SOFTWARE

Today, a guest post from nobody else but me, EER :D

The occasion? Kale showed me this digg, which is about an e-mail client named "3D Mailbox". As the name suggest, it's a three dimensional representation of your mailbox. Strangely enough by default all your e-mail is represented as women in bikini's. Nothing wrong with that obviously :P

I directly saw the potential, after all, with Mii's, PS Home and Second Life, 3D Email was only the next logical step. So hereby a small rundown of my experiences using 3D Mailbox.

First of all, the download was 72 MB(!). So that sounded promising. To use it, you need to register for some code, which I tried several times. Only after three times I found out the thing was case-sensitive and showed only uppercase while expecting lowercase input. The fact that the registration website was excruciatingly slow didn't help much to give a good first impression :X

After installing, registering and making account settings, the first thing I tried was walking around. Well. That didn't work, not using WASD, not using the arrow keys. What good is a first person interface when you can't walk around but have fixed camera positions?

The 3D action was taking place windowed, which isn't a bad idea for a mail client, however, 3D graphics in a window hardly ever perform as well as full screen. And 3D Mailbox was no exception, even when graphics are lower than low, it still doesn't perform adequate if there are multiple e-mails swimming around in the pool. There is also virtually no control over your e-mail folk, they just swim around until you can click them (if you can click them, they swim bloody fast).

There is also a regular e-mail display you can use to read your e-mail from, with spam filter and everything. But if you prefer that, you could simply use Thunderbird or Outlook Express.

All in all it has been a frustrating experience, however, I do think it has potential and I may try it again someday if they implement the following features:

• Free roaming, I want to walk around, without being in some fixed position.
• Better 3D performance, I don't want my PC to crash when there are more than 50 unread mails in the pool. In fact, I don't even want it to slow down.
• More control of my mail, I'd like something like the Sims, where I can tell my mailpeople exactly what to do
• Faster load times, booting the app took me 2 minutes, Doom 3 loads faster than that!

I read a story a few days ago on Digg showing how AACS accidentally slipped up and published some kind of "AACS HD DVD DRM process key". Once the story hit the front page, everyone was in a uproar over this. "OMG BLU-RAY IS NOW CRACKABLE WAI2GO AACS!!!" seemed to be the order of the day, and now not more than 10 minutes ago I check out Digg and see this (all links found on www.digg.com):

http://digg.com/tech_news/IP_Version_6_with_128bit_IPs
http://digg.com/apple/Sixteen_Hexadecimal_Digits_Screensaver_for_Mac_OS_X
- (http://www.newcleardream.org/screensaver)
http://digg.com/programming/The_best_mathematical_riddle_you_will_see_today_Period
- (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/191/480556169_6d731d2416_o.jpg)
http://digg.com/tech_news/d1af2e56517a7202a1cc087a69c4e296_md5_of_some_random_hex_values
- (http://www.quasarrising.com/md5.txt)

Stuff found on Facebook
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9HaNbsIfp0 (Song featuring the process key)
http://ucr.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2338184677 (Facebook Group supporting the key)

What does this all mean? Are all HD-DVD's from here on crackable? Can the process key not be reset? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

I officially completed my first C# program yesterday, and it does more than print "Hello World" in the console window! I created a program that automatically switches my laptop's network adapter between DHCP and a hardcoded static IP.

I primarily use my laptop for my work and have demoted my PC tower to file-storage duty. My tower and laptop connect via a crossover cable, but in order to connect the two I need to manually set the IP of each machine to the same three IP groups (ex. 192.168.0.x). Normally, I'd have to go into my laptop's Network Adapter and manually set the IP, but after yesterday, all that is a thing of the past!

Now, I can just run my fancy C# program and POOF! The program reads my current IP and adjusts my adapter to either DHCP if the IP is set to static or to the static IP if DHCP is enabled. I kept to a console application because I didn't feel that this required a fancy UI, but I learned a great deal about the minor differences in how C# handles string manipulation and foreach statements.

I'm learning slowly but surely, and I'd learn a lot more if I had something to work towards creating, but for now I'll be happy with what I've accomplished!

