Peter Seale's weblog

Thursday, August 21, 2008 8:00:39 AM UTC 

Announcing: Houston Techfest 2008 – 09/13/2008 at U of H

The second annual Houston Techfest takes place on Saturday, September 13^th, at the U of H main campus. This year the Techfest has expanded to over fifty sessions. Make the time to attend!

This is a free, community-driven event that (this year anyway) features mostly Java-related or .NET-related content, with a smattering of just about everything else.

This is your only chance to attend such a wide variety of in-depth sessions, in one place, without getting on a plane and flying somewhere. If you’re bored by flashy tech demos, attend the Methodology, Security, and ALT.NET (AKA Continuous Improvement) tracks. On the other hand, if you love flashy tech demos, we’ve got those too! Lots of them! I'm also happy to say that most of the sessions cover advanced topics, so if you're an information nut like me, you'll find something new at the Techfest. And it’s not all business either; there'll be fun sessions on XNA, Deep Zoom, and Robotics Studio. Don't forget, the price is right!

Houston Techfest 2008 Topics List

==> To attend, you must register! <==

1. Register as a user on the Techfest site. Here is a direct link to the registration page.
2. Without closing the browser (and without losing your session) visit the Agenda page and select each session you'd like to attend.

Links

• Houston Techfest home page
• Agenda (calendar-style view)
• All sessions, including descriptions
• Prizes (yes, there will be prizes)
• Football games you will miss by attending the Techfest - it's important to know what you'll be giving up

Finally, Lando

I don't know how, or why, but what I do know that I promised Lando, and so I must deliver. So, without further ado:

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 8:00:12 AM UTC 

First off, I'll point out I'm not an SVN expert, nor am I a CodePlex expert. I've just figured out how to do the basics, and found that the process was way too complicated. It's like you need a diagram to figure out how to make it work! What I've created below is that diagram: here's how to do a checkout of your CodePlex project from SVNBridge!

Step 0: I assume you have installed SVNBridge and a SVN client (e.g. TortoiseSVN)

If not, make that happen first.

Step 1: Figure out where your CodePlex project is hosted

Step 2: Figure out where your SVNBridge proxy is running

(NOTE: do not mess with the SVNBridge "Proxy settings" unless you're the one person in the world still running behind an authenticated HTTP proxy. You're not, so don't mess with it)

Step 3: Now we're ready to CONCATENATE!

Step 4: Let's try this URL in Tortoise!

 

RESULT: Success!

Footnote: Authentication is another matter

If you need to do updates/commits/etc, you'll need to be sure you're authenticated properly. Use a slightly modified version of CodePlex username and password:

SND\cp_[[yourCodePlexusername]]

(yourCodePlexpassword)

Footnote: If you can't see the source code on the CodePlex site, it doesn't exist

If you're having problems accessing the source through SVNBridge, but it's not spitting out any errors, then consider the possibility that the source isn't public yet.

Saturday, July 19, 2008 4:30:43 PM UTC 

This will be quick.

QUESTION: is there anyplace in, near, around, or even remotely near downtown Houston, where I can go get free wifi? Where they're not trying to shoo me out the door as soon as I walk in? The first person to say "Starbucks" gets shot; they don't give out free internet anymore, since 2000, or way long ago. Also in the news, they're closing a bunch of stores. ARE THESE TWO THINGS RELATED? You make the call!

Back to business.

I'm looking for something as awesome as a Panera. 1) Free wifi, 2) Encouraged/allowed to stay for 2+ hours, 3) Fountain drinks are a huge bonus, but not required.

And before you ask, no, for some reason there are no Panera's near me. Anywhere near me. Allow me to illustrate!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 4:46:27 AM UTC 

Today's fun challenge on SPOT the TYPO will be a piece of a SharePoint deployment script!

Let's bring on the challenge!

SPOT the TYPO!

(line breaks added for readability; ignore them) 

Still can't find it?

Maybe there's a problem with the image…let's try plain text!

stsadm.exe -o deploysolution -name MySolution.wsp –immediate -allowgacdeployment

Wait, I think I saw something!

Here's the image, enlarged:

I definitely saw something!

Now let me highlight the important bits. Enhance!

 

…enhance!

MYSTERY: why is this dash character wider?

Something is definitely fishy! Let's check out a hex dump and see what it says!

