steve.clarke.weblog

People are talking about “Web 2.0”. There’s plenty of debate about what exactly it encompasses. All I can say is that I think it’s primarily about having your information freed from any single system or physical application. It’s about information anywhere with ease of use rivaling or better than a traditional app.

At home I use a variety of systems, depending on what I’m doing and where, physically, I am in the house. For example:

• In my bedroom (yes, my bedroom… long story… the basement office isn’t done yet) I have a Mac and a PC
• At the kitchen table on the main floor I have a Janice’s Windows laptop
• When Janice is using her laptop, I can use Christopher’s PC in the playroom if he’s not using it (rare)
• In the basement I have a Windows 2003 server that I access via Remote Desktop
• In the basement I have a FreeBSD 5.4 server that I access via SSH and remotely via the web.
• At work and home I have a Tablet PC
• I have a Samsung i700 Pocket PC phone with Internet access

The dream scenario was supposed to be that I put everything on my Tablet PC / laptop and use that for everything. The problem is, I don’t always have the laptop around — say at lunch-time, when the battery is re-charging (or like, never because I hate my Toshiba M200 Tablet PC), but I still want access to my information. The dream scenario before the tablet was supposed to be that I accessed everthing via the web. Problem was, the web sucked for apps.

Now with the rise of some new technologies that make web apps much more friendly (a.k.a. Web 2.0, AJAX, etc.) I’m finally moving toward the true dream of information anywhere.

Here is an example of some “Web 2.0” applications that I”m using to supplant applications that tie me to a particular computer or operating system:

Gmail - Replaces Outlook for all my non work-related email.

Backpack / Tracks - Both are web apps written in Ruby on Rails. Backpack is a hosted app — a great place to take general notes and share pages with other users. I can also access it on my Pocket PC phone. Tracks is a “Getting Things Done” task manager that’s installed on my FreeBSD server so I can access it from anywhere. The only thing it’s missing is the ability to email myself a task, but I’ll add it myself if the devs don’t scratch it off their own todo list soon. Both replace Outlook for tracking tasks.

Instiki - Another Ruby on Rails app. This one is a wiki that I use as a general catch-all notebook. Wikis are a great way to manage a pile of ad-hoc information. It has supplanted OneNote as my catch-all organizer and is installed on my FreeBSD server.

Subversion - I use this to keep track of all my programming code and various shell scripts that I use for backup, etc. I have it front-ended by Apache on my FreeBSD server and available remotely over the Internet.

Trac - I use this to track development of various projects. It includes a wiki, web-based subversion repository, and ticket tracking system.

BlogLines - This is a web-based RSS aggregator. It replaced Newsgator in Outlook. Now I only have one place to keep my RSS feeds in sync. I can even read my feeds on my Pocket PC through the mobile version.

Flickr - I use this to manage my photo collection. Replaces Picasa, iPhoto, etc.

Delicious - One place to store all my bookmarks. Replaces Firefox / Internet Explorer bookmarks (as if I ever actually used them).

Grocs - This is my own home-grown Ruby on Rails app that I use to manage my shopping list. I can access it via the web from anywhere, and I can email items directly to the list. Rails makes it super-easy to create AJAX web apps with email integration. Janice can access it as well, and since she’s the primary grocery-getter she can simply print off the list at any time and I don’t have to bother her with my requests.

Of course, I access all of these using Firefox with a complement of plugins. Maybe I’ll post that list some day soon.

That’s my list so far, but I’m sure I’ll be adding more over time. Let me know if you have any recommendations.

Posted by Steve at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wasn’t happy with FSCKEditor (very slow and “glitchy”) so I’m trying the Markdown plugin. I also added SmartyPants — a module that allows cool stuff like automatically creating “curly quotes” and proper dashes… ah, that’s much better.

Have I ever mentioned that I hate HTML?

