Breaking Windows

I gotta say this switching between a Mac and a PC is getting my typing fingers all messed up. Some things I don't think I will ever get used to for example is the "Delete" key. It is not used at all in the Mac world. The "Backspace" key is used to "delete" all that needs to be deleted on a Mac. I find some Windows programs have it setup so that it is possibile to delete with both the Delete and the Backspace keys. Some Windows programs use them as a forwards delete and a backwards delete. This is an odd type of delete for a Mac User. And I think it is a shame that forward delete is not a usual thing on the Mac. It is available, but it is just a forign key that is never used. It is such a useful little thing really. I also find Windows programs that just will not delete something with the Backspace key. I use the Backspace key only because this is the standard way of deleting everything on the Mac. It is just one thing I will have to train myself to do on the PC, use the Delete key, not the Backspace key! Talking about the Bacspace key, its twice the size it is on the Mac keyboard (and about 1/3 the size larger than the one on my PowerBook) which screws me up if I want to use the + or = sign. This messes me up even more because I go back and forth between my PC, my Mac PowerBook and the Mac Desktops at work. its really driving me bonkers! why can't they ALL just be standard? I'd be perfectly fine with the longer Backspace key, if only it was this way on ALL of the keyboards! standards people, they are your friends (well unless you are M$ of course :-D) All this key miss typing would not be a problem to me a year or more ago. I have just recently come across the art of the touch typist (yay!) and now that I can finally compose entire paragraphs without looking at the keys it makes my keyboard switching even more of a nightmare. I usually don't go by those little nubs on the F and J keys, but I guess I should start to get into the habit of doing so. because I just start typing for an entire sentence and a half and I find I am only one key off or something, that's just when I sit back and laugh.

Ahh what a splendid day! And it is splendid indeed for those who use computers. Its even better when your users (er pray) get a little on edge if something wierd happens to their computer. MUA HA HA HA. I have many years experience with April Fools' pranks on the Mac, but (of all magazines) this April's MacAddict has a couple good ones for the PC users as well. Its a basic prank but switch the left and right mouse button around in the Mouse Control Panel. The other one they mention is BSOD Properties, it would be pretty funny to see a magenta screen of death. That would be a change. Do you know of any other, Mac or PC pranks? Please post them! I think the best prank this year goes to Electronic Gaming Monthly. They had a good one last year, but this years took the cake. They had very detailed instructions on how to unlock the secret topless mode in Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach volleyball for the XBOX. They even had screen shots with little pink stars over the girls nipples. Oh that was so great. I got the May issue a few days ago (don't ask me why they come out so far ahead) and the reader responses were great. The readers were so pissed off! What a riot. Unless you can come up with a better April Fools' the DOAX one takes the cake. Oh and just for good measure if you want to have some fun around the office today check out ComputerPranks.com, it has some wonderfuly fun stuff. Also here is some joke and prank software for Windows :-P I almost forget this link to OS X shell pranks on Mac OS X Hints.

Rated CV for Cartoon violence (to a new level IMO), Happy Tree Friends is some funny stuff. I am half tempted to order the DVD. on the Best Buy site it says it is 140 min.

Brian was telling me today of this new reality TV show in the works called American Canidate. Drudge Report and News.com.au are articles we found. Here is the page of the FX site for American Canidate. At first when Brian was telling me this I thought he was pulling an April Fools's joke on me, but nope. All I have to say is WTF is wrong with you people? All this reality TV stuff is just stupid. But man are they getting raitings like nothing before. I think this is because there is nothing on TV anymore worth watching. There are not many good sitcoms or drama shows like there were 5-10 yrs. ago or so. That is why reality TV is getting such huge ratings. It takes a lot of money and a lot of people behind you to run for US President. With a reality TV show they are taking those two requirements out of the picture. I am sure it will be interesting, as interesting as American Idol, but I wont be watching it. I don't see why people sit and watch reality TV shows. Maybe the reason is to see others fail and make fun of them, or see how people succeed at something. Whatever the reason I am amazed they have stayed on TV so long.

I found this out this evening, and it is a little bit annoying. If you have not tried out Snippets in DW MX you owe it to yourself to check them out. As a matter if fact, you should look at the Snippets Exchange. OK on to the annoyance I found. When editing my snippet, in which I spent a lot of time doing I accidentally clicked the Wrap Selection option. Even though I was working with a snippet that uses the Wrap Selection choice, it reset the form, and all my editing was gone! So just don't be clumsy like me!

