So far I have placed two orders each consisting of a month’s worth of food and I have only been on the diet for three weeks. Why do I have two month’s of food you ask? Well mostly because I was clueless when it came to what the food tasted like and which items would be convenient for me to eat daily.

In the first order I went very heavy on eggs and puddings according to what is left in the box. The eggs did not set well with me and I needed to place an order quickly in order to have replacements for the eggs. The pudding on the other hand I have no idea what I was thinking. Why I thought it would be a good idea to eat pudding twice a day for a month is beyond comprehension.

You would have thought that I would have learned from the first order and did a better job of managing the meals. No, it appears that I am incapable of learning bringing truth to the old adage that you really can’t teach old dogs new tricks. That’s not entirely true, the second order I didn’t get any eggs so I did learn a little.

The second order though seems extremely heavy on chicken noodle soup, chocolate chip cookies, and brownies for whatever reason. I’ve been on the diet long enough now that I have at least tasted most of the items and can tell which ones agree with me and which ones make me gag.

Over the weekend I began reviewing the contents of what is left of the two orders and trying to understand what my meal plan should be every day. I’ve decided that walking over to the box and randomly picking a package of food usually results in bizarre meal replacements. I can’t help but think that a day of chocolate chip pancakes, a chocolate crunch bar, a chocolate shake, a chocolate mint bar, and chocolate pudding is probably not the mental reinforcement that I need to begin making healthy choices.

One of my goals in this diet is not only to lose weight but also to begin to develop the skills necessary to choose the right foods in the right portions once I have completed the program to maintain the weight loss I am trying to achieve. I can promise you that after I am off this diet if I consume that much chocolate during the day it is not going to be a healthy day of eating.

I have never been one to conform to a lot of structure or rules so the idea of having pre-defined meals at specific times is not something I am comfortable with. Adding now the idea of menu planning and pre-deciding what I will eat in a given day is an entirely foreign concept. But I realized that is going to be necessary for my long-term health goals.

At first I considered just writing down what I ate as being enough structure but as you can see from the meals above that didn’t work out too well. No I needed to be more proactive in deciding what it is that I am going to eat.

Being a techno-geek I immediately began developing requirements for some software program where I could plug in a list of possible food combinations and it would spit out a list of what I should eat each day. After looking at the problem and analyzing the ideas for an application I had to admit I was trying to kill a mosquito with an elephant gun. I didn’t need to develop software to do this; it could be done with a simple spreadsheet.

I sat down with a blank spreadsheet and listed the dates along the left column of how long I think I will be on this diet to reach my optimum weight. Next across the columns I listed the five meal replacements along with the “Lean & Green” meal.

For each day and each mealtime I entered what I thought might sound good to eat. Shortly a pattern emerged of combinations that sounded good. I quickly repeated the patterns from week to week and soon my spreadsheet was built with a meal plan for the next two months.

Once I had the sheet filled out I went in and randomly tweaked some meal replacements to break up the pattern and give variety to my diet. I made sure that puddings and cookies were not together and that each day included breakfast and lunch items to get my body in the routine of eating those meals where I didn’t before.

When all the minor adjustments had been made I added a second spreadsheet where I listed each of the menu items from the first spreadsheet one per line. There were a total of 20 different food items I had selected from the Take Shape For Life catalog. With those items listed I did a few formulas, lookup tables, and threw in a pivot table just to impress the non-geeks in the audience. The result was how many of each type of food I needed for the remainder of my weight loss portion of the diet.

I then added a column for how many of each food item I needed to get through each upcoming week and month. This was compared against the inventory and resulted in two food orders that will be placed taking into account lead-time and shipping so that I won’t run out of food during a particular month.

The result is a meal plan where everything is laid out so that I can anticipate what I will be eating during a given day. I can pull those items from the box and those that need preparation time I can take that into consideration so that I will be able to manage the meal times as well as the meal contents.

Who would have thought that a spreadsheet might hold the key to obtaining my weight loss goals? I didn’t see that on any of the advertisements for Microsoft Office.

The most popular rumor is the release of the highly anticipated Apple Tablet which has been expected for over a year. As is always the case, Apple closely manages the information that is “leaked” prior to an announcement.

