Vista delayed…again.

Once again, Windows Vista has been delayed, atleast partially, by Microsoft.

Just weeks after 32bit EFI support was pulled, this comes as no real shock, that the latest version of windows for consumers will be delayed untill January. Professional and Server versions are still expected to be available in November (But you don't see me holding my breath).

In other Vista related news, there are rumors going around that Microsoft has created a third graphics option that will allow OpenGL support greater than 1.4, while still keeping the Glass renderer intact. Word is that this option is not the default.


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'Allo 'Allo

First I want to start off with a bit of humor, or atleast I thought so. Checkout the URL that the image is hosted on too.

Hope everyone had a good April Fools day. Was neat seeing all the places do something, however, what was the deal with the Pink pony crap? A good half dozen sites, atleast, changed their pages to be pink and chanted "OMG PONIES!". Wasn't funny I thought.

Saturday, cruise season starts! Yay!

In other news, Apple released Boot Camp, a program to help setup multiboot systems on Intel Macs. Its in beta, but, hell, so is gMail. This is a nice step for easy multibooting, since effectively Apple says its ok now, and is helping. The next best thing is virtualization (which Leopard supposedly will have)


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Organize

Ok, most people who know me know that I am very disorganzied. Despite my attempts to rectify that, things always dissolve into a mess. This renders me forgetful, scatterbrained, and absent minded. There are a few cool mac tools I've run across that help with this.

First up, for games, movies, books, and music there is Delicious Library. Using this, you can easily keep a running tally of what things you have, as well as if anyone is borrowing it. The latter feature is especially handy, because sometimes when people borrow things they have it for months at a time, and then occaisionally forget they got it from you. This way, you know exactly who has your stuff so you don't forget it. Also, if you have a very large collection of stuff, its sometimes nice to have a list of stuff to quickly look through when getting more, so you don't duplicate things. Plus, you can export the list to a text file so you can send it to others, so they know what you already have. Not to mention nifty features like recommendations on similar things, barcode scanner support, etc. All in all, a really cool tool, although a bit price heavy at $40.

Next on the list is a great, free, tool for note taking called Sidenote. Basically, side note is a little app that sits off to the side of your monitor, out of sight, and when you mouse up to the edge, out pops side note, letting you jot down different notes. You can also use color codes to help show importance on the notes. Personally, I like it better than the built in stickies app, because it doesnt always have to be on top (although you can pin it out). Another nice feature is that its not on the dock, so doesn't clutter things up.

Another good app for note scribbling is Desktastic. Desktastic lets you draw, scribble notes, etc on top the desktop or ontop of other programs. Really kick ass for those with wacoms. I have a couple complaints over Desktastic though. First one is, If you have it set "Above the Icons" you can't interact with the desktop unless you set desktastic to hide, but if you set it below the icons, you cant draw on the desktop but rather ontop of all the other programs. My second complaint is that it has an icon on the dock. To me, it would be perfect, if I could hit the expose button to hide all windows, start drawing on the desktop and still interact with the icons, and not have it on the dock. Even if I had to still press the draw button (manditory if you have it set under the icons) before I could draw, but be able to work with it while using expose, I'd be much happier. Still, its $12.95, which is cheap. This is also made by the same company who does Transmit, and Stattoo, two other cool apps.

Lifehacker also has for free its todo.txt series and script which is great, especially for those who love the commandline.


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iClip for Free

As most of you guys know, I like free things. Free as in speech, and free as in beer, it don't matter, they're both kick ass in my book. Today, MacZOT is giving away free copies of iClip 3.7. iClip is a little program that allows you to have multiple things copied at a time. Like your dock, or Sidenote, iClip hides off to the side of the screen and pops out when you mouse to the edge. Grab a copy.


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PARTY ON!

Been busy trying to help get stuff ready for the Halloween party here, so not had much to say here, or time to say it. I have been watching the World Series, and have been enjoying it greatly. GO CARDS!

Speaking of parties though, this week saw the launch of Firefox 2, and all the fanfare that received. If you're a long time Firefox user though, you may have some nitpicks with the interface changes. I know for me, I hate the individual close buttons on each tab. To me, middle clicking on a tab to close it, just seems so much quicker and easier. (Ya hear that google? Take those fancy studies and shove them.) Now, I'll be trying to help those to return Firefox to how it used to be, without the use of extensions that might end up being problematic later on down the line.

Ok, first up, getting rid of the close buttons so you can use middle click to close tabs again. For this, go up to your address bar and type in about:config then hit enter. No http:// or anything before it, just about:config and nothing else. Once that is done, you'll see a page that has a bunch of crap on it, so why don't we narrow it down by going to the filter bar and typing in "tab". See stuff really narrow down in a hurry, eh? The thing you'll want to look for first is "browser.tabs.closeButtons". You'll notice it will have a value of like 1. There are 4 possible options that can be put in; 0, 1, 2, and 3. 0 allows it so they each have individual close buttons, but only are visible if that tab is active. 1 is the default, and has them all up all the time. 2 is what I use, and has no close buttons what so ever, so you can middle click to your heart's content. 3 is how Firefox 1.5 and earlier had it, where there is just one close button and its at the end of the tabbar. Personally I do not like that in FF2 since it clashes a bit with the default theme, plus I just never use it. To change it, just double click on browsers.tabs.closeButtons and a box will popup, in which you can type in the number you want. Easy eh?

Next up, if you're like me, you'll probably want to get rid of the dumb dropdown menu that shows every single tab available, including the visible ones. For doing this, its a bit more tricky, but still very easy. All you need to do is add a short entry to your userChrome.css file. If you do not have this file, or do not know where it is, it isn't a big deal. In side of your profile folder for Firefox, there is a directory named "chrome", and edit a textfile with that name. For the main profile directory, in linux goto ~/.mozilla/firefox/Profiles/, OSX its ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/, and on Windows it is C:Documents and SettingsyouruseridApplication DataMozillaFirefoxProfiles. Go there, and inside will be some directory with a name that looks like jibberish (will look like fie3j82b.slt or sd34ng9z.default), and there should be one that corresponds to your profile directly (Firefox can support multiple profiles, for multiple people, but if there is only one, then there should be just the one). Once inside, you'll see your chrome directory. Jump in, and if you don't have a userChrome.css file, no biggie, just make a text file with that name (making sure the extension is .css and not .txt) or copy userChrome-example.css and rename it. To finish up, open it up in the text editor of your choice, and paste in the following.

/* Remove the dropdown button for all tabs */
.tabs-alltabs-stack { display: none !important; }
tabbrowser tabs > hbox { display: block; }

The last thing that I did, is change the number of visible tabs that may be allowed on the tab bar at any given time. By default in Firefox 2, the tabs cannot be any smaller than 100 pixels, which on an average size screen limits you to no more than 10 at a time. Sucks, don't it? If you still have about:config open (which hopefully you do), look for browser.tabs.tabMinWidth and then type in how wide you want them to be. I found that if it is shorter than 46 pixels, there is a nasty effect where the lines showing the separation between tabs would disappear, making them appear to all merge into one. Set it to about 50 or so (I used 46, but some people like an nice round number), and you'll now have double the amount of viewable tabs allowed before stuff gets scrolled off the tab bar.

Now, only thing left to do is restart firefox, and all your settings are ready and included.


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