Carl Tyler's Blog

Would you like to add a picture to the background of your Sametime Connect client contact list?  Now you can, with our free plug-in for Sametime.  Over the coming weeks we'll release more free plug-ins.  Most of them are things I find useful or one of the developers had an idea for.  Often we'll learn something from developing the plug-ins we can apply to other projects, so whilst they are not full blown applications I would charge for, they can be useful tools and utilities.  You can expect in the next few days to see a calculator, Vonage phone dialer and a cool meeting plug-in.

If you want to install the Wallpaper plug-in, it requires Sametime 8.0 and later and you can download it from an update site located here: http://www.epilio.com/stupdate.nsf/site.xml

Once you've installed the plug-in, choose File, Preferences, Wallpaper and set the image you want to use as your backdrop. Enjoy. Compliments the Epilio developers.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 11:11:37 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (10)

Yesterday I promised to post my biggest Sametime aggravation.  To be honest, most end users will never experience  this issue, but if you're developing exciting new plug-ins for Sametime you will experience this all the time until IBM decides to sort it out.  The issue is backwards compatibility, whoa I hear you say, IBM prides itself on backwards compatibility.  That is very true, but sadly that backwards compatibility doesn't yet exist for Sametime plug-ins (or Notes plug-ins come to that).  

So far every Sametime point release since 7.5 has required the plug-ins to be updated, so that has meant, 7.5. needed updated plug-ins, 8.0 needed updated plug-ins and then 8.0.1 needed updates.  We've also found that a Sametime plug-in running in the Notes Sametime embedded client doesn't always work the same way as it does within Sametime.  For the ISV large or small this introduces expense, for Sametime customers it introduces management nightmares, trying to ensure that people get the right plug-in for their version, pulling out old versions and replacing with new etc.

I look forward to the day that Sametime and Notes have the same backwards compatibility for plug-ins as it does for regular Notes apps, and the day they make it easy for an eclipse update site to say something like, this plug-in should only be availble to sametime version X users.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:58:48 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (3)

In the past I have always told Sametime Administrators, if they want to use Remote Desktop they MUST use the /CONSOLE (-ADMIN) switch.  Now I need to tell them not to administer Sametime with Remote Desktop.

It looks like IBM now has a different policy on supporting Sametime Administration through Remote Desktop, which is, it's NOT supported.  As stated in technote 1106554

Terminal Services and Remote Desktop are not a supported method of administering a Sametime server, and should be avoided at all times.

It does make you wonder what exactly Sametime is doing to make it struggle so under Remote Desktop, how come pretty much every other application out there from vendors can run happily and be administered throught Remote Desktop ?

IBM suggest using other products like VNC, PCAnwyere or IBM Desktop on Call.  My personal choice is none of these but the free version of LogMeIn.com, this is a great application to use if you are responsible for managing remote family members machines or servers.  Install this on their machine before you give it to them or the next time you visit, and you can remotely connect whenever they need help.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:04:05 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (3)

In prior versions of Notes, if you received an email from an internet user, you would see their internet email address.  In Notes 8 (to be more consistent with Outlook I imagine) you now see the users display name, this is fine and not really my aggravation.  The problem I have is that I often want the users internet address, so I use to copy and paste and use it where I wanted.  In Outlook I can right click on a name to copy the email to the clipboard, or I can double click on the name to see the details.  In Notes, I have to move my mouse all the way over to the right of the screen and select Show Details, then move the mouse all the way back to the left of the screen to select and copy the email address.  If there should be a Show Detail button, the button should at least be near the area it relates to, so have it near the email addresses.

Another issue it used to be when you forward an email you could still see and copy the internet addresses of people in the To, and CC now you can no longer get to the internet addresses in the forwarded email which is a royal pain, (You can work around this, by choosing show details before you choose forward or reply)

Does anyone else find this a little aggravating?

To my friend that contacted me the other day to call me a whiner, I would agree this post is a whine about notes, but would still argue my other post wasn't Oh and to keep things balanced, I'll post about my biggest Sametime aggravation tomorrow

Posted by Carl Tyler At 12:47:48 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (2)

Visiting one of my customers today, I found the following sticker sitting on the screen of the work area assigned to me.  Not sure yet who left it exactly, but it did make me laugh.  It reminded me that customers often read blogs so be careful what you say about them

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:59:32 AM Location | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just came home from watching Wall-e (so so movie) this evening to find this huge moth sitting on the kitchen window.  

I had no idea what kind it was so took a picture in case it flew off.  Turns out it's a Promethea silkmoth, and looking at this website, no one has reported seeing one in my county.

I took the picture with the light being provided by an outside light and using an 8 second exposure on the camera.

The thing is big, it's wingspan is a good 3 inches.  This is the second huge moth I have seen in about two weeks, a couple of weeks ago I thought there was a bird flying into the window, it ended up being a huge Luna moth.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 10:28:57 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been using the Macbook for a few weeks now, primarily as a test device for epilio links, which means with a browser and not much else.  Here are my initial impressions...
It does look sweet, shiny and white when you open the box, and yes no 3rd party AOL phone dialers, Norton Anti Virus harassment when you turn it on.  The whole opening the box experience is very nice.

