Sunday, 1. November 2009, 22:16:04
geekery, free, gadgets, software
...
Maybe you've heard about one of the new features of Windows 7, called Windows Snap. It offers a way to
resize windows to exactly half the screen size very easily, which can be very useful with large monitors.
Windows Snap looks useful, but trivial enough that I wonder why it wasn't included in Windows sooner. And on its own, it's hardly compelling enough to make upgrading seem worthwhile.
It seems there's a free program called
GridMove which offers a much more advanced and customizable version of this feature for
any version of Windows. It can be used to imitate Windows Snap, or it can be set up to offer more complex window arrangements. As you drag a window around the screen, GridMove shows a shaded rectangle indicating the size and position the window will snap to if you drop it there. And you can still resize windows by hand if you wish.
On my newish Vista-based PC, GridMove is so responsive that it feels like it's built in to the OS. On my eight-year-old old XP system at the office, it's pretty sluggish, although it's still quicker and more accurate than dragging windows around by hand.
GridMove is configured with simple text-file scripts that divide your screen (or screens) into rectangles called triggers and grids, which go together in pairs. Drop a window on a trigger, and it will snap to the corresponding grid. In simple configurations, triggers and grids are the same size and shape; in more complicated arrangements, they're often different. Several grid scripts are included with the program, and it's easy to write more. There's even
a forum thread devoted to user-created grids.
Wednesday, 28. October 2009, 22:04:12
reading, currentevents, science, links
This Wired story is ostensibly about the controversy over childhood vaccination, but also takes the opportunity to explore the American public's confused, uneasy, and sometimes dysfunctional relationship with science in general:
Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense. Much like infectious diseases themselves — beaten back by decades of effort to vaccinate the populace — the irrational lingers just below the surface, waiting for us to let down our guard.
...
And if you need a new factoid to support your belief system, it has never been easier to find one. The Internet offers a treasure trove of undifferentiated information, data, research, speculation, half-truths, anecdotes, and conjecture about health and medicine. It is also a democratizing force that tends to undermine authority, cut out the middleman, and empower individuals. In a world where anyone can attend what [celebrity vaccination opponent Jenny] McCarthy calls the “University of Google,” boning up on immunology before getting your child vaccinated seems like good, responsible parenting. Thanks to the Internet, everyone can be their own medical investigator.
-- An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All
It's long been supposed that the 21st century media explosion could smash a nation's 20th century mass culture into a thousand tiny shards. Hundreds of TV and radio channels and millions of websites mean that any point of view -- even the foolish ones -- can find an outlet. I don't see any way to both believe in free speech and to stop this sort of nonsense.
Sunday, 18. October 2009, 20:44:57
photos
Tuesday, 13. October 2009, 18:08:08
life
Today I did a Google search to try and find help with some silly Windows programming problem I'm having at work. I was successful; I quickly found a 2005-era forum thread where posters were dicussing the same problem, trading possible solutions, talking at cross purposes, arguing, etc. Standard forum thread stuff.
One poster included a link to a Usenet discussion (archived on Google Groups) of the same problem, from way back in 1999.
That Usenet discussion contained a bunch of longer, more detailed posts. The thread starter in particular seemed to really know his stuff. His post contained a detailed, technical description of the cause of the problem, some sample code to demonstrate the problem, and a list of work-arounds. There was the usual argument in the thread about whether the issue was a bug in Windows or the result of an intentional decision by Microsoft. But the thread ended when a Microsoft engineer showed up and confirmed the problem was real but that for backwards compatibility reasons, it would not be fixed. Which is a really definitive, final and high-quality sort of answer for a forum thread question.
But something seemed familiar about this thread. I looked up at the top and sure enough, that first post was tagged with a very familiar name.
My name.
There was a time when I sort of knew what I was doing, far better than I do now. And at that time, I thought of myself as helpless, lost, and in over my head.
I'm still trying to figure out where that puts me now.
Friday, 2. October 2009, 17:48:35
gripes
There's a leak in the roof at my office.
I removed a sopping-wet ceiling tile. The resulting gap in the ceiling is rimmed with dangling bits of toxic-looking insulation, but now the water can drip freely into a plastic wastebasket perched on the edge of my desk, instead of pooling precariously over my head somewhere.
Now there's a slow, steady drip drip drip as each huge droplet splashes down, causing my whole desk to vibrate slightly each time.
The leak began yesterday. Yesterday the landlord promised some handy person would be here today to remedy the situation. I can't imagine what sort of remedy could be offered -- it continues to rain steadily -- but that's a moot point, because no one has in fact appeared.
The landlord assured us, apropos of nothing, that he would be proceeding with long-promised plans to invest in our run-down building. That sounds like good news. The back steps are so rusty that I avoid them, afraid I'll break a leg (or worse) when they finally collapse. The roof leaks. The climate control systems are wheezing ancients that overheat and fill the building with acrid burning smells at random intervals. The walls are covered with peeling wallpaper that has been sloppily painted over. The building is a mess.
So what is the landlord's plan? He wants to repave the crumbling parking lot, of course.
That strikes me as patently insane, but maybe he's right, maybe that's more important from a business standpoint. We are so very devoted to our cars.
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