My blog has become a little geekish over the last couple of posts, and I may have another very geekish post up my sleeve soon too, so I thought I should jump in with an update about Ladan as that is, after all, one of the main things for which a lot of people visit this blog.

The summer, if we are still calling it that, has been a very stable time for Ladan, no real fears of infection or other problems. It would have been nice to get Ladan out quite a lot but it has been a very wet summer, finding a good day has been difficult. There have, however, been about three trips out this summer, two to the flat where I spend some of the morning sleeping and one trip - a tiny bit further afield - to Ladan’s uncle’s house in the north of Gosforth.  Ladan’s uncle Shahram and his family regularly host Bar-B-Qs and meals at their home for the family and Ladan would often go there while she was living in Newcastle before we got married, indeed I visited there quite often while visiting Ladan up here. It was, therefore, a familiar environment to take Ladan to and also presented an opportunity for the family to spend time with Ladan in a more natural environment.

We are taking small steps forward toward getting Ladan out of the nursing home and into a normal house or bungalow, but things cannot move forward properly until we have a property, and that probably involves a wait of indefinite duration for a local housing association to have a suitable property available. Our case manager is fixing up a meeting with somebody who can help talk me through the various other options that might exist and their consequences.

A long while ago I mentioned a medicine called levodopa which I was hoping we could try with Ladan some time. It is normally used in Parkinsons disease but has been found to have a dramatic influence upon a small number of people who are in a minimally conscious state. There have been a few barriers to trying this medication, including a lack of clear information on how to use the medication in this situation and questions over Ladan’s stability. Ladan’s GPs have been very positive in this matter, as they have been over moving Ladan into home environment, and we now seem to have overcome most of the barriers, so it looks promising that we may be trying this medicine very soon. I will, of course, update this blog with the results of the trial… I might also write a fuller introduction to what it is all about in the next day or two… encourage me to do so if you would wish to read it.

The colder autumn and winter months are, generally, the ones where Ladan is at greater risk of developing chest infections. Over the last few years I think Ladan has had to go onto anti-biotics at least once during this period, last year we ended up in hospital twice and so I am hoping for a smoother ride through this winter.

I remain aware that many people are keeping Ladan in their thoughts and prayers and this a blessing for which I am truly very grateful and am deeply moved by. Ladan has remained very strong through this ordeal, rather than deteriorating she becomes increasingly stable, so please do keep those prayers coming if you can. Thank you.

A couple of months ago I put the three leading free desktop search utilities to the test to see which one was the best. 

The following versions were tested: Windows Search 4, Copernic Desktop Search 2 and Google Desktop Search.  The test was done using WIndows XP. WIndows Vista has Windows Search built into it and that is an improved version, as far as I understand, of what I was testing on XP. First to the test was…

Google Desktop Search

Google Desktop has two main features, a desktop search engine that will index the files on your computer and search through them instantly, and side bar similar to the one that comes with Windows Vista, to which you add lots of gadgets including news readers, email notifications, calendar, slide shows… the list goes on. Personally I find side bars distracting and I have enough distractions off-screen without a side bar giving me more, but this feature is easily disabled. Once Google Desktop Search has indexed the computer it is extremely fast to find results in most file formats including Outlook emails. The software can be accessed in several different ways, my favourite method is as a search box docked onto the task bar at the bottom of the screen. As you type a search query into the box the search engines starts to provide matches to the partial word you have entered. What is particularly good about Google Desktop Search is that the results are all shown with a content preview, showing the text that surrounds your search string where it has been matched, this makes it extremely easy to find the very document you are looking for. The only problem I found is that not all the documents on my computer were being indexed. I uninstalled the software, re-installed it and ran a full index and still found that many of the documents I had were not indexed by the Google Desktop Search.

Windows Search

I was optimistic when I installed this given that the product should be as well designed for Windows as such a product could be. Windows Search did index all of my files but it lacked the context to the results on the search bar. When used as a full application the software offered the ability to open the found documents in a preview window so that you could then search for the result inside the document and realise the context, but this worked very slowly. On the whole I didn’t feel that Windows Search 4 made searching much easier than using the search features already built into Windows and Outlook, having used Google Desktop Search I had had a glimpse of how quickly a search tool could work, and by comparison Windows Search was painful to use.

Copernic Desktop Search

Copernic Desktop Search is similar to Windows Search in appearance and in its interface, it does offer filename matches very quickly from a search box on the task bar at the bottom of the screen but in order to get context you have to use the application Window and preview the matched document in a preview window, this was, however, considerably faster in Copernic than it was in Windows Search. Copernic also seemed to index every one of the files on my computer, including Outlook email, and the application interface is very easy to use. I found that once I had used Copernic a few times I was able to use its features to find the documents and emails I needed very quickly. 

