What is it about writing that makes it so different from regular conversation? I’m not the most personable person, and I’ve never held an audience rapt with my speaking, but I think I can hold my own in a conversation - at least some of my friends would probably say that I never shut up. I have lots of stories of my former life as a professional jazz acoustic bassist in and around Vancouver (and elsewhere) that might not bore people to tears. Stories of various trips to Africa. Stories about deciding to learn to play ice hockey as an adult. Stories about racing small cars as a child. Stories about geek triumphs. Stories about my one year-old son, and my wonderful wife, and my family and extended family. But when I sit down with the intent to write something, nothing comes out.

Why is that?

What I really mean is that this site needs a new name - J.P.C. is ÃœBER-BORING. So, I need your help. What should this place be called?

Image credit to this site.

I just saw a Canada Post guy in the hallway at my office, and about ten feet behind him was a FedEx guy. they both looked really uptight. All I could think of when I saw them was that I wanted to yell “fight, fight!” at the top of my lungs. I think I need more sleep.

What should one think when one walks into the hallway of one’s office building where one works, and finds an abandoned shopping cart with one unused green garbage bag folded up sitting in it?

Got back from getting coffee, and it was gone. I imagine that even if it was there for nefarious purposes, it can’t be all that easy to make a quick getaway with a shopping cart.

Weird.

And I’m excited!

What is your ideal computing environment? Is it one place, or many? Do you only need your information when you’re sitting at your desk, or do you need it with you, wherever you go?

PDA’s have become somewhat popular to people like me who want to be able to take all of their important information with them wherever they go. But as good as they are, they still suffer from the fact that they are not able to synchronize all of my important data.

With my current combination of laptop computer and PDA, I can be “mobile� in the sense that I can pack up my laptop and lug it around for serious computing, or I can ram my PDA into a pocket on my way out the door and still have most of my data available. But there’s still something missing.

The Tablet PC is very intriguing, because along with the fact that it is smaller and lighter than a traditional laptop, it has added functionality that allows it to be used in new contexts. Until the Tablet came along, it was really not realistic to do any form of computing while standing up, with the exception of PDAs. Now, you can have a fully functional “desktop� operating system available to you while on the move.

I have to admit, I love the idea of this, and can see many new ways that a Tablet PC will enable me to do all the things I currently do, and some new things. The only problem is that the Tablet can’t really replace one particular feature of a PDA: its form factor.

So now we’re back to the original problem. For me it’s all about context – I want to be able to have full access to view and modify all of my data in whichever context makes sense most for me at that time.

I only see two somewhat viable solutions:

1. Software creators become fully aware of PDAs, and include two-way synchronization features with their products. While Microsoft has done this well with some applications (Outlook), it has done a dismal job with other applications like Word and Excel. If Microsoft can’t get it together, who else will

2. A variable-size tablet PC.

Let me explain the second one a bit more, since I believe this is the only truly viable solution. This would essentially be a “modular� PC, where the CPU, memory, and hard drive all exist in a PDA-sized unit which includes a touch-screen, and is in fact a PDA. However it will run a full desktop operating system, with features to make the reduced screen resolution and touch-screen interface bearable, even convenient. This unit will then have the ability to dock into a tablet (slate) PC shell that includes a full-sized display, proper tablet pen digitizer input, and a larger battery. This tablet PC will then also be able to dock at a workstation, much as current tablets do.

Obviously I’m talking about something we won’t see for a few years, but at least it is something that is possible. In the near-term, I believe that Tablet PC functionality could and should become a standard part of any mobile PC. All of the functionality that is included in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition should be standard within all versions of XP, whether the system it is running on has the hardware to take advantage of it or not.

Microsoft, please don’t screw up the Tablet PC. It is arguably the best idea to come out of Redmond in the past 10 years, and from all appearances you’re letting it languish. I want to believe Scoble, but seeing is believing.

Yesterday my car started to make a ticking noise that I was not very happy to hear. The car was a gift from my wife’s uncle, and the reason he was giving it away was that it needed new lifters. Since he had another vehicle, he didn’t need to go to the expense of having this one fixed. The garage bill to fix the lifters wasn’t cheap, but it was a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a car, so it was a great deal for us.

The ticking made me really nervous because it sounded like it was coming from the lifters again. For some reason, when I left work yesterday, I thought “maybe the noise is because the engine is short on oil?” I check my car’s fluids quite regularly, so I thought there was no way that this could be the case.

Well, I stopped and got a fill of psycho-expensive gas (grrr), then checked my oil. Sure enough, it was low. So I bought a litre of oil, and put it in. This time when I checked, no oil registered on the dip-stick at all. Huh? It seems that it was taking some time for the oil to drip down, so when I was checking the oil and it looked like it was OK, or only needed one litre, it was actually much lower. So I added another litre - and now the oil was up to the fill line, meaning I still had one more litre to go.

So after putting the third litre of oil in, I was ready to be on my way. I was hoping that as soon as I started the engine, the loud ticking sound would go away. Unfortunately, it didn’t. Visions of another trip to the garage to fix the lifters yet again flashed through my mind.

But about 5 minutes down the road, the engine quieted down, and has stayed that way. So, hopefully I’ve narrowly missed needing another visit to the garage. Who knows, of course, how much damage was done while the oil was so low… Time for an oil change, I think.

So what have I learned? Take more time and be more careful when checking an engine’s oil… things may not be as they appear.

Paranoia, paranoia
Everybody’s comin’ to get me
Just say you never met me
I’m runnin’ underground with the moles
Diggin’ in holes
Hear the voices in my head
I swear to God it sounds like they’re snoring
But if you’re bored then you’re boring
The agony and the irony, they’re killing me, whoa!
Harvey Danger - Flagpole Sitta

Speaking of which, I guess I need to get onto the CSS bandwagon once and for all. The title of this post is facetious, but you get my drift. CSS is the future of the web (and the now, really) - I guess it’s time to catch up!

For someone who considers himself “technical”, I could take my own advice, and Read The F$%kin’ Manual from time to time. I’m very new to Movable Type, and how it uses style sheets. So you’ll notice that my page design sucks, but it doesn’t suck quite as badly as it did an hour ago. This is a work in progress.