I’m listening to Leon Dubosch via a translator. (German is my best not-English, but it’s not good enough.) Leonard thought about projects that could be done in Linz.

Thomas Gegenhuber now speaks. Art reuses what has been created before. (He quotes Lessig.) What can a municipality do? Linz’s homepage is published under CC. Artists who publish their works under a free license gets more money from the government than those who don’t use free licenses. CC here is the default option, and that should be true for cultural funding.

Jakob p[missed last name] says free software is a matter of rights Protecting free software is a human right. Munich uses platform-independent software. It’s free to adapt it, free to partner, free to disseminate it, and has no license fees to pay. What will Linz have to do to be as free Munich: Decide to use open source software in administration, the business, and in education. Right now, all software in Austrian schools is Windows. Instead, schools should teach skills, not applications. Schools ought to have open source software.

Barbara Hofmann talks open courseware. She points to MIT and open coune.rseware. There are 200 schools that are members of the open courseware consortium. The Univ of Klagenfurt in Austria is a member. It takes institutional interest and organizational backbone.

Stefan Powel talks about web science at Univ of Linz. They want to pull together multiple disciplines, initially for a masters degree, by 2010. Bachelors degree by 2012.

Manuela Hiermair talks about overcoming the digital divide. We need free wifi. Communities can provide free access. In Linz, there are over 100 free wifi access points, and a public internet service provider.

Christian Forsterleitner talks about Digital public space. Every resident should receive a bit of Linz’s publis space, free. There are free storage offers from Google, Flickr, MySpace, etc. NBut you give up your rights and are subject to censorship. “We want public authorities to provide this basic service.” “We consider the Webspace to be a citizen’s right.”

[Time to move to Linz? :) ]

[Tags: ae08 ars_electronica linz wifi muni_wifi open_software ]

1 Comment »

Typewriters were terrible tools for writing drafts if only because they had no facility for crossing sections out. At least with a pen, you could make a quick line through an entire paragraph that failed.

Word processors still act as if we know what we’re writing. Oh, they’re obviously much better than typewriters, for which I have zero nostalgia. (”Ah, remember the month I spent locked in my room, typing the final draft of my dissertation? Sweet!”) Word processors let you swiftly delete failed paragraphs, let you undo mistakes and re-do mistaken mistakes, and awkwardly track revisions. But they’re not designed for writing when you’re unsure of what you’re writing.

When you’re writing something hard, you probably work the way you do with a music composition system. You try out some notes. You play them back. You make a change. You shave and fit the pieces together. The same when you’re writing words. You try out a phrase, a sentence, a transition, a motif. You see how that affects the words around it. You make a change elsewhere, and now you have to hear how it presses on the ideas, words, and rhythms around it.

Word processors don’t recognize that way of working. They treat drafts as continuous improvements, not as tentative attempts. They don’t let you toggle quickly between two versions of a paragraph, side by side or back and forth, so you can see how each works, the way you might weigh two photographs to see which one you want to keep.

I don’t have a set of features I want. I’m just saying that word processors don’t work the way we write.

[Tags: word_processors fantasyland ]

12 Comments »

In two separate reports of the eleven deaths in the K2 disaster, I’ve seen a version of this sentence:

The reported toll from the avalanche was the highest from a single incident on K2 since at least 1995, when seven climbers perished after being caught in a fierce storm.

If eleven is still more than seven, then that sentence is incoherent. (It comes from an AP report by Stephen Graham.)

And, yes, I do understand that grammatical errors are less important than mountaineering deaths. And, yes, I do seem to having a crotchety day :(

[Tags: k2._grammar ]

6 Comments »

My Windows Vista Ultimate 64 installation is now telling me that my license will expire in 14 hours. This is confusing since the Control Panel tells me that Vista is activated and gives me a product number.

I tried to use the Windows support chat, but when I entered the n-digit product number, it told me the support period was up…yet another indication that my product is indeed activated.

So, I called telephone support, hoping they wouldn’t charge me the required $59. After asking me too many questions, they transferred me to Windows Activation, with the instruction — and this is the part I like — to answer the telephonic robot’s questions:

Yes
Transfer me
Transfer me
Transfer me anyway

That worked fine, except after telling me that it was transferring my call, the robot hung up on me.

