I never thought I’d see the day when I would upgrade past Windows XP, but it is here. Windows 7 RC is nice; it is almost bug free, fairly well organized, supports Direct X 10, and seems to support most of my hardware. Additionally, I felt no growing pains with my current level of RAM, and system resources. It seems to be the best of XP and Vista put together. But here’s the downside…
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Category: reliability
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Sleeping with the enemy – I am running Windows 7
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Handcrafted CSS – and letting go of pixel perfection
Handcrafted CSS, the latest contribution of Dan Cederholm to the world of Web Design and Development is a fantastic book! To say that I’m a fan of his work is a bit of an understatement. No web designer or developer should be without these books; Bulletproof Web Design, Handcrafted CSS, as well as Designing With Web Standards, and DOM Scripting. These books are fantastic resources, and push web development out of the dark ages of table based layout, css hacks, and duplicating sites for each browser version. But there is a particular philosophy the makes Handcrafted CSS special. (more…) -
Internet Explorer should die
Every now and then the festering issue of IE as a viable browser rears it’s ugly head. This eventuality usually occurs right around the release of a new version. Microsofts latest iteration, IE8, was slated to be released without standards mode being the default rendering mode. With all the progress that the web comunity has made with standards why wouldn’t this be the default? (more…)
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Firefox 3 and JSON
Has anyone else run into problems with their JSON and Firefox 3? We are rounding up development on one of the projects I am working on and Firefox 3 has thrown us a curve ball. Firefox 2, Safari 2.04, Safari 3, IE 6, IE 7 all test out fine on Mac and Windows.I have read that there was a new JSON interpreter in FF3, but I expected new…to mean better, not broken. Any thoughts? -
Don’t Buy Need for Speed Pro Street!
I’ve had it! I bought Need for Speed Carbon the day it arrived in stores. I ran out after work handed over my hard earned cash and ran home to install it. It was fun, and I loved it. Sounds great. But the game crashes all the time. (more…)
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Forget Gasoline…What about Plastic?
One of the often overlooked problems with our dwindling oil future is plastic. As we continue to burn oil in our engines we are using a valuable resource that could be used for durable plastic goods. When the oil runs out, or becomes extremely rare and expensive, how will we manufacture plastics? We rely heavily on plastics for all our products; electronics, transportation, medical technologies, construction, and housing. There are few things today that do not rely on plastics and polymers.
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Using Statistics to Lie
It’s amazing to me how many times I read an article and end up disagreeing with the conclusion. Not because I don’t like the results, but I don’t like how they arrived at the conclusion. For example I read an article stating that California leads the nation in motorcycle theft rates.
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Adobe Captivate V2 and V3 Review
Getting back to design and development topics I thought it would be valuable to offer my insight on this product. Being a courseware developer over the last 11 years or so, I’ve worked with a lot of tools. For most courses developing in either HTML, or Flash or a combination of both is my preferred method. It offers a vast amount of control and creativity. These methods do require a higher level of skill in web development, animation, and scripting but the results are well worth the cost. On the other hand Adobe Captivate offers some flexibility and a relatively easy learning curve for developers, and instructional designers and can result in a very professional result. Here’s my take the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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How to buy a bicycle
As a follow up to the article on cheap carbon frames I wanted to make a few additional points about bicycle quality that are less specific than one frame material. To begin, I think that everyone should ride bicycles. Bicycles provide low impact healthy exercise that is fun for all ages, and even more fun to do as a group. To get started you need to have a bicycle. If you already have one, or need to get one, here are some simple rules to follow when looking for a good bike.
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Everyone can do their part
Finally an excuse to rant about an environmental issue. Blog Action Day has asked that bloggers around the world call attention to the global issue that affects everyone, the environment. Here’s the details:
Publish a post on their blog which relates to an issue of their own choice pertaining to the environment.For example: A blog about money might write about how to save around the home by using environmentally friendly ideas. Similarly a blog about politics might examine what weight environmental policy holds in the political arena.So here’s my take on what designers everywhere can do to help. (more…)