hublocal.co.uk

This is ingenious coding. What the people over at traintimes.org.uk have done is take live train information from TFL.gov.uk – the people who run London’s underground network, and plot it live on a google map. This was done as part of Science Hack Day and it is SO COOL, though some of my friends aren’t convinced about its usefulness. Personally I’d check this site to avoid long waits on a platform on a day when the trains don’t run as regularly (like a weekend or bank holiday).

Anyway, here’s the link, you can make up your own mind about its usefulness once you’ve picked your jaw off the desk:

Live train map for the London Underground

I went to the Apple Store in Regent Street (London, UK) on the day of the launch when I decided to film some of what was going on to share with my friends. I ended up catching quite a blooper; watch what happened when the Apple employee tried to demonstrate one of the iPad’s magical features:

Link to video (youtube)

I’m working for a company called yura.net, I’m really lucky because a lot of us there have known each other since our university days, and it can be fun working with friends. I digress.

We’ve been looking for a content management system (CMS) to manage our:

• website content
• various projects and clients
• support pages (wikis, faqs, forums)
• basically everything necessary to administer the company

We’re looking at dotCMS (NB: the Community edition, not the Enterprise edition) because:

• it’s Java based (so are most of our current projects)
• has a flexible plugin API (we’ll need to develop a few plugins to get our projects talking to the outside world)
• can manage multiple sites (as well as our own project pages, we’ll be hosting a large number of our clients’ websites)
• can manage users and permissions across multiple sites and services
• is free and open source (speaks for itself)
• once you’re used to it, it’s really easy to set up and for clients to use

I’ve used dotCMS to configure a couple of test sites, and it’s really simple and very flexible. In the past I’ve always used WordPress as a CMS for clients because it’s easy to use. I think dotCMS might be easier both to prepare sites and for clients to understand and use them. I haven’t been fully converted yet though; it’s still early days, and dotCMS has its shortcomings which I hope will be addressed in the new release (v1.9, I’m using 1.7a).

The main problem I have with it is the lack of a built-in forum. The way our business is set up, a lot of our products and services will need a forum feature. Ideally clients would have a single account to use across them all – a ‘single-account-for-many-services’ idea is part of what attracted us to dotCMS in the first place (since many our clients will be administering multiple sites through our services), so this is a potentially big problem. We’ll either have to find a forum that meets our requirements, that can integrate with dotCMS and our various projects, or we’ll have to develop one from the ground up, to our own specifications.

Getting detailed information can be hard, too, compared to products with well-established communitites like Drupal and WordPress. The online support for dotCMS isn’t in the same league as some of these other systems. With dotCMS, i’ve reverted to some old school troubleshooting sK1||z0r to get over the inevitable stumbling blocks eg. mailing lists, iRC (there are some things that can never be replaced). You can see the official list of online resources for dotCMS here.

I’d encourage anyone who uses, or considers using dotCMS to use some of these resources, like the forum, to leave a Q&A trail of support. Things like this can be just as useful for future adopters (or potential adopters) as they are for you. And the added activity in the dotCMS community can serve to further motivate the developers, and encourage more to join us adopters on the bandwagon, which is a good thing.

…at my desk, that is.

So a whole week’s gone by, and my neck is almost back to normal. How’d the rest of my week go with a standing desk? Well apart from the occasional reluctance to work while standing (which encouraged me to use the MacBook a little more), very well. I’ve been a lot more focused with the work I have been doing, and generally feel like I’m getting through my workload faster. I’ve been remembering to take breaks, which is healthy, and am generally more productive during them as well.

I thought I’d try changing my desk to its original setup earlier, but it didn’t work. I’ve gotten used to slightly looking down at my screen, and my iMac is actually that big (27″) that I have to tilt my head up to look at it. So I’m going to try going another week with this arrangement – I still have my secondary desk close by if I really need to sit and work…

I spoke to a specialist last Sunday about a wry neck I developed that morning, which has prevented me from working. He mentioned seating posture (at my desk) as a possible cause, so I did a little reading and came across this article about standing desks on my favourite blog. This got me thinking, and since working at my chair aggravated my condition, I constructed a standing desk of my own out of two CD cases and a spare shelf board I had lying about!

I’ve always been open to experimentation with my desk arrangement and will happily spend hours rearranging things if I think it’ll help my productivity in the long run – but with this, I had no idea what to expect. I can tell you I was surprised at what I did find.

On the question of how it works out, as TJ says in his article:

After a few weeks of using it, the answers are simple: it works really well, and other than my feet being sore at the end of the day, I’m really don’t mind standing for a large part of the day.

…and basically, I agree. It’s surprising how well it does work, I find myself more focused on tasks I’m carrying out, I feel like I’m getting through my workload quicker and somehow I feel better for not being tied to a seat.

The shelf plank I’m using is wide enough to accomodate my Wacom Bamboo tablet, my Logitech Trackman Wheel, my Apple Magic Mouse and my iPhone. Perhaps the biggest difference I’ve noticed here is with my Wacom tablet. I used to hide my tablet away to avoid clutter, but now it sits logically alongside my other input peripherals. It’s no longer just a design tool – I use it to navigate the finder, for web browsing and for anything where the mouse is cumbersome. In contrast to the awkwardness of using it while sitting, it feels more comfortable while standing and seems to just make more sense. In general though, I like being able to just switch between peripherals so easily.

I work from home a lot of the time, and I’ll keep this arrangement for a little longer to see how I feel about it in a week or so. Right now I like it enough to keep this new standing desk, though I can’t see myself insisting on one at work just yet.

I should also note that to the left of my standing desk I have a secondary desk for my Windows PC – I’ve been using this machine to take breaks from standing which helps to rest my feet but also, it helps productivity since it’s an opportunity for making notes, planning and general web browsing etc. The fact is, taking breaks boosts your productivity, and that standing at my desk better encourages me to take breaks than, say, eye strain does.