Steve Jobs and the crew at Apple have perfected the art of product releases to build the hype to a frenzied level making sure all media outlets will cover their event. You would think that the public would become accustomed to these events but Apple never seems to disappoint regardless of whether the introduction lives up to the rumors or not.

The January 27 event has been billed as being “mobile” specific. This could mean anything from an update to the successful MacBook laptops to an iPhone upgrade to the new tablet. Personally I am expecting this to be the tablet which some have suggested will be named the ‘iPad”.

Rather than regurgitating the various rumors surrounding this new product, I thought perhaps it would interesting to talk through some of the challenges Apple may have in this space.

While we all love to talk about cool hardware and get excited at seeing the device in person, it is important to keep in perspective that the success of new computing devices are less tied to hardware specifications. For a device such as the Apple Tablet to gain traction in the market it will require incredible software and one killer application.

When Apple Computer introduced the Apple I and later the Apple ][, it was largely described as a “hobbyist device”. To make it work required some software engineering to create a program each time the computer was powered up. It was relegated to a market segment of people who dabbled in electronics; definitely not a mainstream product.

All of this changed with the introduction of VisiCalc. VisiCalc was an electronic spreadsheet that allowed the user to complete mathematical tasks quickly and easily. When people saw what VisiCalc could do, the sales figures for Apple ][ computers literally took off. Suddenly people who before would never have looked at a personal computer were buying these devices and inventing ways to use spreadsheets in their daily lives.

In 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh computer. It took some of the best design ideas from the Apple Lisa and built them into a compact computer. By itself the Macintosh was a novel experiment in alternative input/output. While the Lisa had a similar interface it did not penetrate the market as Apple had envisioned.

Apple made a decision to include two applications with the Macintosh, MacWrite and MacPaint. These two applications showcased the features of the new hardware and enabled users to envision their lives being better as a result of using the product.

Customers flocked to Apple stores after the Macintosh announcement and laid out $2,995 for a computer with 128K of RAM, a 9 inch Black & White monitor, a 400K disk drive, and a dot matrix printer. The shortage of Macintosh computers resulted in waiting lists that at times reached on for several weeks or months before delivery.

For nearly a year after its introduction the Macintosh had just MacWrite and MacPaint software available yet people continued to buy the hardware just to use these two applications.

When Apple introduced the iPod, it also included iTunes as a way for user to interact with their new handheld device. With iTunes users could not only load the iPod with music but would facilitate adding content changing the paradigm of how we buy music.

Now Apple appears to be set to introduce a tablet. The question becomes, what will be the killer application that will drive people to purchase the device. It has been rumored that the tablet will be able to act as an electronic book reader, a multimedia device capable of displaying video and photos, and provide surfing capabilities. Will that be enough to garner the interest of users beyond the current loyal Apple customer base?

Each of the markets (book reader, multimedia, and browser) is adequately covered by existing products both within Apple and elsewhere. Personally I think it will take a completely different piece of software to push the tablet to cult status that previous Apple products seem to have achieved.

It is hard to envision what that software may be especially since very few have been fortunate enough to see the device before its release. The announcement needs to not only provide a glimpse of the new hardware, it must also capture the imagination of software developers to inspire them to develop something that will capture the public driving not only software sales but also hardware.

Like many, I will be glued to my computer during the presentation to see what the device can do and hopefully be inspired to develop something that can push the limits of the device and enable the users to places they could not imagine before the product was announced.

It first started out as a simple file but recently I have noticed that the PDF files are getting much more advanced and complex. Rather than just flipping through page by page the files I am now receiving have table of contents, password protection, and other features.

The progression of these files is fairly natural but unfortunately most of today’s browsers have a limited amount of functionality built into them for viewing these files. It was therefore just a matter of time before someone invented a better PDF browser plug-in to support the advanced features.

The developers at Schubert IT have come up with a solution for Safari on Macintosh OS X. It is aptly named PDF Browser Plugin.

The PDF Browser Plugin gives you a more robust experience when viewing PDF Files. Not only will it show each individual page, it will also give you access to advanced features such as table of contents with hot linking, filling out forms within a PDF document, and several display modes to assist the reader with content presentation.

