Google Base as a cure for Amazon

I wrote a book review on Amazon this morning and never posted it. I don't like turning over my thoughts, howerver sloppy, to anyone. I trust Amazon not to be like some sites -taking user-submitted information under a free model and then charging for it. But this isn't good enough. I'm not even sure I'd be allowed to reprint one of my reviews here.
On the other hand it doesn't do much good for a review to languish on an isolated site. Google Base may be the solution. You retain your data and it allows group reviewing of the same work. There is no system for rating others' submissions yet but that may come or be developed by a third-party.
Update: I reread the Amazon agreement and it said that their rights are non-exclusive.

iView, Finder, Shoebox, Qpict

Requirements
Image managing software should not create a second copy of files. Have robust meta-data editing capabilities. Not keep your data- data this program generates should be accessible to other programs.

iView
Bad
Does not allow partial deqownloads
Does not adjust if underlying image is moved
Not allow common keyboard shortcuts such as Get Info
Company Website RSS feed is invalid
Annotation does not affect original files. But pro version 3 does have XML export.

Good
Doesn't create its own copy
Fast!

Finder
Doesn't allow the editing of meta-data of multiple files. Disqualifier.
No second copy.

Shoebox
Shoebox would be great if it weren't buggy. It allows the creation of heirarchical metadata with many preset categories. Has ability to do inverted selections. Unfortunately, no matter what filter I use I am seeing every image.
Other problems:
No RSS on site so I won't be able to tell if these problem get fixed. I added it in VersionTracker to check for updates.
Many negative reviews on VersionTracker.
Unresponsive customer support.
Pictures with no place data. (? Not sure what I meant here.)


Qpict
Keeps your data. Can't add keywords to spotlight. There is an XML export but who can import this XML?
Help is only offline.

Note:
Do apps work fine if left as a disk image? I kind of like not moving things to application folder while evaluating them.

Casio ex-z750

Light usage
Does the Casio need more light than my old Canon? Taking the same shot at ISO 400 f2.8 the Casio shoots at 1/15 while Canon s400 shoots at 1/30. Camera monitor indicates white balance better on Casio, is the loss of light there?
I forgot if you double megapixels you'll decrease the light.

Note taking
I've use the camera for far more note-taking than pictures. It is quick to start a new recording and can record for hours. There are issues. The sound quality is poor and the files large. It would help my organization if I could pause the recording instead of making many separate files.

Image stabilization
The camera's biggest flaw is the lack of image stabilization.

Samsung PM-a840

I got a new Samsung phone. It is light, small, and more nicely designed than most of their products. Some things it does poorly are photos and hand writing recognition. The manual is very incomplete. The Sprint website supposedly has a feature that will allow me to enter my contacts there but I wasn't able to use it yesterday.
Update: It turns out they were migrating their website. There was no information on this- they just let the site hang. After the move it was still not clear. There was an address book under PCS mail but it didn't show any way to sync with phone. After calling Sprint it turns out that this is done under the Voice dialing section. Sync is not currently working there- it looks like due to the website move.
I get better reception with this phone- the old one was nearly unusable in the house. I had to go to specific locations (which changed day-to-day) and stay there to make the call. This still occurs but is better.

Phone continues to work well. The voice memo comes in handy- although there is a limit of 10 memos. The features I use are phone, memo, and alarm.

Firefox bookmark issues

• Can't edit or delete a bookmark that you find by searching. Fixed in 1.5. Some others may be fixed too.
  
• Bookmarks Manager can't detect duplicates.
• Delete button doesn't work.
• Can't paste into a new folder. It is unclear to me how to move bookmarks into a new folder.
• Undo doesn't work. It says "undo new separator" but separator stays there.
  

OS X integration

I noticed that Safari creates a collection based on the websites that you have listed in your address book. This is nifty but still no challenge to my brother's assertion that none of these convergences provide functionality that people on Windows would need.
The address book-email-calendar-browser-PDA integration is covered in Outlook.
The photo integration is handled by the OS.
That leaves iTunes-Garageband and a few other bits.

Openoffice Calc issues

I was using Calc last night and was having two troubles. I couldn't get the default number buttons (percent, standard, dollar) to change to a different default. The solution was to use the stylist. I still haven't figured out how to make it give multiple results based on a number of values. I think the scenario function must be used.

No more iPhoto

After my vacation I'm going to find an alternative to iPhoto. I was trying to organize my photos for a number of hours last night and it was unproductive.

• It gets bogged down with a lot of files.
  
• It loses folder and file names.
• I end up with not just two copies of the same file but sometimes three.
• It fails on large imports.
• Categorization gets difficult because there is no folder which shows what hasn't been categorized. There is a time consuming work around for this.
  

Nikon software

Nikon has two non-specialty software packages
Nikon View
Nikon view requires a separate download. Then it required two more downloads and installs to bring it up to the current version. At no point was I able to get the transfer to work but I was able to see the folders on the memory card within the Nikon program. I kept getting a message that there was no memory card attached.

Picture Project
This worked as soon as I installed it. The interfaces is intuitive and attractive, it does its own updates, and it's quite responsive. Unfortunately it seems more limited than the Canon software. There's no ratings, photo-stitch, batch processing, or display of focus points. It requires paying money to remotely control the camera. It does support collections.
Ultimately because its imports create another copy it will have similar problems to Iphoto.

Bugs
Picture Project In touch which is used to share pictures told me it needed to download a module before it would work. Then after I told it to go ahead it said the module was not available.
I have version 1.5 there are 1.51 and 1.52 updaters. When I did Check for Updates (which would have been better off under the PictureProject menu) these were not listed. When I downloaded them manually they wouldn't install. Saying they couldn't find PictureProject.
PP Transfer kept starting up when I connected my camera. I tried to turn this off in the preferences but there was no option. I had to open Picture Project.
EXIF information for pictures taken with other types of camera is not displayed.
Update: The 1.61 updater also didn't work. It gave an error about not finding a system folder. A new install worked fine with no loss of functionality.

