Technology

In 2004, I wrote about what I carry around in my gadget bag. Here’s a 2007 update:

• Apple Macbook Pro 17″ – My trusty 2005 Powerbook G4 died on me earlier this year on a trip to Dallas. This is the latest one – unfortunately not the most current line of Macbook Pro though. Upgraded to 3G of RAM.
• Apple iPod – 60GB version from two generations ago. Currently using 56GB. At work, I dock it into a stereo rig. Otherwise, I use the Shure e4c headphones – expensive, but worth it.
• Apple iPod Shuffle (Silver) – I use this when working out or hitting the road on the bicycle.
• Palm Treo 700wx – this is my domestic cell phone / PDA. It syncs wirelessly using Sprint’s EVDO broadband to our Microsoft Exchange servers – providing me with email, contacts, and other information wherever I am.
• Apple iPhone – my personal & international cell phone. My work phone number forwards over to this phone – making it the onestop shop for communications wherever I am.
• Levenger Notebook – I use leather three-ring binder from Levenger to hold my daily schedule, executive summaries, tasks, and various notes as I motor throughout my day. Some of my forms are custom made using Abode Illustrator. I’m also a huge fan of Dave Seah’s Printable CEO series.
• Moleskine Reporter Pocket Notebook – I carry this when I’m highly mobile – it primarily serves as my portable task list.
• Moleskine Reporter Large Notebook – I use this for notetaking and meetings, etc. I began using these when I moved to our headquarters in 2005 – I now have 6 of them filed away in the desk. It’s helped me never lose my notes!
• Sprint Broadband Card – this is used with my work laptop (not listed) to connect to the internet in order to sync up email, etc. when traveling.
• United States Passport – never leave home without it. Now featuring a 5 year entry/exit visa for India.

When I switched to the 17″ Macbook Pro my Brenthaven backpack of years past simply wouldn’t hold the laptop safely. So, I dropped over to Marshall Field’s (now Macy’s unfortunately) and picked up a Tumi Nylon Briefcase that was roomy enough to hold my 17″ laptop. I’ve been in love with my bag ever since.

What’s in your bag?

Waited for 90 minutes to get an Iphone.. and I learned a hard lesson.

Someone in line had to be the first guy that didn’t get a phone…

And that guy was the person standing behind me.

More to come..

Some commentary over at Infectious Greed about life with multiple monitors:

My main office setup has one Dell 2405 (a 24” LCD), and one “smaller” Dell panel that clocks in at around 19”. Funny thing is, as Jason is implicitly saying here, I keep wishing I had more screen real estate. Yes, people would make even more jokes about me playing air traffic controller in my spare time, but luxuriating in the glow of so many monitors feels … necessary.

I have two Dell 20″ monitors running into the Dell XPS desktop – they’re great, especially for gaming. The Powermac has the 23″ cinema screen along with the older 19″ studio display next to it. Love that too. The laptop, unfortunately, only has one screen.

I only wish I had multiple monitors at work.

A year and a half ago, I wrote a post entitled Software Essentials, where I outlined what software I was using and why.

This post has become rather popular, having been linked to from 43 Folders and several other sites.

18 months later, I thought it would be an interesting comparison to see what I was using today and why. Here goes.

1. Text Editing: BBEdit. Nothing new here, I was using this eighteen months ago, and I still do. It helps that my friend Kerri is dating the owner of Bare Bones Software too.

2. Browsing: Mozilla Firefox. The first change of the list. Eighteen months ago, I was using Apple’s Safari and was about to test Mozilla Firefox for the first time. It didn’t take me long to switch. My biggest frustration with Safari was the regular lockups I would run into with the spinning disk of death. No more. I use several extensions with Firefox as well.



3. E-Mail: Mail.app. Another change. I had been using Microsoft’s Entourage the last time I posted about software. It was not too long after this that I switched to using Mail.app after watching several folks use it during BloggerCon 2004. I use it along with SpamSieve for spam filtering. No complaints.



4. Remote Connections: SSH. Nothing new here – it’s still the tool to use. I also tunnel my POP and SMTP connections through SSH along with some others.



5. PDA: Palm Treo 650 from Sprint. Eighteen months ago, I was using a Compaq iPaq 3850. That soon gave way to a new HP iPaq, which in January of this year, I ran over with my car (it’s a long story). Earlier this year, my employer switched our team over to the Treo. Although we’ve had some issues with reliability, it’s had the single largest impact on my productivity of any technological device this year.



6. Backup and Mirroring: ChronoSync and Infrant ReadyNAS X6. I was previously using rsync to a Dell NAS. Based on reading Phil Greenspun’s experience with an Infrant ReadyNAS device for a home music system, I looked into their solutions and purchased a 1TB ReadyNAS x6. This has been a great backup solution for the network here in the house. It grabs changes from the three macs (two laptops and a desktop) and the windows boxes as well. ChronoSync handles the backup process for the Macs.



7. Web Server: Apache. No change and nothing better.



8. Server Operating System: Debian Linux. Still the only linux system I’d use for personal server use.



9. Desktop Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4.3. The two laptops in the house are running the latest version. The desktop still is on 10.3 – not sure that I can justify an upgrade yet.



10. Instant Messenging: Proteus from Defaultware. I’ve played with some other solutions and still like this one.



11. IRC: I can’t remember the last time I used IRC.



12. Weblog Publishing Tools: Movable Type v3.2 and ecto. Really no change here. Just upgraded to MT v3.2 a few days ago. Ecto remains my main remote publishing and weblog management tool.



13. News Aggregator: NetNewsWire. Still the best Mac OS X newsreader. Outstanding scripting support as well.



14. Scripting Language: PHP. Nothing new here. Some of my server applications use Perl as well.



15. Database: MySQL. A new addition from the last list. Generally, I use MySQL for databases.



16. Office Suite: Microsoft Office for Mac OS X is my main office suite. It is completely compatible with what I use at work. With the new powerbook, I did get Apple Keynote and Pages and have begun fiddling with them as well.



17. Music: iTunes. That one should be obvious. I have about 5500 songs in my iTunes library.



18. VOIP: Skype. I don’t use Skype often and rarely have it open, but it’s a great and cheap way to make international phone calls using SkypeOut. No complaints.



19. Widgets and the like: I use Dashboard on the Powerbook since it has OS X 10.4 along with several widgets. I use Konfabulator on the PowerMac G4 desktop since it’s running OS X 10.3. I like both equally.

These are the key applications that I use at home and with my own computers. Work is a Microsoft only environment for the most part and I’ll skip discussing what I use there.

The original post, for comparison, from eighteen months ago is here.

Daring Fireball has posted an outstanding & highly detailed review of his new 15″ Powerbook – the same machine that arrived this Tuesday for me (minus the 2GB of RAM in my case).