Posted by Steve at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a long time away, I'm back again. Even though the site has been active, the Movable Type install has been broken for many months after a botched 3.1 upgrade. I noticed today that 3.2 was released and decided to give it a try. The upgrade seems to have fixed things! Every now and then I get the itch to blog something, but haven't been able to. Now at least I'll be able to.

Posted by Steve at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I couldn't stomach using Internet Explorer for another second. I really gave it all I had - using MyIE2/Maxthon for the past 6 months, but I just can't take another minute of it. I'm addicted to tabs, but Maxthon is flako city. The only thing that was holding me back was that Firefox doesn't have some of the nice usability features that Maxthon has. Many thanks to Tariq who compiled a nice list of Firefox extensions that pretty much give me all the handy feature I've become hooked on in Maxthon.

Oh, and I added an extension that provides Tablet PC floating TIP support for the address box.

... back under my rock ...

Posted by Steve at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Too many things competing for time right now... the blog is going to have to move down on the list for a bit...

Posted by Steve at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For my future reference, to change the port that Remote Desktop listens to, follow the instructions listed here.

To change the default port for all new connections created on the Terminal Server:

What he said...

Posted by Steve at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I bit the bullet and upgraded to the free version of MovableType 3.0 today. I was stalled for quite a while until I finally got things moving by re-uploading all the perl modules (.pm files) in ASCII mode. I guess there was something funky going on when moving from Windows to unix. Oh, and make sure you disable MT-Blacklist.

Christopher, if you're thinking of doing an upgrade, check with me first . :)

Posted by Steve at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I like Jim Blizzard's motto for their Portland Nerd Dinners:

Be there and be square.

:)

Posted by Steve at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is my favorite.

"If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon."

My birthday is coming up soon. Can I have it? Please, please, please?

Posted by Steve at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our government has embraced RSS. Cool!

Posted by Steve at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I do have a lot of pet peeves... :)

Posted by Steve at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Arrrrgh... It should be illegal to link directly to a PDF file on a website unless you display a huge warning that says something like:

"WARNING: This URL links to a PDF file! Clicking this link will bring your computer to its knees for 5 minutes while Acrobat Reader loads the document in your browser! This may be a good opportunity to get a fresh coffee or re-organize your sock drawer."

I get burned by this at least once a day!

Double arrrrgh!

Posted by Steve at 01:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I mentioned my "Technology Radar" in the last post. I'm sure every technology geek out there has one the same as me. Every day I keep seeing technologies, methodologies, cool software, etc. showing up all around me. Some things I'll go out right away and check them out. Others, I wait until I hear about them from enough different sources to convince me it's time to buckle down and give them a closer look. Right now, this is a completely ad-hoc process that's managed in my head. Blogs have really helped because I can see trends developing faster. If I see something blogged about by enough different people in a short period of time I know I should give it higher priority.

A few years ago, before the Internet really hit big, PC Computing magazine had a cool feature where they showed a graphic of a radar screen and mapped several tech trends onto it. The hottest trends appeared around the center, with new stuff just starting to show up on the fringes. I wonder if it would be possible to reproduce this type of chart automatically by scouring blogs for keywords? This could be helpful for determining possible trends to investigate more closely, or it could just help us to be more lemming-like than we already are... hmmm... Do you think it would be useful?

Maybe I'll just keep relying on Mike Gunderloy. :)

Posted by Steve at 02:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're in Canada and looking for a great potato chip to snack on this weekend, try Lays new Cape Breton Sea Salt & Pepper Chips. Sadly, I think they're only available for a limited time. I noticed someone's eBaying them.

Posted by Steve at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been using Avant Browser for a few weeks now. I really like having a tabbed browser with the Internet Explorer engine. The browser is free and doesn't have any spyware. Recommended.

Posted by Steve at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I want one of these.

I really saw the power of these USB memory sticks this week while on-site with a client where we had no Internet or LAN connection, but a lot of files to pass around. Only problem with this type is I'd never get through airport security, so I could only use it locally.

