Muliple Firefox Processes / Profiles

The FireBug plug-in for Firefox seems to cause problems for GMail. Even if Firebug is disabled for the GMail page itself, after leaving the page, the Firefox application crashes. With Firebug generally disabled, no problems occur. So, I'd like to have an Firefox instance for general browsing, also using GMail, without any Firebug extension and another instance for JavaScript debugging and HTML, CSS design.

Geek to Live: Manage multiple Firefox profiles

The solution comes with a separate development profile ("dev") for Firefox and a shortcut to

firefox.exe -P dev -no-remote

Then I copy the content of the profile directory "...Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxx.default" into "...Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxx.dev" to get all my bookmarks and settings into the new dev profile. Now to have a lite-weight instance for general browsing, I start the default profile and uninstall all the development extensions and remove the development bookmarks.

Nokia E70

With my mobile contract expiring, I've looked around for a new cell phone to profit from some contract extending offers.
With WLAN support some smart phones seem very interesting. The display resolution of the Nokia E70 has made me spend some real money on a cell phone for the first time... and so far it was worth it. I can surf the web and manage my emails over WLAN and the details seen on this display allow me to browse most of the standard web pages, check out locations on a map and check the weather with overview images.
And btw this log I'm writting on my mobile with a qwerty keypad.

Problems with HP-L2335 23" Monitor

In October last year I've bought a 23" TFT monitor and was very happy about it. 1920 by 1200 pixels forming a beautiful picture... Then the summing, buzzing noise started. After about 10min runtime it sounds like it looses some internal sync or something. The picture is still fine, but the kind of vibrating, nasty, humming sound paired with some higher frequencies difficult to recognize, give me a headache. I've tried power connections in different rooms at 3 different locations and fed the signal with the notebook (even though the display menu without any signal is enough). No change. So I've called for a replacement...

• replacement 1
  1a support-response, the next day I've received a new device... but except the power-on LED no picture at all...
• replacement 2
  Again a fast delivery. The humming starts right from the beginning and seems to be even louder.
• replacement 3
  Again the same humming sound. In all the deliveries a German power cord was included, so they figured maybe I use a unsuitable Swiss power connection.
  
• replacement power cord 1
  Again a German connector.
• replacement power cord 2
  Unexpected and without notice. But hey, it fits my tablet PC ;)
• internal (Customer Relations Team, HP Switzerland) delivery 1
  Yes, it makes a strange noise, but we can't tell with only one test device...
• internal delivery 2
  It supposed to be alright, with just some "normal" noise. Forwarded to me as the next replacement.
• replacement 4
  The sound again... Maybe this is normal!?!
• more detailed research on the net
  And really there are report about other monitors emitting a humming sound. In most cases the replacement has been fine. Some even figured out some good and bad production series (unfortunately from another brand).
  If you increase the brightness to 100% the sound vanishes.
• response to my research
  Serveral internal personnel confirmed, in a "normal" environment no sound can be heard. => No further support is offered. No changes to the product.

Thank you very much for redefining my "normal" environment! After confirming the problem in the first run!?!
Well, it looks like I'm stuck with a pretty bright working place at day and night (I rather have full light on, than having to wear headphones all the time).
I hope some day there will be a test or regulation for monitor noise levels or something alike, so I can choose my next viewport to my data more successful.

Distribute Personal Information

With my new Tablet PC I developed the wish to have my personal information managed with multiple PCs. Outlook seems to be the only mainstream choice of PIM client still. It syncs with my PDA and "mostly" with my cell phone. But to share the Outlook.pst content with multiple computers I would need to setup an Exchange server... on a Windows server... hmm, nop, too much Microsoft. So I'm probably gonna look into Sync4j some day.
EMails, I should read only per web interface I guess. But maybe I want to look up an old Email when I'm not online... or write lots of offline Emails to send in one go...
For my bookmarks I've found netvouz to be a quite usable service. It would even provide a RSS feed for live bookmarks in Firefox, but I miss the hierarchy with categories for that purpose. So I use the web interface to work with and manually export the bookmarks as XML for a local backup.

Remove Tablet Input Panel (TIP) from Taskbar

Finally I've found a way to get rid of the Tablet Input Panel (TIP) short-cut from the Taskbar.

regsvr32 /u "c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\ink\tipband.dll"

Under Tips and Tricks on the Tablet Creation site you can find other useful stuff too.

Tablet PC TC1100

I've got my new Tablet PC!
Even thought the TC1100 seems to be quite an old model already, it seemed to me the closest to a "tablet". Others are heavier and/or bigger. Because as a gonna-be tablet-user I don't plan to use the keyboard a lot, I don't mind the small, maybe a little fragile TC1100 keyboard. With convertibles you always carry your keyboard with you, making them bigger and less handy.
Here some pros and cons fed by my first impression...
...on Tablet PCs in general
+ really no mouse needed anymore
+ "mouse" gestures are handy (eg. extension for FireFox)
- active digitizer ("mouse hovering" not really needed, is it)
- Ctrl-Mouse-Click features not usable
...on the TC1100
+ nice and small
+ robust glass screen
- only 1024x768 (check-out Toshiba Portege M200 with 1400x1050)
- non-mappable, useless screen-switch-button
...on Windows XP Tablet
- still Windows ;) (some day I have to give Linux on TC1100 a try!)
+ handwriting recognition
- speech recognition
- how to get rid of the TIP toolbar in the taskbar?

Wikis

Even though I've already have made some experiences with Wikifarms some time ago, I want to give it another try...

SeekWiki (http://www.seedwiki.com) seems to be down.

XWiki (http://www.xwiki.com) lets me register, but I'm still waiting for the confirmation email.

On SWiki (http://www.swiki.net) it seems, I already have created an account. After some problems I got into a kind of project management documents collection. Maybe I can use it for my next contracting project.

Starting...

This is gonna be a personal journal. Personal stuff I can share with the public.