Encryption stops linux?

Does work laptops which are pre installed with Windows, using full disk encryption software stop you from using Linux?

Well at least for me.

The problem I have is I have several laptops handed to me by clients that I have to use while working for them. No problem with that, they are much higher spec than my own pcs anyway. Pre installed with MS Windows is fine, it usually is company standard and most of their employees would insist on it. Previously I have just shrunk the windows partition and dual booted into linux.

But my current two work laptops have both got full disk encryption software, to protect lost laptops, from two different providers (PointSec and SafeGuard). And you cant run dual boots with them, nor resize partitions.

So this means for the past half a year I have had to use windows full time, as I rarely get any time at home to use my own linux pcs.

Okay it is not that bad, I am not suffering from starvation or illness, but it is annoying, feels like having a hand tied behind my back when I work. But I shouldnt complain, I am after all getting hardware and licenses for weblogic and oracle handed to me.

I do wonder though, how many others are affected by this? Does it have any effect on the amount of people using Linux?

Planning Poker

Attended a estimation seminar yesterday morning. Some fluff, but being exposed to the theories and practicalities of Planning Poker was worth the time.

Used it immitietly in the afternoon for a project that we were still struggling to define the tasks needed. Very effective, in just getting a discussion going, grouping tasks and assigning estimation units to each task/story.

Well worth a try, even if it made us look like we were playing poker all afternoon, especially as we sat in a tiny glass cubicle at a client.

Agile estimation book by Mike Cohn

Viet Nam

Back from two weeks in Vietnam, cycling from Saigon to Hanoi.

Fantastic country, brilliant people, too many motorbikes!

In the heat the climbs were hard, but otherwise the 500 km we cycled flew by.

In total we covered 1700 km, with some 500 by a sleep train, and the rest bussing through traffic or very hilly sections.

There were endless picture perfect beaches that was completly empty. Wont take many years before the beach bum tourists catch up though.

1-2-3 YO!

New everything

New Job, new house(soon), new country(well return to old)!

We have moved back to Norway, Oslo to be precise. Its a great summer, not looking forward to the autumn, but winter will be great again.

Flatsearching is a battle, as each one gets snapped immidietly as they come up for sale.

New job is good, Im now a senior consultant. More mature role, so no sleep-ins anymore.

But its all good.

Mostly offline this summer

Been mostly offline all summer. Well it is summer after all, but also because of moving house, jobs and country.

Not being in your own house for several months, do make you feel a bit cut off, especially when where you stay dont have broadband.

And when you cant enjoy the sun and sea because of 100 of property viewings, its even worse.

My new job starts soon, so no time to do anything then. But im looking forward to it, and at least I'll be online again.

30th + leaving do

Im 30 years old this month, so I am commiserating with a party. It will also be a leaving do for me and Chloe as we are leaving Manchester the following week.

Planning a long day of world cup football, resturant and plenty of cheap and nasty lager.

Click below to add the event to your calendar.

Moving

Finally moving back to Norway.

12 years abroad, so its probably nothing like the rosetinted memories I have.

But should be interesting.

Just good music

Last.fm is a great idea. Uninterputed real music. No babble, no ads, just good music.

And it gets better and better as you tell it what you like.

Not sure if the bandwidth would cope if everyone at work joined as well. But 16kb/s is not too bad.

flickr

Okay, I followed the flock and joined flickr. It is pretty sweet.

But think Ill keep using my coppermine album at foto.flurdy.com.

Got Dugg

My postfix howto got dug at digg.com.

Seems they were mostly concerned with the GNU/Linux comment though...

Eclipse WTP Howto

The Eclipse web tools project seems to have matured enough so Ive started to switch to Eclipse from Netbeans (sort of).

Ive always prefered Netbeans as it is aimed at java web developers and works as such straight away. Eclipse with its huge following needed too much tweaking, immature/costly plugins etc to get there so I never bothered before. With each iterative Netbeans just got better and better, version 5 is so integrated with Ant, Tomcat, Jboss et all so makes web app development so easy.

However now that WTP has reached version 1.0 I thought I'd check it out again. And I was impressed. Ant integration is good, not quite netbeans level, but different.
Tomcat integration is good, and standard web tools is perhaps better than netbeans.
Im still not 100% happy with it though. The project structure is not as configurable, the tomcat sync does use my ant scripts to include libs and confs. But impressed.

In the end I created a quick howto on installing Eclipse WTP in Ubuntu.

I still recommened Netbeans 5 for all web app developers, however Eclipse WTP is getting there.