What Works for Me

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programming, software

Windows 7 “Starter Edition” comes with a restriction that only allows you to run three separate applications at once.

Are you pissed off yet?

Microsoft wants you to give them money for an operating system that holds you hostage.

And this blog post wants you to be okay with that.

That post is totally apologistic, and really pisses me off.

"Yeah, it’s not so bad that Microsoft is limiting what you do with your computer; you can totally have as many IE windows open as you want!" Really? Is this where we’re finally at with Microsoft? We’re letting them dictate what we do with our computers? Man, fuck that. If anyone expects me to hand over money I earned to someone who’s going to use it to tell me what I’m allowed to do with my own computer, they’re fucking crazy. I’ll run AmigaOS 1.0 before I run Windows 7.

And yet Windows has the biggest installed-base. I guess what’s really rewarded is cutthroat business tactics, rather than spending resources on innovation and actually competing fairly by creating a superior product. We have a word for that: it’s called cheating; gaming the system rather than playing it the way it’s meant to be played.

Before you know it, Windows will be charging you for every program you run. And then we’ll have bills in Congress deregulating the operating system.

real life, seriously serious, software microsoft, windows

You can control who is currently following you on Twitter without having to always have your updates protected. Here’s how:

1. In Settings, turn on update protection (don’t worry, this is just temporary):
    
2. Click Save, and then go to http://twitter.com/followers. You will be presented with a list of your followers. Browse through it and remove the people you don’t want to have following you.
3. Turn off update protection.
4. Done!

howto, software twitter

fun, software error message, shit, windows

Sometimes you encounter people in an IT profession, and they do things that they really should know better about.

Here’s a partial list of things that concern me greatly with someone who considers themselves an IT professional:

• having the default windows xp wallpaper for more than a month
• double-clicking on hyperlinks
• using the active desktop feature of windows xp
• using wordpad to write code
• they use internet explorer, and it has both the yahoo toolbar and the google toolbar installed
• they tell you that the television show Numbers is really awesome

fun, real life, software

My favorite application of 2008, across any platform, is SugarSync.

I started using SugarSync around the time that I noticed my spreadsheet on Google Spreadsheets had math errors, so I immediately stopped using Google Spreadsheets and started looking for another way to be able to work on this spreadsheet in Excel (which actually works and is fast), while not being forced to only work on this spreadsheet on one computer.

SugarSync allows you to sync a set of documents across any number of computers you own. It does this by creating a folder in your My Documents called “Magic Briefcase.” Anything you put in this folder is automatically uploaded to SugarSync’s servers. Every time you save a file, the file is re-uploaded to Sugar Sync – so SugarSync is always “in sync” with your files.

Any other computer running the SugarSync application (I have it installed on Windows and OS X at work and at home) in the background automatically downloads updates to the files in your Magic Briefcase as soon as SugarSync knows that they’ve been changed. So all of your computers are “in sync” with each other.

You’re also able to simply have an online backup for specific files on specific computers – in case you just want a backup and don’t necessarily want to sync the documents to other computers.

Another feature I love is the Web Archive: You can drop things into a special SugarSync folder in the SugarSync app called “Web Archive,” and they just stay there – forever. Got some online receipts or things you just absolutely don’t want to lose? Throw them in the Web Archive.

This solution has worked for me for about a year with no hitches that weren’t caused be either unavoidable mistakes, or Excel (and there were only a couple total mistakes).

And at $2.49 per month for 10GB of storage, SugarSync is cheap. There’s even a free trial.

There’s even an iPhone application that lets you view your files (look at images, read PDFs, etc.), and send them to other people.

SugarSync has more features that I don’t even use (photo albums, music streaming, etc.), and still, it’s easily my favorite application for all of 2008. Considering how frequently good applications are coming out these days – for all platforms – that’s saying something.

software reviews, sugarsync

I stumbled across a page that contains extracts from the Netscape 4.x source code, and it is full of raunchy cuss words.

Any programmer will tell you that nobody swears as often or with as bone-chilling a dearth of taboo as a frustrated software developer.

I actually find this realization nice: Even fancy programmers that work on apps like Netscape that we’ve all used are human too!

Here’s a screenshot of some of the entries:

My personal favorite:

/* "Object oriented?  Fuck that shit!  Pabst Blue Ribbon!" --Dennis Hopper */

Edit: Another favorite:

/* check if Lou is a pindick */

fun, software cuss words, programming

I installed Windows 7 through VirtualBox on my machine at work.

Windows 7 has what seems like an all-new taskbar (with similarities to the one in Vista), and only shows the icons of all the running programs. These icons have neat features – one of them being, if you’re downloading something with IE 8 (which Windows 7 comes with), it shows the progress of the download in IE 8’s icon:

See the green gradient deal in the icon? That’s the progress of the download (Vim! what what!) that’s visible.

Other notes about the taskbar: It feels very similar to the OS X Dock, and I’m sure that’s no accident. For example: as mentioned previously, each program appears in the taskbar as an icon – but only once for each instance of that program, and multiple instances/windows (e.g. multiple IE or Explorer windows) make the program’s icon appear like a semi-fanned deck of cards, so you know there are multiple windows open for that app.

Neat, huh?

software ie 8, windows 7

Windows XP SP3 - the service pack that was launched and then pulled almost immediately - makes it so that themes no longer work.

(By the way, if you want to download SP3, you still can, as of this morning, 4/30/08, at this Url.)

Anyway, you can get themes working again by following the instructions in this forum post, or you can follow the abridged instructions that worked for me right here:

1. Download a patched version of Uxtheme.dll here (and un-Rar the DLL).
2. Download and unpackReplacer.
3. Open a Command Prompt and run Replacer.cmd.
4. When Replacer asks you to, drag the file Uxtheme.dll from your Windows\System32 directory (usually c:\Windows\System32) onto the Command Prompt window.
5. Hit enter.
6. When Replacer asks you to, drag the new Uxtheme.dll that you un-Rared onto the Command Prompt Window.
7. Hit enter.
8. Confirm that Replacer should do this replacement, and wait for Replacer to finish.
9. Reboot.
10. Now your themes should work! Enjoy! (And might I recommend the wonderful theme HmmXP?)

howto, software

A host of programs, from iTunes to AppRocket, do this really annoying thing whereby in their menus, they give you Options, but they also give you Preferences. This is very confusing to us users.

The problem is that there is no meaningful distinction between “Options” and “Preferences.” I mean, my God, these words are synonyms, people!

This is a screenshot of what I’m talking about:

This screenshot is from AppRocket.

I mean, okay, to the developers of the program, the distinction must be clear. “Configuration is obviously meant to configure the content indexer, while Preferences is where the user merely chooses aesthetic options and whatnot.”

But to a user, none of this ever makes sense. Programs are too complicated to begin with!

iTunes does it the worst: They have Preferences, and View Options. Now, what iTunes means is that you will be setting up the options for the view. But, at least for me, this is read as “I want to view my options”: Most menu options are either nouns or verbs, and I feel like the brain tends to err on the side of verb, especially when you’re looking at a two-word phrase (as in “View Options”), rather than a single word. So I’m always confused by “View Options.”

Also, since I change preferences so infrequently, I have to re-figure this out each time.

I’m laying down a new rule: Only one Options/Preferences/Configuration menu item. Pick one, and shove everything into that.

And if the Preferences/Options window gets too cluttered, then insert a filtering text box that searches all the preferences, and then only displays what’s relevant. MyEclipse and RSSOwl do this beautifully.

Users do not (and should not, it could be argued) need to set up Preferences often. It’s okay if it’s an exercise; it doesn’t have to be perfect.

software