the finger-keyboard synapse - March 2005 Archives

March 2005

Whiteboard corruption mystery solved (10:13) - On January 10, I posted about "The great whiteboard corruption mystery" where prolonged or heavy use of the whiteboards was causing Windows computers to "mess up." There was no rhyme or reason and no reliable way to reproduce the problem, and so it had been without a fix for quite a long time (I think someone originally posted about it in the forums a year ago). As I was proofreading a part of the wxWidgets book that Julian had written,...

Safari, image opacity and divs do not mix (20:13) - Sometimes the most benign things can mix to form a deadly combination. On the new web site, there is a really neat image opacity / mouseover effect. (Speaking of the new site, see the entry below for how to see it if you haven't already!) The short phrases to describe the sections of the image don't tell very much, so someone suggested using the tooltips from another page to display more information without taking up more space. A great idea,... | 2 Comments

For the first time: the new web site unveiled (21:22) - It is with great pleasure that we want to give our loyal users and forum/blog readers the first chance to use our new web site and provide feedback. We hope that you will find the new site more attractive, more organized, more interesting, more informative and more fun. The full announcement is available in this forum thread. In order to facilitate and consolidate the discussion for the new web site, comments are disabled for this post; please use the forum...

Nousing Narciposters (22:45) - Wired magazine has a mini-column called Jargon Watch each month. This column highlights emerging words in today's society, and then tend to be technology-related. A few of this month's (April 2005) were particulary interesting: - Narcipost - A shamelessly egocentric blog post that's of little interest to anyone besides the person who posted it. - Nouse - A peripheral device that tracks the movement of the tip of your nose to control a cursor. So I guess this could lead... | 2 Comments

Get the book sometime after June 10th (22:00) - We have received a fairly detailed schedule for proofreading the wxWidgets book, and the final copy is currently slated to go to the printer on June 10th. I can only assume that availability will follow shortly thereafter. I'll post again if/when I know substantially more about when exactly it will be available. Work on the new web site continues, and hopefully this week we can open it to wider audiences for feedback and testing....

More interactive new web site features (10:39) - The new BitWise web site has many more interactive pages where the reader has the opportunity to try something themselves or give us feedback. Some of the recent interactive additions:The FAQ and documentation pages provide a way for users to submit suggestions for FAQ questions and new documentation articles. Each documentation article can be rated by the reader to provide their thoughts about the quality of the documentation. A new Direct Connection Setup Wizard provides customized instructions for setting up...

Happy Birthday Version 0.1! (11:02) - The first release of BitWise, version 0.1, was released three years ago today on March 17th, 2002. That night, we had about 10 users online. It was quite a thrill to have 10 users online on a system that didn't even exist one month prior.... | 3 Comments
First peek of the new web site (10:32) - Many of you have been wondering what the new web site will look like. Here's a shot of the new front page (click for full size): Some things to note:There are three site themes, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Each theme has its own color, orange, green, and blue, respectively, and each theme will have its own screenshots. The news items are readable simply by clicking on the blurb, which will expand the item in-place. The screenshot will... | 4 Comments

AOL gives privacy back (supposedly) (11:07) - Due at least in part to the public outcry, AOL has announced that they will be changing their TOS, and explained that the TOS was really just a misunderstanding. I fail to see how any reasonable person at AOL could have read the TOS and not seen the huge problem with its wording, but that's another issue. In any event, here's a small excerpt from the full article news.com: America Online said late Monday that it plans to revise its... | 2 Comments

AOL does away with privacy (20:25) - Now that the news is pretty well broken around the world, it's time for me to jump on the bandwagon. ;) As I'm sure you've heard, AOL's new TOS (Terms of Service) contain some disturbing clauses. My favorite: Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created... | 3 Comments

George Lucas on 60 Minutes tomorrow (22:59) - While I wouldn't classify myself as a "Star Wars nut/freak/whatever," I do like Star Wars. I haven't ever really gotten in to the post Return of the Jedi stuff, mostly because everything seems so nicely wrapped up that it seems a shame to learn about all the turmoil afterwards. Anyway, I was eager to see the trailer for Episode 3 that was shown for the first time the other night on Fox (after the O.C., which I didn't watch, of... | 2 Comments

Will you be my moo? (21:23) - You know it's a good day when you ask someone, "Will you be my moo?" The best part is I don't know what it means, I just thought it sounded funny. Plus I really need to start living up the craziness of the aoeu message from last week... :0 Potpourri this evening: - The wxWidgets book manuscript has finally been submitted after a series of extensions (remember it was originally due March 1st). We also have received a first draft... | 2 Comments

The answer to the aoeu/asdf riddle (22:30) - I promised everyone an answer to the "aoeu" message, and gave the clue it began with D. The full answer is "Dvorak" because I use the Dvorak key layout. If you hit the keys that makes asdf on Qwerty but are using the Dvorak layout, you get aoeu. :) I just needed some text for a message, which was supposed to go only to me, so I used my left hand to quickly generate some text. So despite popular opinion,... | 5 Comments

Scroll down a few entries... (10:26) - ... and read the comments on my February 27th post. There's a post with some real meat and things to discuss, unlike the recent aoeu/asdf posts. :) (Since this isn't a "real entry," comments are disabled for this post.)...

asdfasdfasdfasdf! (23:42) - I can't believe that my recent post about the "aoeuaoeuaoeuaoeu" message has become one of the most commented-on posts. Does that mean that the posts with real content are boring? :( Anyway, I wanted to clear up the mystery, but instead of directly clearing it up, the title of this message is a rather significant clue. If you know the answer, put the first letter of the answer/reason in a comment. That way we'll know if you were right or... | 5 Comments

aoeuaoeuaoeuaoeu! (11:36) - It seems that every time I wonder what I'm going to post about, something falls in my lap. Tonight was no different. If you were lucky enough to be on late this evening, you received a wonderful message from *BitWise* saying "aoeuaoeuaoeuaoue." This message was added as an offline message for every single user, so if you were online, you received it. If you weren't online, your copy of this wonderful message was, I regret to say, already deleted. How... | 10 Comments