Posted by Steve at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My wife doesn't like looking at the picture of Robert Smith, so I'm inserting some dummy text to make the picture scroll off the page. I know, I should just post a few more entries, but I don't really have anything to say at the moment. (I know, I know, I could also just remove the picture, but I don' t want to do that. Just humour me here.)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Suspendisse viverra, dolor sit amet ullamcorper dictum, tortor enim laoreet urna, et placerat tortor velit vel mauris. Vestibulum faucibus lacus sit amet orci. Proin ac wisi. Vestibulum pharetra viverra leo. In gravida mi vitae sapien. Aliquam velit. Vestibulum dapibus aliquet nibh. Vestibulum sed tortor. Duis rhoncus ante nec lectus. Nam vestibulum sollicitudin wisi. Aenean sit amet dolor. Nam orci. Sed mattis, lorem vel aliquam dictum, mi nisl volutpat velit, in pretium sapien arcu id purus. Integer lectus ipsum, mattis sit amet, facilisis ac, facilisis a, erat. Cras nec mauris a libero dapibus luctus. Nulla et tortor.

Suspendisse ultricies metus ut tellus. Mauris semper urna at dolor tincidunt viverra. Vivamus nulla diam, adipiscing sed, tempus ac, gravida ut, dui. Vestibulum pede. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Phasellus aliquam libero ac velit. Suspendisse vehicula est at ante. Cras vel nulla. Donec arcu nibh, eleifend ut, hendrerit sit amet, tincidunt in, sem. Nunc in enim.

(Random Latin text Generated by www.lipsum.com)

Posted by Steve at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey Blogger.com, the planet is Earth, the year is 2004. Wake up.

Update: Blogger has announced support for Atom. That's great to see. I'm trying out Newsgator 2.0 and subscribing to Atom feeds where possible. So far, so good...

Posted by Steve at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've read in several places lately about the recent measures Adobe has taken to restrict scanning and manipulating banknotes in their software. I just read a piece on NeoWin.net that suggests that HP may have anti-printing measures built in as well. I think this is a good thing.

Interestingly, I visited the www.rulesforuse.org site referenced in the NeoWin piece and navigated to Canada, which brought me to this page from the Bank of Canada's website. Hmmm... I wonder how they were able to scan that clip from a Canadian $50? Do they have their own special copy of PhotoShop? In any case, the use of the image seems to fall within their guidelines stated on the page.

Posted by Steve at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a good article that describes well the reasons I've long preferred FreeBSD over Linux. FreeBSD fits my personality - I like things structured, consistent, and predictable. The author says, "Thus, this rant; as a BSD person, I want to try to explain how BSD works in a way that Linux people can absorb." The article that follows is pretty biased and uses a lot of loaded words and phrases about Linux in general, but overall I agree with his observations and his attitude toward Linux.

Though I'm a big Microsoft fan, my dirty secret is that I always keep a VMWare instance of FreeBSD around for when I get the itch to tinker in un*x.

(BTW, yes I did get this link from Slashdot. I know, I know, I'm supposed to have been cured from my Slashdot addiction, with one minor fall-back. But it's ok. I can make the occasional stop back there now without flaring up my addiction again. In that sense, you could say I've been "deeLIIIVered" from the evil power of the Slash. Somebody say Hallelujah!!)

Posted by Steve at 08:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I purchased Project Gotham 2 on the weekend. Some really nice improvements over the first version. I especially like being able to walk through the showroom and try out vehicles on the test track. I haven't had a chance to go head-to-head with Amanda on Xbox Live yet, but if you have PGR2 and a Live account add "Pyreal" to your friends list for some easy "competition". (Extra points if you can guess from my GamerTag what MMORPG I used to play).

Posted by Steve at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Does anyone really believe it when a celebrity says a shampoo "changes everything" for them?

Posted by Steve at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The amount of watchable television content is at barely a trickle for me. The latest casualty is the Discovery Channel (Canada). The new season evenings are filled with stupid shows about "Choppers", motorcycles, hot rods, and "monster" garages and houses (I haven't figured out what a monster house is yet). Like most American television these days, the shows seem to be more about the personal childishness and bickering of the show's characters than about technology or art -- the kind of "reality TV" crap that drives me crazy.

