tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287567382024-03-07T15:56:22.022-06:00Surfin teh InterwebAll the fancy dancy things I finded while surfin teh Interweb (Hacks, tweaks, rants, raves, solutions; stuff that everyone else missed)Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-12235300851937715922008-09-10T14:09:00.007-05:002008-09-10T15:58:03.631-05:00Opera 9.5 and Google Chrome<div>Opera launched <a href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera 9.5</a> which fixed a lot of the issues that I had <a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-opera-makes-me-weep.html">mentioned</a> <a href="http://gadling.blogspot.com/2005/09/final-word-on-opera.html">earlier</a>. The most important change made, which fixes a long standing quarrel I had with Opera, was that an option was added to switch to the next tab after closing the current one. This makes Opera's behavior consistent with that of most other major browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome etc.) Here are some issues that still prevent me from making Opera my default browser:<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Lack of a "Safari" style RSS reader:</span> The Opera RSS reader uses the each-RSS-item-is-an-email model. I prefer the Safari (or IE7 or Firefox with <a href="http://sage.mozdev.org/">Sage</a>) each-feed-is-a-rendered-page model. </div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Can't move Personal Bar next to the menu:</span> This is just a convenient space saver. In Firefox, I can move the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox right next to the menu. Thus giving me some more browsing space while retaining quick access to my favorite bookmarklets.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Adblock and UserJS UI primitive compared to Firefox:</span> While Opera does possess ad blocking and user scripting capabilities, the UI exposed for both is very primitive as compared to Firefox. For example, there is no easy way to white-list websites using the Opera content blocker.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">No built-in spell checking:</span> While spell checking <a href="http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/opera/spellcheck/">can be enabled</a> in Opera, it is not at seamless and easy to use as the spell checking built into Firefox and Safari. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Firefox is catching up:</span> One of Opera's most compelling and unique features was the full page zoom. Unfortunately, with the release of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla has replicated this very useful feature in Firefox and made it more useful by adding the capability to remember the zoom level for each website. And Opera's other selling point, speed, is also being threatened thanks to Mozilla initiatives such as <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/JavaScript:TraceMonkey">Tracemonkey</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>When it comes to speed, Google claims that it's freshly launched <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome">Chrome</a> browser is the <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/v8/benchmarks.html">fastest</a>. However, Chrome also comes with a most unique feature that no other browser possesses (well, except maybe IE 8:) per tab processes and a browser task manager. </div><div><br /></div><div>It also steals features from:</div><div><ul><li>Firefox </li><ul><li>Instant bookmarks<br /></li></ul><li>Firefox extensions<br /></li><ul><li>Application shortcuts = <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism">Mozilla Prism</a><br /></li><li>Dynamic tabs = <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122">Tab Mix Plus</a><br /></li><li>Simpler Downloads = <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26">Download Statusbar</a><br /></li></ul><li>Safari<br /></li><ul><li>Incognito Mode = Private Browsing<br /></li></ul><li>Opera<br /></li><ul><li>One box for everything = Opera 9.5 address bar<br /></li><li>New tab page = Speed Dial</li></ul></ul></div></div></div>Of course, Chrome is beta and has a lot of issues which prevent it from being a contender for default browser. Some glaring examples include:<div><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Closing the last tab closes the browser:</span> Closing the application should only happen when the user clicks on the big red X at the top right corner or chooses exit from the File menu.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Lack of web feed support:</span> RSS feeds, Atom feeds etc. mean nothing to Chrome. Hopefully a feed capable version will be available soon. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">No built-in spell checking:</span> A must for all bloggers. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Extended Validation Certificate UI is lacking:</span> While Chrome supports EV certificates, the UI used to display them is primitive compared to Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Installs in Local Application Data directory instead of Program Files:</span> This is a big issue. It effectively means that every user will have to install and run his own copy of Chrome. There are many other negative ramifications of this decision. <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/google-chrome-help-troubleshooting/browse_thread/thread/1beceb0df5aecfb1">This thread</a> on the Chrome Google Group has details. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Website Issues:</span> Certain websites are slow and buggy. Facebook and Hotmail are two major ones. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Crashes:</span> For a browser that is supposed to be crash resistant by design, I have had it crashing a decent number of times. Look at this <a href="http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/5TP010UPFU.html">thread</a>. And finally,</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">No Adblock:</span> Chrome lacks an ad blocker. While it seems unlikely that Google will ever release one, Chrome is <a href="http://code.google.com/chromium/">open source</a>, so perhaps we will see a third party extension soon. </div></div>Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-7662186076413482782008-03-27T10:45:00.004-05:002008-03-27T14:18:35.331-05:00Safari on Windows ReduxBack when Apple first released Safari for Windows, I posted about <a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com/2007/06/10-things-broken-in-apple-safari-on.html">10 things that were broken</a> about it. Now that Apple has released the first non-beta version (3.1) let's revisit that list:<br /><ol><li>Can't add custom search engines.<a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:4"></a></li><li><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Double clicking on the tab bar to create a new tab doesn't work.</span> <span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0);">Fixed!</span><br /></li><li><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Ctrl-Enter in the address bar doesn't autocomplete to www. .com.</span> <span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0);">Fixed!</span><br /></li><li>Middle clicking on a tab doesn't close it.<br /></li><li>Can't close the last tab.<br /></li><li>Grabs IE and Firefox bookmarks by default but doesn't display them in the Bookmarks menu. Doesn't grab Opera bookmarks.</li><li>Doesn't use the <a href="http://feedicons.com/">standard RSS icon</a>.<br /></li><li><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Doesn't follow Windows UI conventions. Cannot resize using any border.</span> <span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0);">Fixed!</span><br /></li><li><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Breaks </span><a style="text-decoration: line-through;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27_law">Fitt's Law</a><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">! There is a one pixel hole in the maximized Safari at the top right corner. Moving the mouse to the top right corner and clicking closes the maximized window underneath Safari!</span> <span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0);">Fixed!</span><br /></li><li><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Complex font rendering broken e.g. </span><a style="text-decoration: line-through;" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/">Devanagari</a><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">.</span> <span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0);">Fixed!</span><br /></li></ol>Overall, Safari has shown some incredible progress on Windows! Good job Apple! Now if only it supported <a href="http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1865">Adblock Plus</a> or something like it.