Today, a company unveiled a productivity suite (word processor, spreadsheet, and slideshow) that you use entirely online. ThinkFree.com not only makes all three products available in your web browser, they offer Microsoft Office compatibility and 1 GB of storage space absolutely free.

I am playing with the word processor now, and it looks amazing. This seems like the product I've been hoping for since I first saw Hotmail. If the quality of the product holds up, this will change the way you work. Go sign up for an account, and the next time you have to create a document, try it out.

I am writing a review presently, and once it's published, I'd be interested in hearing your comments about your experiences with it.

Thanks to vigilant Yoursinwriting.com reader Michaeleen, who emailed me a link to a shocking news story involving one of my favourite things: the age-old feud between Pirates and Ninjas.
It seems that a university student was returning from a "pirate vs. ninja" party, when ATF agents in training spotted him acting suspiciously, and arrested him.

My favourite line in the article was from the Special Agent in Charge, regarding the bandannas worn by the ninja-student:
Is there anything that's right, from a federal standpoint? It's like that old saying, "when all you're holding is a federal standpoint, everything looks a misdemeanor."

OK, it looks like that nice simple rating system I found only works if you log in as a Newsgator.com member. I didn't notice this during testing because a cookie on my browser keeps me logged in all the time. And having to log in to rate something just sucks. So I'm going to have to go back to a homebrewed solution, I think.

What's that? Of course I'll let you know when it's back!

I'll cut to the chase: my 5am plan is out the window. I take full responsibility for this breakdown in self-discipline, but in my defense, it's hard to restructure your morning routine while you're starting to date somebody new: evenings are unpredictable, bed times are consistently late, and if there is a sleepover,
it's not cool (or enjoyable) to wiggle out of bed at 5am, even if she could forgive the annoyance of the alarm.
Two beneficial side effects have come out of this attempt:

1. My base wake time has moved back by an hour, and I comfortably (and often automatically) get out of bed by 6am.
2. I have an entirely new intimacy with my alarm clock. I now understand how the Nap function and the Snooze timer work. And oh how I use them.

When my schedule settles down a bit more
I think it will be very easy to push my wake time back by another hour. I find that I am very tired at 5am, and cannot fight my urge to snooze. The few times I did manage to stay up, I really enjoyed having the quiet bubble of time before the day started.

I brought back a popular toy: post ratings. I've taken out the old buttons, and replaced them with a five-star system that I literally could cut-and-paste from the tools at Newsgator.com, my RSS feedreader web site. (Cough, cough... I just wrote about RSS a couple days ago... cough, cough)

Go! Clicky-clicky! After you read each post, just click whatever star tickles your fancy. A one is fine, if that's what it deserves,
and I'll follow along and see what's hot and what's... well, less thermally gifted. Nobody said I don't pander to the masses!

Hosting a web site (especially one that you pay for, like this one), can be a source of joy and fulfillment, or a source of anger and helplessness, depending entirely on one thing: your hosting company.

A web host is essentially a landlord for virtual space; where a landlord provides shelter, power, and water, a web host provides hard drive space, email, and makes sure the site stays "up." A server going down is the equivalent to having your power go out, and the worst possible (but most common) result is that anyone trying to visit your web site gets an unintelligible error message, and thinks your site has folded, or that you are incompetent, or both.

With my last host (who shall remain nameless unless they do not refund my most recent fees, as promised) my site went down repeatedly, email was often unavailable, and every time I wanted to upload some new design, the FTP server (the file transfer doohickey) was busted.
Their email support would often take weeks to respond, if they responded at all. So after a year without getting a particularly serious problem fixed, and two consecutive weekends where my site was down, I flew by night to another host: FutureQuest.net.

The funny thing is that their web site is decidedly un-flash. The pages are full of geek-speak and references to problems and solutions that only hardcore webmasters would appreciate.

I was among my people.

They also came heavily recommended on many independent forums and articles, so I decided to bite the bullet
and give them a try.

So far the move has been painless. I just copied the files over and everything worked, with a few minor (and predictable) edits to some files.

This is, of course, all part of my long-term plan for world domination.

It seems I got a bit carried away. In the heat of redesign and late night geeking, I didn't test my layout in both major browsers: Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE). I use Firefox almost exclusively, and like everything smart and standard, the new design concept doesn't work in IE.

So those of you on IE might have seen some pretty weird stuff. Sorry. I've created a completely different (and boring, for the time being) design for my IE guests, and the Firefox folks will continue to get the new, improved look.

If you're on IE, why don't you give Firefox a try?

In response to a few questions from friends, I've written a short article about what Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is, and how to use it. This one aspect of online geeking saves me many hours a week, and you don't have to be an ubernerd to use it.

You should be able to get going from the instructions I've provided, and when you're ready, feel free to subscribe to my feed using the RSS link in the side menu (it's the icon).

This is what the internet is for: useful, fun, surprising facts. The fact that this entry on how to peel a potato in one shot links to a video of a Japanese cooking show should put the Irish to shame.

My favourite part is the build up, where they have a very frustrated woman trying to peel a cooked potato with her fingernails-- you keep expecting to hear the late night voice-over come on to try to sell you something.

I wanna go buy some potatoes just to try this out.

I was sure that going back to work would give me the nudge I needed. Nah. In fact, I almost missed my 7am bus.

To top it off, the reason I was so tired was that I was up late the night before trying to get through a bunch of marking. I thought I had done enough to squeak by, if I worked hard for an hour before school started and then for the two hours during my prep and lunch.

At school, I had gotten very little done by the time the clock hit 8:40am. Grudgingly, I stood up from behind my stack of assignments, walked to the door and swung it wide, to find:

Nothing.

No kids. I had a moment where I wondered if I was so sleep snafu'ed that I was hallucinating. I chased down a colleague in the hall. I felt like Scrooge on Christmas morning. "Where the hell are the kids?!?" I asked.

She stared at me blankly. "We have an organizational day today. No kids. No classes."

My jaw dropped.

"You forgot?" she asked.

It felt like I was starting March Break all over. I would get the assignments marked after all, no pressure, lots of time, a nice slow start back to work.

"This is the happiest day of my life," I said.

On that note, I feel I have been given a reprieve. Time to catch up and start over. I will spare you my daily sleep reports until I have something of note to mention. Perhaps a weekly executive summary would be appropriate.