 

Hey, now that doesn't look like the standard ASCII character for a dash! That's not like a dash at all!  In UTF-8 encoding (as this file is encoded), ASCII characters should look like ASCII characters! Right? Right!

Dude, where's my cardash?

It turns out, it's the endash, "&#8211;"—heretofore dubbed "the script ruiner." Read all about it (and I mean all about it) in this incredibly detailed article, about the endash. I'm serious, check it out.

OK, WE GET IT

As is always the case with these "why did my character magically become some other character" mysteries, we can safely blame Word AutoCorrect. When we're typing up technical documentation in Word: blame AutoCorrect. Even when we're typing in Outlook, where we think we're safe: we're not safe, Word AutoCorrect lurks in the shadows! It's hiding under that huge ribbon, waiting to pounce! Ha-ha, those three dots just became an ellipsis! You didn't even notice!

Let's say we're looking at a complex Microsoft Knowledgebase article, oh, say #934838. Let's just say. And let's say that on this article, there are lots and lots of commands just begging to be cut-and-pasted into your favorite text editor, Notepad. Notepad is your favorite text editor because you're not crazy enough to attempt to install another one on the production server. And when you paste this into Notepad, everything looks great on the standard Notepad monospace font. It's a monospace font, think about it.

And then you paste the text directly into the Command prompt, which spits out the generic stsadm error, which is hilarious, because they put the error at the TOP and immediately kick off a 5-page command listing, so you have to dig for the original error message. And yes, the error message says "Command line error." And you're studying, and studying, and you have no idea why this isn't working!

LET ME TELL YOU WHY IT ISN'T WORKING. Because when you zoom in, REALLY zoom in, you'll see that the dash character is exactly two pixels wider! And boy, let me tell you—those two pixels make all the difference! Get out your microscope!

Zoomed-in SharePoint art

If you look at the hyper-zoomed-in picture from above, it almost looks like some sort of awful abstract art. Noticing this, I thought—might as well go with it! Allow me to add a few touches here and there, maybe work with the interplay of light and form and structure, maybe add some tasteful emotion words…and give birth to the worst SharePoint-themed abstract art ever:

As with all true art, each person will take away something different from this piece.

Reader challenge

I dare you, dear reader, to take on the challenge: can you create something worse? You can! You have it in you! Believe in yourself!

Tiny PowerShell footnote

There is a systematic way to find Unicode characters in your strings—just check the integer value of each character. Should be easy, right? I'd say so, yes:

Note I used the "%" shortcut instead of "foreach", and "?" instead of "where". Read it as: convert the string to a char array; for each character, convert it to an int; now filter these integers down to only those with a large (non-ASCII) value. The remaining ints are returned to the prompt, which displays them as best it can. There happens to be only one character today, which is the endash, "the script ruiner."

Anyway, the point is you can guarantee your string is ASCII if you make use of PowerShell's (.NET's) built-in Unicode support and write a simple script.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 3:54:44 AM UTC 

If you're thinking to yourself "dude, this is wasting my time just reading the headline; how much free time do you have to post about it?" Well, yes. I do waste a lot of time configuring my system, and further waste time thinking about configuring my system, and further further waste time reading others' thoughts when they write about configuring their systems. It's probably unhealthy, but if so it's widespread. Like the flu pandemic.

But I do have a good reason for this tweak.

Eyestrain is a serious problem

Laugh it up; when it's your turn to suffer make sure to let me know and I'll make fun of you.

So anyway, enabling ClearType aids readability and reduces eyestrain.

Plus, it looks cool.

Disclaimer: don't blame me

I've enabled ClearType on the VM running on my desktop. I don't have to worry about bandwidth or getting angry calls from the network folks. Your mileage may vary!

Steps to enable ClearType in Server 2003

• Download the hotfix found at KB 946633. Unfortunately this isn't a direct link; you have to navigate the deadly DRM/registration obstacle course, Takeshi's Castle style. Many that begin the journey don't make it all the way to the end.
  
• Install that hotfix on your Windows Server 2003 machine.
• Reboot as instructed by the hotfix installer.
• Log in locally to the machine and enable ClearType (see these detailed steps if you need them).

BOOM! YOU GOTS CLEARTYPE NOW!

Ok, further steps for RDP

ClearType won't appear over RDP unless you set up your RDP client properly.

