©Depositphotos/leeser

Whether you are at work or at home, there are some simple things you can do to save power and save that little bit extra in your pocket each month. I would love to say that the big factor for me “going green” was to help the environment but the biggest factor that hits most people (including myself) first is the drastic increases in power costs that seem to grow ever higher.

One thing that many people do not know is just how much power they can save by simply shutting down their computer at night. The savings obviously depend whether it is a laptop, or a desktop and the exact specifications of the machine. However I realised that I could save quite an amount per month on the home power bill by just shutting down at night.

You might instantly think, “Oh but the computer wouldn’t use THAT much power”, but in fact when you add up the computer, printer, external hard drives, modems, switches and every other peripheral that you have connected, the juice that gets used even in standby mode for all these devices really adds up.

So if you are looking to save that little bit of extra cash, or alternatively looking to go green, consider shutting off the computer at night to give it a good nights sleep and your wallet a helping hand too.

Stuart

©Depositphotos/KirillM

I want everyone to stop, pick up their keyboard right now and shake it… go on… you KNOW you are dying to. Something that many people do is clean around their desks, making sure that all is squeaky clean and tidy, but especially in offices the common keyboard is far to often neglected.

Now that it is the new year it is time to give your computer a spring clean and your keyboard is the best place to start.

It might be time consuming, it might be icky but it is definitely a necessity. So lets find out how many of you have now shaken just SOME of the collection of KeyChow (Keyboard Chow) from your keyboards? Cleaning a keyboard is simple but time consuming and consists of one by one pulling each and every key off the keyboard, giving them a good wipe, vacuuming out all the crud underneath the keys and replacing everything back to normal.

There are some great articles on how to do this on the internet already such as HowToGeek’s – HowTo Thoroughly Clean your Keyboard (take a look about half way down for the good stuff).

The only additional piece of advice I really do STRONGLY emphasise is to take a photo of your keyboard before you start, that way you already have a solved version of the puzzle for when you need to put it back together.

So if you haven’t done so in a while, wipe off your desk and give your keyboard a good clean. The germs of the world will hate you for it!

Happy New Year everyone!

Stuart

P.S. Apologies for being so quiet lately, been pumping all of my energy into a new open source project I am working on for the Atlassian Suite. I will try to blog more soon!

Howdy all ,
It has been a while since I last posted, life has been busy and  I have been powering through into a new development project. For those of you that have found this via Google please read on… if you are looking for an easier way to install and upgrade the Atlassian suite I need your input.

For a long time I have wanted to streamline the process of installing Confluence, JIRA, Crowd, Fisheye, Bamboo, and now Atlassian’s new offering, Stash. Since I started using the suite, I have found installations and upgrades to be somewhat cumbersome. Much of the small frustrating tasks could easily be automated and this is why I am now embarking on the Atlassian Suite Manager Script.

The Goal:

The end goal goal is a script that will provide the following benefits:

• Allow for faster deployment of new Atlassian installations
• Standardise the installation process by providing an abstraction layer to mask the differing installation procedures to make life easier, especially for newcomers to the suite
• Minimise manual configuration changes required during installations and upgrades
• Lower the time it takes to complete upgrades by automating the upgrade process all the way from starting the download right through to configuration of the upgraded installation (with the exception of web based wizards)
• Assist in day to day administration of the suite
• [your feature here]… This is where I need your help to complete this survey to give me ideas of the features you would like.

The Concept:

The concept for this started when I decided that it was time to automate all the tiny little config changes that are needed every time one of the modules in the suite was installed or upgraded. While Atlassian provides installers for two of the products (Confluence and Jira), I feel these need to be extended. Even simple things such as the application context path are omitted during upgrades and have to be applied again manually for the product to work.

The remaining products have no binary installer or upgrade function and therefore require manual config changes each and every time which can become cumbersome. Hence the idea for the management script was born.

What I need:

As part of this I need to gather some information from adminstrators of the suite regarding the vast array of configurations out there and what extra functions may be useful to them in managing installations of the Atlassian suite. If you have any friends/colleagues/workmates who also administer the suite (whether they are beginners or veterans) if you could please point them to this survey (http://stuart.li/ASM-Survey1) it would be greatly apprecaited, the more responses I get the better idea I have of where to focus development time on for the initial release.

I thank you for your time in advance, the survey is completely anonymous (unless you would like to provide your contact details at the end for me to follow up). Finally if you would like to sign up to my mailing list to keep updated when the final product is released please jump over to http://stuart.li/ASM-Release-Listserv and you can sign up there. This will only be used for release and update information for the Atlassian Suite Manager Scripts.