Bryan Price

Dude! /Bill & Ted

I have modified my Links to Monitor in a way that is pleasing to my eye.

I have figured out how to center the heading over the maximum length of my stuff (hand calculated right now, but oh well) instead of centering over the whole window.

It took some JavaScript to do it, and it looks like this:

<script>
var wanted = 1070, winw;
if (window.innerWidth && window.innerHeight) {
winW = window.innerWidth;
}
if (winW < wanted) { wanted = winW; }
document.writeln('<div style="width:' + wanted + 'px">');
</script>
<noscript><div></noscript>

Which basically makes the maximum width to be 1070 pixels for the header stuff.  And if there is no javascript, I just put up a dummy <div> to match up with the </div> that is buried elsewhere.

It’s probably absolutely ridiculous for most web slingers, but I like this.  I have really been thinking about how to get it to look like this for awhile, I’m glad I came up with a way that I was able to incorporate in less than 30 minutes.  And most of those 30 minutes were recovering from the crash that I was forcing Firefox to go through (for some unknown reason, I sent debug reports…) in search of a way to get what I wanted.

I may have to adjust the pixel amount every now and then, but at least, if anything, it’s at least close to what it should be!

Let me state this up front.  Windows 8 Consumer Preview has been one of the worse beta experiences from Microsoft that I have experienced.  This from somebody who has beta’ed Windows 95 and Windows 7.

I’m pretty much ignoring the Metro UI.  That still needs a lot of work, especially for keyboard and mouse.  What would work by touch isn’t even close to be replicated by the mouse, and I think that this is a problem.

Unfortunately, just working with the desktop can be infuriating. 

Programs tend to stop working, and it’s certainly not the hardware, not when I can move the mouse and interact with other programs, at least for awhile.  I give up, and I hit the reset switch.

Installing programs test the patience of Job.  I installed the latest Ultraedit 32.  It seems to do nothing, but on the second try, I just let it sit there.  Eventually, itDID install.  Now why did it take half an hour?  Same thing with the drivers for my printer.  Which didn’t even work after it was done.

I tried to make a Windows to Go on a USB hard drive.  The instructions for that fail for me.

In fact, after already installing one new video driver, MS decided to push another video driver on me. The same day!  The second time, it failed.  Bad download? At 150mb, I sure hope not!

I’m seriously thinking about just going back to Windows 7, and leaving it at that.  At least most of my PowerShell programs seem to be working under V3.  One wasn’t working, because I didn’t dispose of an object when I should have, which under V2 was fine, but not V3 has issues, which is fine, I shouldn’t have done what I did.  And it now works as it is supposed to.

I’ve seen my system reboot in the single digits of minutes.  I’ve seen it take half an hour.  I really do not believe that it’s my (new) hardware that is at fault.

Microsoft really needs to issue an update I think, if they want this to be a success.  There just are simply too many bugs. 

Oh, the problem with the video driver not installing?  I’m given a link, which says it’s deprecated, and to go any further, I have to have a company account.  WTF Microsoft!

Also a problem, it should be a one click decision to put things like graphic, video and music files under Metro or under the usual suspects in the desktop world.

Installed on a VM last night.

I’m not digging the Metro UI right now. It’s built for touch, but trying to deal with a mouse without touch just doesn’t quite work for me. Of course, I have a trackball, not a mouse, so it may even be less intuitive that way. After Windows 7 and Windows XP and Windows 2003, I expect something to happen when I right click something. I understand you really can’t right click in a touch system, but it’s been so engrained in Windows users that you would think that there was some kind of transition, at least.

Pressing the Start button or pressing the Windows key goes straight to the Metro GUI. I think it’s a bit too jarring myself.

If they keep it the way it currently is, it’s going to be a tougher transition than even going from XP to Vista or 7.

I have a machine I might use as a real test machine.

Took care of a sample post done here (I’ll right about it later, when we get the site up). We’ll be using WordPress ourselves.

I’ve also been cleaning up my links that I monitor. One site that I had under my Monthly banner hadn’t been updated in five years according to the archives. A couple other sites had simply disappeared or were returning 403(!) errors. I’ve also got a few that are currently down, but I’ll keep an eye on those.

On one of my mailing lists, I tried to raise a little awareness of what I thought was going on with the political process.

Nobody could tell me what I was wrong in, or where I was wrong. I did get called an elitist. And at least one person said that they thought I was wrong, but at least he wasn’t combative about it.

Here’s what I don’t understand. I’ve pulled a decade of civil service. Nobody else on the list has done ANY civil service, at least none that will claim it. I’ve had some people claim that working for a candidate for a couple of hours — in total! — made them something of an expert on the subject.

I don’t claim to be an expert in politics, certainly since I was never in a political type position, although I reported to a number of people who were. Let’s call it close exposure.

Also, this idea, that money, given by interested concerns running to the candidates, and when elected, running out of the taxpayers’ pockets right back to those interested concerns, was something to have some attention paid to it, wasn’t my original idea either.

But I find looking at this as idiots who think they can run the Iraqi War from their quaint little homes in the US acting as generals without having any real understanding of the war going on over there, because all they know is second hand, first off, and secondly, what information they have, is so highly scrubbed, focused, and distorted as to be pretty damn worthless.

The current “discussion”, if you could actually call it that, is how revenue can evidently be raised without raising taxes. Without any attempt at explaining how. As far as I am able to determine, it’s nothing but “and something magical happens” and revenues increase. Now how to deal with the reality of making the cuts that are supposed to happen in the mean time.