Sigh.

So, I tried to get the Activation Support center’s phone number, but for that you have to use the Windows Activation program on your PC … which isn’t where it’s supposed to be … because I already activated my product.

Another call to Windows Support, another round of answering questions, and they actually gave me the number for U.S. Windows Activation: 866-740-1256.

Unfortunately, that group was unable to help. They gave me the phone number for the first tech support group.

I only use my Vista machine for home accounting and for games. Is Microsoft purposefully trying to discourage casual users like me?

Eventually, a tech support person told me that the problem is that I installed Service Pack 1 in January or February. If you did, you have to uninstall it (find Windows Update and click on Installed Updates. Select the service pack and uninstall it. Then, when that doesn’t work, you’ll have to uninstall it by hand.) I’ve spent two hours uninstalling and trying to reinstall:

- Don’t forget to run the System Update Readiness Tool.
- Don’t forget that the System Update Readiness Tool doesn’t have a file name that’s intelligible by users
- Don’t forget that when you run the System Update Readiness Tool, it will call itself something else. I think.
- Don’t forget to run sfc /scannow. (Didn’t work? Run it as admin.)
- Don’t forget to run msconfig and turn off the right start-up programs.
- Don’t forget to yes, transfer me, transfer me, transfer me anyway.

[Tags: vista microsoft ]

The next day, someone called from Microsoft to make sure that my problem was resolved satisfactorily. Ten minutes later, his manager called to make sure that the guy who checked on whether my problem was resolved was himself courteous and thorough. I told both of them that Naveen - the tech support person who solved my problem - was fantastic, but the first five people I talked with ought to be taught what Naveen knew about diagnosing my problem.

8 Comments »

I’ve found myself using Google Docs more and more. It’s about a Bronze Age word processor at this point, but it makes collaborating easy, I like being able to get at my work from anywhere (even when offline), and the continuous backup and versioning is comforting.

But, not only is Docs way under-featured and butt ugly, Google is fixing it up really slowly.

What would Google have to do to enable The Community to enhance it?

We presumably (i.e., I don’t know what I’m talking about) could write an enhanced system that uses Google Docs for storage, but that slaps a new UI on it and adds features. In fact, maybe this is something that Adobe’s beautiful Air-based word processor, Buzzword, should be (or is?) looking at.

Even better: Google could make Google Docs as amenable to add-ons as Firefox is. Of course, I have no idea how hard that would be, and what the possibilities of terminally screwing up your docs might be.

At the very least, while Google Docs is getting better at allowing us to redefine existing HTML elements, to create new classes, and even to create new elements (albeit without giving us a UI to use these classes or elements, other than entering into HTML editing mode), letting us attach CSS style sheets seems like an obvious and non-destructive improvement.

But, IDKWITA (I don’t know what I’m talking about … and why isn’t that a standard Web acronym?), so there may be obvious technical issues mooting all of the above. But I’m sure that won’t mute you from telling me what I’m missing.

Please. [Tags: google google_docs word_processors openness css ]

Marco Barulli at Clipperz (a password manager) blogs about what it would take to get more freedom and privacy from the providers of Web apps. He has a three-part solution…

3 Comments »

The latest version of Keynote exports files in Powerpoint format that the latest version of Popwerpoint can’t read. Charming.

A discussion board pointed out, however, that if you strip out all the presenter notes from your Keynote file, the exported Keynote file will indeed open in Powerpoint. I tried it on one small file, and it worked.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to strip out all those notes. And I haven’t seen anything from Keynote about an update.

[Tags: keynote powerpoint ]

4 Comments »

My new new Mac (a white one) is well, except Finder doesn’t see my family network. To be more exact, there’s no “Network” icon listed in the sidebar of Finder. If I go to Finder’s prefs and toggle “connected servers” or “bonjour computers” on and off, there’s no change. But, if I go to Connect to Server and tell it to connect to smb://192.168.0.134, which happens to be the static IP of a network storage device, it finds it fine, and shows it to me in the Finder. It likewise finds smb://honkervista, which is my big, Vista-crippled machine.