(I can't help but think that if the Columbo series were created in 2003 it would be a weekly "must-see" series about every inane detail of Columbo's relationship with his wife and co-workers.)

Update: I just reviewed the comments on the Discovery website about the current content. It appears that I'm very much in the minority. Ok, it's time for me to come clean. My name is actually Mvbrrgz and I come from the planet Grbvt.

Posted by Steve at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Everybody and their hamster has blogged this link, but I'm putting it here for my future reference. Acrobat 6.0 loads insanely slow(ly?), but here's a tip that'll make it load muuuuuch faster:

Posted by Steve at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Niko: Hey-Pong. My parents played this game.

Kirk: What is this? [Picks up and twists the paddle controller] Am I controlling the volume?

Hilarious. See the full article here.

Posted by Steve at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Currently enjoying my entire 13,500 song collection that resides on my home desktop system from my laptop at the kitchen table. Can't wait to test it from work tomorrow. I have the firewall port redirected in anticipation. Finally, finally I can stream my entire music collection easily. iTunes is insanely difficult to figure out though. I really don't know how Apple has gotten a reputation for being easier to use. Maybe I'm trying to complicate things, but I can't get simple things like drag and drop to work. Arrgh. Thankfully we have a good Mac guy at work who can 'learn me how to use it.

Update: I'm having difficulty getting iTunes connected to my home computer from work. I'll wait a few days to see if others are having the same difficulty.

On another note, I did figure out how to get drag and drop to work, and open up more options in the application. There's a silly looking icon in the top right corner of iTunes that my aesthetically-impaired eyes just automatically ignored. It happens to say "Browse" under the silly eye icon. Turns out that clicking that opens up the functionality I wanted in the app. I think my brain is wired to ignore eye candy and look for the meat. I wouldn't have thought of clicking that image in a million years. Our Mac guy pointed it out, and admitted that even he stumbled on that. Maybe that's why I find the Mac so frustrating to use.

Posted by Steve at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've noticed a significant increase in the amount of spam getting through Outlook 2003 in the past few days. It looks like the spammers have figured out how to get around the filter. Has anyone noticed the same? I wonder if Microsoft has any method to update the filtering to keep a step ahead?

Posted by Steve at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mozilla Firebird 0.7 is out. If you're having trouble downloading from the official Mozilla site, try using BitTorrent. Details, including links, can be found here.

Posted by Steve at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Attn: Doctors' Offices

Please, please stop playing Top 40 radio in your waiting rooms. If the Eminem tune is causing me more pain than what I walked in for, I can't imagine how the 80 year old lady next to me feels.

Hmm... that reminds me.. I need to check on the company's "on hold" music. I'll bet it's also Top 40, and I'm guilty of doing the same.

Posted by Steve at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everybody's talking about the latest software from the makers of KaZaA -- Skype:

Skype is the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Just like KaZaA, Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you to other users – not to share files this time, but to talk for free with your friends.

The technology is extremely advanced - but super simple to use... You’ll be making perfect quality free phone calls to your friends in no time! Just tell them to get Skype as well, if they don’t already have it.

Sorry, but I just can't imagine ever wanting to use my computer as a telephone. Then I'd want to crush my computer into tiny little pieces every time it rang. Computers are frustrating at times, but telephones are just plain evil.

Posted by Steve at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Orson Scott Card speaks out on MP3s ... and I tend to agree with him.

The following thought especially resonates with me:

The record companies swear that it's making a serious inroad on sales, and they can prove it. How? By showing that their sales are way down in the past few years.

Maybe if they started marketing more music that people my age would enjoy, they'd find that, lo and behold, there are customers who prefer to buy music the legal way!