P.S. My apologies for the poor grammar, its been a rather long day

I've really dropped the ball recently. Its been, what, a week since the "Possible Downtime"? Well, I have a couple boring things to mention and a bit of a product review, so brace yourself! Excitement abounds in the land of the web designers and techies.

First off, let it be known that I hate LA and its impatient drivers. The only thing that keeps me coming back is getting paid $15/hour for easy work AND the time I spent on the road travelling there (2 hours each way). That is all.

In regards to the title, I've upgraded my blog's backend a bit. For the most part, I believe the front end, the bits of the blogging system that involve input from you the readers is complete. I've addressed spamming from bots, the numerous date problems have all been figured out, and the format of the posts are, I think, organized and easy to read.

The backend, on the other hand, the part that I get to see and use, has been in a state of disarray for a while, with half of the functionality actually implemented. Well, last week I decided to finish the missing components and make it that much easier for me to manage my blog when I'm away from home. I've decided to treat you all with a picture of the admin page, just so you can see what kind of management features I've stuck into my site:

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The Matt's Blog Admin page
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To be honest, there's not much to look at. The categories are self-explanatory, dividing up various tools into their appropriate groups. At the moment, everything with a link works EXCEPT for the "Categories" section. I'm still trying to figure out how to tag my articles to allow for easy searching, so I jumped the gun a bit and made that a working link. The "Comment Control" category will be removed because I've worked in comment deletion into the same page that you edit news posts from. I've found that lot easier to keep track of and delete only the comments I want to delete.

The "Database Connection Settings" link does indeed work, and through that I can...well, I'm sure you can figure out what that's for!

Last but not least, I have the option to "Edit Side Panels", the various link buttons you see to the right of the posts. That's no more than a <textarea> with some HTML in it, and in the future I'll have to flesh that out a bit more to make it more user-friendly.

I would have included pictures of each of the subpages, but I'd rather keep that to myself until I'm ready to release this as software for people to try out and perhaps buy...but that's a ways down the road.

Moving on...

If you've been reading my blog for the past few months, you'll remember this post I made about various freeware programs I use that replace commonly used commercial applications. One of the points I brought to light in that article was that I had yet to find a suitable free replacement for Dreamweaver. I have a bit of an update to that article.

About two weeks ago, I came across Webuilder 2006 by Blumentals Software in another one of my efforts to find a program that was as powerful as Dreamweaver without the cost. At first, I had disregarded this program because it cost money and thus would not have been a suitable FREE replacement for Dreamweaver.

Well, four months after that post, I decided to give Webuilder a try, drunk on the fact that I had just finished up with a client's website and I now had money to spend on such a program. Lets just say that I ended up purchasing the program (for a paltry $50) 5 days after downloading the demo. I was very impressed with what I had seen and experienced, and I am very comfortable in saying that this program could give Dreamweaver a run for its money.

The interface is very customizable. All of the toolbars under the menu items can be added or removed and moved around to suit one's preferences. I prefer a rather spartan coding environment, so alot of the available tools are hidden away. In the screenshot below, you'll notice that the buttons just about mimic the style of toolbars in Microsoft Office applications, and I think this helps the programmer feel more comfortable with his coding environment. The color scheme, fortunately, is customizable, too. Before I got my hands on it, the code used a lot of blues and purple and greys, and it made it difficult to tell where one block of code ended and the other began. I went in and modified the color scheme to use PHP's colors, making it incredibly easier to keep my PHP seperated from my HTML code.

You'll see two other panes to the left and to the right of the code. The Code Explorer to sealed the deal once I saw what it did. In PHP mode, this panel will show you EVERY CUSTOM-CREATED FUNCTION ON THE PAGE! Simply put, I can see all of the functions I've made and reference them without having to find out where they're located on the page. Dreamweaver never had this feature, and looking back I'm surprised that it went this long without it.

