I'm not sure where I read it, but I remember someone remarking that the term "Road Warrior", was dreamed up by marketing bods to make sales reps feel that there is something glamorous about a lifestyle involving being holed up in a travel lodge in a different place each night, working on a spreadsheet on their laptop. I don't quite fall into that category, but I am working in a few different places (albeit mostly a skateboard/bike/car journey away from home). I'm doing all of this on a laptop (lovely black macbook) - and even when working at home, I don't have a desktop machine anymore, preferring just to plug my macbook into a mouse/keyboard/monitor, rather than consider having a dedicated desktop machine.

I'm trying to avoid gushing about the macbook, but it has so far proved to be a massive step up from my 12" powerbook. The powerbook was great too, but I quickly went out and replaced it when I struggled to use it on a day to day basis in a freelance situation - where I would turn up at a clients site and be expected to get straight down to working all day, without the luxury of plugging it into external peripherals (other than a mouse), and often not being able to get access to other machines for testing in IE etc. My hands would "fall off" the sides of the keyboard, the screen resolution was too low, it was slow, and it was just useless trying to use virtual PC to do testing in multiple versions of IE. So the powerbook will now hopefully see a few more years service as a more than adequate general home living room email, web, word processor, print server and music/ video jukebox machine.

The macbook, with 2gb of ram and a copy of windows XP running in a VM using parallels in coherence mode, has (touch wood) improved the situation massively. The screen resolution is adequate, speed is significantly better, the keyboard is lovely (I actually prefer it to an external keyboard - the "spaced out keys" seem to suit my clumsy typing style) and it has a solid, sleek feel to it. I know some people see them as expensive, but even with the highest spec model it is still under a grand, which makes it cost effective in my eyes, as I hope/expect to get a few years out of it. Parallels is excellent - although I struggled with it before I upgraded my RAM from 1gb to 2gb, it now runs really well and I have it open most of the time, with multiple versions of IE and other windows apps just a click away and opening almost seamlessly, but otherwise working within OSX.

I'm also chuffed to find out that the macbook has wifi reception in the apparent wifi "deadspot" in my garden, where my powerbook wouldn't find my network. I'd been out and bought a wifi range extender to resolve this, but haven't yet set it up, and probably won't need to now. I'd heard before that the aluminium case on powerbooks inhibits the wifi reception, which might explain this.

i've also inherited a PDA phone - a T-mobile Vario II (pocket PC with 3G, wifi and slide out QWERTY keyboard). These have a reputation for being flaky, but it has been reliable for me so far, and incredibly useful - terminal services has come in handy for restarting services on one of my windows servers when I can't access any other way, and I have pocket putty on there in case I need to ssh into a server (haven't needed to yet other than to try it out). The pop email client works well with gmail, although i've disabled it for the time being due to the high volume of email I get. I installed the missing sync software on the mac and syncing works fine, and it is working as a bluetooth modem for the mac after installing a 3rd party modem script.


My main gripes with the Vario would be battery life (less than a day if you are using a lot of the features like wifi), and a bit of fiddliness - I often have to get the stylus out to find a contact and make a phone call. It's also a bit bulky and no iPhone in the looks department. Also I haven't fully figured out the wifi - it seems to randomly try to connect to any available network when switched on, not what I want. Other times (seemingly random) it gives me a list of options via a notification, but not necessarily the options I want). When connected seems to work fine (other than the aforementioned battery guzzling) - good with skype etc.

This morning I had a fantastic coffee but frustratingly slow wifi experience in Boston Tea Party, connected via street net - it went from fast to slow to standstill, although the signal was fine. Someone downloading a series of 24 across the road in starbucks maybe?

I was trying to get rid of the google ads on this site - i'm getting over a thousand page hits a month but have only earned myself $8 since I added them months ago - I can't even cash that in until i've earned $100 so it's just not worth selling my soul for...

I always go on (and on...) about how I chose a 12" powerbook because it was really portable and had decent battery life. Thinking about it, it isn't that much more portable than a bigger powerbook or macbook, but it has better battery life than those with bigger screens. Now that I have a new battery in here I have to gush about how nice it is to have really useable battery life. Last night I watched a film (well a long TV episode) on battery power, listened to about an hour of radio paradise over wifi, and then here I am this morning, blogging, surfing and doing some web development and still have a third of my battery left. All this time i've had wifi on, screen at full brightness and about 10 applications open.