• Ensure you have the Terminal Services (RDP) client v6.0. If you don't know, see the screenshot below. You'll need the "font smoothing" option.
• Any time you connect to a server, ensure the "font smoothing" option is checked.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 8:00:47 AM UTC 

This will be painless and quick.

First, I'll point out that I'm a huge podcast consumer. I've listened to at least 500 hours of audio via podcasts in my daily commute, and have been doing so regularly since ~2005. I've installed every major podcast client, even Carl's Pwopcatcher, to see what works for me.

Criteria

I'm looking for a podcast client that will help me a) get a list of all current and past episodes of all my shows, b) download them, c) automatically and without fuss, d) so that I can play them in my car.

That's pretty much it. In the table below I'll add a feature checkmark for products that do exceptionally well at certain features. I'll also call out unique bad features in the table as well.

Podcast Client Roundup

Feature description	Juice	Doppler	iTunes	FeedStation
Automatically downloads new shows	YES	YES	YES
Permits you to download past shows	YES	YES		YES
Consistently and successfully completes downloads	YES		YES	YES
Allows you to schedule downloads for later (e.g. 2AM)		YES
Bittorrent integration (for DNR)	YES	YES
iTunes podcast directory			YES
'I already have iTunes installed' bonus			YES
'I hate the crapware iTunes installs extra' bonus			YES
'Juice kills podcasters' bandwidth by redownloading'	YES
'Juice crashes more than it closes gracefully'	YES

Conclusions

Juice is the best client for most of us who:

• aren't satisfied with the little sandbox iTunes gives you,
• can't be bothered to manually check each item for download (as FeedStation would have you do). I have 24 feeds, and I just synced, and it turned out to be ~180 new shows. Had I been using FeedStation, that would have been 180 manual "hey I like this episode, let's download it" clicks.
• cannot abide by Doppler's frequent failed downloads. Doppler, you guys are the best, MINUS this one big bad bug! Fix it and I'll switch!

Unfortunately, as is also stated above, Juice is the worst client for any podcast producer. I know for a fact I've downloaded the entire ARCast catalog 4 times (and it's huge). This is probably due to the way Juice stores and compares new podcasts with its podcast download history—the history is so finicky that whenever someone republishes an item in their RSS feed, whether it's to change the date published or even something a human wouldn't notice, chances are good that we (those running Juice clients) will re-download all republished items. Individually, this ends up costing Ron Jacobs (or whoever foots the bill anyway) $0.10 for another 1GB of extra bandwidth every time Juice "starts over" on his feed. Well, who cares, you say, it's only ten cents. Sure, it's ten cents for you, me, and the other 100,000 podcast listeners using Juice. That's a lot of dimes, and there's no end in sight.

So while Juice is the best podcast client available today, you'll never see any podcaster recommend it. They can't afford a 2x-10x jump in their bandwidth bill.

But, just as a secret between you and me (you being the 3 people reading this): use Juice. Or, if you can stomach the limited featurest of iTunes, do that.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 10:56:08 AM UTC 

Update: welcome to the new-and-improved recap! This recap, unlike the last, weighs in at less than a million billion byes of text and code highlighting and will now load in your feed reader.

This is a recap of my entries into the 2008 Winter Scripting games. From, like, the winter. I know, it's April, we're already in summertime mode here in Texas, and it is quite clear that it is no longer 'the winter'. Let's move on, shall we?

I'm going to work through each of the following scripts illustrated in the table below (the counts for "Lines", "Words", and "Characters" mean what you would imagine they mean):

Compare the above table to MOW, who, for example, had a 1 line, 8 word, 58 character solution for #6. My solutions are (relatively) HUGE. So my recaps, which contain the full source, will necessarily be HUGE as well.

For each problem, I'm going to quickly sum up the interesting (at least TO ME) bits of each problem, then I'm going to post the full source.

2008 Winter Scripting Game Events: Index

• Introduction: TOTAL DOMINATION!
• Event 1: Could I Get Your Phone Number?
• Event 2: Skating on Thin Ice
• Event 3: Instant (Runoff) Winner
• Event 4: Image is Everything
• Event 5: You Call That a Password?
• Event 6: Prime Time
• Event 7: Play Ball!
• Event 8: Making Beautiful Music
• Event 9: You're Twisting My Words
• Event 10: Blackjack!
• Recap

Friday, February 29, 2008 5:01:58 AM UTC 

I found this completely by chance.