The PDF Browser Plugin currently only works with 32-bit mode Safari and at the time of writing this post no announcement had been made as to when a 64-bit version would be available.

For non-commercial use the plugin is free making it very cost effective for Mac users. If you wish to purchase a site license for PDF Browser Plugin for commercial purposes they are available for $69.

Overall the plugin works flawlessly allowing me to continue to use the browser when viewing PDF files without losing functionality. It is also much faster and appears to take up less memory that the Adobe client.

For the price it is hard to beat and fills a need very well. If you need something beyond the core functionality that is built into Safari take a look at PDF Browser Plugin and see if it works for you. You can’t beat the price.

I used Joomla as the content management system to give the site it’s form and structure. The content was categorized and laid out in a way that would make it easy for the Webmaster to manage and maintain.

There was one area that was of paramount importance. The club needed an online calendar system where they could enter all of the various rides and activities to allow the site visitors to quickly see what was coming up.

Joomla does not have a calendar feature per se but through the use of extensions it offers the ability to augment core functionality with new features. I began searching for a calendaring module and finally settled on JCal Pro from Anything Digital.

This Joomla extension provides not only an online calendar but also modules to display the next few activities in a bulleted fashion. JCal Pro began as a non-commercial product but has since moved to being a full commercial implementation.

Anything Digital offers a subscription plan that allows you to download the latest version of JCal Pro for a specified time. I selected the Develop Special 1 bundle, which gave me access to JCal Pro version 1.5 as well as the newer JCal Pro version 2.

Besides download capabilities the subscription also allows you forum access to post questions and get product support. The Developer Special 1 bundle will grant you access not just to JCal Pro but also for Anything Digital’s application RSVP and Advanced Search.

I downloaded the software and installed it onto the Foothills HOG Joomla site. The installation was fairly simple and follows the standard implementation using the Joomla Administration module.

It did not take long to get the system up and running but there are some caveats to be considered. Joomla does not recognize the concept of daylight saving time so twice a year the JCal Pro gets a little confused. This usually means having to go in and manually adjusting the dates or times to get things on the right track.

JCal Pro manages time itself and Joomla does likewise. Trying to get your hands around how each interact is a logic puzzle that can at times be frustrating. The JCal Pro development is fairly active meaning there have been several upgrades during the first year of implementation.

It has been a little frustrating because the bugs that I have encountered in the application seem to come and go with each successive implementation. There are also some features that are missing that you would just expect to be there. Printing a calendar resulted in a creative hack uncovered through the forums otherwise that was not included in the base package.

The types of data that can be displayed is also incomplete making it confusing to the inexperienced administrator. With each successive upgrade there have been issues regarding the existing data. In some instances it has required re-inputting the data, a very tedious process.

Many of the bug fixes and changes show up in later releases but as beta versions requiring the Joomla Administrator to run beta extensions on a production server. This is ripe for problems and has come into play in more than one occasion.

Despite all of the trials and tribulations JCal Pro has performed adequately. Of all the calendar extensions currently available, it seems to be the most feature-rich and stable. I’m continuing to use it but cringe every time I have to make changes to it since you never know what will break next.

I’d love to give this extension a raving review but given its track record I hesitate recommending this to all Joomla administrators. If you need a calendar system and you don’t mind a little extra work JCal Pro could be just what you’re looking for.

This is an opportunity for Mac users to be exposed to some great products that they may not otherwise consider. I purchased the MacHeist bundle and quickly learned how great this software really is.

From that moment I began monitoring MacHeist hoping to be notified when they created a new software bundle. This week that monitoring paid off as I received an email announcing the MacHeist nanoBundle.

This is a collection of six applications for the Macintosh. The bundle included utilities, applications, and games making the suite valuable to several types of Mac users.

Perhaps the best news was that MacHeist was offering this collection of software for free. Yes you heard right, it didn’t cost a penny.

I downloaded the software and began to use the applications which include ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterrific, TinyGrab, Hordes of Orcs, and Mariner Write. With the exception of Twitterrific I had not heard of any of these applications but shortly after installing them I began to appreciate each one.