Additional Canon Image Browser notes
Features are grayed out in the edit window for no discernible reason. Seems to be Autofocus view here that I can't access.

DV cams

Been taking a look at the DV cams and Panasonic seems to be doing the best job. DVshop has a few links about the Panasonic DVX 100A. The best review that it points to is at DVXuser.
DVX also points out there may be a DVX 100B coming out soon (no details) but the thing that everyone is salivating for is the HVX200 which should be out in the 4q 2005.

There seems to be some comments that DV can get to film resolution. The HVX's format which is the highest (below 6 figures or so), DVC-Pro HD, is 1080p which is 1920x 1,080 or 2 megapixels. 100 ISO film is currently being matched at 16 megapixels.

Blue screen tips.

Networking problems after reconnecting wires

If something on my network is unplugged and the plugged back in then I am unable to use the internet connection. Rebooting the modem or the router, doing a dhcp renewal or a network diagnostic, or restarting Firefox doesn't help. But if I use Safari then everything starts working.

Possible Canon lenses

Canon 35mm 2.0 weight 8 ounces cost: $230*
Canon 28mm 1.8 weight 10.9 ounce cost $400 at some point
Canon 50 mm 1.4 weight .64 pounds $310
Canon 50 mm 1.8 weight .29 pounds $70*
speed but not weight can be saved.
Tamron 24 2.5 $270

Nikon viewfinder
Shutter speed, aperture, exposure mode, metering method*, focus indicators, exposure compensation, flash ready, and frame counter
canon af/fe lock*, flash ready, shutter, flash exp comp, highs speed sync, focus confirm, exposure, wb shift

I've been doing more reading and testing
Nikon's defenders Thom Hogan and Ken Rockwell both get into the mechanics of shooting (how you use the buttons, how well the exposure is done. I have yet to find this type of defense on the Canon side).
Nikon d70s' advantages - more relevant info in viewfinder area, better access to image size and white balance, weight, price, better metering, better flash, more consistent menus between models, lens don't twist in in different ways, iso auto?, horizontal dials seem nicer, larger LCD, better visibility of LCD in daylight, bigger sensor, iso contrast setting, better use of dials in manual mode, spot metering, quieter shutter release.
Canon 20d- more and better located focus areas, mirror-lock up for slow shots, 3200 iso, better gripping material, more pros seem to be switching to canon, tilt-lenses, nicer viewfinder, scroll wheel better for menus, dedicated autofocus zone selector, usb 2.0, better customer service.

Canon iso not displayed in viewfinder during change,

Rebel XT II

Ergonomics
I found that to use the camera I supported the weight of the camera with my left hand under the lens (update: oops forgot this was way you are supposed to hold it). This meant that the buttons on the left side required a grip change to use although for most part these buttons aren't the most important for shooting. The image size and shooting parameters are accessed through these left hand buttons. More importantly it meant that using the zoom required a grip change because my hand was normally on the zoom ring.
Shooting vertically was even worse. This moves the camera a bit higher which makes it difficult to brace with the left arm. The buttons also became more difficult to use. The best example of this was when I jabbed my finger into my nose while trying to reach one. Unconsciously I stopped using portrait mode.

Software
Canon software.
For browsing there are the ImageBrowser, Digital Photo Professional and File Viewer Utility. There is no distinction made in the manual for when to use each and since they each have some functions that the others don't there are reasons to bounce between these programs that aren't integrated, have different interfaces, and no online help. ImageBrowser was best for viewing images because it allowed side-by-side viewing and seeing the exposure info. The problem with Side-by-side is that the info is done in a separate window which often gets hidden. It has options for cropping and color adjustment.
DPP has a few image adjustments- cropping, rotation, brightness, white balance, and something called ckick. The manual refers to this as click and it shades an image with a single color (like sepia toning but adjustable).
Image browser also has editing and trimming options as well as a method for rating the photos which DPP doesn't have. The shooting info it provides gets cut 0ff (as in: Camera Model Name: Canon Po...)
Finally file viewer utility has no editing options but does have a useful button which shows you where the camera auto-focused.
There is the EOS capture program which allows the camera to directly send images to the computer via USB. This program will not launch if you click on it. It must be started from within DPP. It will also not start if the camera is in playback mode. Once beyond this it allows a nice degree of control of the camera - ISO, exposure, white balance, and image size. The other options can be adjusted on the camera.
This is not the program my Powershot uses. It uses Remote Capture and it only has a size option and no adjustments can be made on the camera.
There are also the Photo Stitch and Camera Window programs, Arcsoft Photostudio. This is 8 programs for 2 cameras.

Speed
In general, all of the software is very slow and I ended up doing quite a bit of waiting moving between images. The software doesn't seem to share thumbnails between apps.

Help
DPP and File Viewer Utility have no online help. There are two PDFs- one for DPP and one cryptically named EDS_M_E which contains help for the EOS capture, camera window, ImageBrowser, RAW and Photostich programs. The inclusion of EOS Capture in the EDS documents is strange seeing as it can only be launched by DPP. It took me a while to figure this out, I would launch the Capture program and then it would disappear.