In case this isn't obvious, let me "fix" it (see below):

AHH, BETTER NOW!

For future use, feel free to "fix up" any icons you come across with this helpful transparent graphic:

Thursday, October 18, 2007 4:06:47 AM UTC 

This is a simple, quick tweak that you may or may not even agree is useful (and may even believe harms your computing experience). First, allow me to present this tweak (visually):

 

By default, Windows (every Windows I can remember, all the way to Windows 95 and possibly further back) sets the keyboard repeat delay to the third peg out of four. While this is probably the safe choice when deploying to a billion PCs, it's not the best choice for me. I don't need to slow down my keyboard; I don't have rickets (yet).

If I'm not being clear enough, the keyboard repeat delay determines how long you need to hold down a key before Windows registers this as 'repeating input.' Bah, this is best done by example.

Keyboard repeat rates: by example

Introducing the Napoleon Dynamite Demonstrates Your Keyboard's Repeat Rate mascot!

The question is: how long did it take before the second "s" appeared on your computer? Half a second? I say to you: that's half a second wasted!

Lowering the keyboard repeat rate allows that second "s" to appear almost instantly! Because you're saving half a second at a time, this would seem like a trivial thing, but let me tell you: it makes a difference. You'll find yourself using the arrow keys and the "CTRL plus arrow keys" more. You'll tab through form fields by mashing your greasy thumb on the TAB key. You'll stop tapping on the keyboard so much. You'll grow an air of smug arrogance. Yes—all this can be yours!

Friday, August 24, 2007 4:52:41 AM UTC  Those of us local to the greater Houston area should be pleased to know that I've found RSS feeds for two Houston-area .NET-centric user groups. Email is so 1993! This is a quick post to point you directly to the feeds:

Feeds

HDNUG - Houston Dot Net Users Group RSS feed

H-SPUG - Houston SharePoint UG RSS feed

Keep Houston Beautiful

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 3:24:47 AM UTC  This post is awesome, but nowhere near as awesome as Vista from 5 minutes ago—so if you're skimming, skim down to the one with the pictures.

Cell Phone RF Interference

Have you ever left your cell phone next to an unshielded speaker and heard that awful buzzing noise? I'm sure you have. Do you wonder to yourself: what's causing that noise? Wonder no more. Do you further wonder: how can I make my cellphone emit this noise on demand?

Wonder no more! Featuring the first ever meta-cellphone ring! Upload this to your fancy $600oops $400 iPhone and impress the kids (albeit really dorky kids)!

cell_buzz.mp3

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 3:06:11 AM UTC 

I WAS NOT AWARE we could do this with Vista! This is, and I'm not joking, the first awesome Vista feature I've discovered! And it's genuinely awesome!

DUDE




And by "this", in case it isn't clear: we can use sliders to change Vista's color scheme! Sliders! Aero! I made mine a disgusting maroon/rootbeer-flavored concoction!

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 1:02:08 AM UTC 

I call this particular masterpiece "Two System Demo." Feast your eyes!

And to answer your question, yes, I'm perfectly aware of just how talented I am! You don't need to tell me I'm the greatest—I already know!

Tuesday, September 26, 2006 2:59:32 AM UTC 

That took bacon took forever!

Why do I have the sudden urge to go to a gym and work out, run a while, or maybe swim a few laps? Was it because I just finished Code Complete? Yeah, that's probably it.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006 2:56:52 AM UTC 

As much as I try, I can no longer find my favorite classic Winamp skin of all time anywhere else on the internet, so I'm posting it here for posterity.

Without further ado, I present to you: FrootyAmp - the Greatest Winamp skin of all time!

FrootyAmp.wsz (25KB)

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 3:37:17 AM UTC 

UPDATE GRAB BAG (2006-09-25): FoxIt has released v2.0, potentially fixing this bug! ALSO, FoxIt is not free for commercial use! So stop abusing the end user license agreement, you filthy pirate scum scumbag scum! Um, anyway, unless you're a big PDF user at home (and who isn't? Oh, I'm not. Yeah, I guess most of us aren't), you can't legally be using FoxIt. Sorry.

By now you've at least heard mention of an Acrobat Reader alternative named FoxIt.  I'm using it now, and for the most part, it's fantastic.

