Bits and Pieces

Solitude
The house is quiet now that the hordes have departed. I’ve been thinking of a few pearls of wisdom some of them passed along. I’ll try to incorporate them in a post shortly.

Basic Brown
Willie made some cogent observations in his Chron column yesterday. Among other things, he said what I’ve said for months, namely that Obama is his own worst enemy. I’m convinced that Barack is on the edge of losing this election unless he begins to drive the discussion away from Iraq and toward the economy.

Let’s face it. He doesn’t look like a commander in chief. Yes, he looks presidential, but the two are horses of a different color. A stubborn prognathus jaw is required of a CIC. A President has to look, well, thoughtful, stately, Presidential. Barack meets the second spec, but needs a little surgery to create the appropriate pissed-off look of a well-rounded modern American head of state.

Firefox
I downloaded the latest edition of the Firefox browser a few days ago and it has been working well so far. The new one is Version 3.0.1, a much improved browser according to the hype. Previous editions were unstable and on several occasions, I removed the program to prevent computer lockups. If my latest download continues to work as it has for the past several days, the bugs that put the whammy on my machine are gone. Let’s hope…!

The latest version came with a new feature that I like, the ability to enlarge images on the ‘net with your mouse or pad. Most browsers permit type enlargement, but Firefox is the only browser I know about that will enlarge an image.

On my laptop, I can enlarge images by holding the Ctrl key down and clicking ++ several times to get a larger image. On my desktop, the feature works by holding down Ctrl and rolling the mouse scroll wheel.

I don’t know if this feature has any practical application unless you have a fetish for finding warts, pimples, and wrinkles on the faces of people you don’t like, which isn’t a bad idea come to think of of.

Are you into romance?
The Romance Writers of America (RWA) is holding its annual conference July 30-August 2, 2008, at the Marriott Hotel, 55 Fourth Street, San Francisco.

Holy Romance, Lover Man! Is that a suitable location for the flowering of love? I suppose so. An imaginative writer could cook up a plot involving love at first sight between a street denizen who turns out to be a member of Britain’s Royal family and an innocent maiden from Hays, Kansas. I just threw Hays in because there aren’t too many innocent maidens in SF.

Golf can be hazardous to your health
Poor ole Michelle Wie had another kiss of death planted on her Saturday. After playing three rounds of sub-par golf, which put her one stroke behind the leader in the LPGA State Farm Classic going into Sunday, LPGA officials discovered that she had  departed the “Signing” area after the completion of her Saturday round without signing her scorecard, an automatic disqualification.

What else could happen to this poor kid? I can’t think of anything, unless perhaps she gives birth on the 18th hole when she’s fifteen strokes ahead in the world’s most prestigious golf tournament. Birthing during a tournament is probably an automatic disqualification.

Technorati Tags: Willie Brown,Barack Obama,Firefox,Visitors

Weekend Semi-Tech Talk

For the past several weeks, I’ve been using Windows Live Writer to write and publish blog posts.

I switched from Word 2007’s blog feature because it had become unbearably unstable. The program would crash at inappropriate times, requiring in some cases a complete restart. If any of you use Vista, you’ll know that it’s slow on the uptake.

So I started scouting the Internet for an alternative, stand alone tool. Live Writer came highly recommended by a number of sites dedicated to reviewing a variety of software. Based in these recommendations, I downloaded the program for free on my laptop and desktop. I haven’t been disappointed. Here are some of the features I like.

• The ability to publish a post on on a variety of blog servers such as WordPress and Blogger, two of the most popular.
• Easy insertion and positioning of photos. The process is painless and virtually automatic.
• A feature called Live Search Maps powered by Virtual Earth. This tool is simplicity itself and permits the user to insert maps and adjust their size as desired. You can also add a red Push Pin to draw attention to a particular location, but I’ve encountered difficulties labeling the pin. I think it’s actually a hyperlink of sorts.
• The map below illustrates the map feature.  You can reduce the map’s size and convert it to a Bird’s Eye View if you wish. The Bird’s Eye View is an aerial photo.