(emphasis mine)

[thanks to Chris Sells for pointing out the link]

Posted by Steve at 10:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[ISerializable] aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

That's quite interesting. I was able to read it pretty near full speed. Does this knowledge provide us with any practical application? Is it possible to shorten words to some bare minimum and leave it perfectly readable, thus making it quicker to type? How about some way to help make reading faster. Oh what I would give to be able to read faster...

Posted by Steve at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some unfortunate news in the last few days about two popular music artists:

It's fun to call someone I don't know a jerk.

Update: My wife reminded me that she made the JERK joke in a Messenger conversation yesterday. Oops.. I forgot. You're the funniest, Darling.

Posted by Steve at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For goodness sake, chairs and stoves aren't sexy. Neither are flower gardens, chocolate bars, shampoo, vacuum cleaners, and most everything else on the planet. It's just getting so tiring to hear people use the S word just because you can now use it anywhere and any time...

Posted by Steve at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... for Canadian Idol.

American Idol is arguably the worst television programming ever foisted upon humanity (a record that is now being broken weekly), but we have managed to bring it to a whole new low.

Certainly there are better things we can "Me Too".

Posted by Steve at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Raymond Chen]   Automobile manufacturers have learned to consolidate all their error messages into one message called "Check engine". People are conditioned to take the car in to a mechanic when the "Check engine" light goes on, and let the mechanic figure out what is wrong. Can we have a "Check engine" light for computers? Would it be feasible?

I think it's a great idea. Computer messages are far too complex for the average user to decode and decide how to approach. Since reading Chapter 6 of Joel Spolsky's book on User Interface Design for Programmers I've taken note of just how many times I automatically click "No" or "Cancel" on a dialog box without even reading it.

Update: I asked my wife how she responds to a computer message that she doesn't understand. She said, "I look for the button that says 'Avoid this now!'" Yeah, give us an engine light, and while you're at it, automatically install patches for us.

Posted by Steve at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[kuro5hin] Nordic & Asian countries reveal open-source plans

Hmmmm... can you imagine an operating system jointly designed by multiple governments?

Posted by Steve at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since installing Outlook 2003 (beta2 with technical refresh) I've been using the built-in Junk Mail filter provided by Microsoft. It works wonderfully. It actually does a better job than SpamNet. I've canceled my SpamNet subscription and just now configured the Outlook Junk Mail filter to automatically just permanently delete spam - I trust it that much.

Hint: If you're using Exchange server, make sure you configure your account in cached mode - i.e. cache your email on your local machine, otherwise the filter doesn't work. And don't set it to permanently delete your junk mail until you have confidence that it's not deleting important stuff. I did have to build a small list of trusted senders before I gained confidence that everything going forward is junk.

Posted by Steve at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

GNU FTP server hacked.

* gnuftp, the FTP server for the GNU project was root compromised. A
replacement machine was rolled out in its place on the morning
(Eastern time) of 2003-08-02.

(For the ptrace bug, a root-shell exploit was available on 17 March 2003,
and a working fix was not available on linux-kernel until the following
week. Evidence found on the machine indicates that gnuftp was cracked
during that week.)

This is the server that hosts the sources for all GNU projects, including GCC - the compiler used by most open source developers. Imagine the possibilities for putting trojans into some of the most used open source software. Apparently they didn't have backups, or what they had were also compromised. Thankfully they have checksums that they can verify the source code against.

I guess security doesn't only affect Windows, but nothing else makes interesting news.

Posted by Steve at 07:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Test posting from Pocket #MT.

Posted by Steve at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

7-Zip is a great open source alternative to WinZip. Now your conscience doesn't have to bother you every time you click the "Evaluage" button when WinZip opens.

Filezilla is a great open source FTP client - a bit rough, but does everything I want.

I generally download and install Cygwin for (among many other things) the SSH client. I heard about PuTTY only yesterday, so I haven't tried it yet. It looks like a great lightweight and free SSH client.

Except for PuTTY I use the other apps regularly.

See, I do like open sores... er, I mean source.

