Well, after a bit of a wait (supplier problems, I believe), I just got my external battery from Battery Geek.

I have always been a big fan of spare batteries for traveling. However, after moving from a MacBook to a MBP and being left with three spare batteries I couldn't use, I figured I'd like to find a better solution . . .

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Kinda like trying to find a place to eat in NYC, I'm suffering from option overload. I have a client getting a project coded in India and he needs decent PHP/MySQL shared hosting for putting up what will initially be a relatively low traffic site. Cost isn't the biggest concern. Decent techs, good support a reliable machine and network and not too much overselling of bandwidth would be ideal. Right now he needs shared rather than ded or VPS. Any recommendations?

I've been using WriteRoom for about a week now and I'm really loving it as a focused UI when you just need to take notes or write up some thoughts on your Mac . . .

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Just noticed a really nice collection of quotations - about languages and about programming.

There are so many each of which that could inspire its own blog post, that I'll just leave the link without editorializing or picking of favorites. Expect to see some blog posts based on some of these over the next few weeks . . .

I've been looking at various solutions to powering my MBP and eee. I had a couple of spare batteries for my MacBook which are now pretty worthless, I would like one power source for multiple devices, and I'd love a solution that doesn't require me to put my laptop(s) into sleep mode just to change power supplies, so I'm thinking seriously about getting an external battery pack . . .

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Well, I've got to say that after taking a couple of days to get used to the setup, I'm really liking my ASUS eee as a backup/note taking/blogging solution.

Basically I use the 17" MacBook Pro at home, in the office and if I want to get some serious work done in a coffee shop. The rest of the time (subway journeys, taking notes at a CFUG, etc) I'll use the eee.

The keyboard does take a little bit of getting used to - it is about as small as a keyboard can get without becoming a device more suited to texting than writing, but after using it for a couple of hours, it's working out fine. When I get home I can then either connect to my wireless network to post a blog entry or I can just copy the files to my Mac using a USB stick.

Only small issue is that the battery drains quite fast in "sleep" mode, so you can't just leave the ASUS in sleep over the weekend and be able to use it on the Monday morning. But given an average boot time of about 16 seconds and a shutdown of about 10-12 seconds, it can boot as fast as many machines can resume from hibernation.

I still haven't set up Skype or an IM client or used the laptop to check web pages, but I'm sure I'll get round to it sometime. Also, I just got a Sprint data card for the Mac which is supposed to work on the ASUS, so it could be great for checking email or the web while in a car (assuming I'm not driving!).

Anyone else playing with one of these? Any hints/tips/thoughts?

Well, after a little bit of pondering, I think I've come up with a pretty good set of gear for developing. Traveling with a 17" laptop - are you mad? I don't know - what do you think . . .

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Well, it's been a while since I've blogged consistently. Between client project, internal development, conference presentations and just a bunch of learning and thinking, I really haven't had a time to document my thinking in terms of blog postings.

However, I've played around with my schedule and am hoping to get back into the flow of one article per (business) day. I've got half written postings on everything from geolocation to behavior driven development, so hopefully there will be some thought provoking posts.

Today, I'll start us off with a post on something that I think could change the way that certain classes of applications are developed. It'll take a while, but the idea has huge potential benefits if I can get it into a production system. I'm calling it Delta Driven Development.

I just wanted to shout out to anyone who isn't on a good variety of mailing lists, that you might want to give some of them a try, as many of the framework mailing lists cover way more topics than you might expect . . .

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Tom Mollerus just pointed out a couple of must-have little Firefox extensions for developers. MeasureIt gives great sizing information, and ColorZilla provides an eyedropper in the browser for quickly getting colors from a page.

I'm assuming everyone who does CSS has Firebug already.

Any other "must have's" that you'd recommend?