Mark Dalton

Wow it was hard getting up on Monday morning. I mean I knew it was going to be, but when the alarm clock went off I just wasn”t expecting it. It was almost as if the alarm clock was mocking me. I got to the train station and had forgotten to renew my ticket over the weekend, so had to stand in the queue which isn”t great at the best of times let alone the first working week of the new year. There was such a demand for tickets the system kept crashing meaning that they could only issue weekly tickets. So I brought the ticket and stood with all the other happy souls on the station platform waiting for the train. Monday flew by after catching up with everybody and before I knew it I was homeward bound with several hundred emails to still wade through. The only problem with taking time off is that the work just waits for you to return.

Tuesday night it snowed and snowed hard so by Wednesday morning we had 6-8″ of snow on the ground and the roads were impassable, this continued all week so I worked from home. Luckily with technology today this is not a problem and I can access all the systems I need to, but I do miss the social interaction and by the weekend I was starting to suffer from cabin fever, and a distinct lack of food.

Saturday I tried to venture into town but the roads were still very slippery and the car parks were closed, so I decided to pop down to see Katrina and the kids as it was Katrina”s birthday on the Friday and I hadn”t given her the iPod that I had brought her.

Katrina was equally frustrated as the schools had been closed and the kids were also starting to show signs of being cooped up to long. We had a cup of coffee and complained about the weather like good British citizens, while the kids climbed all over me, but it was really good to seem them again.

Sunday it was still to risky to go to far but I dug the car out and cleared the drive somewhat and made it to the train station and renewed my ticket. I just couldn”t stand the thought of doing it at 06:30 Monday morning. After doing that and getting some shopping I walked up to Mum & Dad”s for Sunday dinner. We chatted about the snow as they hadn”t made it out too far either and then moved on to holiday”s to try and brighten up the mood.

I walked home slipping and sliding all over the place and then settled in for the evening with a rented movie.

I have been using PDFPen from Smile on my mac as part of my workflow for a while now and it’s a fantastic product. I use it mainly when I scan in documents either to simply carry out OCR before filing in DevonThink or to make amendments to PDF documents I have been sent.

However for a while now I have been wanting to do a little more advanced work with PDF’s, including creating PDF forms. The standard version of PDFPen doesn’t support this but Smile on my mac also offers a Pro version of the software aptly named PDFPenPro. At $99.95 I found PDFPenPro a little expensive for the extra’s it offered over PDFPen which retails for a not inexpensive $49.95, but it is still a lot cheaper than the Adobe offerings. Smile on my mac also offers an upgrade route from the standard version to the Pro version but there isn’t any saving to be had by following this route, other than deferring the cost, and gambling on the exchange rate in my case.

However this weekend I needed to create a customer form and couldn’t stand the thought of trying to do it using any of the standard Microsoft tools so I upgraded to PDFPenPro. It was very simple to get going and within a short period of time I had the basics of the form laid out, and for what I needed to achieve this weekend that was sufficient, but I do have a few issues. Now I understand I am still on a bit of a learning curve so I have emailed the support team to seek confirmation.

I will let you know how I get on!

November 22, 2009 @ 7:52 PM – : Well the team at Smile on my mac have responded, multiple times, with suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong. I did try what they suggested prior to emailing them however but at their request have sent them the file in question for them to take a look at. In my book this is great service. I am probably missing a very simple step, but how many companies to you know respond within a few hours to a request. I am impressed.

November 23, 2009 @ 9:24 PM – : So this evening I received a response from the team at Smile on my mac advising that they had found what appears to be a bug and have raised the issue with the development team, but in the meantime provide a work around. They also had found a number of issues with the way that Preview handles PDF Form fields and in particular form text box borders and the “Required” property. I do however now have a finished product and all in all it was a simple process. I have a few idea’s on how the product could be further improved but will feed them back once I have done a little more with the product.

05:00 and I am wide awake, could it be the excitement of returning to work? I don’t think so! Something to do with the bl**dy car alarm that has been going off every hour since 02:00, not really! The overwhelming desire to watch the sun come up? In Basingstoke, are you kidding me? If I analyse it deeply I think it had something to do with the fact that I was rested, relaxed, and in bed by 10:30 last night, and maybe the slightly weird dream I had about ducks! All I will say is that my first job tonight is to adjust the timing on the heating, dam 05:00 is cold.

So I hit the override button on the heating control and after a cigarette and glass of orange juice went back and laid in bed, waiting for the heating to kick in. I didn’t doze back off which I fully expected to, but when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was laying there trying to remember what I had watched on TV that would encourage the duck dream. Showered and dressed and still none the wiser regarding the ducks I stuffed the laptops into the bag and headed for the car. Once outside I really noticed how cold it was and getting into the car I felt the need to test the heating on HIGH and make sure the heated seats were fully functional.

