Hiding Wireless SSIDs
Posted on December 20, 2007, under Security.
Myth vs Reality. Hi Jeff! 
Honda demos ‘linked’ humaniod robots
Posted on December 11, 2007, under Current Events, Entertainment.
Incredible! Seems like the basics are mostly worked out. I wonder what the models in 5 years will be like.
Outlook 2007 Gadgets for Windows Sidebar
Posted on November 30, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Always visible tasks and appointments. Sweet.
Ex-Syrian Woman Debates the Qualities of Islam on Al Jazeera
Posted on November 14, 2007, under Current Events.
Somehow I missed this very interesting exchange on Al Jazeera back in 2006:
I know people currently serving in the military. The negative aspects she describes are among the reasons these people volunteered to serve in the current war on terror, to protect us here and to help our global neighbors obtain freedom from oppression. I’m very thankful to be born in the land of the free, and thankful for those who sacrifice to protect it!
Fwd: Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore
Posted on November 14, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Thanks to Eric Kintz for posting an entry I’d been thinking about doing myself since last year:
Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore
My particular favorites:
- #3- Loyal readers coming back daily to check your posts is so Web 1.0
- #4 - Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty
My daily web reading is mainly facilitated through RSS feed subscriptions (point 3), and I have actually unsubscribed to several feeds who just posted too often (point 4). They were clogging up my RSS reader, and making me feel constantly behind. So out they went!
Generally speaking, I think the frequent-post mentality is old school, so please don’t do it. I might unsubscribe.
Moab 2007
Posted on October 31, 2007, under Entertainment.
Dakota Ridge (Golden, CO), Porcupine Rim and Slickrock. Been there, done (tried) that. 50 miles of mtb in 3 days - whew!
Sony’s Playdoh Bunnies
Posted on October 5, 2007, under Entertainment.
Check out this cool commercial from Sony. The first time through I thought it had to be CGI, and then watched the 2nd video and saw 40 animators and two tons of clay were involved. Cool!
Framework Hype
Posted on October 3, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Tony Bibbs wrote a post entitled “Fed Up of Framework Hype“. He wrote it from the perspective of a PHP developer, but I think it applies to any language. A good, realistic view of how frameworks should be approached.
Compress your Photoshop Elements Catalog
Posted on October 1, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
Photoshop Elements 5 introduced the embedded catalog where you can tag your photos based on pretty much anything - people, places, events, etc. I love the whole concept of being able to tag photos, and Adobe did it right in PE5. I’ve spent hours tagging the pictures we’ve taken, so the catalog is pretty valuable to me since it represents quite an investment of time. Since it’s something I wouldn’t want to lose, I include it in my off-site backups that I routinely run. One thing I noticed is that my catalog seemed very large. For around 6,000 photos, not all of them tagged yet, my catalog file was pushing over 90MB. That just felt… big! Turns out I was right. While trouble-shooting a problem with Photoshop Elements freezing in Vista, I discovered a little tip to shrink the catalog.
Before you launch Photoshop Elements in “View and Organize Photos” mode, press and hold the Control key. Then click the menu to launch the organizer view. You will see a prompt to compact and recover the catalog. Click OK.
You should see a progress bar, and then a confirmation that the process was completed.
Once I did this on my 90MB catalog file, it shrunk down to 20MB! Excellent! Now the backup routine is a little more zippy.
Photoshop Elements 5.0.2 Freezes in Windows Vista
Posted on October 1, 2007, under Web Dev/Tech.
I recently went to open Photoshop Elements 5.0.2 on my Vista machine, and this time it just hung. The status said “Opening Catalog”, but Photoshop wouldn’t respond. I did a little searching, and came across a known issue on Adobe’s web site. Apparently the Adobe Active File Monitor service can cause Photoshop Elements not to open on Vista. The fix is to disable the service. Once I disabled it through the Services administration console, PE opened right up. With PE 6 now released, I don’t expect Adobe to spend much time fixing this, but I didn’t really rely on that service either, so no big loss. Just a tip for anyone who might run into the same problem.