Conclusions

My favourite desktop search for WIndows XP is Copernic Desktop Search. I found the instant contextual results in Google Desktop Search superior to both Windows and Copernic but the incomplete indexing made it inadequate at the most important task of searching files on my computer. I did check through the support forums but,  like others before me who had had the same problem, I could not find, nor was offered, any solutions. Copernic was fast and intuitive, had I not seen the way in which Google presented results I would not have even thought it might be lacking in any department.

My tests were limited to the free version of Copernic Desktop Search 2, they have since released version 3 and that appears to offer “results as you type” in the commercial (non-free) versions, their web site does not specify if these are contextual results or not. If Google added an option that would allow you to force indexing of files and folders it had missed out then Google Desktop Search would be my winner, but at the time of testing there was no known way of doing this.

Links: Winner: Copernic Desktop Search, Second: Windows Search 4, Third: Google Desktop Search

Trying to work from Ladan’s side I have used a number of old, second hand laptop computers that have been on their way to the the microchip graveyard. When a computer dies, be it a recoverable error or not, it often takes a while to get a system up and running with my email and important data in place, especially if I am in need of another computer.

I decided I needed a solution that would enable me to get working quickly from any computer, and i bought a 4GB USB Disk to try to set somehting up. Now, had I bought a 2GB disk I now realise I could have done something a little more clever that would have worked without the need for WIndows being installed, but I may well come back to that in a future post, for now I have a 4GB disk and am very happy with what I have got, which is this…

• An encrytped, password protected, briefcase of my most important documents
• An encrypted, password protected, backup of my Outlook email folders and settings
• A one-click facility to synchronise my public and private documents, and email, with any WIndows computer (in the case of email it needs to have Outllok XP or better installed)
• All my essential applications installed on the USB disk and launchable from there
• A nice launcher that sits in the Windows system tray and accesses all the facilities from the disk

So, not only do I have my data backed up but I can use almost all of it without interefering with another machine. If I want to use my email on a friends machine I will have to configure a user account under my name to use a fresh copy of Outlook, but I can use webmail for email too. I did consider using Thunderbird as my primary email client and then not needing access to Outlook on any machine (as I can run Thunderbird from the USB Drive), but I prefer Outlook for email management tools.

Here are the tools I am using, and hereby recommending…

• Truecrypt - This creates an encrypted briefcase file that I can “mount” as a drive when I need access to it.
• Allway Sync - A utility that can be set to synchronize between certain folders on the USB and the host computer]
• PStart - An application launcher, like the WIndows start button, that can be configured to work for all the programs on a USB stick.

I also have OpenOffice, Firefox, Mozilla, FileZilla, Gimp, GeoClock, CCleaner, Process Explorer, InfraRecorder, VLC Media Player, Notepad++, Audacity, and a large number of other portable applications installed which can run from the USB drive. Using PStart I can open my briefcase as Drive J: with just one click, and carry out synchronization of Outlook between computers I use with just one click.

One note about Outlook and Encryption, if you are familiar with creating a new .pst file in Outlook then you will know that you are offered three levels of encryption for your messages… None, Compressible or Best… Outlook does not compress the .pst file itself so unless you are going to compress it then the Best option is best!

Most of my blog visitors are not that technical minded to want to know more details about this, so if you do want to know more please le tme know.

Google’s new web browser, Chrome, was launched yesterday. When I ran it I was expecting a brushed metal look similar to Apple’s Safari browser but there is no visual chrome effect. It is still a beta release, meaning it is not expected to be reliable yet, so I won’t go into the problems i found with it, for the most part it functioned very well. The best new feature is the recently visited sites page that welcomes you when you open the browser window or tab, you get a selection of preview images of the sites you use the most. Another new feature that I have not yet experienced in action is the concept that when a page crashes it will only crash the tab and not the browser, meaning that other tabs are left open. In Firefox the other tabs are opened as they were prior to the crash when you re-start the browser , so Chrome takes this a step further. Chrome’s address bar is merged with the Google search box to offer a selection of suggestion web addresses, previously visited sites and search terms as you type. This sounds appealing but after a few uses I haven’t warmed to it yet, when I search in Firefox I get a lot more suggestions for search terms which is handy when you are not sure exactly what something is called, by combining the address bar with the search bar the suggestions become less plentiful or relevant. Finally, Google claim that this browser is faster with today’s application rich Internet… I haven’t really been able to detect the difference in casual browsing but I can confirm it is certainly not slower than its competitors. Currently I still prefer Firefox,  but with Chrome in development and Internet Explorer 8 being released soon, with an easier to use interface, the web certainly seems to be getting faster, easier and more powerful to use.