Disqus - Friends of mangochutney

Re: Dell Inspiron first review | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 15:14:04 -0000

First thing you should have done was formatted and done a bare install. Vendor OS installations are the devil! :)

With such a high screen resolution, you may not need it, but you may want to consider adding a second display. XP has native support for multiple monitors and I simply can't work without it, now.

Re: Stat tracking | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 15:20:05 -0000

So that's where that cookie came from. :)

How does it handle proxies? How can it tell that I'm me and not someone else behind my firewall?

Re: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 20:44:51 -0000

From what I've read online, this movie is actually more true to the book than the Gene Wilder version. I've never read it, though, so I can't vouch for that. You can probably find out more with a little Google-action.

Re: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 21:05:46 -0000

It's Tim Burton. What did you expect? :)

I guess it's about time I read that darn book, too. Thanks for the reminder.

Re: Adobemedia Day 2: Collateral damage? | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:55:08 -0000

So is it worth it to get Fireworks, now? I just started evaluating yesterday (talk about timing...) and I like it so far.

I'm not much of a graphics person (I like to say I can't even draw stick figures.) and I've puttered along just fine using Jasc's Paint Shop Pro for a long time. Recently, though, I ran into some needs that it just didn't do a good job with. I figured I'd give Photoshop Elements (can't afford PS) and, although it addressed the output issue quite well, the interface was...well...

Then I tried Fireworks and I was pleased. Interface isn't cluttered, output it good. Definitely worth looking into further. But I do worry about hitching my wagon to a dying horse. Then again, the latest release is current. I imagine I should get a good lifetime out of the investment, especially at K-12 pricing ;).

Re: Adobemedia Day 2: Collateral damage? | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 17:24:11 -0000

Since I can get FW for academic pricing, it's a little easier to buy "abandonware." :)

Can you elaborate some on the "niggly complaints?" I know every app has them, I just like a little forewarning.

Is 2004 MX the most current, or is there another on the immediate horizon? I'm not a Macromedia customer (well, HomeSite, but I gave up on that a long time ago) so I have no clue what their dev cycle is looking like.

Re: Hubby gets a new blog template! | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 21:11:13 -0000

Very nice looking, but the font is too small for my tastes (and I usually hate when people complain about small font sizes...).

I also noticed some mis-alignment between the page background and the logo/drawing on the right edge in Firefox 1.0.3/Windows. Aligning grids is so hard, your bravery at attempting it amazes me. :)

One last thing, when I try to view the site in IE, I get prompted to download the file. I thought that only happened when serving XHTML with the "wrong" (meaning IE gets it wrong...) mime type, but I just checked and it looks like it's text/html. Might want to check it out on your super-cool new Dell. :)

This really was supposed to be chock-full of compliments, not bug reports, honest!

Re: Hubby gets a new blog template! | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 01:40:19 -0000

You did exactly what I was thinking you should with the graphic. That cleaned up the edge nicely.

1280 x 960 (or x 1024, can't recall...) on 19" display at work. At home, it still ... feels a skosh too small.

I fiddled with the CSS a bit and for whatever it's worth, 12px looks too small, but 14px looks too big. If you don't hear any other complaints, I'd ignore me. :)

As for the page load issue, I don't have the problem here at home. If I remember, I'll try it again at the office on Monday. Maybe it's our proxy.

Re: IE 7 will support PNG transparency! | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 01:51:05 -0000

The extra time will be spent worrying about IE5+ & 6 support.

Realistically, we're probably 2-3 years out from being able to give these versions the NS4 treatment (grumble grumble).

But hey, it's nice to see them quoting directly from P.I.E. I think we really have to give the IE dev team some credit for wanting to do the right thing. The trick is to make sure that MSML (Microsoft Marketing and Legal) don't get in the way!

Re: Another casualty of war | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Sun, 08 May 2005 08:33:02 -0000

This is an all-too-common problem with zero tolerance policies. While there may be a few places where they are appropriate, this is a great example of how they aren't a panacea.

G-d forbid someone might show some common sense if they were allowed any leeway.

Here's to hoping the blogosphere can help right a wrong!

Re: The rumors are true | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 22:25:44 -0000

Judi, Judi, Judi. :)

What, and decrease their revenue stream? Please...

