Somewhere out there!

A blog entry by Scott Raymond on what is new in Rails 1.1.  There is a set of very useful links I need to read later, explaining these features and how to use them.

Anyone who uses Firefox should install No Script. Anyone not using Firefox should start using it now, pretty much just for No Script. No Script makes the Internet safe again for Javascript. Quite important with the advent of Web 2.0.

Extra protection for your Firefox: NoScript allows JavaScript, Java (and other plugins) only for trusted domains of your choice (e.g. your home-banking web site). This whitelist based pre-emptive blocking approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even unknown!) with no loss of functionality

I was wondering when I would get the new Gtalk interface in Gmail. The drag was getting annoying, mostly because my laptop is in service and I can’t use Gtalk on the Mac at home. Then the Gmail Skins extension pointed out after installation that Gmail provides different javascript features dependant on the GMail Language setting. I was using English (UK) for the better dictionary, but switching to English (US) now gives me all the new features.

Very cool.

I’ve decided by next portable laptop will be a tablet. While in the UK over December/January I thought a bit about how I work and what methods I could find to improve my approach to work management. Particularly the constant pieces of paper floating around my deskspace which I like to then carry around in my backpack, and when I’m brainstorm how I like to draw diagrams and hand write notes quickly. Stuff which doesn’t work very well with a normal computer. Further reading and many blogs about tablets which all pointed at OneNote pretty much decided me on the matter. Then last week I had a chance to play around with a HP tc4200 then a Fujitsu T4010. Handwriting works, and its pretty amazing.

Most of last year I was dead keen on getting a Powerbook. Buying a Mini Mac clued me of that. Then being able to run NX desktops clued me having requiring Linux to running on my laptop. For the last three months I was using a IBM R52 just running WinX. With my NX desktop on the other side of the world I contained myself within WinXP. Annoying at times, but most of the time I was only using Firefox, Thunderbird and Openoffice. Not problems. The main thing that happened during this period was I discovered that WinXP is not so bad to run after. There is some really good WinXP software out there. Thus using WinXP Tablet edition is now not an automatic cross of the list transaction.
Question now of course is: which tablet do I get?