My favorite time of the week is here: the time I get to share my week with you. I have been busy writing this week and trying out new software on the side as usual. I made a major change to the basic tools I use to do my work, and I gave a lot of thought to picking up an old gadget again. Join me for this view into my week.
Glucose levels
I know this is not techie but since my health factors into my work week please bear with me for a moment. This week has been strange on the health front for me. I am a Type 2 diabetic which as explained to me by my doctor works like this: my pancreas produces insulin fine (unlike Type 1 diabetes) but my metabolism doesn’t use it well. This is why I have to check my glucose level multiple times a day to make sure it doesn’t go too high. I take insulin injections when it does go too high to keep it within a normal range. I don’t have to take much insulin as a rule, it mainly just runs a little high a lot of the time.
This week was strange as my glucose level has run lower than usual for a few days. I can tell how a day is going to be by my initial glucose level first thing in the morning. If it’s high then it will likely be high all day. If it’s low (which is highly unusual) then it will be that way all day. It’s kind of like the base level for the day. A couple of days this week that initial level was lower than usual by a fair bit. When this happens I have to watch it closely all day because it runs the risk of dropping below normal, and that’s a very bad thing. Diabetes is strange; to those who don’t have it, high glucose is not good (thus the need for insulin) but low glucose is dangerous.
My body does bad things when the glucose level gets too low, I find myself shaky (literally) and fatigued easily. It’s hard to describe but basically it means I feel terrible all over. The body uses glucose for energy, that’s why you can get a “sugar high” when you consume too much of it. We’ve all heard of kids bouncing off the walls when they get too much sugar in them. The opposite is true when the glucose level gets too low; fatigue is not far behind.
This happened two days this week and it has an affect on the way I work. I have to watch the glucose all day closely, get glucose in my system when it drops too low, and generally take more frequent breaks as I get shaky. I am someone who works full-stop as a rule, once I get going I like to go all out. This can’t be done when my glucose is dangerously low as it was this week so I took a lot of breaks during those days. That interrupts my workflow which screws up the creative process big-time. I enjoy what I do so much that I typically work long days out of choice. Writing is still magical for me and once I get going I keep going because I love it. This week I actually knocked off early a couple of days — that’s how deeply this affected me.
Gradually my glucose level got back to where it should be and my system got back to business. The human metabolism is a strange thing, it goes along normally and then hiccups like this and for no apparent reason it changes. Fortunately it gets back where it should be and it did so for me so I’m back to my normal days. Sorry for this side (non-tech) part of my week but it’s a big part of who I am and I wanted to share that.
Safari 4 and Firefox
The web browser plays a huge role in my work. I am in the browser all day with lots of tabs open at once and lots of things happening all the time. I have long preferred Firefox for my work as it fit perfectly into my habits and work style. I used it on both the Windows and Mac platforms and made heavy use of extensions to tailor the Firefox experience to fit my needs. I have been able to do this back and forth between the two platforms as Foxmarks keeps my bookmarks and browser environment the same no matter what machine I might be working on at the time. It’s worked so well for me that I had no desire nor vision of changing. Until this week.
Apple introduced the Safari 4 beta, and I downloaded it on the Mac to see what all the buzz was about. This is not unusual, I try out all sorts of new software routinely as it’s who I am. I like keeping an eye on new things, if for no other reason than to keep informed about new technology. My foray into the world of Safari 4 began that way but quickly became so much more.
I have never liked Safari, I’ve tried it several times in the past on both the Mac and Windows and it just had too many shortcomings compared to my beloved Firefox. I would find myself making compromises constantly and that just doesn’t work for me since the browser is so important to my work. Safari 4 changed all that from the very beginning.
The first thing that impressed me about this new version of Safari was the speed. This program is so much faster than Firefox, even the version 3 beta, that it blew me away. I was constantly amazed how quick things happened no matter how many tabs I opened and no matter what I had going on. It is so fast that I started thinking about using it full-time. This surprised me as I had no intention of leaving my Firefox behind.
I decided to use Safari alone for a day and see how that worked for me. I was able to get all of my browsing environment brought in using the Foxmarks for Safari utility on the Mac. This effectively turned Safari 4 into fully productive system for me and I was happy to see that Foxmarks works fine with this new beta version. Safari 4 worked flawlessly for me except for one thing. The WordPress dashboard that we use to interact with the site had some minor problems with Safari 4 and would have been a deal-breaker but Kevin pointed out that the Safari folks were releasing nightly builds of the Webkit browser, which is what Safari is at the base level. He found that one of those recent builds addressed the WordPress issues.
