When My Web Was Young
Just a few minutes ago, I upgraded this site to the latest version of WordPress: version 3.0, release candidate 1. This means that it’s not officially released, but it’s no longer a beta. The developers are pretty sure they’re done, but they want brave souls to test the software before officially releasing it. I’ve used beta and release candidate software for years on production sites and machines, even though developers always advise against it. I don’t know too many people that have a entire spare lab of computers hanging around to test software. If it doesn’t get tested in a working environment, how will it ever get properly tested? That’s my theory. My company has always actively used beta software in our day-to-day operation, from Windows NT 5.0 (which became Windows 2000
Sorry
I haven’t updated my blog in a while because for the past two weeks, the entire staff of Team Spearfish has been meeting non-stop at my house to go over all of the plans we have to “re-launch” our company. This includes incorporation/partnership papers, ordering business cards, making cold-calls to get clients, nailing our line of services we offer down, and getting the domain controller and client computers working properly so that this Wednesday (hopefully), when we move into the office, everything works flawlessly.
Contacting Me
This morning I signed up for ICQ. Honestly, I don’t know why. Maybe because it came pre-installed on my computer
My ICQ number, if anyone wants to add me, is 611435190
Here are some other ways to get in touch with me or follow me:
Daily Update – 2010.04.26
I’m going to start doing these “daily updates” which are basically short bullets, paragraphs, or links to things that I think would appeal more to viewers of this website specifically, rather than my entire group of Twitter followers. Here is the first set:
- The trackpad on my laptop (HP Pavilion dm3-1030us
) is really fucking pissing me off. First, the slightest bump fucks with the zoom level of text in my browser, or the size of the icons on my desktop. I’m not kidding you…. this is a serious, serious problem.
- Also, for some reason, at random the pointer on my laptop will turn into a magnifying glass, and even though clicking won’t magnify, the pointer won’t change back to a regular arrow. I have to go into the Mouse preferences in the control panel, change the pointer style, and then change it back to Windows Aero in order to fix it. This is making me really, really angry.
- I’ve started downloading old copies of operating systems that I used to own, use regularly, and love. Right now in my download queue are copies of BeOS
, NextStep
, OPENSTEP, and Apple Rhapsody DP (the pre-cursor to Mac OS X
) as well as old versions of Windows
, DOS
, OS/2
and Solaris
. I’m pretty excited. I’ll be putting together a gallery of these operating systems, and will mention more in my next post. Old technology excites me, and I love learning the history and reminiscing with friends about the old tech we used.
- To tide you over until I get that gallery put together (I have a TON of stuff going on, 3 non-profits I’m working on/with, 1 startup company that isn’t my own, getting Team Spearfish off the ground, serving 72 clients, and starting 18 different web projects… all with a team of less than 5 people…. plus meeting ALL this week to iron out all the details of the Team Spearfish partnership and strategic plan), check out this website called GUIdebook. It’s one of my favorite sites for looking at old tech, and the posters are really cool. – http://guidebookgallery.org
- I have new computer syndrome really badly, and I really want to buy a new Mac. I don’t know if I want a desktop or a laptop. I could justify both, but really, I need it for business more than I need it for personal reasons (I keep separate computers for business and personal… or at least try to), and should therefore get the most powerful Mac I can afford. I made the mistake last time of buying an inexpensive iMac
just to have a new computer, and the video card was too weak to do Multiclips in HDV using Final Cut Pro
, which was something I did a lot during that period of time.
- I also really want either an iPad
, iPod Touch
, or a Zune HD
. The startup I’m working on requires me to have both an Intel Mac and some kind of iTouch device, but I also have a Zune Pass and am unsure of whether or not that’ll work with my Droid
. I want to listen to music in my car, although for right now, Pandora playing on the Droid thanks to Verizon Wireless‘ flawless coverage in my area, is satisfying enough.
I really think there should be, and I honestly might try to start, a Twitter-like interface for asking tech-related questions in 140-characters or less (or around that). Obviously this wouldn’t be for questions like “What are the steps to installing Windows XP Professional and joining it to a domain?”. These are more like the questions I’ve had this weekend that I would tweet, except that no one on Twitter pays enough attention to me to see my tweets, and I won’t tweet them to Dave Winer because I’m afraid he might send me some rude, pissy response and then embarass me in front of his internet following for wasting his time (setting me back even further in the online tech/communication community I’m trying to break into).
In every e-mail program or web service I’ve ever used, if I was addressing an e-mail to multiple recipients, I separated their addresses by a comma and a space. This behavior was universally accepted by all of the systems I used to send e-mail. Then, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 decided to make a change. Instead of a comma and a space, they wanted semi-colons. It took me a while to figure this out, and I can only imagine how much time it took other, less experienced computer users to figure out the same thing. I know I have had to address multiple service calls from my clients regarding this. Because I just re-installed Outlook 2010 on my primary work desktop, and ran into this same problem (it is resolved by changing a setting that is further buried the newer the version of Outlook), I decided that I should write a blog post on how to change the setting so that a comma is acceptable to separate multiple e-mail addresses.
