I have been super frustrated with the stock email client on Android which seems to crash about 50% of the time when I reply to ActiveSync / Exchange email.

Last week I discovered Nine which handles both Exchange and GMail if you're an apps for business user. It handles email, calendar and tasks beautifully and can present a combined mailbox from several accounts. The app is nicely designed and so far hasn't crashed or hung for me which has reduced the amount of daily swearing I aim at my phone considerably.

If you need to access Exchange on Android I can't recommend Nine highly enough.

One family of solutions to the Fermi Paradox is that civilizations die out before they communicate - natural disaster, nuclear war, etc. This sort of calamity seems plausible some of the time but it would need to happen all of the time. What if any sufficiently advanced society inevitably discovers irrefutable proof that free will is an illusion and just gives up?

Depressing. I prefer this.

(This is a joke. For a more serious consideration please read this.)

My Chromebook was stolen over the weekend. The good news is that I didn't lose anything given the cloud only nature of the device. The bad news was that I didn't really want to get a new one.

I loved the cost and the boot speed and being able to do nearly everything I needed to with a browser-in-a-box.

But the nearly was a deal breaker. I sometimes need to VPN and the Chromebook wouldn't. It just wasn't compatible with our flavor of VPN and I didn't want to buy another Chromebook on the off chance that Google would eventually fix this. I also have to use Skype (I'd rather not) and this isn't really possible on the Chromebook either. Imo.im was good while it lasted. IM+ is horrible.

I've abandoned the Chrome dream and picked up a Surface Pro 3.

I so want to get to 100% on Google PageSpeed Insights but I'm getting dinged for loading Google Analytics!

I last got one of these in 2010 and assumed it must have died by now, but no, otherwise sensible organisations are still training their customers to fall victim to phishing attacks by asking them to open dodgy email attachments.

The product in question is Cisco Registered Envelope and it deals with the lack of security in email by sending you an encrypted HTML file. Opening this file sends you off to register on some website and then runs a Java app to decrypt the message. This is insane. The HTML attachment in insane and the Java applet is insane.

The latest email I got in this format was an appointment reminder from UCSF. I'm sure there is some HIPPA requirement that they can't just send medical information in a plain text email. But they could send an email that lets you know you should login to your account to see the appointment. It's not like the securedoc.html method is magic, you still have to create an account on a website to use it so it buys you literally nothing.

UCSF, shame on you. Look after your patients digital health as well as their physical health. Out of self interest if nothing else, nobody can pay you if their bank accounts have been emptied after falling victim to a real phishing attack.

Cisco, shame on you. This product is so wrong headed it's impossible to believe that you're doing anything right.

​(previously)

Good HBR article on LEGO and girls: LEGO’s Girl Problem Starts with Management, depressing conclusion:

"Don’t hold your breath, though. Despite its first-day sold-out success, LEGO has decided not to continue the Research Institute line. It was only a “limited edition.” So girls, back to the pool. The guys in this boardroom don’t seem to want to give you any ideas… let alone seats at the table."

(previously, previously)

If you subscribe to I Thought He Came With You via RSS please switch to this new feed and delete the old one.

Longer version... this blog has used FeedBurner for ever but I managed to get locked out a couple of years ago. I upgraded to Google Apps for Domains and part of the process was transitioning various services over to a temporary account and then back to the new one. Most of them made it over but FeedBurner got orphaned somehow.

I've emailed, left forum posts etc but no luck. Google doesn't really do customer service so despite actually paying them I seem to be out of luck. Also, Google hates RSS so FeedBurner probably isn't the right long term tool even if I could get back into my account.

I've been meaning to do something about this for a while but as it was working it wasn't a top priority. This changed when my blog got hacked a couple of times in a row - I'm not sure if it was the software (I'd been using BlogEngine.net) or my hosting provider but it's painful to fix and I decided I needed a change. I Thought I Came From You is now running on a home grown platform. It should be more stable, faster (some quick benchmarking suggests twice as fast so far) and not get hacked quite so often.

So switch to https://ithoughthecamewithyou.com/syndication.axd for updates (I can't recommend Feedly highly enough) and delete the old feed. If you have any problems leave a comment below or send me an email.

My company bought everyone a Fitbit for Christmas and now we're in a Battle Royale to get the most steps. I'm at a disadvantage as I often cycle to work and Fitbit does not track this accurately.

A couple of people suggested that clipping the Fitbit to your shoe would help. So over the last week I conducted an experiment. My ride from home to the office is 6.5 miles. With the Fitbit clipped into my hip pocket it registers 2,362 steps. Perched precariously on my shoe I get 2,389 steps. You can't cheat Fitbit this way.

How far off is 2,300 steps? If I was walking the same distance I'd get 13,000 steps. But I  wouldn't be coasting down any hills so that isn't right either.

For my weight relaxed walking should be around 155 calories a mile, cycling at around 10 miles per hour is 78 calories a mile. This is about a 2:1 exchange rate so those 2,300 steps should be 4,600 or so.

Fitbit does have some options to manually add activities that it doesn't register correctly. This sounds too much like hard work though, it's difficult enough to remember not to put the poor device in the washing machine. I'm also 234,037 steps behind the current leader for January so I'd need to cycle home for lunch as well to stand any chance of catching up...