General

The iMac day 2 and 3

What were they thinking? I have some complaints:

1) Great large screen. Why allow me to have tons of windows and then require me to mouse to the top of the screen for my drop down menus. I know – shortcuts. I didn’t need them on Linux/Windows. I like drop down menus. Really.
2) Themes? Umm… What am I missing? I can’t change the window decorations, etc? Odd. I must be missing something here. Windows and Linux do it and well.
3) Mail. Close – but it chokes on importing my thunderbird email. I was looking forward to using it. Instead using Thunderbird still.
4) Mouse button. So there are apps that use the 2nd mouse button but you use command button and the mouse? I know, I’m a windoze dummy.

I like:
1) iChat – works just right, love the camera
2) Monitor. It’s just great.
3) Calendar, nice app.
4) Software, most my fav open source apps still work.
5) X11…. I started an xterm… oh…..

I got an iMac

Well… It is supposed to be simple. I didn’t get one with Leopard installed, so I ran the install disk and did a clean install. Now I’m missing all my bundled software… Back to the original disks to try installing just that. So far okay, but i did expect more of an out of the box experience from Apple… More to come.

More Google Map Fun…

Mashed up a few of the locations for missionaries from church and google maps (using GMaps from Firestorm Technologies) on the church website I’ve been developing. I was worried about finding some royalty free country flag icons that would work for markers but those were easily found.

Wondering what is in the new “Pro” version of GMaps…?
Trust me, well worth the $5-10!

New Hosting Company

I have several sites I want to setup and need a hosting company that will let me do that. My longtime provider, Midphase, has had ok service. The tech support has been okay as long as I didn’t have anything unusual. Their live support has gotten harder to use (long waits). They have a plan offered by http://anhosting.com that has most of what I need, but it yearly payments. I really want something with less commitment.

So followed my friend at firestorm-technologies and tried out http://HostGator (current host). Here is what I learned chatting with their support and research.

  • All hosts have limits. Midphase cuts service when you hit 10% of CPU. Hostgator does when you hit 25% longer than 90 seconds. Hostgator seems more reasonable here.
  • Databases. Both have plans with unlimited databases (surely they aren’t each a process). Anyway Midphase limits you to 50 simultaneous connections, Hostgator you get only 25. Really you could only host one active site on Hostgator.
  • Speed. This of course is very hard to measure. Once my site was replicated on hostgator I ran some tests using tools that check speed from several locations in the world on different networks. Bottom line, Hostgator was almost 3 times as fast rendering my blog. A better test would have been to run this over several days with a variety of pages.
  • Support. Hostgator seems to be slower turning around small requests but in general is easy to get a hold of and online chats have worked well.
  • Terms. Hostgator TOS scare me actually. All kinds of odd fees and stuff they might charge you if you are a problem. Midphase would probably do the same things they just didn’t disclose it. Hostgator is a month-to-month contract – I like that.

    • Joomla-Craziness

    I started with the lifeinnorthernmichigan.com website, then I did a church website (www.victory-stl.org). Now after buying and installing a RocketTheme template I get javascript problems that cause the dreaded “IE Aborted Operation Error”. It’s probably something to do with javascript loading, or it could be the AjaxNewsflash module, or the JCE Utils, or _______. Of course it all works fine in Safari and FireFox. It only burps periodically, so it is hard to reproduce (and therefore FIX). Joomla has provided a GREAT platform to do a lot of things previously beyond me due to time constraints. Sure I could write it all but … why? The answer is so I can spend my time doing something not nearly as fun as coding: finding IE’s warts.

    While I contemplate a corporate strategy for rich client applications for my employer, I am more mindful of that solution including rich javascript applications running on IE..

    Wii Play

    Well… They were selling out everywhere. I mean the controllers are hard to find still – and for $10 more it comes with a potentially great game (no brainer for many). I already have 2 controllers (but 3 kids) so a 3rd controller doesn’t do a lot for me, but if the game is great it’s a free controller (the way I looked at it when I handed over my Visa card to the Best Buy cashier).

    Wii Play is a lot of fun. There are several different small games, ping pong, billiards, darts, tanks, cow racing, find mii matching games, air hockey, and fishing. While they are all fun, some miss the mark as being too simple. Wii Sports really made you feel like you were bowling and playing tennis. Many of the Wii Play games are not quite as realistic. For $10 it’s a steal, for $50 it’s not worth it.

    To Wii or not to Wii

    Mii Wii Thirty days later the answer is still “yes”. We couldn’t get one before Christmas. I went calling, drove store to store, and tried iTrackr.com and XPBargains Wii locater. I did get one ordered before Christmas online but it wouldn’t show up till New Years weekend. So the kids got a box with a certificate (and they were still jumping around for a promised gift!) Then right after Christmas, while returning something to Best Buy, we lucked out and got one. We started on the family room 20″ TV with it and were just amazed. The controller was so much fun compared to the Gamecube. Of course it was novel. It would wear off right? We moved it down to the basement and hooked it up to the projector (109″ diagonal screen, with component cables). Wow. Real life-like, and even more fun. It will wear off right? Hmmm….

    It doesn’t wear off. We now have Raymon’s Raving Rabits and Monkey Ball. We also are renting Wario Smooth Moves. While I’m typing this my five year old is practicing boxing on Wii Sports (the included game) All the grandparents even play when they visit – some of them have bought them one for themselves! What makes it so fun? It’s simple fun. Like the days of pac-man there again fun games with a bit of novelty you can play for 5-10 minutes and have fun. No big time investment, just fun. A bit of virtual reality, a bit of old fashion fun.

    Open Season – In 3D!

    I’ve seen two of the five IMAX 3-D films released this year. The first was Superman. It was an “okay” movie, great on the IMAX screen, but the 3D was often a bit hokey. This could have been from bad CGI or the fact the 3D was added in a remastering process rather than being part of the original production build. Like most 3-D films you only put on glasses for part of the show. Recently I went to Disney and saw the standard 3-D fare, Bug’s Life, PhillarMagic, etc. Those had some great 3-D effects, but the quality and clarity of the films left a lot to be desired. I saw some previews for Open Season when I saw Superman Returns, and it caught my attention.

    After I got over the sticker shock ($11/ticket) I was glad I went. You really have to see it to understand how it looks. The best analogy I can give is it was like watching a CGI film on a high definition large screen Viewmaster. The effect was outstanding IMHO, and not limited to a few 3-D segments – the whole movie was 3-D. The background images in the movie are rather flat, which didn’t allow for a completely real image. Some scenes that were more panoramic really showed off the 3-D. It was a great way to watch a film. I felt like I was IN the MOVIE instead of watching it. Worth the $11. I now have a reason to go back to the theater instead of enjoy movies solely on my home setup (projector w/110 inch screen). I read Happy Feet 3-D version was canceled, based on the previews I saw, that’s a shame!

    Cingular 8125, A2DP, Stereo Bluetooth headsets

    I recently got a really great set of Bluetooth stereo headphones. I have a bluetooth PocketPC Phone (Cingular 8125) loaded with Yahoo Music (The online music rental plan for $9.99/mo). Sounds like I’m heading for a great thing…

    I did some research on this setup. I found a few people in newsgroups saying it worked great. The headphones arrived. I had the latest ROM from Cingular, but I couldn’t get the headset to work for music. Back to the forums to figure out what is going on.

    Turns out there really isn’t any ROM support for A2Dp, except some custom ROMS (no thanks). The folks at HTC (the manufacturer) provide a A2DP stack for M$ bluetooth – for the Tornado phone. It is a few DLL files and some registry changes. It also “works” for the Wizard (8125). Works, just like “Greatness” is a relative word.

    After resolving I was going to have to use a hack I made the updates, and it worked. I tuned into one of my favorite bands, David Chowder Band – sounds great. Then I head over to some instrumental music. Hmm… What’s that instrument in the background? Is that some kind of modulating electronic HISS? Yup. Back to the forums.

    The hiss is apparently some sort of byproduct of the Microsoft bluetooth stack as other PocketPC devices with the Widcomm stack can tweak the sound out. Do I keep the $100 headphones or … ebay them!?

    Here is the place to get the A2DP hack ->
    http://www.htcwizardweb.net/node/304
    This is a CAB with all the registry changes and DLL’s. Just register first, otherwise you can’t download the file in the thread.

    Here are some tuning tips, YMMV ->
    http://www.firstloox.org/forums/showthread.php?p=60192

    Last bit of advice? OVERCLOCK! I run mine at 240Mhz and it makes up for the bluetooth stack CPU usage.