3 - 2005 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Application Man

And people wonder why I don’t want to casually migrate from machine to machine. Stuff I have installed that I want to install on the new PC (a reference for…

And people wonder why I don’t want to casually migrate from machine to machine. Stuff I have installed that I want to install on the new PC (a reference for myself, but for your entertainment, too):

Office Aps

Symantec AV* – anti-virus
Altiris* – client for help desk software and tech support
WinZip* – compression software
iPass* – VPN client
eRoom 6 client – collaboration suite
Lotus Notes client
JSRS – Notes-based employee reviewer package
Windows Messenger – Exchange and .Net IM client
~~Yahoo Messenger~~
MS Office 2003 suite (Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint)
MS Outlook 2003
… IHateSpam
… LookOut
MS Visio
MS Project

Browsing and Blogging

Thunderbird** – e-mail – see following post for various extensions
MozBackup 1.4 – FF/TB backup utility
AI RoboForm** – password/identity manager
Blogmatrix Jaeger** – RSS aggregator
QuickTime plug-in
Flash plug-in
Sync2It – bookmark backup service (drop?)
FileZilla – FTP
SmartFTP – another FTP?
SharpMT 2** – blogging client
Sun Java?
Adobe Acrobat Writer
IE Google bar

Graphics

Paint Shop Pro 8 – graphics editor
MS Photo Editor – (find it where it’s hidden)
XnView – another light graphics editor; haven’t used much

Palm Aps
(These are the client-side pieces of software; the Palm software wil stay there)

Palm Desktop – basic conduits
PocketMirror – sync software
Ultrasoft Brainforest – checklist software
SplashID – identity management
SplashPhoto – picture gallery
WordSmith – text editor, Word conduit
BackupBuddy – backup software
HealtheTech BalanceLog** – diet, weight, exercise tracker (the heart of the Geek Diet)

Games

City of Heroes** – with all the various downloads. Need to see if there are any migration tricks out there.
City of Heroes Planner** – character planner
TweakCOH – external access to game options
HeroStats – CoH stats tracker
CoH Maps
Dice Roller – a nice dice rolling utility
RPG Dice – another nice dice rolling utility

Miscellaneous Utils

iTunes** – MP3 player and organizer (migration 1, 2, 3)
PSA Cards** – phone/address list (now defunct)
EditPad Lite – JGSoft text editor
XReminderPro** – scheduler
MS NetMeeting – find it, give it a prominent icon.
Diamondsoft Font Reserve** – font manager
Bounceback Express – backup software for external HDD (needs HDD attached).
MS Broadband Networking – good WiFi client/monitor – obsolete with new WiFi setup?
Infotriever – tie-in between our travel agency and Outlook Calendar.
Google Desktop – desktop search. Undecided on this one.
Powertoys TweakUI
Powertoys Cleartype
Lavasoft Ad-Aware – spyware util
Spybot S&D – spyware util
SpywareBlaster – spyware util

* Should get installed as part of the standard image by the local tech support gremlins.
** Research backup/restore/migration possibilities, or use the ones I know are there.

I have the install programs for most of these — either CD or downloaded install files.

That’s a first pass, looking just at the Start menu for what’s installed. I suspect I’ll spot more if I begin looking in the actual Program Files directory …

And, of course, there’s all the stuff in the My Documents folders.

And people laugh when I say it takes me a couple of days to get a machine up to speed …

Ping pong

I’d been wondering why my Trackback listing hadn’t changed in over a month. Granted, fewer people are “doing it” than in the past, but, still … So I tried posting…

I’d been wondering why my Trackback listing hadn’t changed in over a month. Granted, fewer people are “doing it” than in the past, but, still …

So I tried posting something to another of my blogs, pointing back at a post here.

The post session gets an odd message:

Odd number of elements in hash assignment at (eval 35) line 7. line 268.

That repeats serveral times.

The Activity Log, in turn, shows:

Ping ‘https://www.hill-kleerup.org/blog/mt/mt-tb.cgi/6982’ failed: HTTP error: 404 Not Found

Hrm. Especially since I can see that trackbacks are turned on for that post, and that’s the value that comes up for that page to ping to.

Time for a little research.

UPDATE: Well. It would help if the file mt-tb.cgi actually existed. Hmmmm.