Who likes IE? I sure as hell don't. Well now I have one more reason not to like it. When I use it to preview within either Photoshop or Dreamweaver, and Exploder is not open it bombs either app that I am using, and will not launch IE. If I have Explorer running (which is very rare) and then preview through Photoshop or Dreamweaver everything is just fine. Its not as if I can just reinstall Explorer, and I have tried reinstalling both Photoshop and Dreamweaver. This one really puzzles me. For Photoshop this is an easy fix, I will just preview images in Mozilla. But it is unfortunately the case that I need to preview web pages in Exploder. I checked and I have installed ALL Windows updates. I just don't get it. The only thing I can do is go to the Task Manager and click End Task.

Ironic don't you think? I get two pieces of spam like this a week. The reason this one get my attention is because POPFile did not catch it. They must be changing something again to get through spam filters. Its just worth a laugh because it is spam trying to sell me software that will rid me of spam. Oh and I love the ones I get trying to sell me gas masks "at rock bottom prices!" Gotta love it, cuz there is no way to stop it. I read that they have passed or are going to pass legislation in I believe the UK that will make some forms of spam ilegal. I wish our Govn't would do something about it as well.

Rock on! Path Finder 2.1 got MacAddict's Shareware Pick of the Month! CocoaTech (a guy named Steve) needs to advertise more. This application kicks the crap out of the Finder in both speed and feature set. It is really nice to see MacAddict pick it. This is a quote "For power navigation and file management, we'd tale Path Finder over the OS X Finder any day." Great job on one of OS X's hidden gems and killer apps!

I really hate Flash. I would go so far as to say I loath Flash. And why you ask? Ad banners, that's why. When they came to the conclusion that annoying ad banner + Flash = really annoying ad banner there must have been one hell of a celebration. I don't want ad banners to have smooth animation and transparency and sound and interactivity and ... Well you get my point. Because of the use of Flash in ad banners I do not put much importance in anything Flash. Now there are some great things done in Flash, some really funny stuff too. Two of my current favorites are Happy Tree Friends and Strong Bad on the Homestarrunner.com site (This weeks Strong Bad Email is one of the best yet, LOL, and there is even some dialog after the printer paper rolls, very funny. Best one in a while IMO). I could take hours listing all my favorite Flash sites. but i'm not going to, I have other more important things to do (read work). My point is this is what Flash was developed for. It is for entertainment, for interactivity, etc, etc. It was not meant for Corporate America. I refuse to install Flash in Mozilla because of ad banners. You can block images from a server in Mozilla, but you cannot block Flash from a server. The only reason I open Internet Exploder is for Flash stuff, well and checking web sites I work on. There is another reason I hate Flash. It has turned good web sites into total trash because designers get lazy and do not want to support good old HTML web sites. HTML sites are sooo Old School(tm) I guess. In my book (Don't you love that saying, mine would be HUGE) If you are going to have a Flash version of your site, you should also provide a HTML version. And I don't want to here the bull crap that 98% computers that are online have Flash installed. that is not the point now is it? Now obviously Macromedia is going to be pushing Flash on their site. Although not till just recently with the launch of their new site design have they really started to push Flash. They are now using Flash for much of the navigation - more so than they ever have. They are smart though because I can still get to everything at Macromedia.com without using Flash. I do notice they have toned down the use of Flash on their main indexes a lot though. I bet they got some backlash by users on a 56k modem. the drop down menus on the home page are now HTML based and not Flash as they were at the launch of this new design. What really bakes my noodle is that there is no way to go to the Dreamweaver Exchange with out Flash. I will say that It is a great show of what can be done with Cold Fusion, but it is just annoying to need Flash to get to the exchanges. I wish ad banners had not taken a liking to Flash or is it the other way around?. It has tarnished the Flash experience. I hate Flash, I hate Flash ad banners. And lazy people who do not provide more light weight alternates.