Rebel XT

I was a little upset with myself for purchasing the XT before realizing the ergonomics were so poor. This was despite reading reviews on dpreview and Steve's Digicams and trying the it in a store and using a friend's. I'd seen a few posts saying it was inadequate for people with large hands. I have small hands and still find that it requires an uncomfortable pinched grip which strains the wrist instead of using the arm muscles. It is much more unwieldy than my old Nikon 8008 which is heavier. I've tried a few different ways of holding it.
The exposure compensation is difficult to set and read. The compensation button must be depressed while using the dial. This button doesn't give good feedback for when it is engaged so many of my changes don't work. These changes can either be seen in the LCD (which means taking your eye off the shot) or the viewfinder but the display in the viewfinder isn't linked to anything besides shutter press. So you must either take your eye away from the shot or bounce your index finger between the shutter button and the exposure dial.

Lens Tamron 28-75/2.8
The lens focus ring cover a small distance- maybe a fourth of a rotation. This seems to be working well for me because I don't get lost like I did with my old zoom. This may be an inappropriate comparison as this one covers a smaller multiple.
The depth-of-field preview isn't compatible with the lens. I returned this lens but I believe that this statement is wrong.

New Camera

Even though I haven't been doing much with the images (printing, viewing) from my Canon powershot s45 I wanted a new camera. I was dissatisfied with its shutter lag and low-light performance. I've been wanting to take better surreptitious photos for which improved speed and a flip-out lens would help (then I could hold the camera at waist-level). The small Sony's were twice as fast as the other cameras but not as highly rated. The Canon's above and below mine in size had flip-outs but I wasn't sure the larger one was pocketable or that I wanted to decrease image quality by going smaller.

Suddenly I decided that I needed a real camera. The images I wanted the highest quality for are (generally) the ones where I know I'll need a camera beforehand. If it wasn't going to be pocketable an SLR made the most sense because of flexibility. I have a Nikon SLR with two prime lenses (50 and 24), there was also a heavy zoom at one point but I don't know where it is. I also have a Canon powershot s45. If I got a Nikon I could use the old lenses and if I got a Canon the same software, and batteries and charger. Possibly also the same card but I'm not sure I'd want that.
It turns out there is a staggering amount of information on the web. I decided to go with the and Rebel XT for the weight, image quality, future flexibility with lenses. The most useful sites
were dpreview.com (image comparisons here were initially unhelpful because often a camera would be compared to an older version of another camera. But was useful using the comparisons from both candidate cameras and overlapping the windows. Dpreview was more useful than imaging-resources.com due to the 100% views and more consistent examples.)
Canon vs. Nikon seems to be another PC. vs. Mac debate. The Nikon owners seem to be a bit more fanatic.

Here are some of the things I found interesting:
Comparisons
DPreview- purchase frequency, review ranking, side-by-side
Imaging-resource- has qualitative and quantitative information on all parts- cameras, lenses, scanners, printers.
Photodo- Lens grades
nobell.org- Lens data lists
Fredmiranda- user ratings of lenses
Bobatkins- gallery software, looks like some good articles. He also has good reviews (e.g this on Tamron 28-75) on photo.net.
Patrick Murphy Studio- lens comparison web sites, lens lists
Amazon.com- User comments- due to its ranking system, and nice interface. dpreview has terrible interface. Photo.net gets bogged down in flames.


General information
Photozone- lens myths sensor size MTF (a lens metric) . The reviews are good but less quantitative than dpreview and no new info on qualatative end. Tutorials too.
Popphoto- some useful articles but impossible to tell which from titles. cameras and lenses (not so good and in acrobat format)
Luminous Landscape-

Prices-
Photography equipment especially seems to cause some websites (Amazon, B&H) to do the add-to-cart-before-price thing. Choose beachcamera.com

Things I found out
Fredmiranda.com has some Adobe plugins for cleaning-up and manipulating images.
You can store data on your DV tapes.
I can increase my stealth by putting my s45 at waist level and shooting wide without looking.
When using a scanner some of the noise may be from the negative. Slides have less noise.
Film scanners are much better than flatbed using a print.
The "Lens myths" page has changed some of my thinking. Especially about canon 50mm 1.4 vs. 1.8. It seems that pictures will be nearly equivalent after f1.8. This is contrary to reports about it ramping up faster since it starts faster and comments on lens quality.
Photo contests

Notes on determining the power of activated carbon

the question
refresh
refresh

the 15,000 sq. meters we will give the minimum volume of 1 atom thickness.

15,000 cubic. meters/ volume of zinc=number of molecules
number of molecules/avagado's number=weight in grams*atomic number.

15,000 cubic. meters/ volume of zinc=number of molecules
number of molecules/6x10^23=weight in grams*atomic number.

Power of activated carbon: 1 gram=15,000meters
Zinc density=71.4g/cm cubed

15000meter*1,ooo,ooocm/meter=number of centimeters
7.14 g/cm cubed*number of cubic centimeters= weight in grams

15000meter*1,ooo,ooocm/meter=15*10^9 cubic centimeters
7.14 g/cm cubed*15*10^9= 1.05*10^10 grams of zinc

let's assume a brita filter weighs only 1/10 of a kg
Therefore a brita filter can absorb 1.05*9 kgs or 1 million kgs or 1100 tons

The weight of the empire state building is 365000 tons therefore it would take about 340 Brita filters to capture enough zinc of equivalent weight to the Empire State Building.

Firefox extensions

Ad Block
Add Bookmark here
Bookmarks synchronizer
Greasemonkey
Password Maker
Quicknote
Tabbrowser preferences

Undecided on
Bookmarks Synchronizer, Flashgot, Platypus, Tiny url, View Formatted Soure,

Greasemonkey and Password Maker are revolutionary but not well known.
Password Maker provides multiple secure and convenient passwords based on a single "master password".
Greasemonkey makes the customization of web sites easy. By providing a way to execute java scripts aimed at particular websites you can make: Provide a Netflix link next to every movie listed in IMDB; create a text box for adding technorati tags inside the blogger post page, etc.