The File Explorer to the right is a pretty standard feature in coding environments, and Webuilder goes two steps forward by including FTP connectivity and "Projects" that you can set up to organize all the websites you're working on. Its very nice that all three functions are included in one pane because it keeps most of the program open for the code window.
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Webuilder's IDE, customized to my liking
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Like many other IDE's, Webuilder has a split-screen setup that lets you make changes on top and see the code rendered within Webuilder. The nice thing about the in-program renderer is that you can see the page you're working on in both IE and Firefox without having to have those programs open. I find this feature indispensible because I can see code changes without having to wait for a browser window to open up.
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Split-screen IDE
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Here's some miscellaneous pictures I took of the various features in Webuilder:
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Function hints for custom-created functions
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Publish files to the internet based on when you edited them
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Code hints and completion for CSS!
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So I hope this makes up for the week without a post. I'm going back out to LA with a friend tomorrow to do some more computer work, so I have four more hours of work to look forward to. AND, before I forget, look for tomorrow's big announcement! What could possibly be so amazing that I create this much suspense a day in advance? You'll just have to tune back in tomorrow to find out. For my fellow Americans, I hope you had a pleasant Labor Day, and for my international friends, I hope you had a very nice September 4th!

I've been playing around with this idea for a program that will allow users to use speech to control their computer. I've needed a project I could work on to learn C#, and so if everything goes according to plan, this'll be my first .NET application after working exclusively in VB6 for program development.

Microsoft released a Speech SDK that installs all the necessary dll's for API calls, and I even found a basic program that attempts to match what you say to a list of keywords I've picked out as command phrases.

Ideally, this program will be able to accept voice input globally, even without focus. A user would attach a microphone to their computer and as long as the mic could pick up on what the user is saying, one could theoretically control their computer from several feet away without laying so much as a finger on the keyboard or mouse. Now, to execute the voice commands, I'd need to grab what is being said and then execute a program based on the keyword that is used. For example, if someone said "search fastfood", the program would start the default internet browser, go to a website and search for "fastfood".

I'm sure starting up the programs based on the keyword is easy, as I could simply execute a program via the command line and it'd start right up. I would need to find out the "hooks" of certain popular programs that would allow me to pass along arguments to, for example, Firefox as it started up.

At this point, I'm sure the post sounds a little disjointed. I've been on a "stream of conciousness" all day today and I'm just brainstorming, really. I wanted to see what you all thought about this idea of mine so let me know if I should go ahead and run with it or if I should abandon all hope.

Well, I've been trying to find a job for the past two weeks, going out and submitting applications and then turning around a week later and "checking in". I contacted 6 different businesses in my quest to scrounge up some money before college, and of the 6, three outright turned me down.
So now, I must hit the streets again and play the "oh please sir, may I have a job?" card in the hopes that someone will bite and give me work. If I don't find some work as an employee, I'll have to bust my ass at some web design work, and hope that I can get enough that way. So far, I have one web design job I'm working on, so it looks like I'll have to kick it up a notch with my design skillllllz....

And Firefox 2.0 Beta 1 is pretty awesome. I used it to type this entry and for the most part, I must say I'm impressed...at least with the spell-checking feature. I don't know if I like my tabs each having a "close" button on them; it was for this reason I never used one of the earlier extensions that put those same buttons on the tabs. The search bar is also unusually long for some unknown reason...huh. I know there's a "how to tweak Firefox 2.0" article floating around on http://www.Digg.com somewhere, I just have to find it now.

Well, that about wraps it up for now. I hope you're all having an awesome time over July! Oh, and before I forget, there's a map I'm working on for the Deus Ex: MIB mod that I'll post screen shots of, so for people who like DX and the mod community (*cough*EER*cough*), stay tuned!

Earlier this year, I posted an article on creating an unattended XP installation disc. I was at a point where I needed to reinstall Windows, so I went ahead with that project and created an up-to-date copy of XP that installed without me needing to be there (hence, 'unattended').

Well, besides MSTSC support that mysteriously didn't get installed, my copy of XP seemed to be quirk free...until now. Over the last 6 months, I've watched as my computer slowly fell apart from the inside out. In the last month alone, I've had to deal with a Firefox profile that...deleted...itself? I dunno what happened, but the toolbars were all organized differently and my booksmarks were deleted. I was able to restore Firefox to working condition, but today my 200GB Maxtor harddrive failed to write files twice, forcing a hard reboot each time. At one point during reboot, BIOS didn't even recognize the drive, reporting it as an apostrophe instead of its model name. Windows wouldn't boot with the bad drive attached, so I thought I was totally screwed.