San Francisco

• The ability to view your post as it will appear on your site. This feature gets your post about as close to WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) as I’ve encountered. Still, I’ve had trouble positioning the map above so that it appears properly when viewed in Web Layout mode.
• A handy side-bar for inserting hyperlinks, pictures, tables, maps, tags (Technocrati), and videos.
• An exceptionally simple method of setting your categories.
• A Paste Special feature that includes an HTML code thinning tool that removes extra HTML code such as that found in Word-prepared documents. Word coded documents tend to result in odd layouts when posted to the Internet.
• When everything is complete to your satisfaction, click the Publish button and viola! your post magically appears on your site.

Have I encountered any disadvantages? Yes, but the ones I’ve noticed are minor. Here are my pet peeves.

• If you need to squint to read small type, you may be unhappy with Live Writer. I found no means of magnifying fonts for easy reading as you type while retaining your default font size when your post is published. The only workaround I’ve found so far is to format your Font in, say, 16 point type and then return it to 11 or 12 point before publishing your post.
• I’ve also found that the spacing of bulleted paragraphs is perfect when I prepare my blog but somehow annoyingly inserts an extra line when published. I’m still looking for a workaround because I like my posts to look a little tighter.

Everything considered, the minor annoyances become irrelevant when balanced against the advantages of stability, ease of use, simplicity and speed. As a blogger who prefers a clean program without seldom used bells and whistles, this is the one for me at the moment. On the other hand, if you’re a professional blogger, Live Writer may not meet your needs.

Technorati Tags: Windiws Live Writer

Systems Maintenance

…all systems go…mostly…

This morning I began looking for information about the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin when I ran across a photo of a young woman under the heading “She’s an inmate in Santa Rita.”

Thinking perhaps this was a story about a poor unfortunate female trapped in the American web of justice, I clicked the link and suddenly found myself trapped in an endless web of warnings about malware in my machine and how the only way to protect myself was to click Next.

I’m kind of dumb but not that dumb. Still, the more I attempted to escape from the Santa Rita Jail, the more I became convinced that I had been transferred to The Black Hole of Inner Space.

I still don’t know how I managed to extricate my poor machine from this hell.

After gulping several cups of coffee to steady my nerves, I thought, “What the heck? It’s time for a system scan anyway.”

I am tighter than I am dumb, so I use free versions of Spybot and Ad-Aware SE. I booted up Spybot first.

This is my unlucky day. Another maze. Spybot, instead of running normally as usual, defaulted to some remote location on the web and wouldn’t let me go until I had upgraded my version to the latest one. For some reason, I now have two versions.

Okay, I started the newer one and it ran though a full systems scan and gave me an all clear sign. What a relief.

Then I clicked on Ad Aware. Again, I was prompted to update the program, which I did fairly easily, noting that I wanted a full system scan again.

This time, when the Ad Aware scan was completed, I saw a bunch of flashing red lights and a little icon which looked suspiciously like a tiny crab opposite a message “19 Critical Objects,” emphasized with the obligatory red font just in case my bowels weren’t loose enough.

With a shaking hand, I checked all 19 and discovered some interesting things. None was actually critical. The risk factor of each was low.

And all were tracking cookies, the purpose of which is to keep track of the sites I’ve visited for the purpose of inserting ads in the proper spot. That may well explain an ad for a porno site one day when I was reviewing an analysis of The Ten Commandments by Eliot Spitzer.

The third thing I noticed was that all of the tracking cookies had been planted courtesy of Internet Explorer. I thought that odd since I rarely ever use IE. I’m a Mozilla Man. Has IE managed to co-opt my browser?

Not really. Microsoft wouldn’t stoop that low. Would they?

No, certainly not. I recalled using IE one time a couple of weeks ago. Apparently during that one-time use, someone managed to slip 19 tracking cookies into my cache.

Lesson learned. Clear the cache every time you use any browser. You may find your machine trapped in porno hell.

Either that or restrain your prurient desires.