<div><br /></div><div>Another improvement in Safari 3.1 is a hidden preference to enable GDI+ based text rendering on Windows (ClearType!) More details <a href="http://webkit.org/blog/168/gdi-text-on-windows/">here</a>.</div>Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-87173693032650234362007-09-17T14:40:00.001-05:002007-09-20T15:50:17.489-05:00Shareware Worth Spending Money OnWhile I usually recommend free software to most of my readers, shareware, reasonable priced try-before-you-buy software, does occasionally produce some precious gems. Here's a list of shareware that is worth every penny you spend on it. If you are using some of these products, please consider buying them. Shareware authors deserve your money for their efforts as much as huge multinational corporations. (All prices accurate on date of post.)<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dbpoweramp-reference.htm">dbPoweramp Reference</a> ($28)<br />dbPoweramp is a suite of various audio utilities. They include a CD ripper, an audio player, a CD writer and a portable mp3 player manager. It's the dbPoweramp Reference CD ripper that is the standout utility though. It is the <a href="http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc-speed-test.htm">fastest</a> and <a href="http://www.dbpoweramp.com/secure-ripper.htm">most secure</a> CD ripper on the market and works even better than Exact Audio Copy. Best of all, it comes bundled with the latest version of the <a href="http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.php">Lame MP3 encoder</a> (which is the <a href="http://www.rjamorim.com/test/mp3-128/results.html">best available</a> currently) and uses AMG for meta-data and cover images.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.fineprint.com/products/fineprint/index.html">Fine Print</a> ($49.95)<br />Fine Print is a <a href="http://www.fineprint.com/support/fineprint/tutorial/index.html">universal print preview</a> program. It works as a virtual printer that intercepts print jobs before they reach your real printer. You can then combine 2, 4 or 8 sheets into one page, scale larger jobs to smaller paper sizes, convert colored text to black, skip graphics, adjust margins, print booklets and a lot of other capabilities.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.isobuster.com/">Isobuster</a> ($29.95)<br />Isobuster is a CD, DVD, HD-DVD and BD data recovery program. If you've ever felt the pain of losing valuable data due to a scratched or otherwise damaged CD this is the program to use. Other features include creating disc images, cue sheets etc.<br /><a href="http://www.kaspersky.com/"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Kaspersky Antivirus</span></a> ($59.95 for 1 year)<br />This the best antivirus software on the market. It's faster and more accurate than more popular programs like Norton and McAfee and unlike NOD32 has an excellent user interface. Best of all, it's often available almost for free due to constant rebates.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.popcap.com/">PopCap Games</a> ($19.95 each, 17 game pack for $89.95)<br />PopCap is the creator of simple, fun and addictive games like <a href="http://www.popcap.com/games/bejeweled2">Bejeweled</a>, <a href="http://www.popcap.com/games/free/chuzzle">Chuzzle</a> and <a href="http://www.popcap.com/games/zuma">Zuma</a>. While most of their games are available online, the downloadable full versions have more levels and more features. Procrastination was never so much fun!<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.smartftp.com/">SmartFTP</a> ($36.95)<br />File Transfer Protocol has been around for a long time and there are a lot of programs available which support it. Very few of them have the sheer usability of SmartFTP and that is what make this program worth the money.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm">SpinRite</a> ($89)<br />SpinRite is a magnetic data storage repair, recovery and maintenance program. It can repair and recover data from hard drives that have failed. It works independent of your operating system (and file system) and thus works for Windows NTFS and FAT, all Linux filesystems, Mac, floppy, Zip, Jaz and anything else stored magnetically. I've used it a few times and it certainly has helped.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/">Trillian</a> ($25)<br />Trillian is a chat program that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger and IRC. The paid version has support for Google Chat, video chatting and a <a href="http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/compare/">host of other features</a>. It has a slick skinnable interface and some really unique features like <a href="http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/features/index.php?select=6">Wikipedia integration</a>.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/">Ultramon</a> ($39.95)<br />If you have more than one monitor attached to your computer, Ultramon is a must have. It is a utility that lets you maximize applications across the entire desktop, extends the taskbar to the second monitor, manage wallpapers and screensavers for each monitor and <a href="http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/tour/">a lot more</a>.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.rarlab.com/">WinRAR</a> ($29)<br />Why would you purchase a file archiver when there are so many excellent free alternatives? Because it's <a href="http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/ArchiveTools/index.html">one of the fastest and has a competitive compression ratio</a>. And only WinRAR can create RAR archives which have unique features like recovery records, NTFS stream support, split volume support and strong encryption. Newer versions are multi-threaded and will work even faster on newer multicore CPUs.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://wordweb.info/">WordWeb</a> ($29)<br />WordWeb is an offline dictionary, thesaurus and word finder. Why do you need it in this day and age of ubiquitous internet access and Wikipedia? Because it's blazingly fast, can be accessed from anywhere in Windows using a Ctrl-Right Click, supports wildcard search (i.e. searching for yellow bird yields oriole!) and has built in Wikipedia support. <br /><br />And here's a list of more geeky software that's still worth the price.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.scootersoftware.com/">Beyond Compare</a> ($30)<br />Beyond Compare is the best two-way diff tool ever made. Use it and you'll forget you ever used anything else. If only it had three-way diff support.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm">PowerStrip</a> ($29.95)<br />The oddly named PowerStrip is display card tweaking utility that lets you do stuff like change refresh rates down to floating point precision.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://reaper.fm/">REAPER</a> ($39.95)<br />A multi-track audio editor from Justin Frankel, the creator of Winamp.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.wholetomato.com/">Visual Assist X</a> ($149)<br />This brings refactoring support to Visual Studio. Even Visual C++ 6.0! That makes the hefty price tag worth it.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.ntwind.com/software/winsnap.html">WinSnap</a> ($19.90)<br />A screenshot utility that supports transparency, drop shadows, PNG alpha and multi-object capture.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-80617620231966034232007-09-12T12:08:00.001-05:002007-09-14T15:30:03.607-05:00Hard Drive Failure: Various TypesRecently I've been around a lot of failing hard drives and a lot of different modes of failure. Here's the story of four different hard drives that died. (Note: File System Failure isn't really hard drive failure but it's an interesting story anyway.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">File System Failure</span><br /><br />A customer shipped back a Dell Precision workstation that had been running Windows XP SP2. This machine would sit on the factory floor and run our custom image analysis application, 24x7. It had started blue-screening on boot up.<br /><br />We powered it up and it blue screened. The error was <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/228888">STOP 0x00000024 NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM</a>. This meant that the ntfs.sys driver that Windows uses to access the NTFS file system had crashed. We decided to rule out physical bad sectors on the disk first.<br /><br />We booted into the Dell Utility Partition. Kudos to Dell here. This is very well made GUI utility with full mouse support and an extensive array of tests for all the hardware on the machine. We ran all the low-level disk tests and they indicated that at least physically, the disk was in great shape.<br /><br />Then we popped in a Windows XP CD and booted up to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_Console">Recovery Console</a>. Unfortunately, running <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHKDSK">chkdsk</a> from the recovery console caused the same crash again! Ouch! Then we decided to install it as a slave on a different machine. That machine crashed on boot up now!