Alex's Journal

[digg=http://www.digg.com/software/New_Version_of_Journler]

A new version of my favorite blogging software, Journler, has just been released. The new version is 2.5 and includes a very spiffy interface upgrade to match that of the 7.0+ versions of iTunes.

Version 2.5 includes more than just an interface overhaul. According to their new features list, you will find features such as: 

Writer-in-Mind Features 

A half dozen features for the writer in all of us. Live word count, spelling auto-correction, smart quotes and much more.

Snapshot: A Picture in Your Entry 

Journler already did video and audio, now it does pictures as well. Forgot your camera but have an iSight enabled Mac? Quickly add a picture to your entry.

Mail Integration 

Send attached files and media directly to Mail, including them with your entry’s text. You can also copy Mail messages into your journal as a permanent reference. And of course you can view them right inside Journler.

The Lexicon 

View the document-term relationships in your journal or right click a word in an entry or file and instantaneously jump to any other occurrence of that word anywhere in any of your entries or media. Oh yeah.

and of course, there’s also more. I have yet to play with all of the new features.

You can find it as a free download for private, non-profit use on their website: http://www.journler.com

[digg=http://www.digg.com/microsoft/An_Adventure_Re_installing_XP]I’ve had a 1.8 ghz Compaq Presario desktop computer with 1 GB of RAM for quite some time now. It came with Windows XP Home Edition pre-installed as well as quite a lot of crap added by Compaq that took a good hour at least to clean out. This machine lasted a record length of time without a good ol’ format of the hard drive followed by a reinstalltion of Windows. I’d say that it lasted me at least three years.

I do a lot of music recording and creating. Traditionally, I have always used my PowerBook G4 to do what I need to do with my music, however, I decided that since I had an extra computer sitting around that I really didn’t use much, that I would set it up as a permanent music recording station. Since my PowerBook is a laptop, I have always had to take it down to the basement whenever I want to record anything. I decided I could easily solve that problem.

I haven’t consistantly used it as my primary computer for the past two years (which probably explains why it lasted so long without a fresh installation of Windows), but all the same, I went to use it just a few days ago and it had become rediculously bogged down and slow. I can’t really say I know why, but either way I figured that instead of investigating the problem, that it was probably time to wipe the C drive clean and start over with the recovery hard drive partition provided so greatfully by Compaq. Yes, they said it had an 80 GB hard drive, but 10 GB was used as an untouchable recovery partition…

Anyway, I backed up my files and formatted. No problems so far. Windows XP successfully installs and I boot my computer. I had forgotten how much crap the computer had come with, but that wasn’t a problem, I could just remove it. The problem was that the new installation of Windows didn’t last long enough for me to do even that. The first time I booted the computer with the new installation, the task bar showed up as well as the icons and the red “Compaq” wallpaper. A good start.

As I waited for the rest of Compaq’s crap to load, I was prompted. The prompt read that Windows Explorer had encountered a serious error. I could either send an error report or cancel. I cancelled and Windows Explorer restarted itself. Off to a great start.

The task bar showed up again and the icons showed back up in disarray. Then, I was prompted again. The same thing. This happened a few more times before I gave up and restarted the computer entirely. Didn’t help. So, in my annoyance (by this time, I was quite furious), I went about reformatting and reinstalling Windows. After that had finished, Windows Explorer no longer crashed and I could even successfully click on the Start menu without error.

Then I tried Control Panel.

What did I get? Windows Explorer crashed. I tried a few more times, but to no avail. I did what any experienced Windows installer would do: reformat and reinstalled….again.

Upon the third install, I could successfully get to the Control Panel and even uninstall all the crap that Compaq and included with the computer. My problems weren’t over, however. Nope. Not at all.

The next task was to find drivers. I’ve had to deal with reinstalling Windows enough to know that a list of drivers I will need when I reinstall the operating system is always good to have. Using my list, I found the necessary drivers, downloaded them, installed them, and to my absolute surprise no problems at all. I decided I had had enough for the day, turned off the Compaq, and went back to my Mac to do some real work.