UPDATE: Which may be related to this thread.

UPDATE: Okay, renamed my mt-tb.cgi file (on my hard drive, then uploaded it) and updated the mt.cfg file to match it (see here). And now Trackback works.

How … annoying.

Through the wonders of stylesheets, alternative archives, and dynamic publishing, this blog now has alternative printer-friendly pages for each post. Just click on the “Print” link at the bottom of any post (on this page or on the individual pages), and, voila, a nice, clean, un-sidebarred version of any page. Spiffy!

(Ideally, I’d love to use the Collect plug-in to list out/footnote all the URLs, since you can’t click on a paper link, but, alas, that doesn’t seem to work under dynamic publishing. If someone has a good alternative, let me know.)

UPDATE: This applied to the old Movable Type version of my blog.

Terrorist beacons

While the idea of putting RFID chips into US passports sounds, on first blush, like an interesting idea (providing remote reading and confirmation of passport contents), the implication — that…

While the idea of putting RFID chips into US passports sounds, on first blush, like an interesting idea (providing remote reading and confirmation of passport contents), the implication — that folks who want to target US citizens for kidnapping or killing could also scan a crowd for any Americans that weren’t obvious by their clothing or speaking styles — is a lot less attractive.

In short, an RFID chip would be sort of the high tech equivalent of an American flag — or a bulls-eye — over the head of anyone carrying one.

Swell.

(And that’s just a fraction of the problem. Would you hand out all the info on your passport — name, address, phone number, date of birth, etc. — to everyone you meet? Why, then, would you let your passport do so for you? Can you say “fraud” and “identity theft” and “jacking up prices for the silly American tourists who just walked in”?)

(via BoingBoing)

The Saga is Complete133T

Okay, while the 133T-speak gag has begun to get a little old, the Star Wars Episode III Trailer (133T-subtitled) is pretty darned funny. (And the trailer is still pretty cool,…

Okay, while the 133T-speak gag has begun to get a little old, the Star Wars Episode III Trailer (133T-subtitled) is pretty darned funny. (And the trailer is still pretty cool, regardless.)

(via Doyce)

(And congrats to the D-Man on that being MT Installation Post #5000!)

Close shaves

Okay, this probably qualifies as the Pointless Personal Anecdote post of the week, if not the month or quarter. But it’s the little historical fact bit that, should this all…

Okay, this probably qualifies as the Pointless Personal Anecdote post of the week, if not the month or quarter. But it’s the little historical fact bit that, should this all ever get printed out and saved for future generations of Hills, will be of more interest than my commentary on browser extensions or legal cases. Besides, if much more popular blogs can natter about it, so can I.

Growing up, I can remember my Dad shaving with a razor — a Gillette safety razor, I think, and, eventually, a cartridge razor of some sort. At some point, though, he switched over to a Norelco triple-head, and that was enough of a household standard that, when I started into the shaving biz, I went with the Norelco as well. (That it was the razor featured in ads during Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was a nice side feature.)

I stuck with the Norelco through a couple of replacements, then shifted over to a Braun, which I found gave me more control in its rectangular head than the Norelco’s triple heads provided.

And then …

… I went back to a manual razor.

I think the tipping point for me was when Katherine was born. I’d already been feeling guilty about the loud drone of the electric razor in our master bed/bath suite at the house, since Margie ostensibly slept in later than I did, and I was sure I was waking her up with that sound.

When Katherine was born, the need to go into Night Silence became even higher priority, and with my getting up at 5, the electric had to go. So I started shaving with a blade, and — well, I discovered I was actually getting a much better, and more precise, shave. And since I did it in the morning, pre-shower, I could just shower all the shaving cream way with no problem.

Woo-hoo.

That went on unchanged for four years (except for migrating from a Trac II to a Mach 3, which, ludicrous hype aside, really does shave better). Then about six months ago I decided to try what seems to be popular in some circles, shaving in the shower. Bought a little no-fog mirror to stick to the door, moved the Edge gel and my razor in there …

… and, darned, if it isn’t an even better shave, since my beard gets softened up during the preceding ablutions. I have the problem of not having my glasses on, but I manage okay. And it works when I travel, too, since my kit has a little mirror with it that is usable in the shower.

