Posts Tagged ‘Technology’
Adobe CS3
Well, I manage to score a copy of Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 Design Premium software, which includes a lot of really powerful software including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, InDesign, and more. Normally, this package runs about $1800 brand new, but thanks to the perks of being on staff at Purdue I was able to grab this bundle for under $300. It’s very exciting for both my wife and I because it opens up a whole host of creative options that we’ve wanted to have available for quite some time now. I’m thrilled to have a version of Photoshop that’s recent and provides more options for creating my webcomics. I also now have some software, like Flash, that I’ve always wanted to learn how to use and now will have the ability to do so. Good stuff, good times, and my inner nerd is positively drooling.
Knowledge Base Documentation Woes
I have something against Knowledge Base modules. My complaint is this – they’re all crap!
Knowledge Base modules are supposed to be this repository for a given service, and this repository is supposed to provide all kinds of helpful Q&A-type articles to make using the service easier and more efficient. They’re typically intended to be a first-line support item, to be used by the end-user before calling customer support and bugging an operator or a technician with your problem or question. It’s a pretty nice idea – in theory.
The trouble comes in when you actually try to use one of these so-called Knowledge Base modules. I have, as yet, to find a single one that actually provides me with any useful knowledge. The way I figure it, at least half of my queries into a Knowledge Base turn up zero results. The rest of the queries usually only produce a list of ‘related’ articles that have nothing to do whatsoever with what I actually want to know. They reason these articles show up at all is because the search term(s) I entered happened to be mentioned once or twice in the course of explaining how to do something else. Usually after a couple of tries, I just throw my hands up in exasperation and dial the customer support number – only to have them refer me back to the Knowledge Base.1
This all goes along with the problem that documentation for most things also leaves something to be desired. I know, I hate writing documentation, too. It’s a pain in the neck and can often double the time it takes to release the product to the public. But for the end-user, that documentation is a critical part of using the service or software and can be the deal-breaker if it’s poorly done.
- Just for the record, I’ll have none of that. I make them give me my answer and explain that the Knowledge Base didn’t have the answer I needed.[back]
Link Roundup
I don’t generally do link roundups, but in this case, there are a handful of notables, and I don’t really have the time or energy to write about each one individually.
- Antibiotics for Sinusitis – This article from Science-Based Medicine sums up exactly my thinking about the germs floating around out there right now. I’ve been sick twice this winter, and in both cases, I needed high-powered antibiotics to muck everything out, and even then it took two or three weeks to shake it off. From what I’m hearing from folks all over the country, this isn’t exactly unique – the bugs are bigger, stronger, and longer-lasting. It’s likely that over-prescribing antibiotics is one of the prime factors for this.
- SpySat stuff – Is it bad that I ignored all news about the US government shooting a missile at the spy satellite until Phil posted about it (as I knew he would)? Sorry, I just don’t trust the information given back on this sort of thing until I see it on the Bad Astronomy blog, and I have even less use for most of the unnecessary drama that surrounded this particular event. Why must the media blow stuff like this out of proportion? I appreciate Phil’s level-headed presentation of the facts.
- Wireless Digital Display Tattoos – Call me strange, but I think this idea is really neat. Of course, I’m the guy who’d love to have a neurological uplink to a computer, too, so embedding a subcutaneous, wireless tattoo interface in my skin isn’t a huge leap from there.
- Um, Yeah – Grapefruit – xkcd apparently unleashed a monster with today’s comic about fruit. Bear in mind, it’s highly subjective, so his mapping may match yours. (In fact, it’s safe to say that it probably won’t.) Go easy on the guy. Just because he’s wrong doesn’t mean you need to beat up on him.
Wubi - Ubuntu Installer
I’ve wanted to run an installation of Ubuntu on my computer for some time now, but I haven’t wanted to fuss around with reformatting my HDD, setting up partitions, and the running the installs for both Windows and Ubuntu again. So I haven’t done it – until now. Boing Boing had a story on Monday about an Ubuntu installer called Wubi that allows you install Ubuntu straight from your Windows interface without having to worry about setting up a partition.