Technorati Tags: Spybot,Adaware,Santa Rita Jail,Malware

Map My Heart

I have a new toy and as usual, new toys consume my time until they grow old.

This one is a program called Mapjack, and I stumbled across it on CBS5 Eye on Blogs.

It’s a handy tool for searching for addresses as you would with Google but with an added feature, a clear color photograph of the building or whatever else is located at the address.

So far, Mapjack has mapped San Francisco and Sausilito, and Chiang Mai, Thailand. I haven’t figured out the Thailand connection but the pictures sure are purty.

Cities and locations in the planning stage include Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, Pacifica, Palo Alto, San Jose, and Vegas.

Mapjack has a simple interface. If I can figure it out, so can you. If you need help, however, Mapjack’s Help menu has it all laid out. Simplicity in action. Here’s a screen capture shot of the layout. Kind of fuzzy, but you get the idea.

My preferred learning style is to jump in and just do it, click here, click there, click over yonder and see what happens. If you hit a wrong button, your machine won’t explode.

We learn more from our mistakes than from out successes. At least that’s what a pundit said about Eliot Spitzer, et al.

So, just by fooling around Mapjack and making a few mistakes, I had a great deal of fun and compiled a short list of anomalies a new user should watch for:

• The program has an annoying habit of defaulting to Sacramento when searching for some authentic addresses in San Francisco even though Sacramento isn’t an available city at this time. There may be a simple answer to this glitch, but I just haven’t worked it out yet.
• The program may or may not show the picture of the exact location you have entered. In fact, unless you can find the address clearly visible on a curb or a building, you may never know if the one you’re looking at is the right one.
• Not all streets in San Francisco have been completely photographed. You may find a location in the map in the bottom pane but sans picture in the picture pane and a message informing you that no photo is available.
• Occasionally, an address in a telephone directory or other public record may not coincide with an address in Mapjack’s database. I’ve had a couple of Mapjack error messages reporting that no such address exists.
• You may also find the exact address you are looking for, but it will turn out to be a mail drop, like Mail Boxes Inc. I surmise individuals use such an address to avoid snoopers, a wise move. This isn’t a Mapjack glitch, but the knowledge can save a user some time when looking for the address of a specific person.
• And this one is really odd. I stumbled across it solely by accident. A really bad habit of mine is entering nonsense in a search window to see what happens, stuff like mzcgter. That didn’t produce anything in Mapjack, but then I started entering the names of people. An odd thing happened. Results popped up, but not of addresses. We’re talking organizations and retail establishments. What the hell is the connection between a name and a bookstore and how has Mapjack come into such information? It’s a mystery so far. If you check this out, let me know your thoughts.

Beyond the nosiness factor and the newness of looking at pictures in brilliant color with the tools to sharpen the images, I don’t know if Mapjack serves a practical purpose, although I can foresee tourist agencies adding a Mapjack to their site as an inducement to sign up for tours.

But my guess is that the program will be used primarily by folks looking for old sweethearts, classmates, ex-coworkers, and drinking pals.

And there will be stalkers checking out neighborhoods. Be very careful. As usual, if you suspect any kind of stalking, Internet or whatever, report it to the police.

By the way, the title of this post refers to that famous song about cable cars climbing halfway to the stars.

Technorati Tags: Mapjack

The Age of Irritation

Lately, as the complexities of technology have increased, my level of irritation has risen proportionately. This morning illustrates my point.

Everything began as usual–struggle out of bed, shower, shave, all that morning jazz, cup of coffee, head for the couch, hit the TV power button, pickup my laptop, balance it on my lap, check mail, read spam messages, click Google search.

Nada. Then a slight flicker across the screen. Not normal. Frantically clicking buttons. Nothing.

Set everything down and headed for my desktop. Same thing. Zilch.

Began to look around for blinking lights. None.

Then, noticed nothing where lights should be flickering. The modem. No incoming signal.

Checked the system status hotline, which apparently originates with a machine in Indonesia. All systems go.

