We got a lot of techie good stuff to use, but we fear them even before we even touch or know more about them. Why? Is this a learning issue? Environmental issue? The notion 'we fear what we do not know' highlights one key element in relation to fear. Knowing! Tinker, tinker, tinker...

LOL [means Laughing Out Loud], lets see whether my topic is going to get some discussion here. I first encountered the word baby boomers when I was in Melbourne for my postgrad degree. One of my fellow master candidate talked about the impact on the whole social and economic impact when she and other people are retiring in a few more years. Not to mention that she was made redundant from he job with just a few more years to retirement. Well, she succeeded to survive the storm and now working for Anecdote Australia.

What does the story got to do with the topic, nothing much just an intro. Recently, the word baby boomer that I now hear most of the time is associated to the matters related to usage of technology. Most of the time it was a comparison with the younger generation, namely gen-x and gen-y. And, in this context, baby boomers are associated to their lack of either interest about technology or that they are not interested about technology. Is this a fact? I want to know for sure.

So, as a typical gen-x, I simply hit the keys into the 'crystal ball' called Google, ... tehehe... just kidding, to find some answer. Want to know what I found? Just click on the link below :)

Although there's been a lot of talk over the last decade about the importance of creating technology for Baby Boomers, the conversation has largely focused on the size of their population, their characteristically different behavior than previous generations (throughout their lives) and the amount of disposable income they have available. When working on the Whirlpool in.home project last year, I realized that there was another compelling reason why design for Baby Boomers is important: their familiarity with computer technology.

http://www.orangecone.com/archives/2006/07/baby_boomers_an.html

If the above is not intriguing, try the one below ;)

HDTV Tops Baby Boomers’ Technology Wish List

February 10, 2009 — boomersummit

Baby boomers’ love affair with technology continues and they plan to keep buying new technology.

http://boomersummit.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/hdtv-tops-baby-boomers-technology-wish-list/

Well, baby boomers are really tech savvy after all!

So then, arguments on baby boomers not really keen with technology or dislike technology may not be true...I don't know... maybe a baby boomer can share his/her view...

Besides, I'm a gen-x :)

Have you ever been asked to convert a document to PDF and Adobe Acrobat is not installed in you pc? Do you know how expensive is Adobe Acrobat? It is expensive, seriously.

Unless for those lucky few who bought a scanner or a multifunction printer, then the manufacturer may bundle in Acrobat with the printer. So, many actually turned to the internet and download many of those time limited software that converts their file to PDF. However, these software would stamp words like "This document is converted by something-something" and it does not look nice at all.

So, I stumbled upon an open source tool called PDF Creator that helps me to convert files in to PDF format easily.


It is simple to use, all you need to do, after installing the software, is to use the Print function and select PDFCreator as your intended printer. Then just click Print to proceed.

Here are the step-by step guide on how to use PDF Creator. Cheerio!

1. Firstly, very important, download PDF Creator from sourceforge.net here
2. Upon completion, install the software.
3. Ok, to demonstrate just open any file or website. Select File>Print
4. Select PDFCreator as printer, click Print
5. A pop up will appear, type in the preferred title for the pdf in the title box
6. Then, another pop up will appear asking you to type a file name for your PDF
7. Done.

If you need further information, visit PDFCreator main site here

Other references can be found here:

1. Pdfcreator official site, http://pdfforge.org/
2. “PDFCreator | Open Source Alternative - osalt.com,” http://www.osalt.com/pdfcreator.

My team is on leave, including my IT support. So, it's my time to do the techy workwhereby my colleague Connie usually does it.

One of the TM called me up and mentioned that she can't "register others" for a course, hmmm what was wrong with the batch registrations. So, I went into the role management module and noticed that the under CanManageOtherRegistration, Add to Roster, Remove from Roster and Edit was not selected. So, I experimented first by selecting Edit but TM cannot do batch registrations. So, then I selected on all three and it works!

Click on the image below to view the settings.

Since the LMS is up, the password problem issue suddenly pops up and I'm feeling like I'm back to square one before the systems is enhanced. Well to comfort myself, I can always say that this is normal as we are still in the enhancement mode and there are bound to be teething problem after we put the application to the real production environment.

Well, I intend to talk about the LMS enhancement later in the blog, strictly from a KM perspective.

Now, back to the password issue, I've been using this tool called keepass since 2 years ago. Keepass is an open source software, which means that it is free to use :)



The security feature that comes with the tool is something that makes me comfortable using it. The database is well encrypted using the using secure encryption algorithms known as AES and Twofish.

Another feature that makes the tool handy is that it is portable and can be run on even a thumbdrive. This is made possible by creating a key file in a thumbdrive and keepass will refer to it for authentication before accessing the stored password.

If you neeed further info on the tool and how to use it, just go on and visit the site at http://keepass.info, and if you are interested to know more about how u can use applications from your thumbdrive, go to http://portableapps.com/

Been bz with a few user acceptance testing (UAT) recently. It has been awhile since I last performed a UAT, come to think of it has been 4 years ago since my last UAT.

Not to say that I was happy to be doing it but I was surprised on the manner the UAT which I'm currently undergoing. It seems like the end users were not directly involved in the UAT. I'm the departmental rep, a coordinator like role who translate the business requirements to the software vendor. The real owner of the requirements are the biz users or as we termed it as process owners.

By right it is them to do the UAT together with me since they are the process owners who knows best their business requirements. So, I argued that I need my business people to test the system together with me, the coordinator, but was received strong objections from our technical unit.

So, I just let it be thinking that perhaps I was wrong. Nonetheless I managed to do some research to suppress my curiosity on the subject as well as to self assure that I was correct in arguing my case on the approach of the UAT

So, here are some of the sources I found on the net on the UAT.

Cheerio.

1. “What is User Acceptance Testing?,” http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/testing/what-is-user-acceptance-testing.html.
2. “Acceptance testing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_testing.