I started the process last night, leaving it to work while I went to bed. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning to find that the installer had, in fact, stalled on the download. It wasn’t a problem, though, since I just canceled the process and started up the Wubi installer again, allowing it to pick up where it left off. Then there was the reboot and the selection of Ubuntu from the boot-up cycle and the completion of the Ubuntu install from there. Of course, I ran out of time this morning and had to leave for work before the install, setup, and configuration could complete, so I’ll mess with it some more tonight when I get home.
I’m pretty excited about this, though, because I’ve heard good things about Linux in general and about Ubuntu in particular. It’s supposed to be both faster and more stable than Windows1 and just plain better all around. I’ve friends who use Ubuntu who swear by it, so it’ll be nice to give it a whirl and see what I think. If I find a way to do all the things in Ubuntu that I do in Windows, it may even replace Windows as my primary operating system.
Wubi is still in beta, though, so I’m not necessarily expecting everything to run perfectly smoothly, and the developers warn on the website that Wubi Ubuntu may run a little slow depending on how fragmented your hard drive is.2 It should be a nice little experiment.
Any Ubuntu users out there who have some favorite applications they’d like to tell me about? I’m rather hoping that Firefox is the default browser that’s installed with Ubuntu. From there, I’m going to have to go on a hunt for useful applications.
Photoshop Portable
You know what I wish for? A way to make Photoshop portable, aside from buying a laptop and installing the software on there.
This Post Was Made Using Dvorak
I just discovered a “new” keyboard layout that’s actually been around for several decades called Dvorak. I feel like I’m learning how to type all over again, which I kind of am – but the layout is more logical. It’s just a matter of retraining my muscle memory to a new system after all these years of using the Qwerty system (the standard one that everyone is used to). Go check out the link and see what you think. I’m still a brand new convert, but already I love it, even if it is a bit maddening to have one’s typing speed drop to a snail’s pace in the meanwhile.
Twitter(Fox)
I’ve been using Twitter for a couple of months now, but I admit that I hadn’t really gotten into much until a friend of mine (thanks, Dweezle) pointed me at a nice little Firefox addon called TwitterFox. It basically lets you read and write twitters right from your Firefox statusbar. It makes it extremely convenient and fun to use. I still don’t use it as aggressively as some of the folks I’m subscribed to but I definitely use it a lot more now.
I’m curious – does anyone else use Twitter? If so, what are your usernames? Feel free to add me to your own list; my username is stitzelj.
WP-Stats Problems
I don’t track my blog stats quite as religiously as I did a year ago, so it was a couple of days after I upgraded to WordPress 2.3 before I realized that something very strange was happening with my stats. I switched to WP-Stats awhile back because it’s lightweight and takes some of the load off my own hosted account. The plugin worked very well there for awhile, but with the upgrade to WP2.3, a handful of plugins have exhibited some new behaviors, WP-Stats being one of them.
Everything with WP-Stats works as it should except for the traffic tracked to individual entries. As you can see from the screencapture, the traffic is no longer being logged correctly. Instead of seeing the title of the post in question, what generally shows up is the post ID, though I usually have one entry that shows the title for some reason. This wouldn’t even be so bad, since ordinarily you’d at least be able to click through to the post and check the title that way. Tedious, I know, but at least it’d be something. Instead when I mouse-over the link, here’s what I see:
A useless link that doesn’t actually take me where I want to go. Now, obviously something doesn’t work right, and I haven’t had a chance to jump into the code to see what’s happening. The WordPress support forums have seen a fair bit of traffic about the WP-Stats plugin being broken, though I don’t think I’ve seen my own specific problem appear yet (something which I’m about to remedy). Hopefully a new version will be released soon with a patch to address the various problems users have been reporting.