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IN RESPONSE TO KURT'S POST All valid points Kurt! I cant stand when there is no preloader. preloaders can now be done almost entirely with ActionScripting so there is no exuse for them to take time to load. Also when someone decides to put a large bitmap in Flash, and does not do any kind of optimizing of it! I have had some bad experiences with Flash development (well this one was mixed). I do and I dont't like Flash development. I think it is mainly because I like how Director works. For SIGGRAPH 2000 I worked on a project called Merging Identity ( yes it is broken, it has been for some time now, I do not think Bonnie is going to fix it either) which was a Flash front end and a mangled hodg podg back end of an old Macromedia technology called Generator they have phased out because of Cold Fusion. We also used CF for the project, but this is back in days of Flash 3 and I believe CF 4. CF 5 was a big step, and CF MX is a lot different, and better now. anyways, Generator was the first time Flash could interact with any kind of database, from a flat file to Access, to anything really. this was before Flashing with php was really known. it was pretty much ground breaking what we were doing, and Macromedia donated all the software we needed to do it as well. the project was a big hit at the show, but only because of a lot of last minute and constant babysitting. I was happy to see Generator go. It was a learning experience. now we have Flash remoting and Flash communication server. these are mature, Generator was an infant. this experience I had with Flash and Generator and Cold Fusion is what Flash is all about. just leaving reality behind and try to do something out of the ordinary. in retrospect we now know what we could have done better (a lot better) and I hope that Bonnie wants to do this same type of project again. if you really want me to get into Merging Identity let me know and I will, but its even more technical than the things I just spoke of. you know we did that when ActionScripting was all macro like - not even a programming language yet. man that would have made life easier. But I am rambling, back to Kurt's post. You bring up a good point about not absolutely needed Flash to convey a point. Oh here is something else I cannot stand, and this is being a little picky but hey I have high standards for web design. If the end user does not have Flash you can show a static image in place of the movie. Ad banners do this all the time, web developers could learn something from those advertisers yet! instead of showing the broken puzzle piece icon that you click on to download the plugin why not give the user a more user friendly (and frankly more professional) image or images? Another good point is doing Flash because it is cool and "New School" thats just bull **** in my book. I have a lot of angst about Flash. Flash is supposed to be fun. Merging Identities was fun to a point, but we were trying to push the envelope open too quickly. I agree about getting frustrated with Flash. a lot of my frustration went away with Flash 5 and ActionScripting. I don't like it as much as HTML though. the new XHTML and full use of CSS and CSS-P is very cool and a lot more practical. I still get frustrated at flash and have turned down a lot of high paying freelance jobs because I just do not like Flash development. I should work with Flash MX more I just the new objects in it. It is a heck of a step forward for the product.

Since I have been ranting lately, I figure why stop right? In Exploder (5.2) for OS X when you download something, the download manager window does not come to the front. I have nevere come to a conclusion as to why this behaves this way. Also there are not preferences in the Download Options section to make the download manager to come to the front. I think this is a very bad UI decision. Every other browser I use (and I use more than the average joe) has some kind of window or dialog come to the forground when you initiate a download. I just wish Exploder for OS X did the same. We can all wish right?

Wow! This one is better than the previous 2. Check it out! I could complain about some aspects of the animation and compositing but not with such a good story. Best story yet.

My buddy Jake sent me this 404 page. It is the funniest one I have read in a while. You know you are a geek if you like reading other people's error pages. HA HA

My dad just sent me this with the subject line of "The latest form of virus control..." I have never seen this before, its just so dang funny. I can even look past the details that it is actually a RJ-11 phone jack and not RJ-45 ethernet. Since that is the first thing i saw after clearing the tears out of my eyes from laughing so hard you know I work with networking too much. Reguardless of the details, It works well. And could even be used to illustrate stopping the SPAM calls from idiot telemarketers. I do not know the source, so I cannot give credit.

UPDATED - 04/07/03 Well hells bells now everything is just fine. That is odd, minor details. Back to watching the videos from the war in Iraq. This service is well woth th $5 a month (or $40 for a year subscriton).