So, no intention of going back to the electric. Works well for me. And bores the socks off you. Moving right along …

Foxy extensions

As I start looking toward migrating to my new notebook in a few weeks, my eyes are drawn to the Firefox extensions I currently have loaded. For folks’ edification ……

As I start looking toward migrating to my new notebook in a few weeks, my eyes are drawn to the Firefox extensions I currently have loaded. For folks’ edification …

Spiffiness
These make life (or the Internet experience) nicer.

BugMeNot: Bypass those annoying registration screens for some websites.
downTHEMall: Bulk graphics downloader.
ForecastFox: Put little weather icons in your status bar.
Wayback: Context menu access to the Wayback archive for web sites.
Google Pagerank Status: Shows Google pageranks, just like the Google search bar does.
ImgTag: Get an HTML img tag for a page’s graphic file (for direct links to it).

Tabbed browsing
Though FF supports it, these extend it the way I want it.

Tabbrowser Preferences: The sine qua non, controlling what opens up in a new tab, etc.
Flowing Tabs: Wraps the tabs around to multiple lines, rather than squeezing them into a single line. (A version 1.x-compatable version can be found here.)
Duplicate Tab: Adds a “duplicate tab” (into a new tab, or a new window) function.
Tab Clicking Options: Lets you do certain things by clicking on tabs in certain ways (e.g., close a tab by double-clicking on it).
CTC: Adds “Close tab” to the context menu.

Browser functions
These add to what FF does as a browser.

Adblock: Block image ads from download and/or display.
Flashblock: Block flash images from download and/or display.
ieView: Open a page in Internet Explorer (for those pages that must be so opened to function, dagnabbit).
Print It!: Adds a print and print preview button to the tool bar, as well as print functions to the context menu.
Add Bookmark Here: Adds to the bookmarking functionality.
Chromedit: Graphical interface to the various FF config files.
SpellBound: Nice spell checker for web forms.
Text Size Toolbar: Adds text size up/down controls to the toolbar.
Session Saver: Tracks tabs you’ve closed during a session, and saves (and can reopen) open tabs when you close FF (particularly handy if your machine crashes).

One of the cool things about FF is that, if you don’t want the functionality listed above, you don’t have to have it. And if you want something alternative (or in addition) to the above, chances are there are other extensions that have been created to do it. FF works fine out of the box, but these extensions make it work even better.

Spam and yeggs

Big uptick in comment spam over the last few days. A couple slipped through, many got bounced into moderation, most never made it past the starting gate. Guess Spring Break…

Big uptick in comment spam over the last few days. A couple slipped through, many got bounced into moderation, most never made it past the starting gate.

Guess Spring Break is a chance to earn some extra bucks spamming.

Easter Parade

So if the day after Christmas is “Boxing Day,” is the day after Easter “Basketing Day”? Woke up Easter morning to the sound of Katherine running around like a maniac,…

So if the day after Christmas is “Boxing Day,” is the day after Easter “Basketing Day”?

Woke up Easter morning to the sound of Katherine running around like a maniac, having fun with the grandparents downstairs. “Gotta tell your mom not to feed her those Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs this early in the morning,” I murmured to Margie.

“Especially if she’s going to douse them with coffee,” she replied.

Church was the usual Easter pomp and circumstance, bells and smells. The sanctuary was full up, as it’s one of the Two Holidays Which Warrant Church Attendance for many, which made it a great opportunity to announce our new rector (which announcement didn’t seem to engender too much reaction, perhaps because (a) most people were expecting it, or (b) it led off the second half of the sermon, which most folks thought was over at that point).

After the services, we had a Easter Egg hunt out on the lawn — muddy, but devoid of the snow which had been there only a couple of days before. Despite the fact that plastic eggs were strewn on the ground like a flower patch, a minute or two of ~~locusts~~ kids had the area all cleared out nice and neat.

Went off to breakfast, than home. Margie and her mom started working on Easter dinner, while Jim and I finall replaced the hanging lamps in the entry hall and stair well, as well as ceiling fixtures on the ground floor. I also replaced light switches in the guest bath and basement with illuminated switches (which has only been on my list of things to do for about five years).

