light

I was talking with a developer whom I have a lot of respect for. We meet up every 2 years or so to swap stories and mostly me get more info out of his head. I was talking about how many people guage a projects 'success' by it's presenttion and really don't care about how roboust it is under the hood. He said 'when that oil light comes on, just nock out the light.'

that amused me greatly.

coupon

shop4tech.com has another 10% off coupon
AE10
Bummer the last batch of dvds is still holding up. there getting more inexpensive.

free tools

pdfCreator looks stronger then cutePDF and uses a newer version of ghostscript and offers an alternative engine, complete with security wrappers. functions as a virtual printer.

fast FoxIT pdf reader, free: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

LockNote 'secure' notepad stored in stand alone exe. could be usefully for simple encryption that is self contained: http://sourceforge.net/projects/locknote

notepad++ free tabbed code editor. it handles ruby and has some usefull code coloring elements in it. my new favorite editor on the pc: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

netvibes

like blogger, digg, and delicious, i think http://www.netvibes.com/ is here to stay.
i've tried several web 2.0 'personalized' home page thingies, but i've settled on netvibes. when it can connect to any rss feed, and give me most of what i read everyday on one page, i'm happy.

THIS is precicely why I keep recommending rss as a core solution to some services in the new webpage for my work; people (at least I) just aint interesting in reading all the articles and browsing all the websites and looking at all the pictures any more. they want headlines fast.