It's already better than Adobe's ever-ballooning product in several ways:

• FoxIt is 1000% faster (and no, I'm not exaggerating—it's faster by a factor of ten).  You can install FoxIt reader faster than you can load a PDF document with Adobe; it's that ridiculous.
• FoxIt does not attempt sneak in totally unrelated software in the guise of 'Acrobat updates' like Adobe is now doing ("now" being 2006-08-14).

But, I'm here to tell you: it's not all gravy.  FoxIt reader version 1.3 crashes. I have proof! (shocking evidence below)

It's true—I've crashed FoxIt attempting to load two entirely different documents coming from separate sources.

This is something I've rarely (if ever) seen covered elsewhere: I'm here to report that, contrary to all the positive buzz, those oddball third-party products allegedly ten times better/faster/stronger than the originals do have flaws.  I know this is incredibly outrageous, but it turns out: FoxIt PDF Reader is, in fact, not all gravy.

I'll leave you some time alone to grieve. Once you've returned, we'll continue, okay?  Just take your time.

…

I know, I know; it was a shock to me too. Moving on:

When PowerToys Aren't

Getting to a point I'd like to make: not all productivity tools help. For an example, I'll pick on the Windows XP PowerToys ALT+TAB Replacement tool. To be fair to the original authors: I understand this was probably built off-hours as a labor of love, and I do understand a lot of work went into building this particular toy. Please excuse me while I rip on your creation.

As a short introduction: this PowerToy replaces the default ALT+TAB window with a larger window that shows screenshots of each of your windows. The idea is that you're given more information about each window at no cost—thus far, this sounds nice! Here's a screenshot of the Powertoy in action:

The problem is: using this PowerToy is actually worse than sticking with the standard Windows XP ALT+TAB behavior.  Let's do this by the numbers:

1. This Powertoy and Windows XP's ClearType do not play well together.  And by that, I mean that this looks brutally ugly with ClearType on. I've highlighted the important parts below, and no, you're not going blind—this is how it looks!

2. Believe it or not, I could live with the fuzzy, unreadable text shown above. But I can't live with the fact that this ALT+TAB replacement is noticeably slower than the original ALT+TAB behavior! In other words, a simple one-step 'tap ALT+TAB' operation turns into the following:

• press and hold ALT
• press and hold TAB
• wait for the ALT+TAB window to pop up,
  • After the window appears (Not before! Don't you dare let go of TAB before this is ready!), let go of TAB,
  • let go of ALT.
• Alternately, live dangerously—go ahead and let go of TAB before the window appears!  "What happens then," you may ask?  Well, let's check out #3, shall we?

3. This PowerToy crashes.  Let me state this in unambiguous terms: it's not okay for a standard operating system feature to crash!  I know, I know, [[insert your witty Windows joke here]], but it's still not okay! Okay?

So what did we learn today?  Oh, I'm not finished yet—I'm just getting warmed up!  Let's keep rolling!

Why does live.com take seven (7) full seconds to load my search results?

I'll keep this short and sweet. Is there any excuse for this?  Why does the extremely web-one-point-oh non-AJAXified Google search load instantly, while the new and fabulous AJAX-powered live.com search require a noticeable delay? Want to know the answer? The full answer is complicated and full of technical jargon, but the short answer is this: I don't care at all why. I only care that I can literally run, read, re-run, read, and re-re-run searches from Google faster than using a single live.com search.  "instant=way better" is such a ridiculously simple concept, and yet no one seems to get it!

As an added bonus insult, searches from the live.com toolbar actually take longer—yes, I'm saying that the using the toolbar actually slows you down further.

UPDATE (2006-09-25): Thankfully Microsoft has removed the offending "enhanced search functionality" and both the toolbar and the search engine are (gasp) fast!

And that stupid XP search dog!

I'll keep this short, because everyone's already said it before, but: the out-of-the-box Windows XP file search experience is really, truly awful.  Let me do this purely by example.

I sometimes need to edit my HOSTS file for whatever reason; it doesn't matter why.  Unfortunately for me, I never can remember where that durned file is located! So what is any sane person to do?  Start->Search of course!