<br /><br />What was happening was this: the file system had become corrupted and it had become corrupted on such a way that it was causing ntfs.sys, file system driver, to crash every time it tried to access the hard drive.<br /><br />Finally, we booted using a freshly-burned copy of <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu 7.04</a>. The <a href="http://www.ntfs-3g.org/">NTFS drivers</a> in Ubuntu worked like charm and we were able to recover all the necessary data from the drive. Then we repartitioned and reformatted it and it worked fine from then on.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recoverable Disk Failure</span><br /><br />This happened to a laptop at work. Like most disk failures, this too began with an ominous crash. On rebooting the system was extremely slow and the drive started making the noises. It was the dreaded <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death">click of death</a>!<br /><br />Unfortunately, this Toshiba laptop didn't come with any recovery utilities and they wouldn't have helped in this case as they would have to run from the same physical drive which was making noises. Luckily, we have a copy of <a href="http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm">SpinRite</a> at work. I booted into SpinRite and started a Level 2 recovery. For the longest time, the drive kept making the clicking sounds and the progress indicator moved <span style="font-style: italic;">very </span>slowly indeed. And then just like that, after 4% the sounds disappeared and progress indicator moved at a much faster speed. SpinRite finished its check and didn't report any problems. I booted back into Windows and backed up all my data. The hard drive didn't give me any more trouble but I decided to replace it with a newer Seagate drive anyway.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Unrecoverable Disk Failure</span><br /><br />This happened to my own Compaq laptop. The system locked up while browsing. Thinking it was a typical Firefox hang, I forced a reboot. Sadly, my system never did reboot. I brought the laptop in to work and tried SpinRite again. No dice! The drive wasn't even recognized by the BIOS. This drive happened to be a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Deskstar">Death Star</a> and it <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death">clicked like one</a> by this point. (Well it was a TravelStar actually.)<br /><br />After trying for a couple hours, I decided to try some non-traditional remedies. I tried whacking the hard drive. Didn't work. I tried <a href="http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1374232">freezing the hard drive</a>. Didn't work. Finally, I gave up and <a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com/2006/11/breathing-life.html">started</a> <a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com/2006/11/breathing-life-part-2-applications.html">over</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Unrecoverable Disk Failure with a twist</span><br /><br />This happened today on Dell Precision workstation that we use on our lab floor for prototyping. I came in to work in the morning and noticed that the machine had bluescreened with a failure in ftdisk.sys. I tried to reboot and the machine stalled saying it couldn't find a hard drive. And started making clicking sounds. (Yes, this was a DeskStar too.)<br /><br />Learning from my past experiences, I decided to jump straight to SpinRite. I rebooted, pushed the CD tray button, popped in the CD and tried to press F12 to get me to the boot menu. No dice, the machine returned with a keyboard failure. I tried rebooting a few times but the problem continued. Then I turned it off, removed all extraneous connections to the machines (cables going to custom frame-grabber boards etc.), changed the keyboard and mouse and rebooted again. Keyboard failure. This was a very special machine wasn't it?<br /><br />I then opened up the machine and removed the master drive which was failing. I put it in a different machine (an HP) as a master drive, popped in the SpinRite CD and tried again. Again, keyboard failure. There was something wrong with the circuitry on this drive that was causing the motherboard to return with a keyboard failure! At this point, I gave the bad news to my boss and basically set the drive aside and put all the open machines back together.<br /><br />Then after lunch, on a whim, I decided to try again. But this time instead of pressing any buttons after rebooting, I just waited it out. And went to get a coffee. When I returned, the hard drive had stopped making noises and SpinRite had started. I ran a Level 2 scan and it finished with no problems. It's like the problem just hadn't happened at all. I told my boss the good news and backed up all the data onto a different hard drive. We're not taking any more chances with it. It gets replaced with a brand new drive tomorrow.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lessons Learned</span><br /><ul><li>Hard drives fail. You might just get lucky and get all your data back. Or you might not get anything back. </li><li>Back up regularly. External USB drives are pretty cheap right now. And there's some pretty good free <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_software">backup</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_synchronization">software</a> available. Also, use hard drive manufacturer tools regularly to run self tests. (e.g <a href="http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools/">SeaTools</a> by Seagate, <a href="http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm?linkto=QL#DFT">Drive Fitness Test</a> by Hitachi and <a href="http://support.wdc.com/download/downloadxml.asp">Data Lifeguard Tools</a> by Western Digital.) If your laptop BIOS and hard drive support it then turn on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring%2C_Analysis%2C_and_Reporting_Technology#Software">SMART monitoring</a>. </li><li>Keep a copy of <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a> or some <a href="http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page">other</a> live CDs and <a href="http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Tools:Data_Recovery">tools</a> handy. You never know when Windows will decide to repeatedly reboot. </li><li>If you are working with a lot of machines and a lot of drives, consider investing in SpinRite. For $89 it's a really good deal. </li></ul>Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-13336564099552768642007-08-31T15:21:00.001-05:002007-08-31T16:14:37.766-05:00Useful FreewareHere's a list of some new freeware that I found useful.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://reptils.free.fr/">WinSplit Revolution</a><br />An intuitive, keyboard-based window arranging utility. Essential if you have a large widescreen monitor. (I just got a Dell 2407-HC at work!)<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.asp">TeraCopy</a><br />A Windows file copying tool that supports pause-resume and error recovery.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.dopdf.com/">doPDF</a><br />A PDF printer for Windows that <span style="font-style: italic;">doesn't</span> depend on <a href="http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/%7Eghost/">Ghostscript</a>. A leaner (1.29MB only!) and faster replacement for <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/">PDFCreator</a>.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.asap-utilities.com/">ASAP Utilities</a><br />An Excel add-in that lets you do stuff like deselect cells from selection, apply formula to selected cells and a lot more.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.recuva.com/">Recuva</a><br />A tiny file unerase utility. Leave copy on a USB stick so you can run it without having to install.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-25346622875115839712007-06-12T17:11:00.000-05:002007-06-12T17:42:18.558-05:0010 Things Broken In Apple Safari on WindowsApple released <a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/download/">Safari 3 Beta</a> for Windows with a lot of fanfare. Unfortunately they did a lot of things wrong. Other people have already written extensively about <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000884.html">the lack of ClearType support</a> and crashes. Here are 10 other things that Apple did wrong.<br /><ol><li>Can't add custom search engines. <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:4">Firefox</a>, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx?dcsref=http://runonce.msn.com/runonce2.aspx">IE7</a> and <a href="http://www.opera.com/support/search/view/351/">Opera</a> all support this.</li><li>Double clicking on the tab bar to create a new tab doesn't work. Works in Firefox, IE7 and Opera. (Neither is there a New Tab button that I can drag to the tab bar.)