Its like my computer doesn't want to do its job anymore. I had moved all my important personal files to the faulty harddrive before[/i] it was faulty, since it was newer than my primary drive and I wanted to have my files seperate from the harddrive that contained the OS. As luck would have it, the drive was recognized after being unplugged for about an hour, so I took what little time I had left with the drive to transfer all of My Documents, all of my [i]web sites in localhost root (talk about a near heart attack!!!), all my music, and my collection of RvB.

Now, I just have to get some money together to purchase a new harddrive to replace the one that kept freeking out; I'm not about to risk anymore files to a hard drive that intermittently works...oh, and in relation to the title, I suppose most of the problems can be contributed to the method I used to install XP this time around.

Can you believe I've installed XP a total of six times on this machine? Its only been, what, 2.5 years since I built it, and I'm preparing for a seventh reinstallation of my OS. As I told a friend recently: "Windows is like a really bitchy but super hawt girl...so many things to do with her, but sometimes its just too much to deal with"

File recovery can be a bear, especially if you're trying to recover the family's business documents off of a hard drive that mysteriously goes kaput during an OS upgrade.

Enter the freeware file recovery application PC INSPECTOR File Recovery.

PC INSPECTOR File Recovery is the best software-based file recovery program I've ever found that is completely free for anyone to use. I got a crash course on how it worked early last year, and I was very impressed. Here's my story:

I had to recover files off a drive that, for some unknown reason, prevented me from viewing its contents. I was upgrading my parents' computer to Windows XP when the old hard drive containing their previous OS and files failed to be recognized by the new OS. The drive in question was receiving power and was spinning up, but there was no easily identifiable reason for the drive not being accessible through XP. That's when I found the File Recovery program.

Using this program, I was able to read the contents of the improperly functioning hard drive, recover all of my parents' important documents off the drive, put them onto my computer, and then transfer the files to the new hard drive.

File recovery in general is not for the weak of heart or the eagerly excited. This program takes some patience to learn and patience to sit through one or two entire drive scans because you accidentally chose the incorrect scan options. I would advise anyone interested in using this program to get a competent, technology-savvy individual to help you out. There are times when impatient individuals may mistake their computer freezing up for a system crash, when in reality the program is using 100% of the CPU to scan the culprit drive. Scans of drives can also take upwards of 15-20 minutes; it is important during this time to leave the computer that is scanning the drive alone unless you want to brick your drive and lose all of your data (or, if you prefer to to pay for professional, $1000+ harddrive recovery...).

I took the liberty of capturing some screens of the program to show you what it looks like in action:

1. You have the option of recovering accidentally deleted files, scanning a drive for accidentally formatted files, and recover an entire drive if it fails to show up.

2. After your computer is scanned for attached hard drives (regardless of if they're recognized by Windows or not), File Recovery shows you all the drives it can scan. Choose one and click the check-mark.

3. You'll see a progress bar displaying how far into the scan the program is; don't expect it to move real fast, especially if you're recovering files off of a large-capacity drive.

3a. During the scan, its not unusual for the program to use close to 100% of the CPU and for your computer to run like molasses.

4. When the scan is complete, you'll get an explorer-esque file tree of all the files that you've "deleted". To recover a file, click on the folder you want to recover, right-click and select "Save to...". Choose an output folder (on another drive, obviously) and the program will recover the presumed-lost files. The same works for drives that no longer display under My Computer on XP.

With my lust for a new site design thus sated, I've decided to turn my attention towards the great task of finding open source (read: free) alternatives to many of the programs I employ on a daily basis. Why would I look for such alternatives? Quite simply, it is because many of the programs I use were acquired under questionable circumstances.

There are 2 main suites of programs I use on a regular basis that I have become very comfortable with and that form the back-bone of any work I do on my computer. A recent talk with a teacher of mine (who also owns his own business) got me thinking, though, that my violating each program?s EULA could get me in big trouble if someone audited me on a (perhaps vengeful) whim.