After attending the excellent recent Skillswap on security by Oliver Humpage at the Watershed in Bristol, I am feeling more paranoid than ever about security on public wifi. We are all being encouraged to use wifi and work from wherever you want, but little advice is given about how to avoid transmitting your unencrypted usernames and passwords over the network.

By default the average user will not be using any encryption - virtually everyone using ordinary email (i.e. using a desktop mail client) transmits their username and password when they check their mail. During the presentation Oliver demonstrated how applications such as dsniff can be used to sit and gather unencrypted data on a wifi network - this is not difficult to do.

Being already paranoid, I tend to use a web proxy over ssh to surf on public wifi, but I have a whole load of other applications running -IM, skype etc that I suspect also transmit unencrypted data that needs securing, which may or may not be tricky to do over ssh. Apparently a VPN is the way to go.

Connecting Bristol are talking about a map project to show areas of free wifi in Bristol.

i'm two days into plone conference 2006 and it has all been a bit of a whirlwind so far. I'm eight hours behind UK time and travelled 26 hours to get here after missing our connecting flight in houston, thanks to some helpful individual at passport control who wouldn't let us jump the queue.

so far we haven't ventured much further than three or four blocks away from the venue, but luckily there are ample bars and restaurants close by. The hotel has good wifi, the conference venue wifi has been intermittent but seems to be improving. I've been too busy to blog much, but I have uploaded one or two photos to flicker.

The conference itself has been interesting and the keynote this morning has given me a clearer understanding of where plone is at the moment and where it is going. I was also pleased to note that I am not alone in having trouble with migrations between version and at least it is a recognised issue and much thought and effort is going into a solution, and that solution involves being able to dump a sites content into an intermediate format that can be used to populate a new site, thus giving me a way to get my content where I can see it, rather than hidden in zodb/zexp voodoo.

Today I find myself in Caffe Nero on the triangle. I'd always discounted it before because I didn't realise it had an upstairs bit and I didn't like the idea of using my laptop downstairs with people queing for coffee looking over my shoulder. I'm presented with three possible wifi connections - StreetNet, SurfandSip and Caffe Gusto next door. I couldn't get connected to surfandsip (and I think it's a paid service anyway?), Streetnet seems a reasonable signal, and Caffe Gusto is weak but useable (a bit cheeky too considering, but it's nice not to have to fill out the survey that you do with StreetNet)

I went back to Boston Tea Party today, mainly because i wanted to try Goldbrick House, but it wasn't open at 8.30am (I checked back later, it opens at 9 - a bit late for pre-work coffee. The girl in there said she thought they had wifi for customer use - not sure whether it was streetnet or their own).

Anyway, I decided to see how reliable StreetNet is if I threw caution to the wind and didn't tunnel everything through ssh. Seems it's fine - maybe I confused it before by validating normally, then reverting back to ssh tunnelling..

It's back on my list - nice latte, nice Ikea Poang chair to sit in upstairs by the window :)

As I mentioned before a few of us from netsight are going to Plone Conference 2006 in Seattle. Besides actually attending the conference i've been reading up on other things to check out while i'm there. I plan to visit a few of these coffee shops with wifi and i've also just read that the blog business summit is also on at the same time - maybe there could be a bit of cross-fertilisation there as many of the plone bloggers will be at Plone conf?

I now get just 9 minutes per charge on my powerbook battery, and today i've forgotten to bring my power adaptor out with me. I'm blogging this in caffe gusto with the screen very dim! Just enough time to check me email I hope, before it goes to sleep and I have to stare out of the window for a while (I should have agreed to take a copy of the metro off the insistent vendor today for once).

Being as paranoid as ever I decided that normal ftp was too insecure for my windows server (particularly when developing using dreamweavers ftp-on-save on an open wifi network), so I am experimenting with freeSSHd, to provide me with an sFTP server. This appears to be right up my application, as it has a GUI for managing the users, home folder etc. and a nice easy button to press to start and stop it. It also runs as a windows service.

I tried out a friends pocket pc (or is it windows mobile now?) smartphone recently - a cool little device with a slide out QWERTY keyboard (I think it was a variation of this htc device). It also had wifi support so I thought I would try to blog from it. However, he hadn't got opera installed and the wordpress gui completely failed to work in pocket internet explorer. I'm sure there is a solution to this, but I was disappointed that the wordpress online admin didn't gracefully degrade.