This is the first tutorial I’ve written in a while, so it might be a bit hard to understand, as I may have left out some steps I assumed were common sense. I will say that the version of Microsoft Paint that comes with Windows 7 is phenomenal and is what I used to edit the images, including cropping, screen capture (using the Print Screen key on my keyboard), drawing, and saving (Paint defaults to PNG format now…. finally…. because PNG is the shit)
Microsoft Office for Facebook
Yep… Microsoft has been working on, and is very close to releasing, web apps for Facebook. No, you don’t have to visit other people’s Microsoft Office profiles to get points to feed your “office assistants” like Clippy and that dog. But, according to Microsoft, you can “discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends. Built using Microsoft Office 2010 – Docs for Facebook lets you work from just about anywhere within the familiar Office experience.”
So… basically, it’s the same thing you can get on your computer, mobile phone, or a web server hosting Microsoft Office Web Apps…. only, just in case during the 3 out of the 4 things you do on a daily basis, you forget to create an Excel document, you can do it while you’re harvesting your crops on Farmville. Excellent move, Microsoft.
On future iPhone and iPads
OK…. here’s the deal. I didn’t read enough about the stolen/lost iPhone prototype that was found to know if there was a forward-facing camera and a camera on the back of the device. I only know that there is a forward-facing camera.
In order for any type of iChat-like video conferencing to happen, and for people to use their devices as pocket cameras, there need to be two cameras on the iPhone. Have you ever tried to take a picture of yourself and a friend on your iPhone? It’s fucking impossible to get a good shot, because you can’t see what you’re taking a picture of. Sure, if you had a camera facing frontward, you’d get a great shot…. but then it’d be a pain in the ass to take pictures of anything you’re looking at, for the same reason.
Honestly, since switching from the iPhone 3GS to a Verizon/Motorola Droid in November 2009, I haven’t really been keeping up with the news/updates/rumors to Apple’s mobile platform. Aside from the rumor that the iPhone is coming to Verizon, which is always going to be just a rumor, and IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN…. EVER, there is a lot of really great stuff happening.
When I switched, I was coming out of a very heavy relationship with Apple Mac OS X, iPhone and MobileMe. I used an Intel-powered iMac as my primary computer, had an iPhone 3GS with AT&T, and used MobileMe for my personal e-mail, and also to synchronize all of my personal and business contacts and calendars. I also used MobileMe to synchronize data between my multiple Macs and Windows machines. I had a company Exchange server, for Team Spearfish, but I only used the e-mail part of Exchange. Everything else, both business and personal, was handled by MobileMe. In my mind, there was nothing better. MobileMe was the most elegant synchronization platform, iCal was the best calendar application (still is), and the iPhone was the world’s greatest phone (still is).
Then, things changed. My day-to-day work changed directions and I needed Windows as my primary platform. I ended up buying two new Windows machines, and replacing my parents’ aging iMac G5 with my Intel-powered iMac as a Christmas gift. Suddenly, I had two Exchange server accounts, one for the other company I work for. That company had Verizon, and I was given a company phone. When I heard about the Droid, I was pretty into it, and told my boss, who I am very close friends with, and he bought two Droids… one for him, one for me. We had the same phone so if he had any issues, I would know how to resolve them since I had the same computing platform, same mobile network, and same mobile phone.
Why I Won't Be Upgrading to Adobe CS5
First of all, let me apologize for the lack of updates. The Linux machine I was using (and writing about) died… the power adapter shorted out… and I just haven’t ordered a new one yet. I’m writing this on the Mac in my office.
The computer I’m writing this on is an iMac G5. It’s old, and slow, and a lot of programs are rapidly dropping support for it… both because it’s a Motorola processor, and because it’s running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I use the Adobe Creative Suite CS4 on both this machine and my Windows based machines. I was very happy with the CS4 release, because it finally brought feature parity (at least, as much as possible by stubborn Adobe) between the two platforms. If this was an Intel Macintosh, I’d have the complete set of Adobe applications, but since it’s not, I only have the design and web applications. That’s fine, because I’d rather get an enema than try to edit video on this machine (or in Adobe Premiere, for that matter).
What pisses me off is that CS4 wasn’t launched too long ago. In fact, I remember paying for CS3 very vividly. CS4 is buggy, bloated, and slow, on Windows and on the Mac. 64-bit Photoshop is a fucking joke, and it’s the only 64-bit app in the CS4 suite. I really could care less about 64-bit, to be honest, because the applications I use wouldn’t really benefit from it. Most of the applications I use (like Final Cut Pro and Microsoft Office) haven’t even been ported to 64-bit, although Microsoft Office 2010 on Windows will be. I’m not sure about Office 2011 on the Mac.