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I signed up for the $5 a month CNN NewsPass last month, the 27th to be exact. I have been quite happy with it. I can watch video from CNN, CNN SI, and CNN Money. Today though I am having some issues with the service. Some rather irritating issues. I have only had to sign on once and that was on the 27th. I am going to assume they use a cookie for the web browser and/or the media player (the default being RealOne). It is interesting to note that the CNN RealOne NewsPass is available in Raal Media, Windows Media, AND QuickTime, but I will get to that in a moment. In RealOne player I had to login today, fine, no problem. Once I do and watch ONE video it seems that my session is up. Because if I want to watch another CNN video I am prompted to login again. EVERY SINCE TIME I want to watch another video in RealOne player. Im sorry but I have better things to waste my time doing then signing on 20+ times to watch the new videos today. In RealOne player if you go to the CNN video preferences window and choose Windows Media or QuickTime (my favorite, but that is another article all together) you can Quit the RealOne player (then close the RealOne MessageCenter cuz that pops up when you quit RealOne). The next time you click a video link in the web browser instead of launching RealOne player you get a popup window in your browser. It is my experience that using Windows Media takes forever and a day to load anything, and there is no loading screen of any kind. CNN is running a QuickTime Streaming Server (QTSS) - I can tell because I have a lot of experience running QTSS myself - and the QuickTimes load the fastest and play the best. Windows Media video and audio quality is good. Its a lot better than Rea Media. I just do not understand the long long wait to load the file. I cannot watch with Windows Media or QuickTime right now. It pops up that popup to play the media, then imidiatly loads another page asking me to login. So I do (this is not in RealOne player). The web page tells me I have logged in. So I close this popup and click a link for video. I get the same thing, asking me to login again which I do and it tells me I am logged in sucessfuly. This RealOne player and browser behavior happens the same exact way on Mac OS X and in Windows XP. I dont get it. I emailed CNN we'll see if I get any kind of response. So much for watching the latest video at CNN.com. It is interesting to note that CNN does not use QTSS for the actual live video events on the site. Such as the live view of Baghdad or the live briefings they broadcast. This baffles me since they do offer QuickTime content for all their non live video. I have had the opertunity to work with all 3 servers, QTSS, RM's Server and WM's Server both unicast and multicast. WM is just a bitch to admin IMO. the RM Server is not that bad, it is better than WM. I have had the most experience with QTSS and I prefer it. For the University (BGSU Digital Vidoe & Audio Initiative) I have setup or helped setup live streaming radio stations, (one of which originally was streamed in RM and the quality and dropout was horrid) as well as many other live and non live events. The model for pricing that apple uses is also nice - they dont charge. Both WM and RM files cost money per stream. so QTSS is a much cheaper solution. And for those that will bitch that the cost of Apple hardware is an issue, there is such a thing as Darwin Streaming Server that can be run on an x86 box.

I just came across this link and figured I would pass it on. The site is totse.com. It has a very wide range of topics. Its a shame it takes so long to load. But it has good content so that doesn't matter. That's just me being picky.

I am not totally sold on this embedded journalists thing. How many journalists are embedded anyway? Do we really need all of them? Do we really need all those photographers over there? I read last night one American journalist died of a blood clot, and one was killed in a humvee accident. I read today that 2 more journalists were killed by an Iraqi missile strike. There is a need for news about the war but I just do not see the point in getting killed over it. The news is not that important. In a lot of cases it seams as tho the embedded media has become propaganda machines for the Pentigon anyway. So they are not really doing us a big favor.

I just got a couple new DVD's and figured I see how playing a DVD on my new PC would be like. After all watching something on a 21" CRT is gonna be bigger and nicer than a 15" LCD, right? well I must say I am very unimpressed with the performance in Windows XP and Windows Media Player 9. I thought I would share what I have learned.

I have a 15" PowerBook G4 and am used to playing my DVD's in OS X. And I must say the controls for DVD playback in WMP9 are really bad. Only a few of the controls have a keyboard shortcut associated with them. I guess I was just hoping that the DVD controls would be better in Windows Media Player. I find no controls for Angle, Enter, and there is no keyboard way to get to the menu system of the DVD or to move through tracks. Also, and this is just a personal note, the scaling of the video to a smaller version to show the UI of WMP9 when in Full Screen Mode when you move the mouse is horrible. Sometimes this is jumpy in itself, and is also very annoying.

what really gets me is how much the video skips in Windows. Though the same DVD's do not skip on my PowerBook. Even though the DVD-ROM drive on my TiBook is really messed up, it still does not skip or jump around. (I did try many of my DVD's in Windows and they all skip to some extent). Now why is this? my PowerBook is a 2+ yr. old 500 Mhz G4 and my PC is a very new 3 Ghz P4. I have not once had the video skip on my TiBook. I even took the time once to kill all the background processes once before firing up WMP9 and the video still skips. And once, today, I was in the middle of watching X-MEN and WMP just up and disappeared. I was watching Storm zap Toad one second and the next I was staring at my desktop.