This is something to consider when designing web apps - whilst AJAX could potentially be used to provide huge usability enhancements to people using mobile web devices with small screens - the majority of people are going to be using windows mobile with pocket internet explorer - your app should work with no javascript support at all. and then be progressively enhanced with AJAX as a seperate consideration.

free credit today at skype! I just bagged myself "almost 0 hours of calling". So soon after delivering me a free balance expiration - i'm made up!

at this rate i'm going to find it very difficult to review anywhere else ;-)

with the free muffin with my coffee this morning. Still the only cafe I have found on park street, bristol with free, reliable, in-house wifi. Mind you i've only tried a couple so far...

I needed to reinstall windows on my work laptop as it was getting a bit sketchy and unreliable in that undefinable way, so I took the opportunity to repartition the disk and set it up as a dual boot machine, with ubuntu. I created a primary 15gb partition for windows and installed win xp in the usual way, then used the partitioning tools in ubuntu to create a 15gb partition for data (Ext3 to be shared between windows and linux, by installing these ext3 drivers in windows), and a 6gb partion for the ubuntu install. It all went fine, but the wireless card isn't recognised by ubuntu. I've looked into it - apparently I can get it working using some windows driver voodoo that goes by the name of ndiswrapper. I haven't tested how/if ubuntu handles sleep and dual monitors yet, but will do at some point.

once again, I have been obsessing about the idea of owning a mobile web device. I'm not sure what my business case is for owning one, other than the desire for something that can be carried around with me most of the time to use for email and full web browsing, smaller and lighter than a laptop and with better battery life than a laptop. The device needs:-

• wifi
• full featured DOM supporting web browser
• decent battery life
• small and light enough to not be noticeable when carried around in my bag (i've always got one with me, to carry various wires, adaptors, chargers, wet wipes, nappys etc. not quite a "manbag", but close.)
• at least 800 pixel width resolution
• integrated qwerty keyboard

Only the nokia 770 comes close at the moment, but doesn't have a qwerty keyboard. I keep seeing other devices crop up, such as sony's forthcoming mylo, but the screen resolution lets that one down. I'm quite tempted by some of the clamshell smartphones, but I don't want a phone that big, valuable and breakable.

I have hatched a plan to satisfy both my urge for expensive coffee variations and the idea of wifi breakfast nirvana on park street in clifton, Bristol. Or near park street, as it seems that there aren't actually many places to get breakfast on park street at 8.30. My plan is to do this once a week (because of time and money constraints)
Here are my criteria:-

• On my route to work (or a slight diversion of)
• Free Wifi (streetnet should cover most of the area, but in-house even better)
• nice coffee
• Somewhere to sit with a laptop preferably away from the gaze of passing pedestrians

Today I find myself in Boston Tea Party. Upstairs is a room with plenty of space, tables, sofas etc. Nice atmosphere - although a bit quiet and library like this time of the morning. Wifi wise I am currently connected to streetnet. I did notice a WEP protected network called BTP, with a much stronger signal than streetnet, but when I asked the staff for a password I was told to use streetnet, they didn't admit that BTP might stand for Boston Tea Party, but I didn't push it. Shame because for some reason the streetnet signal seems to vary and i've already had to reconnect once.

I won't do any ratings because I need to try some other places first to compare it to, but it is definately a contender.

UPDATE: Actually, the streetnet connection in Boston Tea Party is very flaky - I wanted to correct my misspelling of "definately" in the last paragraph, but got booted out (of the wifi, not Boston Tea Party) for the third time. I'm now correcting this from work. The flakiness could possibly be because I was running over an ssh tunnel (too paranoid about transmitting my passwords on a public network), so I was authenticating in one browser, then using another web browser running through a web proxy on another browser, maybe it saw me as inactive and logged me off or something? Either way - park street cafe bars take notice - if you want my massive £2 a week business, get yourself some wifi for customer use ;-)

It makes sense really when you think about it, but confused me for several minutes! I was about to blame it on the new pine door downstairs...

what's this? i'm actually blogging again after a break of about six months - new site, new URL and everything. I'm not going to explain everything in this post, i'll save that for when I "offcially" launch rickhurst.co.uk

no i'm blogging today because I decided to drop in at caffe gusto up at the top of park street on my way to work to have a coffee and use the free wifi. goddam it's hot, but with the latin music and sounds of the cafe and non-english accents downstairs it seems about right, for a minute here I could be in spain somewhere, rather than just round the corner from work where I shall shortly go and ascend our many, many stairs and stand in front of the fan sweating for a while!