The next day, I went back to my Compaq. I turned it on and all seemed well. The Windows XP screen with the green scrolling bar across the bottom showed up perfectly. Then all went blank. To make a long story short, I had to replace the graphics card because somewhere along the line, Windows decided that it would no longer support it despite the installation of the drivers and the multiple restarts I had to do while installing drivers the previous day.

The final task in setting up my new music workstation was to install the necessary software and the extra hardware drivers I needed for some of my equipment. This was a headache entirely unto itself. The primary software I use is DigiDesign’s ProTools 7 and Propellerhead’s Reason. When I installed the software and drivers on my Mac, it took nothing more than a quick restart and I was ready to go. When I installed the software and drivers on my PC, it took several restarts as well as some rediculously unnecessary troubleshooting, such as having to figure out which of the six USB ports on my PC I had to plug my hardware into in order for the software to commnicate properly with the hardware. This took several hours.

The result: after two greuling days of pulling the hair out of my head and bashing my face on the table, I have a music workstation that does exactly what my Mac did after only a few minutes.

But it was worth it, right?

[digg=http://www.digg.com/microsoft/Microsoft_Convicted_of_Software_Piracy]I know this is old, but it’s new to me, so bear with me. I came across a news article today that dates back five years ago to 2002, but I found to be somewhat humorous.

In 2001, Microsoft was found guilty in French courts of software piracy. When Microsoft ported SoftImage’s 3D animation software of the same name from SGI’s Irix operating system to Windows, it illegally included third party code. They were fined what would be $549,451 today.

The conviction was and still is quite ironic because Microsoft is one of the industry’s top anti-piracy companies. The ordeal was also surprisingly left out of the news for the most part at the time, which is probably due to it happening so close to the September 11 attack on the twin towers in New York City.

I just thought that this was an interesting bit of old news. If you want to read the full article, you can find it here: http://www.vnunet.com

[digg=http://www.digg.com/apple/Prototypes_of_Everything]It seems that everything Apple does is very simple and intentional; a lot of thought goes into every aspect of every one of their products. I know that using prototypes is a very important aspect of making Apple products great, but what I didn’t realize was that they make prototypes of literally everything.

Even their retail stores.

Somewhere near their Cupertino campus, Apple has a warehouse in which it builds its retail store prototypes. In keeping with their minimalistic designing process, they’ve narrowed their stores down to three main materials: glass, wood, and steel.

I came across this bit of news in an article on CNN’s website: http://money.cnn.com.

It also mentions that Apple is now in the top ten of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies and according to this website, Apple ranks at number 7. There are more details about Apple’s ranking here.

[digg=http://www.digg.com/microsoft/Vista_IE7_Banned]This is interesting:

The U.S. Department of Transportation has banned any upgrades to Microsoft Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and even Office 2007. The DOT’s CIO, Daniel Mintz, says he has placed “an indefinite moratorium” on the upgrades. In the memo he wrote to his staff, he stated the reason as being that “there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade.” The ban applies to about 15,000 computers.

In the same memo, a ban on upgrading to the same products is also in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration. This ban applies to about 45,000 computers.

In an interview given on Friday, March 2, the chief technology officer at DOT, Tim Schmidt, said, “We’re analyzing different client software options and also integration issues.” He also mentioned possible alternatives to Windows Vista being Novell’s Suse Linux and Apple’s Macintosh computers.

I read about this in an article on http://www.informationweek.com.

I also found this to be quite funny. According to the article, this could affect several million dollars of software sales of Microsoft software; especially if other federal organizations follow suite. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for Microsoft. While Vista might sport some cool features, Microsoft really didn’t appear to do much to it to motivate corporations (or in this case federal entities) to upgrade to Vista.

We’ll see how this turns out I suppose. What’s your opinion of it?

[digg=http://www.digg.com/microsoft/Microsoft_Propaganda_Film_2]Here’s an amusing video I found on YouTube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XObuskjLlZE]