I just had higher expectations for Windows. I ended up hooking my 21" monitor up to my TiBook, that solved the problem of the jumpy video. I guess I will chalk this up to something else that is better done on Mac OS X.

Oh yes, my PC did come with DVD player software. I got whatever bundle of software that comes with a DVD-A05 drive. I have yet to really hear of any DVD player software that is really any better than WMP, so if you know of any I for one would like to know about it.

I rummaged through my Start Menu and found PowerDVD XP (version 4). funny thing is that this application does not show up in that window that shows up in XP when you insert a DVD into the computer. WMP9 and RealOne show up in the list, but not PowerDVD. I will have to watch a couple DVDs with PowerDVD to see if things are better. One thing that I find interesting is that Windows does not come with a built in (1st party) DVD decompressor. WMP9 has to rely on a 3rd party decompressor (in my case PowerDVD). Since WMP9 and PowerDVD are actually using the same "backend" to play the video there should be no difference in quality in either app (WMP9 or PowerDVD). But there is something that tells me that the video will jump less using a dedicated DVD player such as PowerDVD.

Talking about bundled software, of all the bundles software that came with the components of my computer, the Audigy2 card, the 9700 Pro, the LITE ON CDRW, the DVD-A05, none are worth using. Save maybe for the copy of NERO 5.5 that came with the LITE ON drive. Of course that will not let you burn using another drive (such as the DVD-A05 drive) so thats not even really a great bundle. PowerDVD seems to be a good piece of bundled software as well. I have not had the time to mess with it though. I plan to look into it and do a comparison/review of it though.

Recently several bogus mp3 files meant to resemble the file attributes of songs from Madonna's new album "American Life" were flooded onto Peer2Peer networks for music pirates to download. When Madonna's fans went to listen to her new songs instead of enjoying her music they heard the message "What the f*ck do you think you are doing?".

This was an attempt by Madonna's managment to slow down the spread of her album online, forcing fans to either buy it, or do without listening to her music, hoping to increase sales on the album.

Unfortunately for Madonna and her managment, thanks to an unknown hacker, Madonna fans could visit her website to download her full album and remixes and no longer needed to worry about downloading bogus mp3 files. While visiting the site fans could see the hackers message to Madonna that stated: "This is what the f*ck I think I'm doing..."

Check out the thread about this and the screen shot of the defaced madonna.com web site.

So what does this mean? Music pirates will get their music!

Holy Cow Batman! My sites are back up and running! It is so good to be back to my old site. Like sleeping in your own bed again. Thanks for the refugee camp Jake!

Yea yea yea so I guess I am the village idiot huh. So Jake, the smart ass that he is, is being nice enough to make a small refugee camp for me here till I get my domains transferred to yet another host. For the record they did give me more than 1 week of service before closing their doors. and I did do my research at WHT. So thanks Jake for letting me post stuff here for the time being ;) Well it is good to be back on my own site. Kind of like it is nice to sleep in your own bed again. Thanks Jake for the refugee camp. believe me folks, you do not want to venture inside the mind of Jake Ortman! its pretty scary in there! he he. I am with another web host, this time one called HostApply. lets just hope this one does not go belly up in a one month time period. tomorrow (hell its today already) is my birthday (yay!) and I am going to my Dad's house for the weekend. So I do not think I will be posting anything. I do have one new post, and the rest of my posts from when I was using Jake's blog.