Re: Voice recognition | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 19:36:53 -0000

I still prefer paper magazines. There's no way I'm taking my laptop into the bathroom. :)

Re: Voice recognition | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 02:54:51 -0000

But I don't _have_ a PDA. :P

Re: Our long nightmare is nearly over | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 17:16:42 -0000

Why is it that you never link to Eric's blog when you mention him?

How is he ever going to build up PageRank? :)

(I only ask because I was looking for his site - prior to adding it to FeedDemon - and I had a heck of a time finding the post where you announced his blog.)

Re: Tiger and kid games | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:51:14 -0000

[Had to download Internet Explorer for them.]

Did you try Firefox? Sure, I'm not checking a lot of kid-centric Flash-based sites, but all the sites I go to that are using Flash appear to work just fine in FF.

Re: Comcast | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 04:14:38 -0000

It's a shame about the config utitlity nonsense. You don't even need it.

I just set up a friend with Comcast before I moved, about two weeks ago. All we had to do was phone the 800 number to give them the modem info (mac, serial number) to activate it on their network.

Use The Force, next time. <obi wan>Trust in your technical ability, Judi.</obi wan>

Re: Dual computer laptop bags? | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:42:31 -0000

An off-the-top-of-my-head solution might be a separate laptop sleeve for one of the computers.

He might also have better luck with a backpack.

Don't forget to follow your Adwords links on this post, too. ;)

I've got my eye on a used PowerBook, so this is something I may be interested in. I'll probably forget to check back here, so if you get any interesting replies, any chance you could CC me?

Re: You know you have too many applications open when… | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 21:18:51 -0000

Turn off the default eye-candy XP theme and revert to classic. That'll recover some lost pixels.

The dual-height taskbar is the only way to go. I actually drag my Quick Links to the bottom half and I add the Address bar as well. It's much quicker than browsing file paths via Explorer and you can type URLs straight into it and have it launch in your browser.

Additionally, other toolbars, such as Media Player, go on the bottom portion.

Don't forget to minimize to the system tray on any apps that support it (FeedDemon, Outlook, Trillian, ActiveSync).

Re: Vista fonts | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 14:56:26 -0000

Hmm...download link seems to be down.

I've been using Andale Mono for my editors, though there's a smidge of clipping on a few characters when italicized at smaller sizes.

Re: Clicking is never good | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 21:53:44 -0000

One thing to add to your lessons learned: make sure your removable storage is cross-platform compatible, especially if you're bi-platform.

(Now onto the (mostly) off-topic...)

I've been using Trillian for years. So long in fact that I finally guilted myself into buying a license.

Although there is a differentiation between services, it's quite easy to lump everyone together into non-service categories.

The history function in Trillian 3 can't be beat. I've used it countless times to retrieve info that would be lost on clients like Messenger.

Does it have too much other stuff in it? Yup. But I ignore all that nonsense and stick to the IM stuff. :)

I'm strictly peecee, and though I had a loaner iMac for a bit and I did use Adium, it's been so long that I can't recall much about it.

Re: Waiting. | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 14:34:40 -0000

It just seems so wrong to have Cinema Display that's covered and not fix it.

Promise me you'll at least _plan_ on taking it in after you've gotten past "bad tech week." :)

Re: I (heart) Honda Odyssey | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:23:35 -0000

The navigation system _almost_ makes me jealous of a mini-van. :)

Re: Windows XP Pro can’t play DVDs out of the box | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:27:35 -0000

That reminds me that I have to get my Dell lappy setup for my trip next week.

Thanks for the reminder!

Re: Google Desktop Search 2 | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 02:23:52 -0000

If you'd care to spare me the inconvenience... :)

Does it index and return results from FeedDemon's cache at all? We've seen a few requests for some type of plug-in for MS' Desktop search and it hasn't been a priority. If Google Desktop handles it, at least I can point people in that direction.

Re: MTBF | A View from Judi Sohn

Jack Brewster — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 16:57:55 -0000

Check out Strongspace:
http://www.strongspace.com

9GB - $24/mo

They're new, though, so if that's a problem... Also, doesn't look like they have a scheduled offering, but the tech they're using may work with tools already at hand?