Games I used to play

Great
Windows: Space Quest, Alone in the dark,
Apple II: Nueromancer, Sneakers, Autoduel, Archon
NES: Contra, Super Mario,
Other: Breakout, Push push

Games that I was obsessed with and but in retrospect don't seem so great.
Windows: Castle Wolfenstein 3-d, Doom, Ultima, Lode Runner, Kings Quest, Leisuresuit Larry,
Apple II: Bard's tale, Zork, Snake, 2400 A.d.,
NES: Zelda, Sea and skate

Didn't get along with but tried
Windows: American Mcgee's Alice, Hexen, Included Windows games, Sim city, Myst, mechwarrior (?)
Apple II: Strip poker, Pac man, Tetris, Carmen Sandiego,
NES: Miracle software, Duck Hunt, Top Gun, Mike Tyson's punchout,

Simple and fun
Boulder dash, Impossible Mission, Burger Time, Turbo outrun, Double Dragon, Castlevania, Rampage, 1942, Mario, Galaga

Hard to recall, but did spend quite a bit of time with:
Spy vs. spy, Manhunter, Joust, Original Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Beyond zork, Black Cauldron, Choplifter, Below the Root, Ghostbusters, Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Karateka, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Shanghai, a Mind Forever Voyaging, Elite, Dig Dug, Kid icarus, Metroid, Metal Gear

To be categorized when I remember the names
Windows: , cool cartoonish where you are a knight,
Apple II: Surgery game, , car game where you would go up on the truck, a spy game (not spy hunter),
NES:
Other: arcade car game where you could get rocket launcher

I'm finding these hard to remember and difficult to categorize but this has made me remember the incredible amount of time I wasted on them. I'm also fuzzy on what system they were on. I was considering getting one of the new generation of consoles but this has convinced me not to.

Gamespot was helpful in providing names for NES and Apple II but had no pictures. There is also a list for the PC but it was too long to go through. Pictures are on various sites.

Things that haven't worked out for me

and the reasons.

Web services
Friendster- Wouldn't contact someone to be an "activity partner".
Technorati- too much huddled masses.
del.icio.us-too much huddled masses.
blogroll- updating my website is a pain.
Meetup- The two meetups I attended no one showed for.
Tribe.net- don't remember.
Musicmatch- not going to deal with DRM locking me to certain devices.
Ebay, Half.com, Overstock.com, deals-of-the-day type things- Despite a few trials they haven't worked their way into my spending.


Software
Microsoft Office- Very buggy with long documents, annoying interface, expensive.
Frontpage- code soup
Photoshop- Expensive. Filters don't improve images. Still good for some things.
Abiword- Bugs. Limited functionality.
Chat- any kind.
Nero Burning- didn't do well at spanning cds.
Applescript- basic functions missing.
Winamp- terrible to use.
Musicmatch- not bad but worse than itunes.
Browsers
Camino- No extensions.
IE- No tabs or extensions.
Safari- no extensions.


Things I continue to use but don't like*
Blogger, Flickr
Notepad, Real media, Dock, Windows, Explorer, Adress book, Mail.app,


Use often*
Firefox, openoffice, Thumbs Plus, Total Commander, Homesite, Text Wrangler, Quicktime, Thunderbird, Neooffice
Amazon, Google, IMDB, Netflix, Yahoo, Consumer reports.

Seldom used but good when I need them*
Grab, DVD capture, Windows Media Player, Stickies

*Applies in the past tense if Windows based

General rules of computer use

• Remember what you are trying to accomplish.
  
• Don't meddle with a system.
• If you run into a problem pursue multiple avenues simultaneously.
  
• Backup.
• Make friends with gurus.
• Upgrades are usually worth it.
• Be wary of tech support. Use a solution based on whether it makes sense, risk, and your time.
  

Blogger bugs

I'm sick of blogger.

• It's difficult to post with Blogger's edit window because
• Inconsistent Mac interface leads to sometimes using control and sometimes the Apple key. For example italics use control but cut and paste uses Apple.
  
• Incredibly poor spell checker. Doesn't learn words. Can't add possessive or capitalized versions automatically. Very small dictionary.
  
• Not able to search while editing a post.
• Spacing issues. HTML for this post is unreadable because of no carriage returns. There is another option for carriage returns which disable wsywig.
  
• But it's difficult to create posts outside of blogger because
  
• Cut and paste leads to many errors.
• Mailing to blog adds extra paragraphs in middle of sentence and puts in unclosed tags.
• It has no categories.
• It's slow.
• Templates are difficult to edit due to small text box, no search, lack of color coding.
• Dealing with images is a hassle (this is most understandable, considering it is free service).
• No password protection for posts.
• Combined with Google bar spellchecker it will delete posts.
• It can take a long time (months) for a blog to get indexed. Pretty poor for a service hosted by a search engine. Indexing speed is probably based on traffic.
• There are sometimes problems on the edit screen where the edit bar will take up most of the page.
  

Also

• Blogger support team is unresponsive to bug posts.
  
• Bug list on blogger page is nowhere near complete.
• Service outages.
• Spellchecker is very poor. These were all words that Blogger didn't know as I was posting on July 30- Davids, sociologist's, publisher's, asphyxiated, unfunny, unAmerican . This number is fairly representative.
  