I’ve tried making random alterations in the system config network panel, since that traditionally has forced empty network panes to fill up properly. Not in this case.

Should I really have to be mounting these machines by hand?? TIA…

[Tags: mac os_x network_configuration ]

8 Comments »

Apparently, the traits I like in a candidate are the traits most of the country dislikes. I am therefore a counter-indicator. And also pretty depressed.

Pity me.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that the candidate I prefer (= am in love with) has in fact “closed the deal” with the majority of Democratic voters and delegates. So, maybe you shouldn’t pity me.

Yet.

[Tags: politics obama ]

2 Comments »

Baby bump.

[Tags: ]

1 Comment »

For those who are keeping track (= me), the new new motherboard on my MacBook has not prevented the same old problems from recurring. I still am getting random app crashes, most well-behaved by an occasional crash to blue. (Actually, only Keynote crashes to blue.)

I’m feeling pretty certain that we’ve eliminated the mobo as the source of the problem. Since these same problems have occurred in two separate operating systems, including through a clean install of the second one, I don’t think it’s an OS thing. Since they’ve persisted through the creation of a clean user account, I don’t think it’s a software thing. Because the RAM has passed repeated testing by me and by the service professionals, I don’t think it’s a RAM problem.

I am therefore taking it personally.

[Tags: macbook apple ]

6 Comments »

After trying the various phone numbers on the AT&T Wireless site, including 1-800-331-0500, 611 from my cellphone, and 800‑288‑2747 from GetHuman.com, it seems that AT&T provides no customer service on Sunday. So, if your phone or their software is broken, you are SOL.

Jeez, remember when major corporations acted like major corporations? Or maybe this is how major corporations act.

(There’s gotta be a national security angle to this somewhere. Do terrorists and hurricanes take Sundays off? Yeah, that’s the ticket!) [Tags: att customer_service vrm ]

2 Comments »

My unreliable MacBook has a brand new motherboard, thanks to The Computer Loft. Thank goodness, the intermittent failures intermitted while they were watching.

Much as I appreciate the loaner from the Berkman Center, I’ll be very glad to get my own back. Using a loaner feels like wearing someone else’s shoes. [Tags: macbook]

3 Comments »

I no longer have a working computer and I don’t know what to do about it.

I’m not going to bother whining about Vista, although to make the case for my despair I do have to state for the record that Vista has turned a working XP machine into a useless pile of software failures. I cannot count on any application completing its task. And I’m not referring to Vista’s propensity to interrupt me with security questions. E.g., I spent most of yesterday trying to move 20gb of music from Vista to my MP3 player, hoping that Vista would move all the files before crashing. It took many reboots. App after app freezes or crashes. And I can’t play a graphically intense game, even after downgrading to DX9, without a fresh reboot and no other apps running. Even then, it’s likely to freeze while I’m playing and almost certain to if I leave it alone overnight. And keep in mind that this is on a high-end machine with lots of RAM and hard drive, and a high-end graphics card. So, well, I guess I am going to bother whining about Vista.

Vista is worse than I’d expected (at least in my experience), but what really has me down is that my MacBook — which in most ways I love — continues to be unstable to the point of unusability. I had hoped that Leopard would end the frequent app crashes. So I did a fresh install. Things worked well for a a few weeks. Now it is crashing and freezing frequently. Last night during a presentation, Keynote totally froze, even thought I had done a fresh boot and had nothing else running, and I had to present with slides. (No, that was not an improvement.) This morning, I was interviewing JP Rangaswami for a podcast and Audacity froze and then crashed, wiping out the recording. I continue to get seemingly random app crashes of the kernel error sort. My system is unstable, which is worse than being broken.

I have run every diagnostic I can find, especially looking for bad RAM. I have done a scrape-and-clean reinstall. I literally don’t know what else to do.

