Jun 21, 2008

Fixing Fonts in Opera on Ubuntu

Do your fonts in Opera 9.5 look "fuzzy" or "pixelly" on Ubuntu? Mine did, until I added a .fonts.conf file in my home directory. Just copy and paste the XML from this post on my.opera.com to your ~/.fonts.conf file to get corrected font rendering.

Jun 15, 2008

Miter Saw Laser Guide

I love my old Delta Compound Miter saw. I have a fairly basic model, but it does what it is designed to do: make straight cuts at measured angles. But with basic saws you do miss out on some cool features of more expensive models.

Like laser guides, for instance.

I usually make a pretty accurate cut, but when I found that Irwin makes a Miter Saw Laser Guide accessory that works with most miter saws, I had to try it.

Installation of the Irwin Laser Guide was straightforward. You just replace the outside washer of the saw blade with the laser guide, and bolt it back on. The laser activates automatically when the saw blade starts spinning. And that's all there is to it - the basic saw now has a laser that accurately marks the cut point of the saw blade. Neat!

There are a couple of downsides. The first is that the automatic activation means that blade needs to move to get the laser to draw. I wish I could manually turn it on instead, as it seems unnecessarily risky to activate the saw just to check a measurement. The second downside is common to most laser guides, and that is that the laser is nearly impossible to see when the saw is being used outdoors on a sunny day.

But hey, for only $25, the Irwin Miter Saw Laser Guide is a great accessory for an inexpensive miter saw.

Irwin Miter Saw Laser Guide

Jun 09, 2008

A PC Guy and MacBook Air

I've been using the MacBook Air [macbookair, macbookair, usingthemacbookair] for about a month now. I haven't used a Mac since they ran System 7, and I've been an avid ThinkPad X-series [thinkpadx40issues, thinkpadlenovoupdates, thinkpadreference, thinkpadx40] user for the past 5 or 6 years. Before then, I was a fan of Sony Vaio laptops. I'm a PC guy. I've been using PCs since MS-DOS 3, Windows since Windows 3.0, and Linux since kernel 2.0.

The MacBook Air is undoubtedly the best laptop I've ever used.

The MacBook Air is rock solid. It is small. It is light. It is fast. It is stable. It runs cool. It is compatible. It does want I want it to do, when I want it to do it. The success of the Air is clearly a combination of a great operating system running on great hardware.

On the hardware side, the build quality is amazing. It makes every other laptop look ancient. The LED-lit LCD screen looks gorgeous. The keyboard is easy to use. And the multi-touch pad is the first laptop input device that truly supplants the desire for an external mouse. In particular, the three-finger forward and back swipe is pure genius, along with double-taps and two-finger taps. The included video camera is a nice touch. Power management is superb, with long battery life and automatic power saving modes. I never turn the Air off. I just close the lid.

The Mac OS X operating system is a joy to use. As a Windows and Linux user, I had no trouble adapting to the OS at all. The integration is thoughtful everywhere in the system, with noticeable efforts to remove complexity and excessive options. Within minutes of unboxing the system, I was up and running on the network. The closed OS/Hardware ecosystem completely removed the usual hassle with hardware driver installs and crapware removal. System updates are painless, as is installing software from the net. The whole downloadable software packaging, installation method(s), directory structure, and security enforcement is a very nicely thought out process. And finally, after all these years, Mac OS has keyboard shortcuts for everything (unlike the System 7 days). Alas, as a Windows user, I'm still fumbling with the Control, Option, and Command keys, and I'm not sure all apps are using the same editor keyboard shortcuts. I suppose I just need some practice.

As a Linux user, installing XCode is a must. I was thrilled to see that I could compile and run Midnight Commander and other Linux apps with minimal fuss, and can safely dump new stuff in /usr/local without screwing up the main system config. OS X is unix! ssh works great, as well as every other basic unix command. And the default shell is Bash. Nice. X Windows also runs fine, and I'm happy that I can use The GIMP. ImageMagick works great too, as does connecting to printers served from Linux hosts.

As a Windows user on a corporate network, Microsoft Office is absolutely mandatory for any computer (note my longing for a Linux version [thinkpadx40issues, thinkpadx40]). MS Office 2008 for the Mac is very nice, and compatible with files from Office for Windows. Entourage isn't Outlook, but in many ways that's a good thing. It is a pleasure to use, and of critical importance, is perfectly compatible with Exchange Server. Oddly, Outlook 2003 on my Thinkpad X40 loads much faster than Entourage 2008 on the Air. And alas, Excel without VBA is just a spreadsheet, not the power tool that I need. Fortunately, it looks like Microsoft is bringing VBA back in the next version. Microsoft also provides a Remote Desktop client that works very well in allowing me to remotely control my Windows workstation. The combo of Remote Desktop and Mac Spaces is nice - I switch from Mac to Windows with a simple hotkey combo. And the Cisco VPN client, along with the very nice Shimo interface, gets me on and off the corporate VPN with ease.

Finally, about the concern with the lack of peripheral ports on the Air. I haven't used a single peripheral port once in my daily operation of the laptop. I ordered the USB Ethernet adapter, tried it out to make sure it worked, and haven't used it since.

My experience with the MacBook Air has been total computing bliss. If only Windows machines were this elegant.

MacBook Air

Jun 03, 2008

I Hate InstallShield

I can't tell you how many times I've seen InstallShield crash or hang when I try to install or uninstall a program on Windows XP. In many cases, I'll open Process Explorer, kill the hung process, and take a peek at the TEMP directory (in Windows\Temp). I usually find a dozen "temporary" copies of InstallShield files in there, so deleting everything in TEMP sometimes fixes the problem.

Tonight, I finally got around to installing a game that was sitting on my shelf for the past two years. When I ran its installer, InstallShield crashed with the useful message: Error Code: -5009 : 0x8002802b

Thanks, that's helpful. Luckily, a four-year old post on a the Macromedia forum revealed a fix: just nuke the C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Professional directory.

Now to scan the machine for SafeDisc and other malware…

Y'know, back in the old DOS days, you installed programs by typing:

c:\> md coolgame
c:\> copy a:\*.* c:\coolgame\*.*

And it always worked.

May 31, 2008

Use Crtl-T to Tag Files in MC on Mac

I've been using MC (Midnight Commander) for years on *nix systems, and was happy to get it running in the Terminal on the Mac.

But where the heck is the Insert key on a Macbook Air [macbookair, macbookair, usingthemacbookair]? You need the Insert key to select files in MC!

Thankfully, a helpful blogger pointed out that MC also uses the command "Ctrl-T" to "tag" files. Nice tip!

More tips for MC can be found here: http://linuxgazette.net/issue23/wkndmech_dec97/mc_article.html