Category Archives: Link/News

Volunteers for Change Fairfax, VA

Posted by Ben on June 9, 2008 None comments

Leticia has been interested in getting us involved more in the community so she’s been hunting around for local service opportunities. She finally found a great program in our area that I thought I’d share for anybody looking for volunteer experiences in the DC metro region.

Fairfax City runs a division called Volunteer Fairfax that provides volunteers for numerous events through the year. They also organize team-building service activities for your company, up to thousands of people.

Volunteer Fairfax runs a specific program called Volunteers for Change. This program provides hundreds of weekend and evening volunteer opportunities, organized over the web. It’s perfect for people who can’t commit to regular hours every week or month, but want to do something when they can.

Events from their sample calendar:

  • Dinner prep at Ronald McDonald house
  • Bowling with the mentally/physically disabled
  • Bag groceries
  • Thrift store sorting
  • Tutoring
  • theater ushers
  • special city events
  • medical supply sorting

How it works:

  1. Attend an orientation at their building in the Fairfax County Court Complex
  2. Fill out some simple paperwork, sign a release
  3. Wait a day for your info to be added to their system
  4. Log into the web-site, find an event you can do, and sign up online.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Software Pick: SyncMyCal

Posted by Ben on May 9, 2008 None comments

With the acquisition of a Blackberry I wanted to be able to sync both my work and home Outlook setups to the Blackberry (and to each other). I tried a number of free tools (though they aren’t that easy to find) and quickly concluded I would need a better solution.

Enter SyncMyCal. It’s easy, it’s cheap (only $25), and you can try for free. I rarely have duplicated events, and I don’t have to think about it ever–it just WORKS.

How it works: SyncMyCal synchronizes an Outlook calendar with a Google calendar. First I created a Google calendar, then I set up SyncMyCal on both work and home computers. I set the home computer to take priority in conflicts, but at work I set the Google calendar to take priority over Outlook–this way there’s a hierarchy of priority that helps to prevent unresolvable conflicts and duplicates.

I bought it days before Google released their Outlook sync tool, but SyncMyCal can do a lot more and I don’t regret the purchase one bit.

The latest version also syncs contacts, but I haven’t used that yet.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Announcing: GeekSoftworks.com

Posted by Ben on May 5, 2008 None comments

I’ve setup a new domain for a front page for my software hobbies and what will eventually be my “store front”:

Geek Softworks

It uses WordPress, but it’s not a blog–it’s for the software I write. So far, only a few products are up, including DiskSlicer (a new version!), Windows Media Top 10 Plugin, and Word Count for Windows Live Writer.

I also setup forums for those projects. The site is still pretty small, but it’s functional and it will grow.

Thanks for looking!

Popularity: 3% [?]

I could get cable for this…

Posted by Ben on April 29, 2008 1 comments

My wife and I only recently bought a TV, but we still don’t get cable or even have an antenna. If we ever did, the only things we’d watch are Discovery, History, and Food.

This is the closest I’ve come to signing up:

Popularity: 3% [?]

Need some new audio cable?

Posted by Ben on April 15, 2008 None comments

Get it from Blue Jeans. Awesome.

(BlueJeansCable.com)

(via digg)

Popularity: 3% [?]

How to catch a NetFlix thief

Posted by Ben on April 8, 2008 1 comments

Via Geekologie comes the hilarious tale of a man (boy, really) caught stealing NetFlix DVDs from a mailbox. The comments are funny, too. Some seem like they’re obviously written by the neighbor.

One issue I didn’t really see addressed in the comments on the post is the overall issue of mail safety. People need to consider the seriousness of stealing mail. There’s a reason the fines for it are so severe. A reliable and trusted mail system is the foundation of a good portion of our society and its communications mechanisms.

Having lived overseas, and having had many family members live all over the world, I can personally testify to the need for a secure mail system. There are countries I would not mail a package to–it would just be a waste of money. The security of our system *HAS* to be enforced harshly or people will lose faith in it and it becomes a system of corruption and scamming. This kid got off lucky. If he were older or there were stronger evidence he were stealing more valuable items, or he were being less discriminating in what he stole, I think he could have gotten a far worse punishment.

Popularity: 4% [?]

The Bugle podcast

Posted by Ben on April 3, 2008 None comments

I just discovered this gem of a podcast. The Bugle is a podcast published by the Times Online. Better writing than the Onion, and funnier than the Daily Show. It’s basically two Brits being witty about the week’s news. I’ve only listened to episode one so far, but found myself laughing too hard to concentrate on anything else.

Popularity: 6% [?]

How to file good bug reports (from Frank Kelly)

Posted by Ben on March 19, 2008 None comments

This is an issue I run into constantly at my job.

Frank Kelly wrote up a good summary of some items. They’re simple, easy to understand, easy to follow, even for non-programmers. ;)

In fact, I’m sending this link out to everyone in my group here at work.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

5 Books to make you stupider

Posted by Ben on February 29, 2008 1 comments

Well, after a week of investigation, I’ve settled on a social network for books: Shelfari. It’s attractive, easy-to-use, easy to manipulate many books at once, they have a mobile version, and I have one friend on it (who invited me).

 Goodreads.com also looked nice, and it almost won. bookwormr.com, the one I originally found was just too immature at this point. I’m also wondering what features are going to set it apart from the pack, especially when there are so many well-established sites that do the same thing.

Meanwhile, if you want to read some books that will definitely NOT make you smarter, check out 5 Books that can actually make you stupider.

Visit my Shelfari page.

 

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Online reading list – bookwormr

Posted by Ben on February 20, 2008 5 comments

I found a great site I wanted to share with everybody: bookwormr.

To explain:

I’ve got 3 large books on my nightstand at the moment:

  • Scotland: The Story of a Nation – Magnus Magnusson – Much of my heritage is Scottish, and I got intensely interested in Scottish history during our trip to Edinburgh last year.
  • Code Complete – Steve McConnell – I’ve read this before, but it’s a good book to review every year or so and pick up new tips.
  • The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales – there are many variations on this book. I have a very old, out-of-print edition. I read a few of these a week–they’re mostly quite short.

Those are all fairly large books and I’ve been working on them simultaneously. Meanwhile, I keep getting book recommendations from various places (blogs, podcasts, family). It’s to the point where if I don’t write them down, I’ll forget. I’ve sort-of kept track of books I want to read on my shelf, in an Outlook note, in e-mails to myself, but I was in need of a central repository for this.

So I stumbled upon bookwormr, which is (almost) exactly what I want.

It’s still in its infancy stages, but I think it shows great promise. And it is usable now, despite some rough edges. The owner seems very amenable to suggestions via the blog.

How it works:

  • Search for books (it uses Amazon as its database)
  • Add them to one of your three lists (already read, reading, want to read)
  • You can tag, review, and rate the books.
  • See what others are reading.

The author also has a wordpress plug-in and a Facebook app to go along with it. I’m going to try out both.

Features I’d like to see:

  • Easier way to add multiple books at a time
  • Ability to sort lists according to a ranking system of my own (the author is planning on adding the ability to sort on author, title, book rating overall)

Update: here’s my bookwormr profile.

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Popularity: 5% [?]