I feel like I’m out of options. I don’t mind an occasional crash. But I now don’t have a working computer system — one I can rely on to, say, record a podcast or sync an MP3 player — and I’m actually pretty depressed about it. [Tags: mac leopard os_x vista whines technodepression ]

30 Comments »

Jeez my MacBook is hinky. Basically, nothing works reliably on it. I thought Leopard would fix the problems, and it has brought a little more stablility, but I can’t count on using any app without it vanishing in a puff of kernel errors. My RAM tests ok, the CPU temperature is reasonable, my permissions are good, and I’m working out of a new, clean user account. Even so, I can no longer get advanced apps like Parallels or VMWare to work, and even good ol’ Quicksilver (oh, how I love it) seems to be cross-linked with other apps, sometimes popping up when I open them. The problems do not seem to be app-specific, since even little programs will end randomly. Usually, it’s just an annoyance, but since products like Keynote are too proud to do autosaves every few minutes (on Windows, I have Powerpoint set to autosave every 4 mins), the random puff of disappearance has at times cost me work. Not to mention that in the upgrade to Leopard, GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto and iTheRest have vanished off my hard drive. Yokes.

So, I think I’m going to back everything up yet again - I am a man of many backups, although none seem to work when I need them - and take it back down to the bare metal: reformat, reinstall, re-hope.

Even so, and I want to be clear about this, I love my MacBook with an ardor that none of the many Windows machines I’ve had has ever inspired, including the big, honking box on which I am now running Vista. Vista is crashing left and right on me in ways that a new operating system with very few programs installed (and most of them Microsoft programs at that) ought not. Plus, everything about Vista requires thought. After all these years, I’m pretty good at Windows, but I don’t want to have to think about it any more. And if I were new to computers, I think I’d find Vista incomprehensible. It’s become Unix-like, which is ironic given that Ubuntu is making Unix/Linux easier every day.

So, I think I’m going to rebuild my Mac from the ground up. Consider it an act of love. [Tags: mac vista ]

5 Comments »

Things have been going well with my MacBook (thanks for all the IM help, Britt) until yesterday. The pattern that’s emerging brings back the feelings of dread so familiar from my many years of Windows use.

First my terminal window stopped working. When it starts up, it shows me the following message:

Last login: Fri Jul 6 19:46:14 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
macdavid:~ david$
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A/Resources/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub; exit
[JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed loading MRJApp.properties file
[JavaAppLauncher Error] CFBundleCopyResourceURL() failed while getting Resource/Java directory
[LaunchRunner Error] No main class specified
[JavaAppLauncher Error] CallStaticVoidMethod() threw an exception
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NullPointerException
at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.run(LaunchRunner.java:85)
at apple.launcher.LaunchRunner.callMain(LaunchRunner.java:50)
at apple.launcher.JavaApplicationLauncher.main(JavaApplicationLauncher.java:61)
logout
[Process completed]

Then the built-in Web server stopped working. When I try to restart it using System Preferences > Sharing, it hangs.

This morning, Smultron has started crashing whenever I try to save a file. I lost a bunch of work, which is just damn depressing,

At least with Windows, I have enough experience to know how to try to fix it. With OS X, I’ve installed third party replacements for the terminal and Web server, but I fear I’m facing cascading system failures. Or is that just a Windows-based reaction?

In any case, I’m not enjoying this feeling of helplessness:( [Tags: macintosh macbook whines ]

22 Comments »

Here’s how tired I am of being on the road: I’m actually looking forward to jogging tomorrow.

(I’m writing this while sitting in a broken seat on a US Air plane waiting on the tarmac for the Zodiac to wheel appropriately so that we are allowed to take off. I can’t tell the attendants about the broken seat - the frame has unwelded - because the flight is full and they’d probably kick me off. So I’ll mention it on the way out.)

1 Comment »

Adobe Acrobat 7 is refusing to uninstall. So, following advice on a discussion board, I downloaded the Microsoft Windows Installer CleanUp, which is designed to remove the Windows installer configuration information about selected products that may be confusing the uninstall process.

When I try to install the the Microsoft Windows Installer CleanUp, I get the following messages (click on them to see them full size).

I’ve been using Google Docs to write documents that are collaborative. It’s a good first gen product, and I enjoy using it, but it would take a giant step forward if it let me apply a CSS style sheet to the docs I’m composing.