These are not free trials nor are they in anyway disabled. Instead licenses and serial numbers for each piece of software was sent to me allowing them to be completely unlocked and usable.

I suggest stopping by MacHeist and checking out what they are offering. If you happen to miss out on this bundle stay tuned as I am sure the MacHeist guys will be back again with another great deal for the Macintosh user community.

After the film was developed, I would review the shots and pick out my favorites. The remainder of the pictures would go into a pile that would rarely be viewed again. There may be times where I might have a second set of images printed to send to parents or grandparents but mostly the pictures stayed in an envelope.

At some point my wife Trina decided to take up “scrapbooking”. She was going to take the hundreds or thousands of pictures we had taken in our lifetime and sort them assembling photo albums that could be looked at by friends and family.

The problem was that you had to be at the physical location of the pictures in order to enjoy looking at them. For parents and grandparents that meant that they rarely saw the pictures or if they did it was during a visit.

When digital pictures began to be prevalent, things substantially changed. The photographer had immediate feedback to determine whether the picture turned out or not. The number of pictures you could take was dependant on the size of your camera’s memory card.

With the continual reduction to the price of memory, camera photo cards became very inexpensive and hence people began taking a lot more pictures. Initially the digital pictures suffered from the same problem as their film counterparts. They were stored on a hard drive somewhere and rarely looked at.

As the Internet became more pervasive it became easier for people to keep in touch through email, social media sites, and via web sites. Before long people wanted to share their photos with others who were not necessarily close.

One such program that facilitated the sharing of photos was JAlbum. This software allows you to create on-line photo albums that can then be uploaded to a web site where anyone can view them.

JAlbum is written in Java and has been ported to several platforms including Windows, Linux, and Macintosh OS X. This makes it extremely valuable since it will run on any standard operating system the person may have.

Creating an online album is relatively simple with JAlbum. You simply select the images you want to include to decide where you want the album to be saved. JAlbum offers the ability to modify the look and feel of the album by using one of several themes or skins.

These skins modify the overall look of the photo album while keeping your pictures the same. There are skins that look like wedding albums, birthdays, and several color and sizes to give your album a unique look and feel.

Once you have decided on a skin and identified the photos that should be included in the album, the software allows you to generate the photo album. The software then creates the pages with the appropriate HTML and CSS values to produce a finished photo book.

You can provide JAlbum with the address of your web site and it can automatically update your web site with the new photos or if you don’t have your own web space the software can assist you with finding a place to host your photo album.

The software also allows you to share your album with other JAlbum users creating a photography community where you can find others who share your passion for photography or inspire you to create new and exciting pictures.

JAlbum is maintained with new versions coming quite regularly. The software updates are fairly simple to install and activate new software features. I use JAlbum quite often when I need to publish photos.

Two of the more popular online albums are Dakota’s soccer pictures and My Scrapbook. Now with JAlbum my pictures are no longer banished to a box or hard drive but are being shared with family and friends.

Once a framework has been established, the reader is now ready for a more Macintosh specific book to help them learn application development. A follow-up book to Learn C on the Mac is Learn Objective–C on the Mac (Learn Series) by Mark Dalrymple and Scott Knaster.

The Objective-C book, like the Learn C book, is published by Apress publishing. They do a very good job of editing the text and organizing the books to make them understandable and flow appropriately.

It should be noted that the Objective-C for the Mac book is not a beginning programming book. It rightfully assumed that the reader has experience in software development and specifically in C. Without this experience the subjects covered in this book will quickly go over the reader’s head leaving them confused and frustrated.

Learn Objective-C on the Mac begins with a description of the extensions to C that make up Objective-C. This affords the reader with necessary background information for what is different over and beyond the standard C language.

After an introduction to object oriented programming the book discusses the Macintosh development tool suite that makes up Xcode. The Xcode environment is integral in the text of this book and provides a good reference for the toolset.

Besides basic coding, Learn Objective-C on the Mac offers good information on memory management and optimization techniques that will be invaluable to the budding Mac developer.

This book is not an easy read. The best way to utilize it is as a reference and a companion while attempting the code on a computer. Unless you have tremendous amount of prior software development experience it would be hard to follow the examples just on paper.