I use both Rapportive and Gist. Rapportive is nice because it shows me info about the person that sent me an email. Usually. But I generally get the full name and stuff like that.

Gist pretty much tries to put everything together, but since everything is javascript, even running under Firefox 4 makes it rather clunky. I haven’t tried Chrome, maybe I’ll try that combination next. But Gist is pretty damn manual intensive. It won’t go out like Rapportive to even see if it can figure out what somebody’s real name is, which would be a big help. I don’t like the way the news goes, it’s just a bit too much, and why some of those people are ranked so high in importance while others are ignored (which I have fixed manual, it’s the others I guess I need to fix, but sheesh, that’s another manual operation…)

I think I saw Scoble claim that he liked Gist over Rapportive, but I just don’t see why. Rapportive gets me information without even having to hit the site. I don’t find it slowing down Gmail even as it struggles to find something about the email. And the incessant complaints about no last names and no companies (over 250 of my contacts don’t have a last name, and that was after I culled about 100 mailing lists out of those) are enough to drive one batty. I’m sure that I’m not the only person that has a certain email on file, so why when somebody else puts in information, why doesn’t that just show up for me? I understand that personal stuff might not want to be shared, but employment, Flickr and other accounts. And then there’s no undo, so if I accidentally click on something (very liable to happen with the slow as fudge javascript), I have to refresh and find out what I did.

OK, just tried Chrome, it’s not really any faster.

Already run Xmarks.  I thought Google Bookmarks had gone like the dodo as well.  I don’t want them tied to a specific browser or machine, and I don’t want to install something that requires I install anything to use it, if I’m at a friends/kids/library.  Because I can’t even guarantee that it will be Windows based.

OK, Google Bookmarks is still around.  But it looks like I need to import everything into Firefox, install the Google Toolbar (yuch), and then import them that way.  And then hopefully don’t strip them away when I do get rid of them in Firefox.  It really doesn’t look Google has done much with GB lately.

Ma.gnolia has entered read-only mode.  Netvous isn’t taking any new users (evidently from 2008, if their blog entry can be believed…)  I’m trying out Diigo.com.  I’ve imported my Delicious, but they evidently are still crunching it, I’m still bookmarkless.  I just found out Furl has become Diigo.  That’s interesting.  Bluedot.us won’t even load right now (the one for the MySpace crowd evidently…)  And those are the ones listed by a four year article about social bookmarking.  The fifth was, duh, Delicious.

Evidently, I have a blinklist account, so I’ve uploaded my links there (although it’s still thinking about it…)  Blogmarks is relaunching, no new users, and I don’t have an account there.  Feedmelinks isn’t even a service anymore it appears, since it redirects to AdExchanger.  Shadows.com is now a linkbait site.  Simpy is a page from Reuters.  Don’t ask, I haven’t a clue.  Spurl (which I had an account at one time I’m sure) isn’t loading.  Jots just says "Hello world". (it’s not even HTML, it’s text).  Wink is now a person search, not a bookmark search.  And the Yahoo!  My Web was shut over two years ago.  Their current offering of bookmarks.yahoo.com is showing a copyright of 2009.  It also has issues importing my Delicious, although do I really expect Yahoo! Bookmarks to stay around as well.  Nope.

I’ve four more via Wikipedia (at least those that load are are what I’m looking for…).  A.nnotate.com.  That one might be a bit too much for what I want.  As it’s name suggests, you can annotate the web page, and it will keep the annotation, the HTML and CSS code.  Bringing a 1TW laser to a knife fight.  Faves appears to be what Bluedot actually is (which might explain why it resolves but doesn’t load, although I think I’d do a redirect, unless they’ve got some nasty bots doing things with the domain, and keeping the domain active means the bots don’t find something else to do…)  Mister Wong, a German site (in English and other languages…).  And Evri. 

And yes, I’m babbling.  I figure others here might find the info worthwhile.  I’d blog it if…  I’ll put this up on my WordPress blog at least.

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Mr Jones <@gmail.com> wrote:
> Xmarks, Google Bookmarks, no shortage of services available.
>
> On Dec 16, 2010 5:33 PM, "Bryan Price"
> <@gmail.com<@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> It’s a bookmarking service.  Bookmarks in the cloud you could say.

I’ve got an AWACS going over head all the time right now.  Don’t understand what the hell is up with that.

I applied for a position with a real estate management company.  I needed to fill out the online app as soon as possible, and I had to use this code.  So I go through, and the section is supposed to be about my personality.  And then I run into this bit where either I chose to get a free credit report, or I have my own credit report, and although it won’t really be a consideration, it’s a requirement for the job interview.  WTF?

I aborted the online application, and deleted the email requesting that I fill it out.  It sounded like a phising expedition to me.

And now I’ve got a new version of Windows Live Writer to install, but I just had to write this up.

My other blog, http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ is Blogger based.  FTP no less.  And since Google has shut down FTP publishing with Blogger, it’s now off to change to WordPress.

At some point, I’m supposed to be able to get WordPress running with my host.  Much longer, and I’ll just move it somewhere else.  I’m almost done with the conversion.  I need to do one more thing, then export it (on a test blog), and then it will be ready for the real blog.  Oh, and there’s another site I want to go through and make sure I’ve got everything done right.

But since I already have this one, I guess what I want to blog will be going here for now.  And then maybe export and import into the new WordPress blog when it’s done.

Or not.