SO! In the interests of preventing any future jail time, I?ve decided to make the switch to freely-available programs that accomplish the same task as the programs I?m illegally running. I have some past experiences with many of these programs, and as painful as it might be to learn new programs, I figured I?d turn this into a post to get you guys thinking about alternatives to programs that people "just can?t live without":

- Microsoft Office 2003 --> OpenOffice.org
I tested OOo about 4 months ago, at a time when it received a lot of praise for the way it offered Microsoft Office functionality in a free package. OOo is a suite of programs and includes a word processor (Writer), slideshow creator (Impress), spreadsheet (Calc), vector drawing tool (Draw), and mathematical function writer (Math).

At the time I tested it, OpenOffice was very promising. I could open and edit all of my documents I created in Microsoft Word with Writer, and my Powerpoint slideshows crossed over well to Impress (thought not without minimal loss due to Powerpoint-specific features). I was very impressed with Math, as it offered a replacement to MathType 5, and would definitely come into use on future math assignments. Calc was almost a copy of Excel, making it easy to learn and use.
Several updates to OOo have come out since I last tested it, and I?m looking forward to seeing if it is still the Office-killer it claims to be.

- Macromedia Fireworks --> Gimp for Windows
Fireworks is an excellent program for graphic design, and it?s been my weapon of choice because I?ve had a hard time figuring out Photoshop. The Gimp is a free graphic editor that some say rivals Adobe?s Photoshop, so of course I?ve had a difficult time learning this program.

I used The Gimp for about a month, and what I experienced was incredible! This program had so many different types of filters and ways to manipulate pictures, from image embossing to drop shadows, and many others that were lost to me. What amazed me even more was that such a program (which I am convinced is on-par with Photoshop) was and still is offered completely free of charge!

With a bit of determination, I?ll be able to get a handle on such an excellent program, but for now I?ll stumble through like the newbie I am.

- Macromedia Dreamweaver--> PHP Designer 2006
I spent a good deal of time testing out some possible replacements in this category, trying to find one that I would feel comfortable enough to replace Dreamweaver with. I believe I've found the best FREE PHP editor with PHP Designer 2006. I was looking for a program that had syntax highlighting and code hinting for PHP commands, and this program fit the bill nicely.

I tested out the Beta release, version 4.0.6, and though it was not without its quirks (all minor annoyances, like the PHP debugger info mysteriously deleting itself!), most of the functionality of Dreamweaver had made it into PHPD2k6. I could organize the sites I work on into various "Projects", syntax color schemes were demonstrated and easily changed from the Options > Properties menu, and I could also preview my PHP code straight from inside PHPD2k6!

Until I scrounge up some decent money for a commercial PHP editor, there's no doubt in my mind that I'll be using this program to work on future PHP pages.

That just leaves one more program I need to find a suitable alternative for:

- I use Macromedia Flash for animation and drawing, and I have yet to find ANY program that could be a replacement. This is the one program I may have to do without until I earn enough money to buy legal copies of Macromedia Studio 8 (around $1000).

So yeah, that about wraps this post up. I?ll let you all know how the transition works out, and let me know if you think there are any better programs out there than the ones I mentioned; I?m always eager to try out new things!

[quote]--Edited 4/30/05--
- Inserted "Dreamweaver --> PHPD2k6"
- Removed section about finding replacement for Dreamweaver[/quote]

I'm sure you've seen them before; lists of Firefox extensions that "you cannot live without". Well, I make no claims that this is a list of the "BEST Firefox extensions EVER"; simply put, this is a list of Firefox extensions that I personally use, and that you may or may not be interested in.

--Extensions for Web Developers--

The Web Developer toolbar features an insane amount of tools for web developers that allow you to play around with and manipulate the layout of websites. I find that I use it mainly to:

• See the page layouts without styles attached (hint: hit [CTRL] + [SHIFT] + [S] with the extension installed)
• Disable JavaScript on a few clients' sites that use anti-rightclick script (which prevents me from easily accessing the source)
• Resize the browser window to a set "resolution", to imitate viewing the site on 1024x768 or 800x600 (I run at 1280x1024 resolution, but most people are still stuck on the lower resolutions)
• Outline certain elements, such as table cells and divs, to check for nesting and organization of sites
• Validate the CSS or markup of a site without having to navigate to each individual validation site

There are a TON of other features in this extension, and I'd recommend this extension as the BEST one in this list!


