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Because I’ve currently got Lando hooked up to my home network via a wireless USB dongle, it can be very time-consuming to transfer files larger than a gigabyte over from my main computer. To work around the problem, I ordered an 8GB Kingston DataTraveler 100 USB flash drive from Newegg.com.

The drive arrived in the mail today, so when I got home I started copying a 2GB file over. I immediately noticed that when it came to copying files over, the thing was slow as goats. I had read something to that effect when reading some of the reviews on Newegg.com, but over 20 minutes to copy over 2GB of data? Really?

Since I also remembered reading about the drive’s default FAT32 file system, I started looking up how to convert the drive to NTFS, which just so happens to be the same file system in use on my main computer and Lando, since they are running Windows XP and Vista, respectively. What I found was a semi-legible video about how to convert a flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. Rather than making you learn a new hybrid of English in order to figure it out, here are the steps I followed to accomplish the task:

1. Delete all files from the drive.
2. Go to My Computer and right-click on the flash drive, choosing Properties from the context menu.
3. In the window that appears, click on the Hardware tab.
4. Find the flash drive in the list of devices, click on it once and then hit the Properties button.
5. In the new dialog, click on the Policies tab.
6. Select the “Optimize for performance” option if it isn’t selected already and hit OK.
7. Hit OK again to get out of the original Properties dialog.
8. Go to My Computer and right-click on the flash drive again, this time choosing the Format option from the context menu.
9. In the subsequent dialog, choose the NTFS file system from the dropdown.
10. Select the Quick Format option.
11. Hit OK and wait as your flash drive is formatted with the new file system.
12. When the final dialog appears, letting you know that the drive has been formatted, you’re good to go.

After following the steps above, it was readily apparent when trying to transfer files to and from the drive that it was much faster. Note that the steps above are written from the perspective of a Windows XP machine, but they likely aren’t too different on a Vista machine. Either way, I’ve noticed the speed increase on both machines, so I’m much happier with my new USB flash drive now.

I went to the dentist for the first time in over six years on Wednesday. According to the hygienist there, apparently cases like mine are quite common — twenty-somethings who end up taking a break from dentistry while they make the transition from college to a stable job, get insurance all figured out, etc. That doesn’t make the fact that it’s taken me over six years to get back there any less embarrassing, though.

A few things happened that were notable:

• I actually told the hygienist I was glad to be back at the dentist’s office (has anyone ever said this before?).
• The hygienist told me I’ve been brushing my teeth well — in fact, perhaps too well. She said the trauma from my brushing appears to have caused my gums to recede in a few places, exposing the nerves near the roots of my teeth (which explains the twinges of pain I’ve been feeling when certain teeth encounter cold water and breezes).
• The dentist told me that I have pretty severe decay goin’ on in my two upper-back driver’s side molars. He wants to get to work on those immediately in the hopes that it will prevent me having to endure a root canal.

That last thing resulted in me getting scheduled for a follow-up appointment two days later, which means I’ll be back in the chair tomorrow for those who didn’t minor in math. My outlook may have changed slightly by then, but for now I’m still glad I finally made my way back to the dentist and have a plan of action for getting my oral health back on track.

After a couple of months at home coding, emailing, and getting my blog back on, I’m going out on the road again. I’ll be in Portland for OSCON next week and and the I’m also going to be presenting Online/Offline Synchronization with Adobe AIR and LiveCycle Data Services to PDXRIA on Thursday. I thought I […]

I’m giving a few talks in the next couple of months, but with all due respect to the 360Flex guys, the one I’m most excited about is my MAX talk - Next-Generation Flex Authoring: In Depth. I’m not a huge fan of the title (and it may change) but I’m going to be providing walkthroughs […]

I’m deeply committed to Yojimbo, but I’ve been flirting with Evernote for about three months now. Last week, Evernote rolled out a beautiful new iPhone app with the launch of the app store. Here are a few early impressions of the iPhone app:

It looks fantastic. It is fun to look at, and easy to understand.
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A few minutes ago we posted a new build of the Flex SDK which includes a lot of the stuff we’re doing for Flex Next. This is your first chance to jump in and start playing with Flex Next features. A couple of my favorites are FXG and the new states model.
Ely Greenfield has a […]

I’ve been waiting and hoping for Garmin to do an Adobe AIR application (I’ve even tried lobbying our lighthouse program to reach out to them) and while this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting - it’s a start. Garmin has created a little custom-chrome, GPS-shaped widget that provides updates on the Tour de France. I’m […]

The arrival of iPhone 2.0 has changed how I use my iPhone more than I imagined it would. But I did anticipate one thing correctly: OmniFocus for iPhone has tripled the usefulness of OmniFocus for me.
Some have been unhappy that OmniFocus is charging $20, but I gladly paid it. And after a few days of […]

I started working on Tagnacious back in May after a discussion with a friend and coworker about how it would be cool to be able to search a bunch of sites based on a single tag, as opposed to searching a single site based on a single tag. It was about as informal a conversation as two people could have, but once I heard the idea come out of my mouth a lightbulb went on and I thought, “hey, that’s something I could build myself.”

Before I got too carried away, though, I made sure to look around and see if there was anything like what I was imagining already available out on the web. I found two sites: TagsAhoy and Keotag. The problem with the former, at least in terms of my idea, is that it is focused entirely around your tags, and not the tags applied by anyone. The problem with the latter is that, while it’s closer to my idea, the site makes you choose a tag first and then choose the place you want to search for that tag as a second, separate step. Keotag does offer information from more services, so I guess it has that going for it.

Since I wasn’t able to find a site that worked how I imagined one would, I went ahead and implemented Tagnacious. I hooked it up to the APIs and feeds from Flickr, YouTube, Last.fm, Amazon.com, del.icio.us and WordPress in order to provide tag-based search results in the form of photos, videos, music, books, bookmarks and blog posts, respectively.

The end result looks a little something like this:

If you’ve got some time to kill, please give it a whirl. As of right now, I know of one or two bugs (e.g. sometimes calls to the YouTube API fail and the rendering of the rest of the page just halts) and I’ve got a few additional features up my sleeve, but I think it’s due time I let the rest of you play around with it and let me know what you think.

While perusing around the internets I found out about the Enterprise UI Summit which is taking place August 7-8 in Aspen, Colorado. It sounds both pretty swanky and pretty valuable:

The Enterprise UI Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only event for the most innovative UI designers and big companies in the world. The event is a think […]