Posted by Steve at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

[NeoWin.net] In at least a partial answer to its critics, Microsoft said it would begin shipping the consumer and business versions of Windows XP with the protective network firewall completely activated, to make PCs less vulnerable to attacks.

Great idea. And they're doing it with the current shipping version rather than waiting for Longhorn. If only they had done this from the start with XP...

Posted by Steve at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow. NVidia has really benefited from supplying XBOX, while ATI got stuck with the Nintendo Gamecube.

Posted by Steve at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just installed Messenger Plus! 2.20. It now supports MSN Messenger 6.0. The killer new feature for me is the ability to map every contact to a custom name. I now have every contact mapped to the actual person's name. No more playing "find the contact". Sweet. Worth it for this feature alone.

Posted by Steve at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As of today I'm now the #1 Steve Clarke on Google. Interesting that the entry it has referenced in the search hit is my July 26th posting about being #5 in Google.

Posted by Steve at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... now all we need is Popcorn without the annoying pieces that get stuck between your teeth.

Is anyone working on this problem?

Posted by Steve at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want Popup ad blocking in Internet Explorer? Try the new version 2.0 Google Toolbar (still in beta, but hasn't caused me any trouble). It also supports form AutoFill. Now I don't have to manually enter the following information into download forms any more:

Name: Hubba Bubba
Email: hubba@bubba.com
Address: 123 My Street
City: Beverly Hills
State: CA
Zip Code: 90210

The Google Toolbar does it for me!

Incidentally, a quick office poll suggests that data collected from online forms must be heavily skewed toward Beverly Hills, California. 90210 is probably the only zip code that most non-Americans know from memory.

Posted by Steve at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've always been frustrated that Windows error message boxes don't contain "copyable" text. Very often, when I get an error message I want to Google it to find a solution. I can't count the number of times I've scribbled the message down, or hand-typed the message into a search engine or the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

Well, apparently I should have just tried hitting the old <Ctrl>-C key combo. Someone said (can't remember where I read it) this will copy the message box text to the Windows clipboard. I haven't gotten an error message since I found about this, but I hope it works. Let me know if it works for you.

Update: I just tried it on the message box that w.bloggar gives me after a successful posting. Here's what it puts to the clipboard. Cool!

---------------------------
w.bloggar
---------------------------
Posted with Success! Post ID: 130
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

Posted by Steve at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw this warning on a container of Silly Putty at Toys 'R Us:

"Not meant to be used as ear plugs."

Duh!

Posted by Steve at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've moved my Movable Type installation (the software behind my blog) to a new server. It was on one of our Windows web hosting servers, but now it's on one of our Ensim-based Linux servers. MT is written in perl, so I was having some quirky behaviour getting some functions on the Windows box. Now it feels at home -- and I like the chance to occasionally have an excuse to do some Linux command line.

Anyway, there are some broken links because the archive numbers don't all match up when I imported from the old server. I'm going through checking for broken links now. If you find anything unusual, please let me know.

Posted by Steve at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've already confessed to my wife, but I did also commit to being held publicly accountable.
I visited Slashdot once on Wednesday and once today (ok, twice). I swear I only read the headings though.
I stand before my loyal reader tonight begging your forgiveness. It won't happen again -- I hope.

Posted by Steve at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

John Robb points out a Google-like interface to the Yahoo! search engine.

Posted by Steve at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tim Horton's has introduced a new policy of having their employees follow up a coffee-only drive-through order with the question "Would you like a muffin or doughnut with that?" This is really annoying for several reasons:

Looks like I'm not the only person with a Slashdot problem. Cwiddy pointed out the Quit Slashdot.org Today! site in the comments section of my Goodbye Slashdot article earlier today.

The site is a bit outdated -- it doesn't mention RSS Aggregation as the ultimate alternative to Slashdot -- but the points it makes are still relevant today.

It also reminded me of a Slashdot random story generator that I had forgotten about. Oh, and I just remembered Suck.com's Slashdot parody from 1999 as well.