--IE View Lite--

IE View Lite is a nifty little extension that allows you to right-click on any site you're viewing in Firefox and open it in Internet Explorer without having to open the program and type the address in manually. It saves a lot of time, and lets me quickly see my code in the other browser... :P


--Html Validator--

Html Validator offers the functionality of an HTML code validator inside Firefox. Normally, you have to go to http://validator.w3.org/ to get your website's code validated, but with this extension, you can see the number and location of errors in your code.


--ColorZilla--

If you're like me, you've found yourself needing to get the Hexadecimal code for a particular color you've seen on a picture or website; rather than Print Screening the color, then Copy > Paste-ing into an image editing program to get the code, ColorZilla gives you a built-in eyedropper tool that you can use to pick a color within Firefox and get that color's Hex code. Very handy!


--FireBug--

I just got into JavaScript recently, and the built-in Javascript Console in Firefox is fine for some basic work. FireBug is like the Javascript Console on steroids. Each error received with either bad JavaScript or CSS code is displayed, and this extension will even highlight where in the source code the problem lies so you can fix the problem with minimal searching.


So there you have it. Five Firefox extensions that I commonly use, and that you might enjoy. So go ahead, give these extensions a try, and if you don't have Firefox, go here to download it!

Check back sometime next week for another Firefox Extensions post, this time with general-use extensions :D

As I perused the internet, looking for cool tech stories, I came across a link to a Firefox memory leak fix that actually works.

So here's the deal:

1. Type "about:config" into the address bar
2. Create a new boolean called "config.trim_on_minimize"
3. Set it equal to "true"

Now, all you have to do is minimize the browser window, and Firefox will automatically cut down the amount of memory it is currently using.

And for those of you wondering, apparently Mozilla knew about this fix.

So there you go. A way to cut back Firefox's memory usage until Mozilla fixes the problem with an official patch!

Here's an interesting site I came across earlier today:

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/

It's a site that describes how to create an up-to-date, fully automated Windows installation CD, from 2000 to 2003 (yes, XP is included in that group).

This guide walks you through slipstreaming Service Pack 2 and integrating all the Windows updates into a default Windows installation. The descriptions are very detailed, and links are included throughout the guide that direct you to the various downloads you'll need to complete a particular part of the process.

I spent a couple hours today creating my "UXPCD" (Unattended XP CD), and there were so many ways to customize it.

To start, I copied and pasted all the contents of my Windows XP CD to my hard drive. My personal copy of XP was bought about a year and a half ago, and it came with Service Pack 1a integrated into the install. Slipstreaming Service Pack 2 onto my XP installation was very painless and fast; all I had to do was pass a switch onto the Service Pack executable, and Windows handled the rest.

Next up was integrating the updated that Microsoft had released since Service Pack 2. If you decide to try the guide out, when you get to the "Hotfixes" section, be warned that you'll need to download about 25-30 different patches. The guide offers a few ways of downloading all the Hotfixes you'll need; I opted for the forum (http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=31886), as it had all Microsoft Hotfixes sorted according to OS and Service Pack status. I ended up downloading all the patches under "Windows XP Patched SP2", since I had already added Service Pack 2 into my new installation.

From there, I spent some time with my good ol' friend, Mr. Run Prompt, passing /integrate to all the Hotfixes I had downloaded, and before I knew it (this part really only took about 10 minutes), I had an XP installation image that was fully up to date, up to Service Pack 2 and all its subsequent Hotfixes.

After you get the Hotfixes integrated into your install, the guide goes on to describe many ways to customize your install. There's a section on adding in drivers for almost every (exaggeration) piece of hardware XP could run on, automating the installation of many popular programs, including Ad-Aware, DirectX 9.0c, and WinRAR, among others, and even how to add in your own OEM information that appears in System Properties, in case you're doing this for a company network.

If you're into computers, this process is a lot more interesting than I'm making it out to be. I have yet to test my CD out, but I'm hoping that by tomorrow, I'll be able to report back on a successful install.