I downloaded the Webkit build (which replaces Safari 4) and all of my problems with WordPress went away and I was off to the races. I have been using Safari 4/ Webkit full-time for almost a week and it’s a testament to how well it works for me that I haven’t fired up Firefox in days. Safari 4 does everything I need and so fast that I have not looked back even once. This is unusual as I normally have times when I go back to an old program solution due to a problem with the new but not this time. Safari 4 has worked so well that I have also installed it on the Windows systems I use. Apple has made a big step forward in my opinion and I have not found a single thing that it won’t do that I need.
GMail- you don’t need no stinkin’ client
I have used a client email program on my computers for years and years. That was Outlook on the Windows side and Apple Mail on the Mac side. This has worked fine for me and there was something comforting about having all my mail stored locally on my computers. I use GMail for all my email needs these days and given the web interface and cloud nature of GMail I have often asked myself why I am still using clients to interact with it.
This week I decided to give it the old college try and do without my client email programs. I started using GMail in the browser and made a concerted effort to do without the client program. I admit that a big part of this decision was due to how well Safari is working overall. Strange as it may seem (it still feels so to me) I haven’t fired up the client in days. I must admit it’s working pretty darn well.
I am not a fan of the web interface of GMail and that’s played a role in my stubborn refusal to give up the client app. Bare-bones interfaces certainly run faster but they do that by not providing a lot of bells and whistles toward making usage easier. I cast my preconceived notions aside and I have to admit I got used to the GMail interface pretty quickly.
A big reason for client email app usage was to have access to my email while offline. GMail is a cloud service and the thought of being cut off from my email makes me nervous. I know that GMail has the offline mode so I gave that a try to soothe my nerves with going client-less. I have not been able to use the GMail offline mode with Firefox because GMail requires Google Gears to make it work. Gears is not compatible with the beta version of Firefox 3 so I could never try it with that browser.
I gave it a go with Safari 4, and Google Gears works fine: offline mode installed without a hitch. GMail then synced my email from the cloud to my Mac for about 30 minutes and then it was all there on my computer. This provided a measure of relief about getting cut off from my email while offline but that relief was short-lived.
As soon as offline Gmail was installed the interface to work with GMail got screwed up. The left column was stretched out very far to the right which left the actual column to work with email far too small. Nothing I tried would let me change these column widths and it was a big pain to work with my email. This would not work, the whole point with losing the client app was to make it easier to work with my email.
I could not figure out why installing the GMail offline feature would cause the interface to screw up but it definitely coincided with that installation. I went online to the GMail help group online and discovered that this is happening to a lot of folks who enable offline GMail. The worst part of this is there is no fix other than to disable offline mode. I did this and sure enough the interface went right back to the way it was before. I am now using GMail online only and that makes me nervous should I lose connectivity. I hope Google will fix this soon. Other than that I am getting along with the web interface of GMail just fine now once I got used to it.
Errata
I have been using Pandora to listen to streaming music a lot this week, I sure love this service. I have a dozen “stations” programmed with artists I like and Pandora never fails to play me like music that tickles my ears. I got a great example of this when Pandora played the theme song from the old TV show “Taxi”. That song is so great and distinctive and I found I was immediately awash with a feeling of nostalgia for the old days. It was amazing how strongly that song affected me and I would never have heard it except for Pandora.
I am using three smartphones all the time these days. All of them have big touch-screens and I find myself constantly cleaning finger smudges off the screens. It’s beginning to feel like that’s all I do. I see the phone in front of me on the desk with the screen off and those smudges stare at me until I just have to clean them. Oh to be less a geek with only one phone. :) I should note that the smudges don’t interfere with using the screen when it’s on, it just looks so nasty when it’s off. Maybe I can train myself to ignore it more.
e-Books of the week
I read a lot this week due to my frequent breaks and I got heavily into Tom Clancy. Clancy’s novels require you to have a LOT of free time as they are so long and involved. I finished up Debt of Honor and have gotten heavily embroiled in Executive Orders. What a great novelist he is. I should point out that I’ve been doing all my e-Book reading using the just released eReader Pro on the BlackBerry Storm. It doesn’t have all the fancy options yet but is a solid e-Book reader already and it’s worked well for me.
Wrap-up
That’s it for another week. I enjoy sharing my week with you and hope you get some enjoyment out of it too. I’ll be back next week so until then take care and happy geeking.
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