Ok, I'll try not to talk about /. any more. See, I haven't visited it, but I still can't stop talking about it...

Posted by Steve at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've always loved "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey", from Saturday Night Live. A few years ago I collected a bunch of them from all over the web and compiled them into a database to display them randomly on a website. Below are a few of my favorites. For more, see this site.

To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kind of scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.
- Jack Handey

I remember that one fateful day when Coach took me aside. I knew what was coming. "You don't have to tell me," I said. "I'm off the team, aren't I?" "Well," said Coach, "you never were really ON the team. You made that uniform you're wearing out of rags and towels, and your helmet is a toy space helmet. You show up at practice and then either steal the ball and make us chase you to get it back, or you try to tackle people at inappropriate times." It was all true what he was saying. And yet, I thought something is brewing inside the head of this Coach. He sees something in me, some kind of raw talent that he can mold. But that's when I felt the handcuffs go on.
- Jack Handey

Posted by Steve at 05:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ok, it's official. I'm not visiting Slashdot any more. I've commented on Slashdot on several occasions here. One entry was even titled "How To Break Your Slashdot Addiction"

I've been reading Slashdot for a long time -- I actually own a Slashdot t-shirt circa Comdex '99 in Las Vegas (now used for painting, I think). But over the past few months, I think CmdrTaco and his cohorts (man those sites are creepy) have basically finally caught on to the formula that spewing random anti-Microsoft crap gets them a whole pile of traffic. They don't have to say anything that contains value, accuracy, fairness, truth (and so they don't) to get traffic to the site.

I guess it was the utterly braindead Can .NET Really Scale? posting that finally put me over the edge. See Rory's comments on that item. Ian White's statement that "I don't read slashdot anymore, its way to anti-MS for me, and precious little else." finally gave me the courage to make the break.

Anyway, I'm wasting entirely too much emotional energy on thinking and talking to anyone who'll listen (thanks Jared) about stuff I see there. The only reason I still visit is to pick up miscellaneous interesting tidbits, but my RSS aggregator now guarantees that I always get my interesting tidbits several days before Slashdot gets around to posting them.

As of this morning, I figured I had two choices on how to deal with Slashdot:

Posted by Steve at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is just sad.

Oh, and just to be politically correct, Moses and Buddha available too.

Posted by Steve at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tim Marman posted the entry that finally drew my 5 cent comment that's been brewing ever since the controversy on RSS vs. Echo (now Atom) started. It seems like the people arguing are forgetting the value proposition of XML. They are thinking with the mindset of difficult to decipher and implement standards of ancient history (i.e. 5 years ago).

The whole point of XML is that it makes it relatively trivial to implement, consume, and translate content. Clemens Vasters pointed out that he had an Atom feed created in fewer than 2 hours. This seems to be the common refrain -- trivial implementation time. There are already several RSS converters that make it very easy to convert any feed. I would be worried if switching formats, or providing alternate formats required significant effort, but it's stinking XML, and really, really simple XML at that.

Am I missing something deeper? This doesn't seem like rocket science.

Anyway, the dust seems to be settling. Half the reason I've been so quiet on my blog through July has been that I was starting to really get disgusted with the blogging world because of the crap that was flying.

Posted by Steve at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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Ever have a need to insert dummy text like above into, say, a design comp? I just discovered a site that will generate as many paragraphs of latin fluff as you want. You can specify the number of paragraphs, words, bytes, or lists and it'll spit it out for you.

Posted by Steve at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Steve Makofsky (a.k.a. The Furrygoat Experience) links to the AT&T Wireless "Top 10 Ways to be a more courteous cell phone user".