</li><li>Ctrl-Enter in the address bar doesn't autocomplete to www. .com. Neither does Shift-Enter to www. .net nor Ctrl-Shift-Enter to www. .org. Firefox supports all three and IE7 and Opera support the first. Opera can be customized to support all three.</li><li>Middle clicking on a tab doesn't close it. Works on Firefox, IE7 and Opera. Perhaps because Macs don't have middle buttons? (Opera's problematic close behavior has been <a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-opera-makes-me-weep.html">blogged about before</a>.)</li><li>Can't close the last tab. You can in Firefox and Opera.</li><li>Grabs IE and Firefox bookmarks by default but doesn't display them in the Bookmarks menu. Doesn't grab Opera bookmarks.</li><li>Doesn't use the <a href="http://feedicons.com/">standard RSS icon</a>. Firefox, IE7 and Opera all do.</li><li>Doesn't follow Windows UI conventions. Cannot resize using any border.</li><li>Breaks <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27_law">Fitt's Law</a>! There is a one pixel hole in the maximized Safari at the top right corner. Moving the mouse to the top right corner and clicking closes the maximized window underneath Safari!</li><li>Complex font rendering broken e.g. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/">Devanagari</a></li></ol>(As an aside, here's a fancy nickname to use for Safari, in the same vein as Internet Exploder, Mozilla Firesux and Crapera -- Apple Suckari!)Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-20574192714226234132007-04-18T11:36:00.000-05:002007-05-17T10:48:59.750-05:00Why Opera makes me weep<a href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera 9.20</a> is out and it features another great innovation from the Opera developers: <a href="http://portal.opera.com/startup/index.dml?tip=speeddial">Speed Dial</a>.<br /><br />And yet, in spite of Opera being faster, leaner and slicker than Firefox, I'm still forced to use Firefox as my default browser. Let's explore why:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Broken Tabbed Browsing</span><br />Opera fanatics love to point out that Opera was the first mainstream browser to feature tabbed browsing. Unfortunately Opera's tabbed browsing model Just Doesn't Work™. Here's how I use tabbed browsing in Firefox (or IE7 for that matter.)<br />1. Visit Digg.com<br />2. Scan through the front page and middle click on the stories I'm interested in to them open them in background tabs.<br />3. Select the tab for the first story I had opened and read the story.<br />4. Close the tab by clicking on the little X on the tab.<br />5. Firefox takes me to the next tab i.e. the next story I had wanted to read. IE7 does the same. <span>Opera unfortunately takes me back to the Digg.com front page</span><span> i.e. the parent tab</span>. Which is downright stupid.<br /><br />Sadly there is no real way to fix this. You can install a custom button which does "Close page & Switch to next page", you can change the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F4 to do the same, you can even set up a mouse gesture to do this. But for some stupid reason you cannot assign this to the little red X on each tab or even to the middle-click on each tab. And I'm so used to browsing this way that change is not possible. In fact, I shouldn't have to change. <span>Programs should change to behave like users expect, users shouldn't have to change their behaviors for programs.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lack of a "Safari" style RSS reader</span><br />The Opera RSS reader uses the each-RSS-item-is-an-email model. I prefer the Safari (or IE7) each-feed-is-a-rendered-page model. Firefox let's me chose either using <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/77">appropriate</a> <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/629">extensions</a>. (I have to admit that this isn't that much of a problem since the arrival of web-based RSS readers like <a href="http://www.pageflakes.com/">PageFlakes</a> and <a href="http://www.netvibes.com/">NetVibes</a>.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lack of an easy way to emulate IE/Firefox keyboard shortcuts</span><br />"Ctrl +" for zooming in, "Ctrl -" for zooming out, "Ctrl 0" for zooming 100%, "Ctrl Enter" for "www. .com" completion, "Shift Enter" for "www. .net" completion, "Ctrl Shift Enter" for "www. .org" completion, entering search terms in the URL bar for an I'm Feeling Lucky search. This is stuff I'm used to. I'm aware that I can customize Opera to do all this, but perhaps there should be a simple one-click way of doing this. Again, <span>programs should change to behave like users expect, users shouldn't have to change their behaviors for programs.<br /></span><br />That's all the rants I have for Opera. This a huge improvement over <a href="http://gadling.blogspot.com/2005/09/final-word-on-opera.html">my earlier list</a>, and I can see that Opera is now a lot closer to being the perfect browser. All Firefox will have to do to be the perfect browser is to be as fast and as memory efficient as Opera. Tough order.<br /><span></span><script type="text/javascript"><br />digg_url = 'http://digg.com/software/Why_Opera_makes_me_weep';<br /></script><br /><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-92159977839268795642007-03-20T16:24:00.000-05:002007-03-20T16:52:01.934-05:00RIAs and a hidden treatRIA is short for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Internet_Application">Rich Internet Application</a> which are supposed to be the Next Big Thing™. And I downloaded my first one yesterday. It's the <a href="http://firstlook.nytimes.com/?category_name=times%20reader">New York Times Reader</a>. Here's some information about it:<br /><ul><li>It downloads the latest edition of the New York Times for offline reading. </li><li>The biggest difference from the New York Times website is the high quality of the fonts and excellent overall reading experience. It feels like reading a real paper. </li><li>There's a fantastic full-screen mode. </li><li>It uses Windows Presentation Foundation, which is a part of the Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework. If you haven't already installed it, it's a <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10CC340B-F857-4A14-83F5-25634C3BF043&displaylang=en">50MB download</a>. Luckily you only have to do it once. If you're running Windows Vista you already have it.<br /></li><li>It's in beta and free service expires on March 27th after which you pay $15 per month.</li><li>There are annoying animated ads. This is my only real criticism of the whole thing. I don't mind static ads, but the animated ones are really annoying.</li></ul>Though it's sad that the free version reader will expire on the 27th, I was quickly able to find similar readers from the <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/newsreader/">Seattle Post-Intelligencer</a>, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/newsreader/">Forbes</a> and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/eReader.html?in_article_id=436404&in_page_id=1992">The Daily Mail UK</a>, all of which are completely free (minus some soul-sucking registration.)<br /><br />I expect the RIA market to quickly heat up, now that WPF is beginning to take a hold and Adobe has just released the first <a href="http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/">Apollo runtime</a>.<br /><br />Speaking of Adobe, I was poking around on their website and noticed that you can download a <a href="http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html">standalone version of Flash Player</a> which includes debugging capabilities. Very useful for analyzing or just playing those downloaded SWFs without having to start a browser.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-12064293949531276202007-03-02T17:34:00.000-06:002008-11-15T06:03:58.352-06:00Explorer Breadcrumbs<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBcFKO1qqA1qgede2munyUh3uXu_cUPaTElajVffe2Zt1chiCsmmG1gfEGXXxyixqtZwfx1eefOIAZevGhc8w2RoLYrnF17hhHl_afozLhZVllvwa5rcBgZkZgDxnbBMbuWwEM/s1600-h/explorer+breadcrumbs.png"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBcFKO1qqA1qgede2munyUh3uXu_cUPaTElajVffe2Zt1chiCsmmG1gfEGXXxyixqtZwfx1eefOIAZevGhc8w2RoLYrnF17hhHl_afozLhZVllvwa5rcBgZkZgDxnbBMbuWwEM/s400/explorer+breadcrumbs.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5037475125818616850" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Windows only: Donationware program <a href="http://minimalist.com/docs/ExplorerBreadcrumbs/">Explorer Breadcrumbs</a> adds a breadcrumb toolbar to XP's Explorer windows similar to what's currently available in Vista.<br /><br />Hat tip to <a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/windows-explorer/download-of-the-day-explorer-breadcrumbs-windows-240965.php">LifeHacker</a>!Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-32366329480130917742006-12-12T11:55:00.000-06:002006-12-12T12:08:14.137-06:00Java SE 6 Now!Sun just released <a href="http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp">Java SE 6</a> and you should download it now!<br /><br />Why?<br /><ul><li><a href="http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/07/26/lcdtext.html">Subpixel antialiased fonts</a> - Finally, Java applications won't look like crap</li><li><a href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/chet/archive/2005/04/swing_update_no_1.html">Gray Rect Fix</a> - Finally, Java applications will <span style="font-style: italic;">feel </span>faster</li><li><a href="http://weblogs.java.net/blog/chet/archive/2006/02/these_are_some.html">And many more</a>...</li></ul>While you're at it you could also uninstall previous versions. (I wish Sun would at least ask during installation if you want to uninstall previous versions...)Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-11193118855776623322006-12-01T17:14:00.000-06:002006-12-11T15:19:24.200-06:00Books to buy when visiting IndiaHopefully my India trip will get scheduled without a problem. Here's the books I plan to buy when I'm there. (Thank God for cheapo Indian editions!)<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393062457/"><img src="http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0393062457.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_V38639758_.jpg" /> A Random Walk Down Wall Street</a> by Burton Gordon Malkiel (Edition 9?)</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Second-Steve-McConnell/dp/0735619670/"><img src="http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0735619670.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg" /> Code Complete</a> by Steve McConnell (Edition 2)</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Object-Oriented-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633612/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0201633612.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg" /> Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software</a> by Erich Gamma et al. (Edition 1)</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Effective-C%2B%2B-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computing/dp/0321334876/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0321334876.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_V66386703_.jpg" /> Effective C++</a> / <a href="http://www.amazon.com/More-Effective-C%2B%2B-Improve-Programs/dp/020163371X/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/020163371X.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_V65785119_.jpg" /> More Effective C++</a> / <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Effective-STL-Specific-Standard-Template/dp/0201749629/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0201749629.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_V34028406_.jpg" /> Effective STL</a> by Scott Meyers (Edition 3 / Edition 1 / Edition 1) - I'm not sure buying three books would be worth it. Maybe I'll just buy the first one.</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Modern-C%2B%2B-Design-Programming-Patterns/dp/0201704315/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0201704315.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_V34027761_.jpg" /> Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied</a> by Andrei Alexandrescu (Edition 1)</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley/dp/0201657880/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0201657880.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_V34027562_.jpg" /> Programming Pearls</a> by Jon Louis Bentley (Edition 2)</li></ul>Books for which Indian editions don't exist but I wish they did:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Computer-Graphics-Second-Ed/dp/1568812698/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/1568812698.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg" /> Fundamentals of Computer Graphics</a> by Peter Shirley et al. (Edition 2)</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Multiple-View-Geometry-Computer-Vision/dp/0521540518/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0521540518.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_.jpg" /> Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision</a> by Richard Hartley, Andrew Zisserman (Edition 2)</li><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Improving-Design-Existing-Code/dp/0201485672/"><img src="http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0201485672.01._SCTHUMBZZZ_V34029126_.jpg" /> Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code</a> by Martin Fowler et al. (Edition 1)</li></ul>Comments and recommendations welcome.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-35978223610117427552006-11-24T02:42:00.000-06:002007-09-04T12:11:12.822-05:00Breathing life (part 2) - ApplicationsHere's a list of applications that I've installed so far. This list will grow as I add more stuff. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Update: List was updated on Sept 4, 2007 - some entries were deprecated and some URLs were fixed.</span><br /><br />(Ubuntu blocker: Program that prevent me from switching to Ubuntu Linux completely)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Archivers</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-Zip</a> - For 7z, zip and all other archives<br /></li><li> <a href="http://www.rarlab.com/">WinRAR </a>- For rar archive creation and fast decompression<br /></li></ul> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Video Tools</span><br /><ul><li> <a href="http://www.avisynth.org/">AviSynth </a>- Versatile frameserver <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.divx.com/divx/webplayer/"> DivX Web Player</a> - For watching videos at <a href="http://stage6.divx.com/">Stage6.com</a></li><li><a href="http://www.headbands.com/gspot/">GSpot Codec Information Appliance</a> - For codec identification including identification of special codec features like GMC and QPel <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli"> Media Player Classic</a> - For watching most videos<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.apple.com/au/quicktime/download/standalone.html">QuickTime</a> - Just for the codecs. MOVs are watched using MPC which uses the codecs<br /></li><li> <a href="http://www.videolan.org/">VideoLAN</a> - For watching anything that Media Player Classic fails at<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.virtualdub.org/"> VirtualDub</a> - AVI creation <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/"> VirtualDubMod</a> - More AVI creation <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.videohelp.com/tools/XviD_Codec"> XviD</a> - MPEG4 codec par excellence <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">(URL updated)</span><br /></li></ul> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Audio Tools</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.burrrn.net/"> Burrrn</a> - Convenient CD creation with CD-Text <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/"> Exact Audio Copy</a> - Ripping CDs (This is going to take such a long time!) <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.foobar2000.org/"> foobar2000</a> - Playing and managing music <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html">Lame</a> - mp3 encoding</li><li><a href="http://www.last.fm/tools/downloads/">Last.fm</a> - Music playback statistics and recommendations<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.rarewares.org/others.html">WaveGain</a> - For normalizing volume before burning CDs for the car<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.winamp.com/"> Winamp</a> - Playing and managing music when I'm bored of FB2K <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li></ul> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Download Management</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.flashget.com/en/download.htm"> FlashGet</a> - This was recently made adware free and now I can't recommend it enough. (Be sure to get the Classic Version v1.73)<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">(URL updated)</span><span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.shemes.com/">GrabIt</a> - Usenet</li><li><a href="http://www.quickpar.org.uk/">QuickPar</a> - PAR2, SFV and MD5 verification. If they add SHA this would be a complete solution</li><li><a href="http://www.utorrent.com/"> µTorrent</a> - Programs like this prevent me from switching to Ubuntu <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li></ul> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Security</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.gnupg.org/"> GNU Privacy Guard</a> - Used solely for verifying downloaded binaries<br /></li><li><a href="http://tor.eff.org/"> Tor</a> - Anonymous browsing for fun and profit<br /></li><li><a href="http://vidalia-project.net/"> Vidalia</a> - Anonymous browsing for fun and profit</li><li><a href="http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/%7Etwoaday/index.html">WinPT</a> - GUI front-end for GNU Privacy Guard<br /></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Instant Messaging</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.google.com/talk/"> Google Talk</a> - For the burgeoning number of contacts in GMail and Orkut<br /></li><li><a href="http://messenger.msn.com/">Windows Live Messenger</a> - My primary IM and also because it rocks. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Update: Not my primary IM any more.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span><span><br /></span></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Browser</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">Adobe Flash Player</a> - The only indispensable browser plugin</li><li><a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/"> Mozilla Firefox</a> - My primary browser<br /></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">CD Burning</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://ww2.nero.com/enu/index.html"> Nero Suite</a> - This came with my external DVD burner. Useful but very close to being classified as bloatware<br /></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Imaging</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay">CDisplay</a> - Simple little image viewer that supports reading Zip and Rar archives<br /></li><li><a href="http://picasa.google.com/"> Picasa</a> - Fantastic image management software<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.getpaint.net/">Paint.NET</a> - Fantastic image processing software. Goodbye GIMP forever. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Ubuntu blocker)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.xnview.com/">XnView</a> - For everything that Picasa doesn't do, like slightly more advanced image processing, convenient wallpaper resizing and working well without a database</li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Utilities</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> - PDF viewing. <a href="http://ardownload.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/8.x/8.1/enu/AdbeRdr810_en_US.exe">Version 8</a> is fast as hell. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0); font-style: italic;">(URL updated)</span></li><li><a href="http://www.ccleaner.com/"> CCleaner</a> - For occasional registry and disk cleanups. Hopefully I won't have to use this too often</li><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx"> Command Here PowerToy</a> - When Explorer doesn't cut it</li><li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/"> PDF Creator</a> - For printing to PDF from any Windows app.<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"></span><br /></li><li><a href="http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/">PureText</a> - For pasting plain text instead of rich text without the trip to Notepad<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx"> Sysinternals Utilities</a></li><ul><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/Autoruns.mspx">Autoruns</a> - For monitor and controlling startup activity</li><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/contig.mspx">Contig</a> - For defragmenting single files which the Windows defragmenter cannot handle<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/PageDefrag.mspx">Page Defrag</a> - For defragmenting unmovable files</li><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx">Process Explorer</a> - For monitoring running processes and much more</li><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/processmonitor.mspx">Process Monitor</a> - For monitoring running processes for thread, file and registry activity</li><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/TcpView.mspx">TCPView</a> - For monitoring open TCP and UDP connections</li></ul><li><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx"> TweakUI</a> - For those tweaks that make Windows liveable</li><li><a href="http://windirstat.info/">WinDirStat</a> - Disk usage analysis using tree maps. More polished solution than the pioneer <a href="http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/">SequoiaView</a><br /></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Editors</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.pnotepad.org/"> Programmer's Notepad</a> - When you need a kitchen knife<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.vim.org/"> Vim</a> - When you need a battle axe<br /></li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;">Antivirus / Antispyware</span><br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.kaspersky.com/">Kaspersky</a> - After watching computer after computer at work turn to molasses after installing Norton Antivirus 2006, I decided to look elsewhere. I was considering <a href="http://www.activevirusshield.com/">Active Virus Shield</a>, a stripped-down AOL-branded freeware version of Kaspersky before I got Kaspersky 6 for free (after rebates) at CompUSA. It's fantastic!</li></ul>Interesting, everything in that list except Nero and Kaspersky is open source or closed source freeware.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-75145123777187481502006-11-24T01:53:00.000-06:002006-11-24T03:26:35.232-06:00Breathing life (part 1 - Setup)The only upside of my recent misfortune was the opportunity to start with a clean slate. I bought a 100GB Seagate hard drive in lieu of my Hitachi Travelstar 60GB one, which shall be recycled shortly for <a href="http://www.dansdata.com/magnets.htm">rare earth magnets</a>. What follows is a step by step procedure of how I went from a brand new hard drive to blogging from the old laptop again.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Install it</span><br />Unscrew laptop hard drive enclosure. Unscrew old 2.5 inch hard drive from mount. Carefully, carefully, remove the cable and jumper from the pins. Unpack new hard drive. Carefully attach cable and jumper (jumper in the cable select position). Screw on new hard drive to mount. Screw on mount to the laptop. (I wish I had taken a few pictures of the procedure, but I was just a bit too eager to get it over with.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Partition and format it</span><br />Boot up to the Seagate utility CD. Create partition. I had originally planned to create multiple partitions and install Ubuntu on one of them, but then decided against it. I'll do the Ubuntu thing later. One partition, formatted as NTFS. Boot count: 1<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Install Windows XP</span><br />Make sure laptop is not connected to Internet. Boot up to the Windows XP SP1 CD that came with the laptop. Install Windows XP. This took about half an hour, with a couple of prompts and one reboot. One annoying part of this install was that the setup files were not copied to the hard drive. So manually copy the i386 folder from the install CD to C:\ and change the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Windows\Current Version\Setup to point to C:\. The right way to do this would have been to boot with the install CD and do a winnt32.exe /makelocalsource. Boot count: 3<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. Install drivers</span><br />At this point the device manager showed a couple of nasty yellow question marks indicating lack of drivers. Pop in the drivers CD that came with the laptop and install all the drivers. Suddenly everything comes back to life. Strangely enough, I didn't need to reboot at this point.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. Turn on the firewall</span><br />Windows XP SP1 ships with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Firewall">Internet Connection Firewall</a>, an inbound firewall which is switched off by default. Turn on the firewall for both the wireless and wired connection.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. Update Windows</span><br />Start Internet Explorer and connect to Microsoft Update. Round one had almost 64 different updates not including Service Pack 2. This was followed by Service Pack 2. Then the two more rounds of updating which added Internet Explorer 7 and also all the optional updates like .NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, Windows Media Player 10, DirectX 9.0c etc. Boot count: 7<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7. Install Microsoft Office 2003</span><br />Lucky me, I bought a copy of this as a student with a perpetual license for a really discounted rate. A complete install takes about 10 minutes and 950MB. This is followed by another round of Microsoft Update. Boot count: 8<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8. Install everything else</span><br />Now install all and sundry other applications.