From a perspective of learning Xcode and the nuances of Objective-C on the Macintosh this book will do a decent job of introducing the terms and gives you enough information that you can delve in further in areas you might find interesting.

This may not be the ultimate Macintosh development manual but it contains enough good information and programming examples that it will get you up and running in minimal time and by the end of the book you should have the knowledge necessary to be a Macintosh developer.

These upgrades never quite work out the way I envisioned them. Oh sure there are some like Windows 3.0 that were so astronomically superior to the previous version that I never looked back but for every one of those experiences I have ten like the day I upgraded to Microsoft Vista on release day.

Today marks another one of those milestone days in Microsoft history. Today they released Windows 7, their follow on product to the highly unsuccessful Microsoft Vista. I shouldn’t say Vista was highly unsuccessful, after several months of pain and suffering it did get better.

Still there were more than a few annoyances that remained with the operating system and of course the gigantic black eye it received at launch that caused the product to never gain a strong foothold in the marketplace.

All of that is about to be forgotten as people begin to purchase and upgrade to this new version. Release day is almost anti-climatic since public beta versions of he software have been out for what seems like years.

Many of the problems users suffered through with Vista have been cleaned up and there are sufficient amounts of new features to make this a must have for many Microsoft Windows users. Considering most people are probably still using Windows XP, this is a necessary change to make the platform more reliable and safer.

Today was not just the release of Windows 7 though. It was also the grand opening for the new Microsoft store in Scottsdale Arizona. Yet again Microsoft is “borrowing” from Apple’s success to open their own branded store hoping to cash in at the retail channel.

The store has a grand opening at 10 AM but people have been lining up well before that. It is probably equal parts curiosity and free swag that is bringing the people out to this event. For the first 1,000 people in the store Microsoft is giving away free gifts. For the first 100 in the store they are giving away concert tickets.

As part of the grand opening, Microsoft has spared no expense and has brought in a recording artist to entertain the customers. In Scottsdale the entertainer is Ashley Tisdale from the Disney Channel. Ms. Tisdale has a couple of albums under her belt but she is best known for her work in Disney’s High School Musical trilogy.

What that means though is that the Microsoft Store will be inundated with a combination if geeky Microsoft fan boys and tween mall rats. That may not be the best demographic to target your new operating system and products to but that’s what they are going to get at least on the first day of business.

I think Microsoft needed to do something especially in Arizona where interest in the new Windows 7 platform does not seem to be gaining a lot of momentum in the market. There is some buzz as there always is just as a new product is released but not nearly as much as Apple seems to raise when they release a new product.

With an Apple introduction there seems to be lines everywhere as people wait for an opportunity to purchase one of the first ones. When Apple introduced the iPhone people camped out for days waiting in line for a chance to purchase. Stores even opened early to get through all the mobs of people lined up.

For the Microsoft Windows 7 release none of the local stores appear to be doing anything more than having a kiosk with the new operating system and someone who can answer questions. I have not found any stores in the immediate area who planned a midnight opening or any special coming out party.

This is in stark contrast to just this past Tuesday when several businesses had a midnight opening to allow people the opportunity to purchase the movie Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen. It makes you wonder what Microsoft is doing from a marketing perspective if a DVD sale for a Hollywood sequel garners more press and excitement than a new operating system.

I’m still undecided whether I will make a trip to Scottsdale to see the new Microsoft Store for myself. Although I plan on upgrading to Windows 7 before the week is over I find my excitement is waning a little. Instead maybe I’ll stay home and watch Transformers 2 on Blu-Ray. After all it is the hottest movie of the season according to the Geek Squad at Best Buy when I was there Tuesday night at midnight.

I have also become a big fan of Twitter as a communication tool. Within its 140-character limit you are able to share all kinds of information and reach people you may not otherwise be in contact with.

Through using Twitter I have made several friends and contacts. Many of these contacts want to be notified whenever content changes on my web site. Out of the box, Joomla does not offer the ability to broadcast site changes to Twitter.

