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If you want to know why I switched have a look here

http://steves.businessblog.com/blog/_archives/2004/8/25/129522.html

- Posted by Steve Richards - 7:56:34 PM - comment []

There are two discussion threads active on the GTD forum on Offices.  The first is asking people about their home offices and I have replied to this with some links to my blog.  Inspired by the interest people seem to have I have updated some of the pictures and added a couple of new ones.  Of particular note is my new baby spider phone, (brand new and 2/3 off retail price off eBay!):

Then Eric Mack got into the act with this "not so tidy" desk post, and another post that links to his blog:

I cope with this by having a designated untidy area:

My wife and kids also have a desk each, and share this one in my office, which helps keep them away from mine:

- Posted by Steve Richards - 7:50:51 PM - comment []

This video of Microsoft Reasearch into large screens and multiple monitor support, shows some of the cool things that you can start to do with all of that screen real-estate.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=14162#14162

- Posted by Steve Richards - 1:03:53 PM - comment []

I described my Office in a previous post.  In this post I thought I would provide a bit on insight into my home network.  The following diagram should give you the basic idea.

1. The hub of the network is a little 4 port 100MB switch.  All three servers and one laptop are plugged into this
2. There are two dedicated servers on the network
1. Server 1 is a dedicated application server.  It only runs Windows 2003 Server and GSX Server 3.1.  All application servers and some test desktops run on top of GSX server.
2. Server 2 is a dedicated management server, and Active Directory domain controller.  This server runs the MOM Express 2005, and acts as a backup of my main file server, using Windows 2003 Volume Shadow Copy.
3. My desktop PC also happens to run Windows 2003 server, as this allows me the flexibility to access it via Windows Terminal Services from anyhwere in the house, mirror my data files, and also runs as AD domain controller for resiliance.  It also runs VMWare Workstaton.
4. When I need access to my company network, I run up a corporate standard PC in a VM on my Desktop Server and VPN from there, (VMware allows me to share files between my Corporate network and my PC network, with full network isolation).
5. The Pinter/Scanner is plugged into the management Server and the Desktop application server, one connection via USB and the othere via parallel.
6. For flexible use around the house and offsite I also have a laptop which runs Windows XP Professional, but can access Linux from the VMWare application server.  The laptop and my PDA both connect via WIFI.
7. My eldest daughters both have PC's.  One laptop and one desktop both connected via WIFI.
8. All machines are part of the home AD Domain and use roaming profiles.
9. All data access except from my desktop server is via DFS
10. All print access is via my desktop server
11. Windows Terminal services is used extensively by everyone in the family
12. My desktop has three screens all driven from my desktop server.  One display via analogue, one via DVI and one via a virtual display adaptor from Maxivista.
13. I have a KVM switch that allows my Keyboard, Mouse and Secondary display to be connected to either my desktop server or my application server for console access, although its more convenient most of the time just to leave a Windows Terminal Server session open.

In a future post I will explain a bit about my home lab, which is all virtual for maximum flexibility and runs a mix of Windows and Linix servers and clients.  I will also expand a bit on my desktop application environment and security.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 7:35:51 PM - comment []

Microsoft research have come up with some really cool tools for capturing and manipulating whiteboard contents captured using low quality web cams.  My whiteboard is right behind me, (so my web cam points right at it, so it would work just great, but the downloads are MS only.  The best trick is it removes the person writing on the board from the image.  Here are some of the key points:

Other systems use expensive cameras or dedicated electronic whiteboards. The Live Whiteboard system, developed at Microsoft Research by Zhengyou Zhang and Li-wei He, uses whatever whiteboard you already have. It only needs an inexpensive Web cam and some clever software.

Live Whiteboard doesn't just deliver a video stream of the whiteboard. The software takes out all the shadows and uneven surfaces that come through on a Web cam, and turns the whiteboard into an image that allows viewers to see the whiteboard notes. Through a series of image processing procedures, the originally captured image is first transformed into a rectangular bitmap to correct perspective distortion, and then color-enhanced to increase contrast, saturation, and to provide a clean uniform white background.

In addition, if the remote viewer wants to focus his attention only on the content, the system can take out the image of the person who is writing on the board. The remote viewer sees only the new content magically appearing, he never sees the person who is writing the content. This saves even more bandwidth.

The full news article can be found here, and the web site for the developer with more info and the research reports can be found here.

- Posted by Steve Richards - 11:15:25 PM - comment []

In another post I am going to talk a bit about why I think multiple monitors are really important, but first I want to introduce you to my home office, so you can see my personal working practice in its full context.  First things first:

1. Everything I need is within arms reach
2. I try to scan all my paper, and its all there in PaperPort, see below
3. I have two desks, a computer desk where I have my three monitors, and drive all my clients and servers from one keyboard and mouse and a layout, reading etc desk where I have space to organise.  The kids use this desk at night if I am happy to be disrupted a bit.
4. I have a web cam on top of my primary display, again more on that later

For the full article click here to continue ...

- Posted by Steve Richards - 7:16:03 PM - comment []

I have been quite happy with my two monitor setup at home,  but using maxivista I am now able to drive three monitors from my main desktop PC.  This is just great.  I can now have my email in one, my RSS feeds in another, be using Office in another etc.  I am also using a lot of virtual PC's and I can have these displaying on different monitors.  So I can have RedHat on one monitor and SUSE on another and still be using Office on my third.  It really must have driven my productivity up 20% when I am doing this sort of work, which is probably 50% of the time.  That's at least £100/day.  A staggering return on investment - the third monitor, (old laptop), was being scrapped and Maxivista is about $40!!

The other great advantage is that your concentration and focus is not disrupted, you might think it would be, but it seems that by not switching applications all the time, and by being able to focus on the task at hand on your primary screen, the other two monitors just provide supporting information.

We really must get more people to understand the value proposition of multiple screens!  

- Posted by Steve Richards - 12:25:58 AM - comment []