Except mine. Grabbed the phone and called the provider. Recorded message, “If you are calling for blah, select 1 now.

Selected 1. Looped back to the original message after several more “if…then” choices.

Hmmm…decided on more coffee to calm my nerves.

Still no incoming signal. Some more coffee and an English muffin. Bad. Humans need structure.

Two hours later, after endlessly tapping my feet (not in an airport men’s room, thank God), the modem lights began to flicker and miraculously everything was working as it should.

For a long time, I thought about the effect of technology on human lives. The thought occurred to me that a vote cast electronically may not necessarily be shunted to the candidate of choice.

Life is hell. But it’s the only one we have.

Technorati Tags: Technology,Irritations,Frustrations

The world around us is collapsing

…especially my world…

I had just typed the caption and the introductory words for this post when Word 2007 crashed and restarted, causing me to lose the scrap of work already accomplished.

With my edition of Word 2007, this isn’t an unusual occurrence. The program crashes perhaps once or twice in a day. On one occasion, it closed and restarted when it wasn’t even open. I had left on an errand and an annoying crash message waited for me when I returned. So far, I’ve been unable to fix the problem, although I’ve followed the instructions on the Word site and elsewhere on the net.

From my own personal standpoint, Word 2007 is a step backward in terms of stability and improved features. It’s only saving grace is its blog tool. That’s the only reason I continue to hang onto this monstrosity. Despite its frequent crashes, Word 2007 is still a quicker and easier process for preparing and publishing a finished blog post. No other word processor that I know about has a blog feature.

Even so, Word 2007’s blogging feature has a number of shortcomings. Selecting Categories is cumbersome, and there are no means of assigning Tags.

Moreover, positioning pictures properly in a draft post and then hitting Publish often sends the narrative to my blog site, but images may or may not make it. I’ve had them appear properly positioned on occasion but also lost entirely. Lately, I find pictures in a WordPress file rather that in the blog post. This irritating quirk began suddenly one day and I haven’t figured out a solution.

It’s always possible that the Word 2007 version that came installed with my new machine was a Monday morning version. Or the Vista operating system itself may be the culprit.

Vista has an annoying habit of suddenly freezing, and the only way to unfreeze it is to kill it with the Task Manager. That’s a mysterious task in and of itself.

For the moment, I plan to stick with Word 2007 and Vista. But I’m busily looking for a standalone blog authoring tool. All suggestions will be deeply appreciated. Except those that invite me to take a flying leap through a rolling donut.

Windows Live Writer

Since writing the above, I researched a few tech mags and came across a free blog authoring program called Windows Live Writer. I downloaded and installed a free copy on my laptop and another one on my desktop. Then I wrote some practice posts to see if it lived up to its sterling reputation. So far it has. These are some strong features:

• Pictures load easily and quickly and in the proper position
  
• Selecting Categories is also quite simple
  
• Embedding Technocrati tags is a matter of just typing then into the place provided
  
• You can view your blog exactly as it will look on your site, a feature lacking in Word 2007
  
• The interface is simple
  

One minor glitch popped up the first time I used Windows Live Writer on my desktop, which uses a Vista operating system. The program froze and I had to resort to the Task Manager to shut it down. This leads me to believe that the freeze and crash problems I’ve experienced with Word 2007 relate to an incompatibility issue related to Vista. The knowledge will at least narrow my search for a solution.

If anyone is interested, this is the Windows Live Writer download site. Scroll down and click the Download button.

Ole Man Ribber

Walker, Texas Ranger claims 72-year old John McWayne is too old for the presidency while his own 67-year old body huffs and puffs through another episode of Chuck Norris, Political Consultant.

Walker and his client, Mike Huckabee, may be chronologically younger than John, but their brains are seemingly stuck somewhere in the early mists of creation. The Intelligent Designer failed to include a 21st Century in their computer clocks.

John is old, no question about that. But any man with a good-looking woman on his arm is tailor made for the Oval Office. She’s probably the only sign of youth in the entire Republican Party.

Is politics a joke, or what?