XP's search dog is so slow sometimes that I've actually kicked off a "XP dog search", then (while this is running!) taken the following steps:

• Opened Start menu and clicked on Run
• Typed "cmd" to open the command prompt
• Typed "cd \" to go to the root folder of C:\
• Typed "dir HOSTS /s" to do an old-school DOS search for the file
• Watched the dir command finish and note location
• Pressed START+E to load Explorer
• Browsed out to %WINDIR%\System32\Drivers\Etc to find the file
• Edited and saved the file

Is Rover finished by this time? Nope!  Can anyone explain why running dir /s is so much faster than Windows' search? Anyone?

Oh, I'm not finished yet!

Outlook 2007 Beta 2

I've read Chris Pirillo's 65 Outlook complaints, and I'd like to take a different approach.  Instead of focusing on the left-right-center-justify alignment of text and color coordinating and font design and Chris Pirillo's other OCD complaints, we'll work on just one thing.  Just one.

Are you thinking speed issues? Because if you are thinking speed issues, then you're dead wrong.

RESPONSIVENESS IS KEY.

For added impact, I'll attach some tasteful ASCII art and fly this statement around in a marquee. I'm not above using marquees, obnoxious colors and blink tags to get a point across (blinking effect subject to availability):

+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
|..oO RESPONSIVENESS IS KEY Oo..|
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+

Why is responsiveness not priority #1? Or at least, high enough priority that they might, you know, tackle this problem within the first ten years of Outlook's first release?

If you've ever actually used Outlook (any version!), you'll instantly know what I'm talking about. This is so fundamental, and affects such a large user base—Outlook is the #1 Office application, and it's outrageously unresponsive!

Let me explain this by example.  This will only take a few steps, so you can follow along:
1. Click on a mail folder containing 200+ messages. Actually, any mail folder will do; the small ones lock you up too—yeah, even those.
2. Press CTRL+A (uh-oh!)
3. Try to do anything else while Outlook performs a Select All operation on your messages.  Years of experience has taught most of us to Just Don't Try That, Or Else.

There's no secret SHIFT+ALT+BACKSPACE keystroke to fix this; you'll just have to wait it out—or failing patience, kill outlook.exe.

This is ridiculous. Why, with my multi-billion instruction processor running at 10% capacity, with half a billion bytes or more of available RAM, and an incredibly huge and reliable network pipe, does my email application give me problems?

Now you may say: "Outlook loads Internet Explorer components in order to render HTML mail and RTF and Office Smart tags etc etc."  Let me borrow an argument from above: I don't care why. I don't care about the why, and after this many years and this many releases, I don't want to hear any excuses.

And let me state this again for the record: this is not about Outlook's speed. The 2007 beta actually runs faster than 2003 in several areas, including the CTRL+A scenario mentioned above, and including mail rules processing (yes, it's all much faster).  I don't care*!
*Okay, I do care about speed, and yes, Outlook can be unbearably slow. But today we're all about triage: responsiveness comes first!

In fact, I am willing to sacrifice speed for improved responsiveness.  This may not be a ridiculous trade-off as (for whatever reason) using multiple threads may be slower than sticking with a single thread.

Is anyone working on fixing this? Given Outlook's track record, the answer's definitely "no."

UPDATE (2006-09-25): This bit about Outlook must have been subliminally placed in my brain by Microsoft's marketing. Why, you may ask? Two reasons: 1. I keep sending Outlook beta error reports, and now that I think about it, those error reports are categorized as "Non-Responsiveness." 2. Vista's performance team is focusing primarily on consistent performance (AKA responsiveness), specifically mentioning that they are not focused on "small bursts of speed". So anyway, they're Working On It. 
But all of the above still applies—Outlook's still terribly unresponsive…at least for now.

Conclusion

I honestly started this off as a quickie writing about FoxIt crashing. I've certainly, uh, deviated from that.

If I can leave you with just one thought, let it be this simple series of SAT-style associations:

Adobe Acrobat : FoxIt
Live.com search : all other major search engines
XP search dog : dir /s
ALT+TAB replacement : ALT+TAB
Outlook : ???

Feel free to leave your own word-association games in the comments. Any day now I'll reach that "lifetime weblog stats: five plus comments" milestone, and with your help, that day could be today!

Friday, August 04, 2006 3:23:55 AM UTC 

If you're going to waste your time, you might as well waste it on something totally awesome—something like this!