Margie and Ginger also made efforts to work on something to hold down the carpet in the dining room, which has a tendency to fold and kink and generally get messed up with the dining room table on top of it. More on that once the project is complete.

A variety of folks over to the house for dinner — Stan, Randy, Bruce, Jackie and Justin. Good conversation and enjoyable times, highlighted by the annual Easter Egg hunt in the living room with the two young-uns. Katherine was in super-cute mode, which was fun.

Great dinner (leg of lamb and pork loin for the entree; Jackie’s strawberry cheesecake and Margie’s chocolate torte for dessert, Silver Oak and Linne Calodo for wine), followed by extended chit-chat in the living room.

Overall, a nice evening, and a nice wrap to the weekend. I’m off to work today, while the Ks, Margie, and Katherine do fun stuff (including a trip to the zoo).

Up with the birds

Driving into work at 5:30 a.m. in the morning may suck in many important considerations, but it does let you see some spectacular sunrises this time of year….

Driving into work at 5:30 a.m. in the morning may suck in many important considerations, but it does let you see some spectacular sunrises this time of year.

The sort of new PC I like to see

Got confirmation this afternoon from IBM that my new ThinkPad T41p will be shipping in a couple of weeks. Glee! And, it’s about time … Of course, there’s a finite…

Got confirmation this afternoon from IBM that my new ThinkPad T41p will be shipping in a couple of weeks. Glee! And, it’s about time …

Of course, there’s a finite chance I’ll have a business trip before that happens. Can’t be helped, alas. But at least I’ll have a new PC out of it all.

A low-tech approach

If you find your PC’s screen keeps getting smudged with fingerprints and other gunk, try this. (via JMS)…

If you find your PC’s screen keeps getting smudged with fingerprints and other gunk, try this.

(via JMS)

Friendly searching

A very interesting essay on why “personalizing” searches — having a search engine like Google trying to weight search results based on what you’ve looked at, or expressed an interest…

A very interesting essay on why “personalizing” searches — having a search engine like Google trying to weight search results based on what you’ve looked at, or expressed an interest in, before — is not always a good idea. All the points are worth consideration (and apply to many sorts of “personalizing” paths).

The bottom line is (as #10 implies) that the human brain is far better at figuring out what it wants at any given moment than any sort of personalization algorithms.

British Apples

John Kovalic, who did the art for the faboo game “Apples to Apples,” speculates on items what would be in a British version of the game….

John Kovalic, who did the art for the faboo game “Apples to Apples,” speculates on items what would be in a British version of the game.

A new criterion for “diversity”

According to the Princeton Review of best colleges, one of the criteria for a “diverse” university is ignoring God. Huh? Delving into the individual pages, one finds the question restated…

According to the Princeton Review of best colleges, one of the criteria for a “diverse” university is ignoring God.

Huh?

Delving into the individual pages, one finds the question restated as “Are students very religious?” Which makes sense, maybe, if you equate being “religious” with “the school is full of a single, vocal, socially-enforced common religious/denominational point of view.” Maybe.

Certainly one can consider the distinction between the top five two categories given:

“Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis” – Reed College, Lewis & Clark College, Marlboro College, Eugene Lang College, Hampshire College
“Students Pray on a Regular Basis” – Brigham Young University, Wheaton College, Grove City College, University of Dallas, Samford University

But does a homogeneous non-religious student body represent a more “diverse” school than a (presumably) uniformly religious one? I’m not sure I’d agree there. (Would a student seeking an active spiritual life, for example, find the “Regularly Ignoring God” students of Lewis & Clark more diverse or tolerant, for example?)

And … um … “monochromatic” as the antonym for “diverse”?

Identifying colleges as being more religiously-oriented vs. less religiously-oriented is, probably, of value. But I’d tend to consider a college that had both strong religious organizations and activities and non-religious/secular ones (even anti-religious ones) as the more diverse campus. Just as, for example, a campus that had a large and active gay community would be more diverse than a gay-only or straight-only college.

Weird.

Sanity in the standards wars? Inconceivable!