Future of the browser

A while back there was a post by a Firefox driver asking where Firefox
should go- for people not to list smaller, faster or more stable but to
imagine what could be done. The question proved more difficult than I
imagined. Firefox had made my browsing incredibly simple. A letter, an
arrow key, and enter would often take me where I wanted to go after
which I didn't think about the browser and concentrated on content. I
realized that bookmarks for places that I visited infrequently were
still difficult.
Even with good titles bookmarks were still difficult to distinguish,
categorize, and browse. They were also one of the slowest and most
memory and focus demanding of the usual browser tasks. This resulted in
my not wanting to create them as it would only make the list longer and
interrupt what I was doing by categorizing it and forcing me to choose
a magic title. There was also another problem with bookmarkds that was
getting steadily easier with computers in general. Deleting files tends
to be something we do less of. Hard drives are larger, file navigation
is easier, version tracking (within programs) is better. With the
steady rise of internet web sites and the fact that as a user spends
more time on the internet they have more sites they want to remember
there is an increasing need for bookmarks. This means that bookmarks
need more deleting to avoid problems due to irrelevance, similar
titles, and broken links. Even if they were all relevant deletion would
still be needed to minimize the problems of navigation. I would also
say that looking for a specific bookmark and seeing all the other ones
that I half remember was distracting. I got sidetracked into wanting to
see what is happening with another site.
There is also the issue of making bookmarks public. People need to have
a way to link and provide meta-information about other sites or current
topics.
How do you do create bookmarks in a way that is efficient,
customizable, and fits in with your online presence?
I was unable though to figure out how to make things better.

Luckily people are on the job.
Google now records individual's searches. I haven't had a chance to
evaluate but the ability to search your search history is a very
strong. Its connection to the fabric of everyday use also gives it an
advantage that none of the other services will have. Any service like
Technorati will force the user to choose its service, while Google
steadily moves to being one interface for everything. Being Google it
also has the ability to bring in a number of users that will dwarf the
other communities. Its problem is that it doesn't allow the viewing or
searching of other's people history. The pause feature may indicate
that this will come. A minor weakness, shared by others, is an
inability to add your old bookmarks but this could be corrected with a
simple script.
Between Google and blogger all the elements are there but aren
I have briefly looked at StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and Technorati. They
may not be primarily about bookmarking or may not seem to be about it
but this is the future. Collective intelligence both automated and
manual will become the only way to maintain indivual memory and will
also provide ways to expand these memories. Right now they are not
well-suited to the long tail which is precisely where bookmarks are
deficient. A contributor to this problem is that none provide a
permanent location for results.
The unfortunately-named Technorati allows users to create watchlists of
blogs and search on current topics. The search is slow and poorly
implemented. My search on “translucent concrete” prioritzed results
with these words separate above those together. The help showed no way
to couple them. More critical is that a watchlist is something that
people want to check frequently and for this RSS feeds are much easier
to use. It does provide a good combination for fine-grained and general
searching.
Even more unforturnately-named, Del.icio.us (somewhat like Flickr) is
more link based and provides an HTML interface for finding new links on
a topic. Wisely it provides no distinction between results that belong
to a category and those which come from a person. It doesn't implement
search.
StumbleUpon is a Firefox extension and a web service. The idea of
StumbleUpon is to guide users to new websites that are well rated by
similar users. It presents a toolbar allowing a user to give a thumbs
up or down for a site. This then causes the rating to display when the
site is visited, enters a favorite in the user's online profile. If the
site has never been rated by a StumbleUpon user- this typically happens
with very small sites and permanent links within larger ones the user
is asked to give a description for it. StumbleUpon automatically places
it in a category.
A user selects a category and clicks StumbleUpon which sends him to a
highly rated site, within the category, that he hasn't seen before. Or
the user can go to the profiles of friends or users that StumbleUpon
has rated as being similar to him and see the links they have selected.
The bookmarking has some good features- it has the highest ease of use
of any tool I've used. The extension automatically (and insecurely
)logs in and the majority of the time all the user does is make a
click. The worst case, where the user has to enter a title in a pop-up,
is easier thany to the typical browser case because it doesn't have to
be categorized. These links are created on a web for the user that
anyone can access regardless of browser.
There are still a host of problems. The links are not on a consistent
page- as bookmarks are added they will be placed on another page. The
categories that are entered for sites can not be used on individuals
pages for sorting. The only sorting is chronological and they can not
be searched. They are not available offline but I don't think this is
generally a problem.
It is frustrating because none of these problems are inherent to this
type of service. StumpleUpon could be: an easily-used bookmarking
device that uses collective intellegince to add meta-information, an
innovative site-finder, and a community builder. At this point I've
used StumleUpon a few times to get sites similar to the ones I like and
the others not at all, none of them are as easy to retrieve as the
insufficient in-browser bookmarks.

Blogger doesn't import email well

Below is what blogger created out of one of my email posts. This applies to rich text or plain text email. With rich text you also get unclosed font tags. But with both I got many paragraphs randomly inserted.
It adds many unn

<fontfamily><param>Times New Roman</param>A while back there was a
post by a Firefox driver asking where Firefox should go- for people
not to list smaller, faster or more stable but to imagine what could
be done. The question proved more difficult than I imagined. Firefox
had made my browsing incredibly simple. A letter, an arrow key, and
enter would often take me where I wanted to go after which I didn't
think about the browser and concentrated on content. I realized that
bookmarks for places that I visited infrequently were still difficult.