This is such an obvious idea that there must be something obviously wrong with it. [Tags: google css wrong_in_public_again]

6 Comments »

I quite like Yahoo Local, and use it frequently. But try searching for “bargain department store” in “toronto, ontario, canada” (without the quotes). The site tells you that it couldn’t find any stores in Toronto (because it only knows about the US), but perhaps I’d be interested in Kohl’s Department Store near Marion, KS.

If you zoom out on the map, it becomes clear what’s guiding this seemingly random choice: Marion appears to be dead center in the US. Thus, it is statistically most likely to be near any randomly chosen point in the country.

While this may make probabilistic sense (Or maybe not: I was a Humanities major), it makes no common sense. Yahoo would satisfy more query-ers if it picked an area dense with population. Or it could just say, “Yo, moron! Toronto isn’t in the US…at least not yet, bwahahaha!!” Although I have to say, I find something charming about being redirected to a small town of geometric significance.

(Disclosure: Years ago I was on a little Yahoo Local advisory board that met once.) [Tags: yahoo local marketing maps]

2 Comments »

Dear Logitech:

I’m looking forward to using your “cordless presenter,” especially because of its willingness to vibrate in my hand five or ten minutes before my allotted time. I’ve liked your other pointing devices as well, and over the years have bought dozens of ‘em. It’s true.

But it’s going to take me a while to buy another because you seem so determined to keep me from using them.

I just cut my thumb opening the clear plastic Fortress of Solitude in which you’ve packed the cordless presenter. The presenter is a wee bit of electronics, not much bigger than, say, my middle finger, but you’ve got it wrapped in a plastic package that neither scissors nor Xacto can penetrate. You forced me into stabbing your product with a carving knife. Is that really the sort of “initial user experience” you were hoping for? And once you have managed to slice it open, the plastic separates into twin sharpened blades designed to un-man intruders.

Here are things that are easier to open than your packaging:

An unripe, fused pistachio shell

A coconut on a nude beach

A new CD

A space-time portal

A delicious vegan fast-food place

Please remove the pitbulls and razor wire from around your products. And if you don’t believe me, do us all a favor: Have your CEO try to open one of your packages. (No executive assistants allowed!)

Thank you.

A Bandaged Customer [Tags: marketing packaging logitech]

11 Comments »

Here’s a new footnote in the anals of petty totalitarianism.

A few minutes ago, the guy ahead of me in the airport security line got literally “Tut-tut”-ed by a jovial TSA worker because he had put a 2.5 oz bottle of Purell into a scanner bin, along with his jacket and change. “You have to have all fluids in a clear quart bag,” said the TSA guy. “You can go back through and get one at Hudson News or you can surrender the Purell.”

Facing the prospect of going to the rear of the line, the traveler told the TSA guy to keep the Purell.

“I thought the purpose of the quart bag was to make sure you’re not bringing too many three-ounce bottles,” I said. The TSA guy nodded with a minimum of commitment. “It’s pretty clear that this three ounce bottle is going to fit into a bag,” I continued, syllogistically.

“I don’t write the rules,” the TSA guy said, throwing the little bottle into a bin full of little bottles, presumably the most dangerous bin in the world.

I know the TSA guy doesn’t write the rules, and he was friendly when he could have instead become a martinet. Nevertheless, he confiscated a bottle that he would have let through if it had been in a clear bag, as if the quart bag defuses explosives.

“They ought to trust your judgment more,” I said, feeling lucky that our little interchange hadn’t resulted in me being taken into a small room and being asked to bend over.

On the other hand, I am feeling more secure, knowing that an evil-doer couldn’t get on board and sanitize us to death… [Tags: security airports tsa kafka politics]

9 Comments »

Audacity is a highly-recommended open source audio editing tool that I’ve been using for years and have found both helpful and frustrating. Since I don’t really know what I’m doing, I waste a lot of time doing it.

For example, try editing out a section of a stereo track. You can’t do it. You can only select both tracks…until you figure out that you first have to split the two tracks by clicking on the “audio track” pull down to the left of the tracks. Then you can select a part of just one track. But then comes the next challenge: When you delete from one track, it’s now out of sync with the first one. You can get around this by generating silence of an equal amount to what you cut. Or you can do what I think is the right thing: Edit > Split Cut deletes the selected stretch and replaces it with blankness. You can then paste into the hole it leaves.