I had to renew my train ticket and luckily my early start paid off as while there was only one guy serving he was the one with 90% of the brain cells and powered through the queue. Even more luck when I pulled into the car park and the car in Bay 1, yep the golden bay, the bay right next to the exit, was pulling out. Parked, smiling, and still cold I headed for the station and then I realised the shorter walk didn’t allow me to finish my smoke before entering the station, so I had to either stand with the private school students who had all been kicked from Dad’s Merc into the cold or ditch it. I ditched it and headed for the coffee shop.Then it happened, Yes I had the quick queue, yes I had the gold parking spot, but the coffee shop was closed! I nearly gave up then and there but figured I could wait until I got on the train. Then it happened, the 06:51 was delayed by 4 minutes due to slippery tracks. Now most people would shrug and say four minutes, what’s the fuss? After 10 years commuting however I saw the look in the other commuters eye’s. The rules now change and the shuffle starts. You take the gamble you take your spot and you pray to the great train god that the doors will open in front of you. If they don’t, your screwed, and there was no chance of the much needed coffee elixor. There will be 10 people to each seat, and it will be elbow warfare. In my relaxed state of mind I was no match for them, and with low nicotine levels and zero caffeine this was a fight I was not ready for. So I hung back and watched the chubby cyclist squeeze in between the suited guy and the rather sleepy goth bloke and decided it was better to save the fight for another day.

As the 12 coach 07:17 arrived I smiled, the train gods had respected my peaceful, non combative stance and rewarded me with an empty train, and as I boarded I thought to myself “Don’t get to smug, it can all go so wrong”. We arrived at London Waterloo on time and intact, and without seeing one duck.

Then it started….the working day. I can’t really say I got into it or really took any notice of what transpired but as I packed up I thought, what was with the bl**dy ducks? The journey home was uneventful and the golden parking bay position paid off as I pulled out of the car park in poll position.

Arriving home, showering, and changing I felt that I had won. Maybe not the war, but certainly the battle. Logging on to check my email I noticed a post from my little sister and remembered I hadn’t caught up with her after her Halloween party. After hearing about her day and my niece Eleanor not being well I logged into her laptop remotely, using the free LogMeIn service and installed the Adobe Reader software for her, and set up a separate account for her husband, so he could use the laptop without messing up anything she was working on.

So now I am ready to sort the heating timer out, grab something to eat, and then chill out in front of the TV. I hope tomorrow goes this well, but you never know the mood of the train gods!

So this weekend I have been the Duty Manager and therefore tied to the house, however looking on the positive side, I have a filthy cold so it probably hasn’t done any harm staying in the warm. Work has been pretty manic over the last couple of weeks and there were a few more changes going in this weekend than in previous weeks, but thankfully the weekend has gone smoothly and without any major hitches.

Other than this I have pretty much just lay on the sofa and watch TV and I must say I feel better for it. This afternoon I am going to tidy up the house and then catch up on some paper work. Exciting!

One thing I have managed to sort out is a problem I was having using my HP 7210 All-In-One unit that stopped scanning after I upgraded to Snow Leopard. A major pain in the backside as I use this for scanning in all by bills and documents.

It would appear that the functionality is now built directly into Snow Leopard, and the previous HP drivers and tools are now redundant, full details can be found on the HP Website here.

This has meant that I have had to change my work flow slightly, but I do like the fact that I can use tools that are built into the Operating System and don’t have to keep track of driver versions.

Wow what a week! The moment I set foot in the office on Monday I knew it was going to be one of those crazy weeks, and I wasn’t let down. After my catch up last weekend I decided that I wasn’t going to fall behind again so went back to carrying my MacBook Air. I must say that its surprising how much I get done during the train journey and with things so busy at work it’s nice to get things done while I am still in the frame of mind to do so, meaning that when I get home I can relax.

It has now been a couple of weeks now since I upgraded all of my machines to Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). While Snow Leopard isn’t revolutionary I must say that I have found that all my machines are a little snappier. The MacBook Air is probably the machine I notice it on the most as this is the one that travels with me. The first thing I have found is the speed at which it comes back from sleep mode and secondly the speed of the Time Machine / Time Capsule backups, especially important as quite a bit of data can change while I am on the move. Other than that I can’t say anything has particularly impressed me, but for the £25 upgrade fee I am happy with the improvements made. On the MacBook Pro and iMac I can’t say I have really noticed any difference as both are high end machines, but the real test will probably be the next Final Cut Pro project I have. What I can say however is that to date I haven’t experienced any problems, bar a few applications that are awaiting compatibility upgrades.

With the Snow Leopard upgrade also came the upgrade to iTune 9. Now there were some much trumpeted improvements but the one that really stands out for me is iTunes Home Sharing, which allows me to finally copy my music between my machines legally.

Well today I am going to catch up with my PodCasts while catching up with some paperwork, and then tidy up the house. Tomorrow I need to sort out the weeds that are over taking the drive way and the garden which is just going wild again.