Jim's blog

I have just started using several 'cloud' computing services having found that they ease my pain in several areas.



First I was made aware of Highrise which has neat features to help me track my client contacts and relationships. I am still trialling the free version but it won't be long before three "Cases" is not adequate to meet my needs and I'll go for the paid service.



I also have started a trial account at Xero which is where I expect my business and personal finances will be managed in the very near future. I already am using it to track my personal finances through my BNZ bank account. My account details are automatically synch'ed from the BNZ to Zero so when I log in all my latest transactions are there already and Xero has done a pretty good job of categorising most of them.



About the time I started trialling Xero as I became aware of Freshbooks which has some excellent features for time recording and invoicing. It didn't take much of a trial before I jumped in to the paid for service. Being able to track my time and haev my colleagues and sub-contractor log on to the same system to log theirs and then being able to produce consolidated invoices is just magic. I have been using spreadsheets for that over the last 3 years and this will save me hours every month.



The really good news is that when I tag a contact in HighriseHQ as a client, the client details can be synchronised across to Freshbooks, and when I produce an invoice on Freshbooks it is posted into my accounts on Xero - all with no manual intervention. Setup was a breeze.

Well I bit the bullet and did the upgrade between LTS versions of Ubuntu over the weekend.

After backing up everything I ran the 8.10 -> 9.04 -> 9.10 -> 10.04 upgrade sequence. I'm not sure why I didn't just reinstall from scratch - it would have been a lot faster although I would have had to spend the time adding the extra programs I regularly use and I hadn't backed up all my VMWare Server virtual systems that I use for testing so would have had to go through a few hours of fun with that.

What was good?
Everything pretty much just worked - albeit somewhat slowly.

What wasn't good?
Took a long time (downloads ran at under 100k/sec a lot of the time - ain't broadband fun. Luckily I didn't have to sit in front of it and wait.
Some 'features' of newer versions of software are on by default and that is a pain. I don't want my password safe to lock after 2 minutes. I use it frequently at times and my pass phrase is long enough that it is a pain to type in too often (i know - its a trade off). And why do I now have to type in a password I never did before when using Thunderbird which has saved my Gmail login password?
And why does Thunderbird now start with a new set of defaults that I have to change back to how I use it?

It installed a set of games that I didn't want. Surely even a dist-upgrade should take some notice of what is already installed and if I have removed all games please don't gratuitously add them in for me - likewise a bunch of new apps I haven't even heard off. What are Akonaditray and Gwibber anyway and why do I care? Give me choice if necessary.