I have to say I very, very rarely have my cell phone out of "vibrate" mode, and even more rarely actually take a phone call when I'm with another person -- only if I think it might be an emergency. I hate the telephone with such a deep loathing that even a cell phone is just marginally tolerable - so keeping my calls short isn't generally a problem. :)

Posted by Steve at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh no! I just had a scary moment. In typing my last post, I had to stop and ask my wife if the "I" in "I'd" is supposed to be capitalized. It looked right when I typed "i'm". I can only attribute that brain cramp to getting much too used to conversing in all lowercase while using Messenger. The sad thing is, I do a very good job of avoiding annoying shorthand in IM conversations like "ppl" and "l8tr".

What's written language going to look like in another 20 years?

Posted by Steve at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

MSN Messenger 6.0 final release is out. Get it here.

Oddly it isn't posted on the actual messenger.msn.com site yet. I got the link from the Microsoft Download Center RSS feed provided by Thundermain.com. Another reason I really love RSS -- I find out about almost everything before most people know about it. I can't count how much cool and useful stuff that I've gotten off this feed alone -- stuff that I'd never find unless I was drilling down deep within various product sites on Microsoft.com.

Update: http://messenger.msn.com now has the official 6.0 download. Use this one if you need extra help in downloading and installing software (i.e. you're not a geek).

Posted by Steve at 05:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I said on May 28th that I didn't particularly like PDF documents. Jacob Nielsen's latest Alertbox summarizes some of the reasons that resonate with me. Here's his summary:

"Summary:
Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation."

One of my biggest online pet peeves is clicking a link and failing to recognize that it's a link to a PDF file. I use the time that it takes for Acrobat to load inside my browser (and rudely seize all running IE windows) to slap myself several hundred times for being so stupid.

Posted by Steve at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you consider yourself a power user, get it.

"Dave's Quick Search Deskbar is a tiny textbox that Dave Bau designed for search hounds with weary mouse-fingers. Unlike the Google Toolbar, this little deskbar lets you launch searches without starting a web browser first, directly from your Windows Explorer Taskbar."

I tried it out a year ago, but didn't take the time to learn enough about it. It probably wasn't as flexible then as well. There is a bit of learning to get up to speed (not much, but a little). Now I find myself using it to launch applications and other stuff that I used to have to do all kinds of mouse-clicking to do. Some examples of aliases that I've configured:

Looks like I haven't been blogging enough to keep more than one article on the main page - the side bar is doing some odd wrapping. Here's another post to see if I can clean up the look of the index page. :)

Posted by Steve at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Paul Thurrott's WinInfo site:

A year and a half after Windows XP shipped, the OS is finally getting the respect it deserves. According to the most recent "PC Magazine" annual reader survey, PC service and reliability have improved this year, thanks mostly to XP. "XP has brought consumers the stability of Microsoft's corporate operating systems, Windows NT, and 2000, replacing the relatively volatile Windows 95, 98, and Me," the report reads. "If an OS performs better, so does the hardware it controls ... This year, 44 percent of the [17,000] rated desktop PCs run Windows XP. And the users of Win XP machines are considerably happier with their desktops than respondents running other versions of Windows." The report reveals that XP crashes less often than other Windows versions, too: 37 percent of respondents who use XP have never had a crash, compared with just 7 percent of respondents who use Windows 98. And although OSs such as Linux and Mac OS X got high-reliability grades, too, those OSs are barely used, the report notes: "Fewer than 1 percent of the desktop PCs in the survey are running Linux, and fewer than 2 percent are running Mac OS." As far as XP's quality goes, am I the only person who honestly isn't surprised by this news?

No Paul, you aren't the only one. I've never found Windows to be unstable, but then again I've never had Windows 95, 98, or ME installed on any computer i've owned. I've been using some variation of the NT-kernel-based operating system since 1994, having used Windows NT 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, then Windows 2000 and now Windows XP.

Anyone who complains about Microsoft software and stability has probably only ever used Windows 9x. If I used one of those operating systems I'd probably hate Microsoft with a burning passion too - or at least run Linux as my primary OS (well, I guess the two aren't mutually exclusive).

Posted by Steve at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been a bit slow on the blogging lately. This will likely continue for a while.

Meanwhile, here are a few things that are new with me in the last week or so: