:skyecade online

Get the @&$% out of here. Classic…

     

Filed under: Linux, Geekculture, Microsoft, Apple, TV / Video
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hehe

Poor Microsoft. One of these days Bill Gates is just going to walk up to Steve Jobs and backhand him.

     

Filed under: Microsoft, TV / Video
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I had this thought while driving to work today. As a lot of you know, I split my time pretty evenly between Windows XP and OS X, and I’m quite happy doing so. I’ve been a Windows user for as long as I can remember and an OS X user for a little over a year now. Some of you also know how much I loathe Windows Vista. It’s slow, unstable, clunky, and a major resource hog. I understand that my Grandmother may need the added security that Vista offers, or the electronic hand holding that Microsoft forces upon you, but I don’t. I hate jumping through hoops. Vista is a minimalist’s worst nightmare.

If it were up to me, I would go on using XP and OS X forever, but we all know that can’t happen. So what do I do? When the day comes to replace my Dell XPS, what will I buy? Another XPS, but this time with Vista on it? Sure, you can still buy new PCs running Windows XP, but will that be the case a year from now? Would I even want XP a year from now? A year in technology terms is an eternity. Microsoft already said they are going to stop supporting XP in 2008. I’m really getting backed into a corner here. I can’t run XP forever, and I highly doubt Vista will have matured by then, if ever. I’d say there’s a 50 / 50 chance that I may eventually go all Mac. Those chances are pretty high considering I’ve been with Windows since the beginning of time (remember the whole technology/eternity thing). It’s really sad too. The truth is, there are really only three reasons why I haven’t made the switch yet.

The first reason is because I dropped $3500 on an XPS about a year ago. I am going to squeeze every last ounce of life out of that computer before I pull the plug.

The second reason is familiarity. I can fly around XP like it’s nobody’s business. Unfortunately, Microsoft blew that right out of the water when the redesigned Vista. Was there something wrong with “Add or Remove Programs“? Not to mention I’m starting to get pretty damn efficient with OS X. Did anyone else just hear a hammer?

The third reason, though it may seem childish to some, is that I’m a gamer. I love gaming. First person shooters in particular. XP still reigns supreme in this arena, but for how much longer? With Macs sporting their new Intel chips, game development has shifted significantly. I’m sure this also has to do with the fact that Apple’s market share is increasing. Game developers actually like to sell their products. Weird! My point is, Apple seems to be moving in the right direction in terms of gaming, and that’s bad news for Microsoft.

So what’s left? Productivity? Mac! Development? Mac! It’s Unix for god sakes. Internet? Mac! Entertainment? Mac! Creativity? Mac!

Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me the reasons why I should, nay,… need to stay with Microsoft. Believe me, I’ll listen. I feel like I’m breaking up with a long time girlfriend. I keep making excuses to stick around, but they’re starting to sound old and transparent. I know what you’re thinking, “stop your bitchin’ and just switch already“. *sigh I have some time to think about it anyway.

Maybe Vista is a reincarnated version of Windows ME. And maybe a year from now we’ll all be saved by the release of Windows XP Ultra Deluxe 2009 Edition. Then all my problems would be solved.

     

Filed under: Microsoft, Apple, Software
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Check out this research done by Compete Inc. which outlines the top 20 websites ranked by unique visitors (U.S. Traffic only).

I was surprised by some of the domains that were on this list and equally surprised by some that weren’t. Read/Write Web makes some comparisons to Alexa’s top 20 websites, along with some other interesting commentary.

     

Filed under: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Web 2.0, News, Internet
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Dear Santa,

The first thing I want is a huckleberry attachment for my MacBook. It’s a little webcam mirror that will essentially turn the built-in webcam around and allow me to shoot things in front of me. I can’t think of a practical use for this, but I want it.

The second thing I’d like to add to my list is this Web 2.0 poster that would look absolutely smashing in my office. You have to order this one from Europe, so I’d step it up a notch.

While you’re at it, you might as well throw a Zune on that list. The brown one please. It will look nice sitting next to my iPod. They can fight it out for my affection.

     

Filed under: Gadgets, Apple, Microsoft, Web 2.0, Music, Technology, Zen Geekery, Internet
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Four of us were sitting at my friends house a about a week ago, when I brought up some interesting news stories I read about Apple’s OS X vs. Windows Vista. Now, when you’re sitting in a room full of avid Windows users, it’s interesting to see how instantly hostile they can get towards Apple, and how defensive they can be of Windows. This kind of boggles me. I’ve always used multiple operating systems side by side and have found that each of them offer things that the other can’t. Granted, I spend the vast majority of my time using Windows and have invested way, way, more time in that OS than in all of the others combined. It would definitely be a hard sell to get me to switch my primary operating system.

If there were such an operating system that could make me switch, however, it would most likely be OS X Tiger. I’ve been using OS X on a daily basis now for about five months and have loved every minute of it. This is a new frontier for me. I have no substantial experience with any of the other Apple operating systems, so I can’t form a valid opinion of them. Just OS X Tiger.

Here are some of my thoughts on OS X in comparison to Windows and Linux:

First of all, OS X is really just a pretty version of Unix, so we know right away that it’s far more secure than Windows. Having a background in Linux/Unix really helped me with the transition to OS X. In fact, the first time I booted up my Mac I was surprised at how much it looked like Kubuntu, menus and all.

Boot up and shutdown times are ridiculously quick. Noticeably faster than Windows and quite a bit faster than Ubuntu. Coming out of sleep mode is almost instantaneous too.

Installing programs couldn’t be easier. Drag the new program to the Applications folder and voila, it’s installed. Uninstalling couldn’t be easier either. Drag the program to the trash bin and voila, it’s uninstalled. No orphaned DLL files or abandoned registry entries to clutter up your system.

No viruses. The typical argument here is that it’s because the writers of such malicious programs don’t create viruses for Macs, because no one uses Macs. That’s partially true. It is possible to write a virus (or other malware) for OS X — and as the operating system becomes more popular you can bet we’ll see more of them. The simple fact is, however, it’s much harder to write this kind of software for a Unix based OS. One reason for this is because 99% of Windows users are going about their daily business logged onto their computers as administrator, also called a root. Ask any Linux user if he or she surfs the net as root and they’ll most likely laugh at you. OS X, for all intents and purposes, is Linux.

It’s very intuitive to use, but first, you have to clear your mind of all Windows. Only then will yo be able to accept the OS X interface. For example, the whole corners thing is genius. When I move my mouse to the top left corner (or whichever corner you choose), all my open applications are tiled in front of me. It’s like alt-tab times 100. It’s little things like that that make OS X shine.

OS X is a very powerful development platform which comes preloaded with languages such as Python, Perl, PHP, and Ruby, while still remaining incredibly user friendly to the computer novice.

Spotlight! By far the best search utility in any operating system. So good that Microsoft is putting a Spotlight clone in Vista.

Plenty of software applications. From what I used to hear about Macs, the main problem was that no one made software for them. Like I said, I don’t know anything about the older versions of Apple’s OS, so this may be true. I can tell you that with OS X, there is definitely no shortage of software. Because OS X is Unix based, you can essentially run any Linux program you want on it. For example, I don’t use Microsoft Office anymore, even on Windows. I use OpenOffice which is a free, cross-platform office suite. I don’t use Dreamweaver anymore. I use NVU, which is a free, cross-platform HTML editor. Software that is cross-platform is especially nice because no matter what OS you are using, your workspace remains familiar.

OS X is geared more towards the user. In the world of Web 2.0, content is king. In the world content creation, OS X is king. It’s hard for anyone to argue the fact that the Mac reigns supreme in the area of photo manipulation and audio / video production. With bundled apps like Garage Band, Photo Booth, iTunes, and iMovie, the average user can easily produce rich content, ripe for a new dynamic web.

These are just some of the examples of why I love OS X, and it’s only been 5 months. So if you are a Windows user and you haven’t looked at an Apple in a while, I recommend that you take another look, you may be surprised.

Or you can wait a bit. Apple and Microsoft both have new operating systems due out shortly, OS X Leopard and Windows Vista respectively. 2007 could turn out to be an interesting year.

     

Filed under: Apple, Microsoft, Software, Productivity, Reviews, Technology
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Three reasons sites break in Internet Explorer 7.