<br /><br />Final boot count: 8Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1155003487805808312006-08-07T21:06:00.000-05:002006-12-04T02:21:20.290-06:00Free CD utilitiesWhile applications like Nero Burning ROM and Sonic Easy CD Creator are the Swiss army knives of CD burning and reading, here's a list of small utilities which do only a few things each but do them well.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://www.burrrn.net/?page_id=4">Burrrn</a></strong><br />Burrrn burns audio CDs. That's all it does but does it so well that it deserves a download. It can decode mp3, aac, ogg and more, it has built in support for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain">ReplayGain</a> so you can burn CDs that will not fluctuate wildly in volume from one track to the next and it creates CDs with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text">CD-Text</a> so that you can see the track details on most modern CD players.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/">Exact Audio Copy</a></strong><br />Exact Audio Copy is a well-respected program which can rip audio from damaged CDs which other CD rippers like iTunes and Winamp can't handle. While the interface isn't quite as intuitive as the competition, the startup configuration wizard is pretty good. The <a href="http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC">HydrogenAudio wiki page</a> has some great documentation on how to correctly configure and use it. If you really want to be geeky and ensure that you are getting perfectly copied CDs you can download the <a href="http://www.accuraterip.com/">AccurateRip dll</a> and compare your results with hundreds of other geeks who submit their results to the AccurateRip site.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://www.imgburn.com/">ImgBurn</a></strong><br />ImgBurn burns <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_image">CD or DVD images</a>. While this might seem a trivial ability as most other CD burning software can do this, ImgBurn can handle many possible disk image formats apart from the usual ISO and has many other advanced features especially for DVD video burning. The recently released version 2.0 also has the capability of creating disk images from files stored on disk.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://www.isobuster.com/">Isobuster</a></strong><br />Isobuster is to data CDs what Exact Audio Copy is to audio CDs. This program can successfully recover data from scratched, incorrectly burned and otherwise defective CDs. As an added bonus you can also use it to mount disk images and extract data from them. Quite useful if you need just a few specific files from a disk image and don't want to waste a CD burning it. Isobuster has a shareware pro-version ($25) which adds data recovery from UDF CDs.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1153151619729433522006-07-17T10:52:00.000-05:002006-11-16T12:14:00.862-06:00Indian gov blocks Blogspot, Typepad, Geocities blogs!In any case, there are ways to get around the block which include the following:<br /><ul><li>Use the <a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com/atom.xml">Atom feed</a> via a <a href="http://www.netvibes.com/">web</a> <a href="http://www.live.com/">based</a> <a href="http://www.start.com/">RSS</a> <a href="http://my.yahoo.com">reader</a></li><li><a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/">Coral Cache</a></li><li><a href="http://pkblogs.com/interwebsurfin">PkBlogs</a><br /></li><li><a href="http://world.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=en_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Finterwebsurfin.blogspot.com">Babel Fish Proxy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en%7Cen&u=interwebsurfin.blogspot.com">Google Translate Proxy</a> (Though I'm not sure this is working.)</li></ul>Of course, all this is contingent on being able to read this post in the first place :(<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Update: </span>Apparently the blocking is not related to the Bombay blasts but rather to curb the spread of religious propaganda! This means the ban probably will not be lifted anytime soon. On the other hand, assuming that the ISPs have been asked to block specific blogs on blogspot, it would be up to the ISPs to ensure that they don't block the domain blogspot.com.<br /><br />Visit <a href="http://chennai.metblogs.com/archives/2006/07/bloggers_blocked_across_india_3.phtml"> Chennai MetBlogs</a> and <a href="http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?category=National&slug=Thousands+of+bloggers+blocked+out&id=90350">NDTV</a> for more details.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Update 2:</span> Blog blockade will be lifted in 48 hours says <a href="http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/19blogs.htm">Rediff</a>. Quoting from Rediff: <blockquote>"He [Amitabh Singhal] acknowledged that some ISPs -- he insisted it wasn't all -- mistook the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) notice and blocked entire blog domains, adding that it was technically feasible to block a sub-domain and leave others still accessible."</blockquote><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Last Update: </span>So the domain level block on blogspot.com is gone but <a href="http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=18954">the block on a few specific sites remain</a>. This makes us better than China and Pakistan but put us firmly with the likes of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Germany#Freedom_of_Speech">Germany</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom">UK</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_France">France</a>. I guess we're not quite up there with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_States">the US</a> yet when it comes to freedom of speech. But I have hope.<br /><br />(Cross posted to <a href="http://gadling.blogspot.com">Hob's Zeitgeist</a>)Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1150677464601119502006-06-18T19:36:00.000-05:002006-12-04T02:22:23.464-06:00Bend Word to Your WillEverybody loves to hate Microsoft Word. That includes famous people like <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1631430,00.asp">Dvorak</a>, <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/04/08/25/0155251.shtml">Slashdot folks</a>, <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/4/152255/3982">Kuro5hin folks</a> and <a href="http://www.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html">people who dislike WYSIWYG</a> in general. Some of the criticism's that Word faces include:<br /><ul><li>Lack of separation of content from presentation</li><br /> <li>Bloat and</li><br /> <li>Clippy and all clippy-like behavior</li></ul>I have a theory that people love to hate Word because they don't understand it well enough. After all Word seems easy enough. It opens to a seemingly easy to understand interface. There's the text area where you write things, there's the fonts tool, the indentation tool and all sorts of other sundry tools which fit into the mental model that people have about Word. It's just that the interface seems to be boneheaded if you try to type anything more complicated than a simple letter. <br /><br />The problem is that Word is designed to be easy if all you are interested in doing is writing a simple letter. To do anything more complicated you have to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rtfm">RTFM</a>. Just like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docbook">DocBook</a>, just like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX">LaTeX</a>, just like all the supposed alternatives to Word. Of course, if you decide to learn Latex or DocBook, you <em>have</em> to read the manual, you won't be able to do anything at all if you don't. Word on the other hand seems to bring out I-don't-need-to-ask-for-directions behavior in people. Especially in highly technically savvy people. So if you're a geek or just someone who's lost a lot of hair over Word, here's what you should do:<br /><br />First bookmark the <a href="http://word.mvps.org/index.html">Word MVP Site</a>. You're going to need to look-up everything that's over there time and again. <br /><br />Begin by reading the <a href="http://word.mvps.org/Tutorials/index.htm">Tutorials</a> and <a href="http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General.htm">FAQs</a>. Make sure you don't miss:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/">Shauna Kelly's gentle introduction to Word</a>,</li><br /> <li><a href="http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/UsingOLView.htm">Using Outline View</a>,</li><br /> <li><a href="http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm">Styles</a>, which is a part of the larger Creating a Template and </li><br /> <li><a href="http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WorkWithSections.htm">Working with sections</a></li></ul>Follow up by downloading and reading <a href="http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html">Bend Word to Your Will</a>.