Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Maybe one day I will write on here some personal stuff, I mean really personal reality, not just the sanitised for the public version of my reality. My Spy Journal was started as a view inside me, but lately I have covered up who I am with the stuff I write about, work, web technology, Microsoft etc. Maybe one day soon there might be some more about who I am, what drives me, what makes me tick, my version of life?

What do you reckon? Do you care? Do I care even if you don't? Do I know what I think you mean but don't know you mean it? was that confusing - did it even make sense? Does life? Is this too cryptic? All of the above? Hmm lets see. Maybe...

The weekend was mostly spent I not working - the theme to the weekend. Apart from one short appointment that was supposed to happen on Saturday (and ended up being postponed to Monday) I barely touched a computer for work!

Mercedes turned 4 on Saturday so that was lots of fun. We had presents early (as usual) and then I spent a lot of time playing with her, helping her draw and colour in with her new coloured pencils and markers, paying with her new ball (from Grandad and Grandma) and lots of other fun things.

I have been using RescueTime since half way through December. It has proved invaluable to me in order to see how what I am spending my time on. RescueTime is a small application you install on every computer you use. in my case, that's my main machine, my secondary dev machine, my main laptop, my virtual PC and my remote desktop at a clients and another clients laptop I have here to work on (it can be uninstalled later). Of course you can just install it on one machine if you like, but as I discovered I spend time on several. Once you create an account it starts recording your time on applications you use and websites you visit. This is then sent tot he RescueTime servers where it is compiled for your viewing.

I now have two quad core machines. The details are below, but first the reasoning behind the addition.

Research stage

I use PC's extensively for work and my main workstation has to be able to keep up with what I am doing. I have been frustrated with the Vista 32bit low RAM limits, maximum RAM being only between 2.75 and 3.5GB RAM. As I use virtual machines to do development work in, as well running a lot of applications simultaneously RAM is very important to me. As mentioned in my Why I need a quad core PC post recently my RAM usage is often over 80-90%.

So it seemed to me that 64 bit Vista was the only way I was going to improve my machine's performance and allow me to access the full 4GB or RAM or more.

I had been reading with interest Nick Hodges General Melchett Project, where he set out to build a machine with a Vista Performance index of 5.9, the highest available. Full story on the Channel 10 website. I had also been filing various bits of information about Vista 64 and limitations, things it would not do etc.