So, eventually I get it to work. Usually. And it’s free and open source, so how can I complain? Oh, I can whine a little because it’s of my nature. But not outright complain.

I did run into one weirdness today that puzzles me more than makes me whiny: When I try to copy and paste music from one recording into the track of another, it gets compressed to half its size, and thus goes up an octave. Instant chipmunks. I think this is because the music is saved at 48K and the track I’m pasting it into is 96K. But I’m just guessing based on noticing the multiple of 2. Yes, I am that type of mathematical prodigy.

In the end, though, I was able to record an interview over the telephone, with me recording into a mic, through a combination of an M-Audio Fast Track Pro, a JK Audio Inline Patch, a lot of trial and a heck of a lot more error, and a lifeline thrown by Colin Rhinesmith of the Berkman Center.

[Tags: audio audacity]

4 Comments »

After United Airline’s online systems assured me as of 7pm that my 8:40 flight from Boston to DC was only 45 minutes late, I arrived at the airport to be told by the unhelpful person behind the counter that they’d actually cancelled the flight that afternoon. (I’d also checked with a living person over the telephone.)

But that’s just your usual traffic snarl. Kafka didn’t step in until I said that the subsitute flight they wanted to put me on at 2:30 tomorrow afternoon wouldn’t work, but I still wanted to fly back with my ticket on Monday. Fine, said the unhelpful telephone support person, but that will have to be repriced up as a one way fare.

Ah, yes, that’s how to develop customer loyalty! [Tags: marketing united_sucks airlines travel kafka whines]

I was supposed to join a bunch of folks I really like, talking with NPR about social media. But it looks like I may not be able to get there until late afternoon tomorrow, at which point I assume it’s not worth my going. (Disclosure: It’s pro bono consulting.) Too bad. I was looking forward to it.

6 Comments »

If I could write plugins, here are the plugins I’d plug in. Instead, I’m just pluggin’ for them:

1. When I want to put someone’s address in the body of a msg, I frequently will type that address into one of the “To” slots in order to use Thunderbird’s convenient auto-fill capability. But, all too often, I moronically forget to delete the person’s name from the To slot and end up sending it to her. I did that just the morning. So, I’d like to be able to select some text in the body of a msg and tell Thunderbird to do its auto-fill thing on it.

2. I’m waiting for a site to send me an authorization link. It’s taking a while. I’m afraid the msg has gotten filtered. So, I’d like to be able to tell Thunderbird to let through the next message that comes from a particular site or has a particular word in its subject or body. In fact, it should flag that message by coloring it, or beeping, or something. The dialog box that lets me flag a msg should let me indicate that I want only the next msg that meets the criteria to get through or that I want a permanent exception made. (Of course, a permanent exception is really just a new rule, so I could create a filter rule to do this.)

Thank you. [Tags: thunderbird plugins wishlist lazyweb]

1 Comment »

I’ve been using Kaspersky Anti-Hacker as my firewall primarily because it stays out of my way just enough.

But I just did some semi-controlled experiments trying to figure out why I’m getting less than a quarter the bandwidth I’m paying for (using my ISP’s bandwidth speed test, which is consistent with DSLReports’s). I’ve tried lots of variables, but the biggest one so far is Kaspersky. If I have it set to Medium strictness, I get a third of my rated speed. If I set it to allow all (i.e., sort of off), the volume of bits almost doubles. If I go to Settings and turn the Intrusion Detection System to off, it goes up another third, getting me close to half the bandwidth I’m paying for.

In Safe Mode — yes, it’s XP — I get 66-75% of my rated bandwidth. So I’m continue to cycle through lots of the other programs that get loaded when I start up—putting them back in one by one and restarting. But, it’s in an inexact process since my ISP doesn’t deliver a steady stream of bits to me under the best of circumstances.

By the way, you know what’s a pain in the ass? Cycling through lots of the other programs that get loaded when I start up—putting them back in one by one and restarting.

