Wednesday, September 17, 2008

TeamViewer Remote Desktop Software

I've been looking for ways to access my files at home from work or where ever I am. I have also been looking for a way to support family members with their computer problems and helping to teach them how to do the things they want to do with their computers.

I tried several things that had limitations. Some of them were complicated to walk others through installing and sometimes never actually worked on their older software.

I found one that I am very happy with. It is called TeamViewer.

Pros
  • Free for personal use.
  • Remote Desktop - Basically you can take control of another machine and the user on the other machine can see what you are doing. This is helping for fixing problems on a remote machine and also for training.
  • File transfer. No need to share directories. Once you connect you get access to both machines file system. You can do file transfers without opening up a full remote desktop session.
  • You can set up a VPN. I haven't done a ton with this, because it seems to be a little different than VPNs I have used. Most times when I have used a VPN when you browse the web it goes out through the VPN's network. So far it doesn't work that way for me. I think the idea is that you can share printers and operate on files as if they were on a local network.

Cons
  • As far as I can tell there is no way to pipe sound from the remote machine to your local machine.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Tricks to Deal with ADHD

Although I have not been officially diagnosed ADHD I find that I am very distracted and have trouble gathering my thoughts. Here are a list of things that I have found help.

-Make lists of short attainable steps to get done what you want to do. The list will probably pop into your head in the wrong order, but once you have captured them all you can go back and organize them. At least this way you capture what needs to be done before you mind gets distracted and you forget what you were doing and what the steps were.
-If you are working on a computer shut down notification icons like email, social networking sites, and so forth. You are likely to lose focus and be distracted when a notification comes in or you will be tempted to go check sites for changes.

-Exercise. My dad often says that teachers told him that they could tell a big difference between when I walked to school and when I got a ride.

-Make it interesting. ADHDers are capable of hyper focus if it is something that interests them. Find ways to use that to your advantage to get lots done quickly. Find ways to make it interesting or even entertaining without creating more distractions for yourself.