Even with good titles bookmarks were still difficult to distinguish,
categorize, and browse. They were also one of the slowest and most

Powerbook you are so beautiful

I dearly love your beveled keys. They are firm but responsive, musical but industrious. Listen. Those soft clicks interrupted by the  syncopated clap of the spacebar. The tiny row of function buttons on the top, smoothly framed by the esc and eject buttons. The four arrow keys both with and separated from the others.
The subtlety of your trackpad, I wouldn't have known- I didn't know. How could I have suspect that something so metallic and bare could move me? (You know what I mean.) It's not like those other trackpads.
Silver, silver everywhere.  The powerful subdued cover opening to brightness- as if jewelry had come alive. Glowing and shimmering, facets expanding.
You resemble not other computers but the designs of movies. My apartment will never be your match until I can place you next to a door that softly slips into the wall as I near.
But even that isn't it. There is also in your features the strong shapes of modern art. Look only at the bottom half of the front it is as if I had gone into Plato's cave and switched on the lights, therefore finding the perfect button.   The long lines curving at the ends like a racetrack and then the black moat of air pulling me toward it. Made whole with the neat cupping of the frame.
Descending to the bottom it merges with other shapes- the tiny row of circles following behind larger one (like baby ducks), these circles buried into a 3-dimensional rectangle confronted by a smaller brightly framed one. In between these two rectangles, directly below the perfect button, parallel to the circle, sits a larger circle. A calm home bringing a Japanese sense of balance to the strong American shapes.   
And when you speak to me Vicki-with-an-I...

Fwd: Purpose

This blog more than the others is for my own uses. I want a record of what causes me trouble and the solutions I find so that I can: get a recognition of patterns of problems, solutions, and their sources; be able to retrieve solutions that I've forgotten; find answers to problems in the process of collecting my thoughts on them; and stopping obsessing about problems.
I didn't expect the last two results when I started writing this. I'm the most pleased about the latter. I have a tendency to work for long periods on problems that are not critical. The idea is that I want some type of perfect environment and that if I achieve that I won't have to spend any more time tinkering. This is, of course, not possible. I will always be dealing with software that in some way does not work the way I want it to. Even if somehow this magically did occur my computing environments are not stable. As soon as an upgrade was done, I would be back to endlessly tinkering. There is also the problem that every change to a computer not only brings it to a less common and more difficult to diagnose state as well as creating the risk of unintended consequences.
Here are examples of this that have caused me problems this month-  Wanting so badly to get bullets working in Mail that I spent an hour on it, called Apple Tech support for another hour during which they erased all my mail, and now spending many hours trying to recover the mail; Wanting to have all my email centralized, therefore enabling POP on my Yahoo account, and removing all the files which over the years I had diligently made online backups of. There haven't been bad consequences but I've also wasted many hours trying to get Iphoto to import; dealing with Greasemonkey script bugs, dwelling on Apple's replace vs. merge for folder copying, and trying to create an AppleScript that won't do much for me.
Writing about these helps me stop obsessing. When dealing with a problem I create a mental list of possible solutions. I have to remember this list so that I don't retry something unsuccessful and to figure out what I haven't done. By putting it on paper I allow myself to forget it and can convince myself that I've tried all the avenues- or occasionally in the process of collecting the thoughts I realize there is something I haven't tried. There is great relief here- these aren't things that I work on for a few hours but things that my mind returns to again and again over the course of months.
I think occasionally I will find a solution that will be useful to other people and I'm glad of this. What would be even better is if they saw how pointless much of this is and decided to stop tinkering themselves.

Replace and merge

The argument over what should happen when a folder is placed over a folder with the same name seems to be a distillation of the PC vs. Mac debate. As always there is a tendency to reduce the arguments to single points ("don't you know what replace is??") which means that issues lose their context.
Replace would not make sense on a PC. The reason that replace is an option on a Mac is because of the good choice of separating the user properties from the applications. On windows if a replacement of an application folder was done, data would not be lost but configurations and extensions would be.
The use of replace as a method for installing applications also fits in with the Mac philosophy of making drag and drop a universal feature. As a PC user, it seemed to me there was an excessive amount of drag and drop (henceforth "drag) talk with Macs. I hardly ever used drag so it seemed like just another example of Macs choosing a graphical nicety over getting things done. What I neglected to think about was that part of the reason I didn't use drag on the PC was that it was broken. PC drag works so inconsistently that remembering where it works becomes worse than memorizing genders in a foreign language. Not only are we dependent on the application but on the relationship of two applications, their states, and the type of data.
The idea on the Mac is a consistent, easy-to-understand interface for getting things done. Therefore drag can do work that on PC would be drag, program installation and file opening. f these three the drag is the most readily understood because it has a real world equivalence. If we were purchasing the equivalent of an application (a calculator, a clock) we would drag it home from the store, not install it. This means people don't have to be experts to get things done.

I think the ideas of simplicity, consistancy, and a real-world equivalence, are far stronger argument than the language argument ("replace means replace, get it"). What we are dealing with is metaphors. A metaphor is a way of understanding something in terms of something else not an exact equivalence. If above my chair I have a desktop with files that I need to move I would not "cut and paste" them. Nor would I attempt to put a clock or a calculator inside a folder. I might put a directory inside a folder but not the other way around. These ideas do not mean that our computer OS's are faulty they are doing the best they can.
Let's also imagine a scenario. My computer needs more RAM but the two slots are both full. I go to the store and buy a larger module then replace one of the smaller ones in the computer. After I replace the old one it does not disappear from existence. I could go back and replace the new one with it if needed.

Computer metaphors also have to bend to suit computing. Deleting doesn't suggest a trash can but both OS's understand that regardless of the wording this is something that users need. And it is hear where the use of replace leads to both inconsistency and potential problems.
Users come to understand that deleting is difficult to do. On the PC it is Delete-Yes-Empty Trash-Yes. On the Mac it is Apple+Delete, Trash, Yes. Not only are these (basically) four-step processes but we are trained to stop in the middle (for days or months) and two of the steps mention delete.
With replace there is only one step of confirmation which does not mention delete.

Last there is a general design principal that anything users do should have an undo.

By using either undo or the trash can with replace the Mac could allow for user mistakes and be consistent across two fronts.

Google answers

I still think that "you get what you pay for" should be changed to "you get less than what you pay for". But there are times when you get what you pay for. There are even times you get more : hackey sacks, bicycles, Google answers.
The quickness, generosity, and dedication of the staff seems completely unconnected to any thought of monetary reward. I have asked 9 questions, gotten pages of comments that were really answers and paid, I believe, less than 5 dollars.