Do other firewalls reduce bandwidth less? [Tags: firewalls bandwidth kaspersky]

3 Comments »

I went to the clinic today after two days of minor chest discomfort - occasional twinges - that then gathered some jaw pain, and then a wicked headache and nausea. But the ekg says my heart is fine. The rest of the symptoms are of a very nasty bug going around. I feel like crap - and believe me, I’m a moaner (because I’m a man)- but I’m not as scared as a few hours ago. I knew my symptoms were not strong infarction symptoms, but I was still more worried about looking like a nervous nellie than about being a dead nellie. Did I mention I’m a man?

So, I’m blogging this while chilled feverish, thankful that we can afford the outlandishly expensive insurance that let’s me pop down to a clinic for a little ekg and blood work.

So, if this post makes no sense - am I writing this in Klingon?
- blame it on the virus, or possibly Dick Cheney…

4 Comments »

I know my blogroll is suffering from link rot, so during this holiday interstice, I decided I’d finally get around to fixing it up. But first, to make it super-easy, I decided to put it into an iframe, an html widget that pulls in content from another file. That way I could simply edit a simple file and do so simply, without having to go into the Movable Type template editor. (Yes, I looked at one of the MT plugins, but it requires MT v3.3, and upgrading to v3.2 is a lot like installing 3.3, which I am certain I will screw up.)

So, today I’ve spent several simple hours trying to figure out how to get an iframe to size to its contents. It’s more complex than I can handle. PartMost of the problem is my own vagueness about how the object model works. For example, in the many solutions I found via Google, I’m never quite sure whether the code goes in the container document or the contents document. So, I try both. Every possible freaking variation. Some of the problem is that the object model is so rich with possibilities. Some of the problem is that there are differences among the browsers, so you first have to ask politely (and programmatically) which browser is in use and then provide the appropriate function. And part of it is that it’s too damn hard.

So, I’m giving up for now. And, believe it or not, I’m consoling myself by going back to the chief object of frustration in my life: MythTV.

I just love the holidays, don’t you? [Tags: iframe holidays html javascript I_am_an_idiot reasons_to_drink]

5 Comments »

I’m trying yet again to install Linux to use as a desktop machine. Ubuntu won’t install because it tells me there’s “no RNG,” which apparently is a random number generator.

Any way around this? (I’m trying to install Ubuntu 6.10, desktop edition, on a pretty new Intel machine.

I can’t say that Kubuntu handled this error very gracefully: No explanation, no hints, no joy :( [Tags: ubuntu linux]

6 Comments »

Richard Ericson has a very useful review of Office 2007 in Computerworld. It sounds like a user like me will get nothing of real value out of it, except that I’m a power-user of PowerPoint, so I’ll likely have to make the switch.

The review doesn’t mention whether Microsoft has managed to fix the Word revision tracking bugs that have been there for the past ten years. And not just the bug that causes files to go corrupt if they’re too heavily revised. I mean things like not handling paragraph joins correctly; after backspacing two paragraphs together, the only way to get rid of the invisible paragraph marker that remains is to delete a few characters backwards and a few characters forward of the join. Also, if multiple people go through multiple revision cycles, I haven’t found a way to show only the latest revision’s changes by a particular person. Also, if you toggle off displaying your revisions to a document and then make a change, it toggles the display back on.

I don’t know what software number Office is up to, but maybe after spending another $329 to upgrade to the Professional version (which should be called the Penultimate version since $539 is the upgrade price for the Ultimate version), I’ll have a word processor with rev tracking that works.

Or maybe it’s time to switch to Open Office for real. (Alas, I seem to be stuck with PowerPoint, though. I use all its animation features and I can’t show up to give a speech for which I’m paid with a presentation that my hosts can’t run.) [Tags: microsoft office reviews]

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When I’m reading something online that takes more than a screen, I find that I highlight a line near the bottom before I scroll so I can orient myself quickly on the new screen. Therefore, it might be useful if my software did that for me automatically. I can imagine (but, alas, cannot write) a Firefox extension that highlights the bottom line of the main frame (well, ok, so we’ve hit a snag here) whenever a page is scrolled.

Just thinking out loud… [Tags: firefox ereading wishlist]

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