This is a great write-up by Swedish blogger Roger Johansson. From my experiences over the last month, I would say he hit the hammer right on the head. This is what he had to say:

1. Sites that have an XML declaration before the DOCTYPE, making IE 6 use quirks mode, but not IE 7. Both browsers still get the same CSS, so IE 7 renders it differently.
2. Sites that depend heavily on CSS hacks that no longer work in IE 7.
3. Sites that use conditional comments to feed a bugfix stylesheet to IE without specifying a version number, thereby making IE 7 load the bugfixes and mess up rendering.

     

Filed under: Microsoft, Design / Development, Internet
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I finally fixed the IE7 problem that plagued this site, although it’s really only a temporary fix. It’s also a very ugly fix. I had to use a conditional comment in my code which detects Internet Explorer 7 browsers and then loads a separate CSS file.


<!--[if IE 7]>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../wp-content/themes/skyecade/ie7_hacks.css" />
< ![endif]-->


It sucks that I had to do it this way. I was warned by multiple web developers that this is not the preferred method and I tend to agree with them. For now though, the site works in IE7 and it will buy me some time until I can really look over the code and see what, if anything, is causing this stupid, annoying, pain in my ass behavior. It should be fun.

     

Filed under: Microsoft, Design / Development
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Internet Explorer 7 has been out for about a week now and my head is already spinning. For those of you who are not using this <sarcasm>fabulous</sarcasm> piece of software and can’t see the horrible mess my website has become, have a look for yourself. Isn’t it fantastic?. As you can see, the lists in the right sidebar are stepping left and overlapping the content. Yes, I’ve been using the beta for quite some time now, and yes, I’ve known about this irritating little bug for a couple of months, but I kept telling myself that Microsoft would never release a browser with such obvious shortcomings. Guess what…

This site uses a lot of CSS and is written in xhtml (transitional), both of which comply with w3c standards. Validate them yourselves if you wish. BUT WAIT! Before you do, I should mention that though the site code complies with w3c standards, some of the content may not always validate properly, e.g., when embedding videos from Youtube. So to validate this site, click on this to leave the front page and then click on the two buttons below.

   &   

Needless to say, the site renders perfectly when using Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Safari, Konqueror, and even older versions of Internet Explorer. Grrrr. I’m so disappointed. I was really looking forward to this release.

So what now? I could block all IE7 users from my site. That’s just mean. Not to mention that in about one months time IE7 is going to be included in Microsoft’s automatic updates - which in turn, means that the majority of Window’s user’s will be upgrading to IE7. That’s a little under 50% of my visitors. Yeah, I thought that was a crazy statistic too. That obviously means that about half of the people that visit this site are using something other than Internet Explorer. Although, I’ve always assumed that people who read and/or write blogs were more likely to use an alternative browser to Internet Explorer, but I never would have guessed 50%. My faith in humanity has just doubled.

Maybe I should just wait for Microsoft to fix this problem for me. (you may now take a moment to laugh). Done?

No, I think my only viable option here is to find a CSS expert who can write me an IE7 hack of some type. If it’s even possible. I really don’t want to do a complete site redesign just because one stupid company that can’t play nice with the rest of the kids in the yard.

To help clarify my last statement:

• kids = web standards
• yard = the internet
• stupid = Microsoft

Alright, I don’t think Microsoft is stupid. In fact, I think can be down right brilliant at times. So why, then, can’t they get something as simple as this correct? Why, oh why.

Anyways, I don’t plan on doing anything drastic for a while. Maybe Bill Gates is a frequent reader of my site and will be appalled with what he sees and go back to Redmond and personally fix the problem himself. Thanks Bill! I owe you one.

Enough blabbering. What is the moral of this story ladies and gentlemen? For the love of god, download Firefox.

<!- - end IE7 hack - ->

     

Filed under: Microsoft, Software, Design / Development, Internet
3 Comments

I took this little personality quiz which helped me to discover my inner OS. I’m not really surprised by the results.

Which OS are You?

I love the last line in the description. Especially the part where it says “even desired”. So true, so true.

     

Filed under: Apple, Microsoft, Software, Zen Geekery, Technology, Random Bits
2 Comments