1. Download Microsoft's Font Tool for Tablet PC. Here's a direct download link.
2. Spend minimal time writing all the letters using your Tablet PC.  The program provides several tools to improve your budding font's quality, but for brevity's sake I'll just mention that they're available.
3. Briefly preview, then press the "export" button. Yes, this is as ridiculously easy as it sounds.
4. Step 4: upload a sample for the world to see!

Let's do this:

I know what you're thinking, and yes—yes, I am truly amazing sometimes. Instead of uploading my site logo, I could have just uploaded an image of the words "I am awesome", but that would have been…redundant.

Also, before you ask: I used WordArt.  Yes, WordArt—the industrial-strength graphic design tool that sets the standard against which all others are measured. Watch out, Photoshop!  More realistically: your days are numbered, PowerPoint-slide-distributed-as-poster!

Thursday, August 03, 2006 1:33:45 AM UTC 

I call this one NiceLogger Training.

My 'canvas', so to speak, was at first OneNote 2003 SP2. Yearning for artistic freedom and chafing at the restraints imposed upon me, I imported the captured OneNote image into Paint.NET 2.64, at which point I really went to town with the micro details, shading effects and transparent brushes.  I'm not 100% happy with the finished product, but what true artist is?

Anyway, here is the first in a series of my tablet masterpieces:

Art criticism may be directed to the comments link below.

Friday, June 30, 2006 4:21:05 AM UTC 

Friday, May 26, 2006 4:06:22 AM UTC 

UPDATE 2007-09-09: Pretty much everything below this paragraph is now misinformation. I've laid out my site with Yahoo UI Grids and posted a brief, uninformed review at http://www.pseale.com/blog/YahoosUIGridsIDidntReadTheInstructions.aspx.

Yahoo's UI Grids layout is precisely 750 pixels wide, give or take precisely 0 pixels. If you're targeting a wide audience and really working to reach the low-end, this CSS template collection is far better than anything you or I could come up with—it's the perfectly good solution. But I'd like to, uh, maybe use more than precisely 750 pixels.

Let's try this visually:

Yahoo's concept of a standard user's browser window:

My concept of a standard user's browser window, circa 2007:

So I'm using tables for layout. Sorry.

Here's the link to the site: Yahoo UI Grids

Thursday, May 18, 2006 2:07:30 AM UTC 

UPDATED 2008-05-08: Removed the actual project. I never bothered to update it beyond the codename Atlas betas, and now that I've waited a few years, the ASP.NET AJAX pendulum has already swung! It's too late for AJAX; we gotta get on this Silverlight thing now! Everybody move!

In my never-ending quest to use the word "mashup" as often as possible, I've gone ahead and mashed up a traditional search box with Microsoft's Atlas framework (beta), producing:

Web 2.0 Search mashup [updated: repointed link; don't bother]

This is a tagsonomy-based, community-driven AJAX mashup that just oozes Web 2.0.  As an added bonus, I've mashed up rounded corners and an annoying image background tile into the HTML.  I've held off on gradients for now, but only because I'm partially blind from dogfooding this.

Give my enhanced search mashup a try! [updated: repointed link; don't bother]

Sunday, May 14, 2006 4:49:10 AM UTC 

A Word from your friends at Subversion and TortoiseSVN

Clicking on the "TortoiseSVN" icon from the Start Menu (shown below)…

 

…pops up the following message:

 

Later, while browsing through the repository's home directory, I came across this helpful reminder:

 

GPL Compliance

Since this is an open source project licensed under the GPL, I'm required to fully publish all changes I've made to the code.  In the spirit of full disclosure and in the spirit of the GPL, I present to you my modified documentation:

I Swear I Love You Guys

Their documentation is excellent, and I swear I love you guys. I swear it. Anyway, thus far they've been an excellent set of products.

Subversion (SVN) project home page
TortoiseSVN project home page

Monday, May 08, 2006 3:52:15 AM UTC 

These epic flash sagas built entirely with animation from NES games defy further explanation. Turn your sound up (absolutely essential!), press F11 to go into fullscreen mode, and check this out:

Click here for the Michael Forever flash movie!

My personal favorite is the second episode, "Michael Fantasy", wherein Michael Jackson "and all Famicom soft" help prevent planet-sized Zangief from jumpkicking the Earth into oblivion.  This is simply too awesome for words.  Let me try with a picture:

…still not good enough.  You simply must check this out: Michael Forever! And don't forget to turn on the sound!

Check out RSF's main page (Japanese)