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1150332849067975362006-06-14T19:52:00.000-05:002006-12-04T02:21:45.546-06:00Tiny Extensions Which Should Be Merged Into FirefoxFirefox while usually very intuitive, has some strange gaps in functionality which make certain tasks unnecessarily difficult. Here's a list of tiny extensions which fix it. In alphabetical order:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1280/">Clear Private Data Button</a></span><br />Adds a button that lets you clear private data. This is the same functionality as the menu item <span style="font-style: italic;">Tools -> Clear Private Data...</span> Useful for compulsive cookie clearer's like me.<br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/ClearPrivateData.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/240/">Context Search</a></span><br />Lets you right click on a selection and search for it using any of the installed search engines instead of the currently selected ones. (Tip: You can add many useful engines from the <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/search-engines.php">Search Engine Page</a> and <a href="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/">Mycroft</a>.)<br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/ContextSearch.0.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/65/">Paste and Go</a></span><br />Steals the feature from Opera. Lets you right click the address bar and <span style="font-style: italic;">Paste and Go</span> instead of Paste and manually clicking the Go button. As a bonus also adds a <span style="font-style: italic;">Paste and Search</span> item if you right click on the search bar. (Yes, we know we're lazy!)<br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/PasteAndGo.png" alt="" border="0" /> <img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/PasteAndSearch.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1172/">Searchbar Autosizer</a></span><br />Automatically resizes the search bar depending upon length of the text typed in.<br /><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/SearchBarAutosizer.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.pikey.me.uk/mozilla/?addon=sb">Search Button</a></span><br />Adds a button just like the Go button to the right of the search bar. Useful when there's already some text in the search bar but you don't want to take your hand off the mouse to hit Enter. (We really are very lazy!)<br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/SearchButton.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1563/">Search Plugin Hacks</a></span><br />Adds a very useful feature. Lets you delete search plugins. Just right click on a search plugin you want to remove and delete it.<br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/SearchPluginHacks.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/181/">Translate</a></span><br />Lets you translate entire webpages via an item in the Tools menu and snippets of selected text using the content menu. Translation is done using <a href="http://babelfish.altavista.com/">Babelfish</a>.<br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/TranslateContext.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br />(After installing the Clear Private Data Button and the Search Button you'll have to add them to your toolbar manually. Do this by right clicking on the toolbar and selecting <span style="font-style: italic;">Customize...</span> and dragging the buttons to the appropriate locations on the toolbar.)<br /><br />Quite a lot of the functionality that these extensions bring is going to be a part of Firefox 2, so they'll be unnecessary then.<br /><br />Tags: Firefox, freewareHob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1149821666206444932006-06-08T21:53:00.000-05:002006-12-04T02:22:07.409-06:00Making Explorer Do The Right ThingWindows Explorer while usually well behaved, has some odd quirks which make things unnecessarily complicated.<br /><br />For instance, unbelievable as this may seem, there's no way to sort files using extension. There is instead a generic "Type" which lumps all kinds of files together depending upon the application they are registered to.<br /><br />In the folder below, there seems to be no way of sorting to differentiate between the mp3 and ogg files.<br /><br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/Before.png" alt="" border="0" /><br /><br />The solution is to install this <a href="http://www.xrayz.co.uk/download/?page=free">Explorer extension</a>. It neatly adds a "Ext" column. (In the Explorer menu, select "View -> Details" to popup the dialog below.)<br /><br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/SelectExt.png" border="0" alt="" /><br /><br />Now we can sort by extension, and all is well in the world!<br /><br /><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/After.png" border="0" alt="" /><br /><br />This sort of thing also strengthens my theory that Microsoft is filled with excellent programmers (They designed a file browser so beautifully that you can write an extension for it with relative ease) but overeager user interface designers. This problem should never have happened in the first place.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1149402128082281202006-06-04T00:38:00.002-05:002006-11-24T03:27:45.400-06:00The Search For The Second Best Coding FontSeeing as how the best coding font <a href="http://interwebsurfin.blogspot.com/2006/05/best-coding-font.html">has been found</a>, grumpy coders who don't like having anything to do with number one are busy <a href="http://www.lowing.org/fonts/">looking for the second best</a>. The top three contenders are:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Andale Mono</span>: Designed and released to the web and the removed by Microsoft, it's currently <a href="http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/">available at CoreFonts</a>.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/1600/AndaleMono.png"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/AndaleMonoCrop2.png" alt="" border="0" /></a></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Monaco</span>: By Apple, never intended for us poor PC folk, the enterprising can find it using Google.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/1600/Monaco.png"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/1600/MonacoCrop.png" alt="" border="0" /></a></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Consolas</span>: Brand new font by Microsoft, with hinting only for ClearType, so it works well only if you have subpixel rendering on. Available as a <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&displaylang=en">giant 4MB installer</a>, which is strange as the font itself is about 250KB.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/1600/Consolas.png"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/1600/ConsolasCrop.png" alt="" border="0" /></a></li></ul>Honestly, I would have just continued to use good old Lucida Console, if only it didn't have the dreaded 0O (zero - oh) problem.Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1148615841276978632006-05-25T22:40:00.000-05:002006-11-24T03:28:07.377-06:00The Best Coding FontA good coding font has a lot of requirements:<br /><ul><li>Differences in O and 0 (that's o and zero)</li><li>Differences in l, I, 1 and | (that's L, i, 1 and the pipe)</li><li>Letter and line spacing not to cramped and not too spaced apart</li><li>And in these days of internationalized coding, a large character set</li></ul>Well, the Gnome foundation released the <a href="http://www.gnome.org/fonts/">Bitstream Vera</a> fonts which contain the excellent Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. <a href="http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/">DejaVu</a> fonts are based on the Bitstream Vera fonts but add more characters.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Here's a screenshot:</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/1600/DejaVuFontsMono.png"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7228/293/400/DejaVuFontsMonoCrop2.png" alt="" border="0" /></a>Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28756738.post-1148606171807099332006-05-25T20:15:00.000-05:002006-11-24T03:28:38.612-06:00GapminderHere's a slick flash application from Google which let's you visualize all kinds of data about all the world's countries. See how India's military budget is almost the same percentage of GDP as the US military budget but how we have only 85 phones per 1000 people as compared to 1223 in the US.<br /><br />Best of all, if you notice the slider at the bottom, you'll notice that the chart can be viewed over a period of decades starting from 1975.<br /><br />Fascinating!Hob Gadlinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02577403659485039737noreply@blogger.com0