When I use the machine and have it open, the edges of the base/keyboard are pretty sharp and hurt your wrists after a while.

Black dog hair really stands out on a white computer, to give you an idea of how Jessie's hair gets everywhere, when I first opened the laptop after taking it out of the box, there was already a hair on the touchpad.

All the Mac Shortcut Menus have this funky key that is shown for various tasks, I spent a while looking at the keyboard and it doesn't exist.  It turns out it's the option key .  If Apple make the software, make the hardware (and sue anyone else that tries to make compatible hardware) why not just put the symbol on the key?

Safari has three buttons, which I assumed to be close (red), minimize (yellow) and maximize (green).  For some reason you can't maximize Safari with a button.  Fortunately Firefox works the way you'd expect so that is now the default browser.

Going to sleep and waking up.  OK I don't have any apps installed on this apart from the apple applications right now, but wow, when I tell this thing to sleep, boom it's asleep, literally at that kind of speed, boom it's sleeping.  Open it up, bam it's awake.  All my Windows machines take much longer to go to sleep and wake up (I sometimes wonder if it would help if read them a story and gave them some milk), sometimes they even refuse to wake-up.  The Mac does it so quick I sometimes wonder if it's just pretending to be asleep.

I miss the right mouse button.

I was amazed at how I plugged in an external drive and straight away Time Machine popped up and asked if I wanted to use this drive as the backup device.  Time Machine reminds me of Roxio's Go Back which I used to use on Windows about 8 years ago.

I can't figure out how to tell how good my wireless reception is, is there an option somewhere that will show me what kind of percentage I'm getting?

Why do Macs have a backspace key instead of a delete key?  I did find fn backspace does the same as delete.

It's very weird to install software and not think about where it's getting installed to and things.  This is the way it should be, but it feels so strange to let the OS control it (probably because in the past anything you let the OS handle got screwed up)

The magnetic power hookup reminds me of the one's on Deep Fat fryers.  I wonder if there is a 3rd party market for making little adapters that do the same thing for regular PC laptops.  They would only need to be a short 3 inch piece of cable with a magnetic connector in the middle, and a male and female connector on each end that matches your laptop connectors.

I like Garageband but you need to download about 140 mb of samples to really have any fun with it.

The Mac bluetooth picked up my phone and knew what it could do with it, no fussing.

I'm still coming to grips with the Operating System, and the single mouse and some of the new shortcuts.  The next plan is to start installing some real software and see if things start to slow down.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 01:05:12 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (6)

Well after a few hours of waiting, the fog cleared, and everyone rushed to their planes to get out.  It was like a Le Man 24 start, everyone rushing to their planes and trying to get to the front of the line to depart.  This was the first time I had flown back from Nantucket go via the east of Boston Logans.  I flew at 8500 feet and I think this is the way I'll go in the future.  Usually I would try and fly west of Boston flying under Bostons airspace, this time I decided to take a direct route and fly over Bostons airspace.  It worked out great.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 08:00:50 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jessie, my friends and I made it successfully to Nantucket.  We went for lunch on a clear sunny blue day and Jessie and I headed back to the airfield, to find that the one part of the Island the airfield is fog bound.  So currently we are sitting in the pilots lounge waiting for the fog to clear.



Jessie is quite happy though, lots of wealthy people keep coming through after they land in their Learjet's (yeah I wish) and they are spoiling her rotten as she does tricks for treats.  Fortunately nobody has the plane I've taken booked for tonight or tomorrow morning.  So if it comes to the worst I can sleep on my friends boat in the harbour, hhm not such a bad life is it.

Posted by Carl Tyler At 02:55:05 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (6)

I'm doing my preparation for a flight I have planned for tomorrow where I'll be taking a couple of friends to Nantucket, who are going to meet up with another friend there and they'll then sail back over a few days.  I'm going to fly down to the west of Bostons Logan and pick them up from Norwood a small airfield south of Boston then head to Nantucket, have lunch.  I'll then head back to New Hampshire, flying to the East of Boston over Hyannis in Cape Code and Gloucester on Cape Ann, trying to avoid the large jets that tend to come in that way to land at Logan.

I've done the traditional planning with the old pencil, paper and ruler, worked out the flying times, distances,  headings etc.  but to double check things I like to put the same route into Aeroplanner on the web and make sure the headings and timings match up with what I calculated (they did).  It really is amazing how much the Internet has changed our lives and how much we take it for granted.

The web apps print out pretty looking flight plans, communication frequencies along the way and sectional charts ready to go, which is much better for reading on a bumpy flight than my spider scratching hand writing.   This is one of those areas, where I can get the latest weather, Notice to Airmen, No fly zones etc. all by checking the web, I do also phone 1-800-WXBRIEF to check there isn't anything the internet missed, but it makes the phone call for weather and other stuff much shorter.

I was going to take Jessie with me, but having worked out the weight and balance calculations, with my friends and their bags she'd put us over, I'll recalculate my fuel load and maybe I'll be able to squeeze her in, but I don't think so  Hhhm, maybe if I fly down on a low fuel load and then get more gas in Nantucket she'll be able to come, as I'll have an empty plane coming back.  Time to pull out the calculator...

Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:06:38 PM Location | Permalink | Comments (0)