Like many other features though, the development community has come to the aid of web site owners and have developed Joomla extensions that will incorporate this new functionality. A quick search of the Joomla Extension Library showed that there are several modules capable of integrating with Joomla.

I think I tried each of the modules attempting to find a good balance of functionality with minimal interaction by the web site owner. After all, what good is a solution if it requires you to spend more time managing the tool than the benefit you derive from it?

Initially I used an extension called Twitter Status. It would allow me to post a Twitter message each time I published a new article. It did not allow posting of updates and was relatively basic in its functionality. The developer first introduced Twitter Status as a free extension but then decided to make it commercial leaving early adopters hanging unless they paid.

From my research I could not determine whether the newer version would allow any additional functionality and I was unwilling to purchase the extension without knowing whether it would meet my needs. I attempted to contact the developer but his response was basically that I was not a paid customer and therefore he had little or no time to answer my inquiries.

Based upon his responses I decided I needed to look for another solution. After installing and testing several Twitter extensions I settled on Auto Tweet written by Ulli Storck.

Auto Tweet acts as a Joomla plug-in installing through the Joomla Administration module. Once installed the plug-in is quickly configured. Besides securely storing your user name and password, the configuration page also allows you to decide whether you want the page URL appended to your Twitter message and how many attempts the plug-in should make if it is unsuccessful in posting.

You can define specific sections and categories that will be tweeted and you can exclude sections and categories. You can post just new articles or modified or private articles. You can also include static text and hash tags to your messages to make sure the tweet reaches the appropriate audience.

Overall Auto Tweet has worked flawlessly and I have received several comments from friends thanking me for keeping them informed of changes to my web site. It is one of those set it and forget it kind of extensions that make managing a web site easier while driving traffic to your pages.

I have to admit I was more than a little nervous migrating my blogs. Some of these blogs I have been writing on for over a decade so I had a lot of entries and I wasn’t exactly sure how successful I would be moving the data from one system to the other.

From the Movable Type administration screen I exported all of the entries and saved the file to my desktop. I then backed up the blog domain and with a deep breath I deleted the Movable Entry files and databases from the domain. I felt about as alone as a boy scout stationed in Antarctica. Ok I have no idea what that means but I can tell you I was feeling pretty vulnerable at that moment.

The installation of WordPress was very straightforward and fairly easy. At the conclusion of the installation procedure I was left with a pristine yet somewhat empty WordPress blog. On the surface it was very pretty but my stomach was filled with butterflies as I began the process of trying to migrate the data from Movable Type.

Given the large market share that Movable Type has had in the blogging community it was no surprise that WordPress came with a migration tool specifically for transferring data from Movable Type into WordPress.

I followed the instructions of the migration tool pointing it to my exported Movable Type file and after what seemed like an eternity (it was really just a minute or so but when it is all of your data it just feels like an eternity) the system came back notifying me that the migration was successful.

I went to the entry list of the administration tool and sure enough it looked as though all of my data had been properly migrated. I launched the site and the entries showed just as they did in Movable Type. I flipped through several entries and tried the online search and everything seemed to be working normally.

The migration tool in WordPress worked perfectly. I was not completely on WordPress for my blogs. Although the migration was successful, it was not without its flaws. The archive data structure of Movable Type is very different than that of WordPress. As a result, any link in a post that was migrated no longer pointed to the permalink properly. I was able to adjust the directory structure under WordPress but it still did not match exactly to what I had under Movable Type. I was left with the task of going into each entry and manually adjust the links in order to point to the new location in WordPress. It has been a pain but I am not sure what else I could have done differently to make this not happen.

The WordPress environment has been very stable over the past three months. I am diligent at maintaining the latest version of the software so as new point releases of WordPress have come out I have upgraded. The upside of this is that I haven’t had the security issues that others have reported when using older versions of WordPress.

During this trial period I have accumulated several plug-ins to implement additional functionality into the WordPress environment. Over the next several days I will devote a blog post to each of these plug-ins. Perhaps you are looking for similar functionality within your blog, if so these plug-ins may work for you as well.

So far I have been very happy with the migration and subsequent management of WordPress as a blogging platform. I would not hesitate to recommend this software to anyone looking for a stable software base on which to build a blog.