WOW! My blog is back on my bday! Happy Birthday Ken! How old am I? I am a quarter century old today! April is such bitter sweet. Taxes at the begining of the month and my bday at the end :-/

And they will stick it to you! he he. this article is great! Francis Uy found the name, address, and phone number (must of been some really dumb guy to give all that info) of some spammer sending him deals on anti-virus software and posted the info on a web site. people ended up sending bogus magazine subs. to this guy. what great punishment for a spammer! From MacCentral: "When the issue finally did make it to court, it was Moore who brought it there, claiming that he had received eight harassing telephone calls, more than 200 unwanted magazines and dozens of products that he never ordered. Moore sued Uy for harassment." and he lost! As he rightfully should! If I were Francis Uy I would have a smirk on my face from ear to ear. Francis Uy Web Page

Recently several bogus mp3 files meant to resemble the file attributes of songs from Madonna's new album "American Life" were flooded onto Peer2Peer networks for music pirates to download. When Madonna's fans went to listen to her new songs instead of enjoying her music they heard the message "What the f*ck do you think you are doing?". This was an attempt by Madonna's managment to slow down the spread of her album online, forcing fans to either buy it, or do without listening to her music, hoping to increase sales on the album. Unfortunately for Madonna and her managment, thanks to an unknown hacker, Madonna fans could visit her website to download her full album and remixes and no longer needed to worry about downloading bogus mp3 files. While visiting the site fans could see the hackers message to Madonna that stated: "This is what the f*ck I think I'm doing..." Check out the thread about this and the screen shot of the defaced madonna.com web site. So what does this mean? Music pirates will get their music!

This was a subject that came up at the X vs. XP Forum, and I thought I would post what I wrote here as well. I still prefer using the Finder to Windows Explorer. And in response to the open-two-windows-of-the same-location thing - this is a very useful thing to do, and can be done with much less than some describe. I have a number of AppleScripts for file management that I use. One is to open a window clone. I find no such thing in Windows. another thing I grew to love in the Mac OS and have been miffed at in the 4 months I have been using Windows on a daily basis is the concept of Labels, coloring the folders for organization. Some people say this is hogwash but putting things in specific colored folders is a great thing. Not only that but replacing a folders icon in Windows is not the ease that it is in the Mac OS. If I want a folder to stand out, I put a custom icon on it. Not a very quick thing to do in Windows. There is a utility for Windows called Rainbow Folders that will replace the icon with a colored one, not the slick way of using metadata like the Mac OS does, but I can put up with extra .ico files to color my folders. i'm not kidding coloring a folder a specific color is very useful. Rainbow Folders is not a breeze to use, and is not quick to be able to color a folder, but it does the job, it just takes longer then Labels in the Mac OS. In the Finder in OS X there are icons for the 3 views, you can click on them to change the views. I would like to see something like that for the various views in Windows Explorer. So I can click from Thumbnail to Details and all the ones in between. Windows Explorer lets you cutomize the toolbar with a very limited amount of options compared to the toolbar in the Finder. I have a number of my file management AppleScripts in my Finder toolbar for example. I very much miss column view from OS X now that I use XP for most all my work. The tree view in XP is OK, but it does not let you drill down the heirarchy of your HD like Columns view does. spring loaded folders are also a big help in file management. If you want such a thing in Windows you have to get the entire Open Desktop package ($50 subscription) to get a rather small utility from the good people at Stardock named SpringFolders. There is no free utility that does this. You can spring load folders in Windows Explorer tree view finally, but not in list or icon view. Since there is absolutely no difference between browsing your files and browsing the web (in Windows), Windows cannot seem to keep the two separate. For example if I have the Google toolbar showing in Internet Exploder and I go to root through my My Documents folder it shows the Google toolbar right there above my files in the Windows Explorer window. This is poor design. And if you have any other IE toolbars installed they work the same way. Windows Explorer cannot save the information as to how you look at a folder, be it in icon view or detail view. It stores this information in the Registry, and this information is only kept for a few specific folders such as My Documents. The rest of the views go back to the default once closed. Even My Documents gets set to the default view sometimes. So if you go back to a folder it will probably not be in the view you want it in. Mac OS X uses an invisible .DS_Store file to control these types of settings. Having a folder the way you left it is something that helps a great deal in file management. For example, Save dialog boxes in Windows do not remember were you were last. That information is *sometimes* saved in the registry but gets overwritten even if the developer is smart enough to code this functionally in. I for one like my Save dialog boxes remembering were I last was. these are the observations I have had so far with Windows Explorer file management. I don't loath it by any means, I just prefer using the Finder over Windows Explorer. I think that over all file management under OS X far exceeds that of what XP has to offer. And for that matter I use Path Finder is OS X because it far exceeds what the Finder does (not because of file management mind you, but because of other very handy features).