Sony is making noises that its support for the Blu-Ray next-generation DVD format may not preclude reaching some sort of compromise with its HD-DVD competitors: “Listening to the voice of…

Sony is making noises that its support for the Blu-Ray next-generation DVD format may not preclude reaching some sort of compromise with its HD-DVD competitors:

“Listening to the voice of the consumers, having two rival formats is disappointing, and we haven’t totally given up on the possibility of integration or compromise,” Ryoji Chubachi, Sony’s president-elect, said at a news conference today in which he discussed the company’s performance and future strategy.

[…] HD-DVD backers, which include NEC Corp. and Toshiba Corp., say HD-DVDs can be produced for about the same price as DVDs and are backward-compatible with DVDs and CDs, making the format more convenient for both consumers and the industry. HD-DVD movie titles, PC drives and players are all due out by the end of the year.

Sony has steadfastly promoted Blu-ray as a technology that has greater capacity, saying this makes the format more useful because more content can be stored on a disc. The technology also has wider support in the technology industry, although release dates for movie titles have not yet been announced.

Chubachi’s comments mark the second time that a Sony executive has signaled the possibility of a compromise between the two camps. In January, Ken Kutaragi, executive deputy president of Sony, said a format war wasn’t in the public interest and that Sony hadn’t ruled out the possibility of uniting the formats.

Indeed it is not in the public interest — and, further, is the thing most likely to keep folks from investing in either technology. Folks have become a lot more sensitized to standards issues than they were in the Beta-vs-VHS days (and to some degree because of that), and are less willing to pony up for a machine that will be only useful for some title and not for others.

And Sony has not been exactly the most successful in promoting alternative formats and technologies, even though its offerings — from Betamax to Mini-discs — have been technologically spiffy.

If they can come up with a compromise on this, everyone will be muuuuuch happier.

Dolt? D’oh!

Evidently, during the development of the Apple Lisa (the proto-Macintosh), rather than dialog boxes having an “OK” button, they had a “Do It” button. Which actually sounds kind of nice,…

Evidently, during the development of the Apple Lisa (the proto-Macintosh), rather than dialog boxes having an “OK” button, they had a “Do It” button. Which actually sounds kind of nice, more meaningful, more active, etc., right?

When the software required confirmation from the user, it displayed a small window called a “dialog box”, that contained a question, and presented two buttons, for positive or negative confirmation. The buttons were labeled “Do It” and “Cancel”. The designers observed that a few users seemed to stumble at the point that the dialog was displayed, clicking “Cancel” when they should have clicked “Do It”, but it wasn’t clear what they were having trouble with.

Finally, the team noticed one user that was particularly flummoxed by the dialog box, who even seemed to be getting a bit angry. The moderator interrupted the test and asked him what the problem was. He replied, “I’m not a dolt, why is the software calling me a dolt?”

It turns out he wasn’t noticing the space between the ‘o’ and the ‘I’ in ‘Do It’; in the sans-serif system font we were using, a capital ‘I’ looked very much like a lower case ‘l’, so he was reading ‘Do It’ as ‘Dolt’ and was therefore kind of offended.

After a bit of consideration, we switched the positive confirmation button label to ‘OK’ (which was initially avoided, because we thought it was too colloquial), and from that point on people seemed to have fewer problems.

And now you know.

(via Mind Hacks)

As opposed to, say, heavy caliber firearms or machetes

A nice set of tools for fighting spam and similar ick — mostly research for tracking down the miscreants involved. (via Spam Huntress)…

A nice set of tools for fighting spam and similar ick — mostly research for tracking down the miscreants involved.

(via Spam Huntress)

Clear advice

If you somehow happen to get involved in development of your company’s blogging policy, you’d do far worse than to start with Linkster’s example….

If you somehow happen to get involved in development of your company’s blogging policy, you’d do far worse than to start with Linkster’s example.

My company, unfortunately, in the news

Despite having misspelled the name of the subsidiary involved, my company is indeed the one mentioned in this story about the BP Refinery explosion in Texas City. Word is that…

Despite having misspelled the name of the subsidiary involved, my company is indeed the one mentioned in this story about the BP Refinery explosion in Texas City.

Word is that things are pretty tumultuous in the Houston office right now.

My company prides itself (and rightly so) on its safety record, attentiveness, and procedures, so any injuries, and expecialy any deaths, are extremely unusual, even in as relatively dangerous a field as engineering and construction. I’m sure I’ll be hearing more about this.

Month: March 2005