There are a few problems.
You can't search or link to a particular posters questions. A non-answers Google search will find some of them but there are no boxes on the page for this. So you need to logout or use your browser toolbar. The list derived from this is also uniformative displaying things like the names of those who commented and the price of the question. For example these are mine.
There is also some funny business with logging into answers. Since I'm logged into Gmail it brings me to the answers page already logged in. I have to logout because when I joined answers it was before I had a Gmail account. The login page is then presented in a small box of the old page (instead of going to a new page with a login screen). A reload can fixes this but it can't be fixed in general. When I try to change my email address to that of the Gmail account it says I have to use an external account. Besides making logging in difficult this means that I can not use Gmail and Google answers at the same time.

Current issues or bugs

See also: Firefox bookmark issues, iPhoto issues, Nikon software, ivew,

Unsolved
TiVo cannot connect to computer. I have wireless USB for TiVo box and a wireless powerbook. I installed the TiVo software and TiVo appears in the system preferences. (TiVo originally did not work with 10.4 but one of the patches fixed this. My Ethernet is not wireless. I have turned on the service and checked off some playlists so they will be shared. I added my computers i.p. inside TiVo. This stage does not work. I tried rebooting.

Gmail does not handle attachments over a Meg in size even though its stated maximum is 10 Megs. It gives "Document Contains No Data" errors. I initially thought it was still working because the red message at the top still displays "Sending". Google shows many other users experience this.

iMovie can not add titles. CGContextSetFillColorWithColor: invalid context . All I saw about this was that someone saying that Googlemaps didn't work and he fixed it by clearing the Googlemaps cache. Clearing iMovie cache did nothing.

Solved
I was not receiving email from a friend. This was because he was also hosting my future web domain and he had already made the change on his end. So the emails stayed on my account on his server.

Unable to "Rate this item" on Amazon. It was because it is an image and at the very bottom I never found it.

Importing from Thunderbird to Mail.app

When I first started working with Mail I did an import of my Thunderbird stuff but today when I tried again, in order to recover deleted messages. I ran into a lot of problems and the help I found didn't work. All of the things it made sense to import were grayed out.
The solution is to import the folder called Mail.
This may not work for me though because currently I only see Sent, Trash and Unsent. Perhaps Mail has something that records what you have previously imported.

Gmail vs. Yahoo Plus

I decided that I should get Pop working for all my accounts so after setting up Gmail I decided to do Yahoo. The default for Mail is to delete all downloaded mail after a week so Yahoo did what I told it to do and a week later deleted all my email. This is frustrating because I had intended to have many of the documents online so they would be invulnerable to hard drive crashes/ theft, etc.
Gmail on the other hand only archived the emails each week. I keep finding that Gmail is easy to use in many small ways that I hadn't been looking for: preventing composition loss due to navigation away from page, combining threads, listing number of unread messages in title (unobtrusive and it can be scanned from other tabs), combining replies.
The combining replies with the original message has multiple advantages:

• reduces page loads when composing
• will globally enable a more consistent replying method (as more people use Gmaill there will be less need for the included originals)
  
• message content streamlining (the message you write only has things written by you. This makes manual and automated searching more efficient. )
• reduces wasted bandwidth.
  

I haven't used Gmail long so there are probably more things, I'll discover.

Gmail JavaScript broken by Greasemonkey script

I was unable to use the selecting JavaScript in Gmail (all, non, unread, etc.). By selectively disabling the scripts I noticed that it was the Humane autosave feature that was causing this. By tracking down the script home I noticed there was an update. The update fixed this problem but there were a few other problems that need to be highlighted.

• There's no way to know that a greasemonkey script has an update
• Greasemonkey's most current version which allows you to see the script is not available by auto-update. This is a problem common to many extensions.
  
• It may become very difficult to tell which Greasemonkey scripts are causing problems and some problems may go undetected.
  

Future Topics

These notes are probably not going to be understandable but if you scan you may get a look at what will come soon.

Applescript
Blogger- control and apple c, can't switch tabs,
Links: technorati, blogroll, stumbleupon, bookmarks synchronizer
firefox extensions
Post to metaefficient about monitors.
talk about future monitor tech?
Ask Christian why he used reply instead of commenting for monitors
Google answers (also send to Blaise)

Powerbooklove

Soft
Address book photos show up in mail.
Changing desktop photos.
JuhNuh Sayqua - The lists I make do not explain it. And I have had trouble explaining to my brother what makes the difference but the mac is much easier to use. It feels friendly.

Hard
Monitor turns off. There are times when I'm listening to music when I don't need the monitor on at all. My Dell never allowed this.
Sweet keyboard.
Many times runs very cool.
Long battery life.

Powerbookhate

• Keychain keeps prompting me for password. You are supposed to be able to reenable applications but I don't see them listed in order to do that. This problem started after I changed my keychain password then changed it back.
• iTunes doesn't have way to do a direct import of mp3 files from internet. This means two copies of the files.
  
• iPod doesn't seems to support shuffling of playlists.
• Powerbook wakes from sleep to check email. Not sure how to turn off.
• Dock stickies often do not allow new characters at end.
  

Non-Apple

• Firefox doesn't have way of disabling extensions without unistalling them.
• Firefox opens TextEdit on startup.
  
• Neooffice lags behind typing when working on an encrypted file. This might be fixed with beta java 1.4 updates.
• Neooffice has slow startup. See above.
  

12 inch superdrive Powerbook with Panther

Soft

• Mail program- "reply all" replies to sender too. No bullets. There is somewhat of a workaround with special characters but the option to insert this doesn't show up for me. It does show up for others on my computer. (Apple tech support was not able to fix this but they did clear away all my old emails while trying.)
• Address book- has no way of telling you which addresses are unfiled. In minimized mode you can click forward to next address but not in max (it would be useful to scroll in max for bulk editing.)
• Firefox crashes a lot.
• Apple techsupport seems as bad as PC support for complex questions
  
• Dock Inability to distinguish programs- The taskbar was much better at allowing me to distinguish what my minimized documents were. A text label was better than a tiny snapshot with an even tinier icon. I have my icons set to the largest size but all I can distinguish is some white and grey which I assume to be text and then a blotch in the right corner.
• Dock often has too many windows for same app- iChat has three.
• Dock loads mini-windows when I would prefer main one. Often I will click on Firefox icon and it will load the download window.
  
• Always creating new finder windows by accidentaly clicking outside the browser.
  
• Computer appears to lock when switching users- I believe what is happening is that the account not currently being used shutsdown due to non-use so that when you switch over and the screen is dark and appears non-responsive you may think it is locked.Spotlight
• Spotlight can't seem to search on exact strings. i.e. "these words in a row". It is not instantaneous and difficult to use while it is searching because link placement changes as the list grows.
  
• Excessive power use- closed it disharges in about a day. The thinkpad I used seemed like about a week.
  

Hard

• Even with Ignore Accidental Trackpad on I keep going to strange places in the document.
• Sometimes noisy and hot even when not doing much. (Battery recharging?). Note: This problems seems to have disappeared.
• 12 inches ends up being too small for multiple docs.
  

Uploading images part II

Since I can't get Iphoto to import I installed the Canon ImageBrowser utitlity and tried to upgrade to the current version- 5.01. After attempting to upgrade I got message "int error" and then the program halted. Instructions on the site indicated I might need to install an earlier version so I downloaded 3.6 and tried again but got the same message. This indicated that maybe 3.2 would be good but this was not available on the site.
I called Canon which was quick to respond, polite and unhelpful. After having me do meaningless tasks they blamed Apple.

Update:I've been able to install with Apple's Image Capture which works much faster than Iphoto did. I would like to get the Canon browser working so that I won't have to manually rotate photos.

TV Power consumption

I want a new TV. I've been thinking about a projector because in addition to viewing it might be useful for some projects I've been thinking of doing. I wanted to check the environmental correctness of this so I went to metaefficient and it mentioned the low power consumption for LCDs as compared to CRTs. I did a bit of searching for a while but could find nothing about how projectors compared to LCDs.
I continued to search for a while becaue I'm stubborn and seem to like to not work on anything productive. I remembered there were those stickers with the star that I was always removing from electronics. I searched around some more for "ratings" "eco" and "star" before finally landing on energystar . Energystar has no specific ratings on any product or categories of products.
Amazon had energy information where the manufacturer decided to trumpet it. I finally found energy consumption stats at B&H.
I still have no other info about other environmental concerns that might help compare the different technologies (eg manufacturing processes, durability). But my basic finding for a sampling of comparable sizes was very surprising: CRT (Sony 36 inch 240 watts), LCD (Sharp 36inch 224watt), Plasma (Sony 37 inch 350Watts). (I would choose a smaller size but plasma screens seems to start at 37 inches.
The popular suggestion that LCD is multiple times lower than CRT (metaefficient suggestion, Viewsonic, etc ) may need to be reexamined. The indication that LCD and Plasma are roughly equivalent may not be right.
It is hard to compare a projector since it doesn't have a fixed size but the one I am looking at the Epson Powerlite S1 (1400 ANSI lumens) is 200 Lumens and should project over a much larger area.

Before finishing I decided to check if this discrepancy was due to the larger sizes of the TVs I was looking at. There a differences here but nowhere near what is stated in articles 14 inch CRT 60 watts , 14 inch LCD 40 watts).
*Obviously there will be differences between manufacturers but this further indicates that the type of technology is not the best way to predict power consumption.

Google's hung up on search

Here's a hell of a lot of steps to add a link to categories to your blog
How to use delicious for blogger. You can manage to get the actual links in your blog by using Technorati tags inserted inside using Greasemonkey and then using the results of searches as the links. But

• It's a bit slow as the search gets generated each time.
• One time a character was dropped and it made the links seventy pixels tall instead of 70% of the rest of the pixels. Maybe this was my fault.
  
• Sometimes the 70% text is difficult to read.
• It's not going to be perfect because it will be search based.
• I would like to have users be directed to a category automatically when they enter. (Probably and easy JavaScript hack.)

Google seems hung up on search. Sometimes pre-defined structured data can be a good thing. It's why Yahoo's People Finder returns a few likely results with their address and phone number while searching for someone's name in Google returns information about the summer camp attendance of somebody's father.

iPhoto poops on me

• I've attempted to upload from my Canon s45 three times and it craps out.
• iPhoto's folder and rolls make no sense.
  Supposedly I should be able to preserve the information contained in my old file structure by moving folders into iphoto one at a time. See this from apple's site:
  

  You can also drag individual photos or an entire folder from the Finder into iPhoto's photo viewing area. If you drag a folder, a film roll is created with the folder's name. If the folder you import contains subfolders, film rolls are created with each subfolder's name.
  

  
  I have found this doesn't work. Update: What may work is to be in a folder and then do the import from there.
  

• I am unable to create new rolls. Mostly this is grayed out but if you go to the top of the library folder and select a few photos it isn't. Even then when I execute the command nothing happens. I have never had a roll besides last roll.
  Update: My new take on rolls is that they aren't supposed to work unless you are importing them from the camera. This makes intuitive sense except that I would still think you should be able to create a new roll.