Monday, September 17, 2007

Drain it, baby!

I had the shivers this week-end: my HP dv6000-series laptop would refuse to charge the battery. I kept begging it, but to no avail: it gave me the blue blinking light. And this is, how should I put it, bad. It means that the battery needs to be replaced.
For heaven's sake, that battery was less than a year old! This is the 21st century! That stuff was invented in the 19th! And they still can't make those work reliably?
That's when I remembered of some obscure procedure one person at HP tech support told me about 9 months ago: The Power Drain (tm). Yes, believe it or not, there is a way to drain whatever power may be left out of your HP laptop...
The draining goes like this: unplug the AC, remove the battery, and then press the power button for 20s or more (the first time HP made me do this, I thought it was a joke!).
I tried it this time. Then I placed the battery back in its compartment, plugged the AC back in, and lo! the battery started charging again. Everything seems to work fine now.
As to why some drainage was necessary...

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Mac OS X applications

I used to be a huge fan of Apple stuff. My first Apple system was an Apple II (because the Mac was too expensive at the time). Eventually I got myself a Mac LC, right after that almost-unknown Apple IIGS (which was an Apple II that looked like a Mac --it had a mouse, it had QuickDraw and all). And then, at work, everyone had Macs. There were also a couple of PCs lying around.
Then one day, I needed to compile something on one of those PCs (it was running NT 3.51beta at the time). And, oh my god, the compilation of that C program took just a few seconds. Why did it take 10 minutes on my Mac? It was, at the time, a good-enough reason for a divorce. Windows was going to be my love, and it has been ever since.

Fast-forward to 2007. I still use Windows systems at work (XP SP2). I still use Windows systems at home (we have a Media Center, a laptop running XP, and another running Vista). And life is great. But... for some reason unknown to me (nothing new in the near future? the new iMacs?), I started looking at Macs, and at OS X for the first time in years. I am even thinking of finding good reasons to actually go and buy one.
So here is one thing I discovered recently, after watching a nice demo of Mac OS X Tiger (thanks to Google Video, although for some reason that video is not available anymore today): it is much more natural to deal with applications on the Mac than it is on Windows!

An application is usually installed by launching a package (this is similar to what you have on Windows with the Windows Installer). Once the application has been installed it usually appears in you Applications folder. You may create aliases (shortcuts in the Windows world) that you may put anywhere (including the Dock) to launch that application. Deleting those aliases does not delete the application (exactly as on Windows).
You may also move the application from the Applications folder to any other location, and its aliases will still run properly. Deleting the application only involves putting it in the trash can.
In that description, one thing stands out: the application is just one file.
On Windows, an application usually consists of several files: an executable, a few DLLs, and more (plus a few registry entries). On the Mac, it's just a file. Which means people cannot screw it up.

This is where I started thinking: how can it be just a file? On Windows, with .net, you get to something very similar: no need for registry entries, an executable or a DLL may actually contain resources (i.e. other files, like icons or strings of text), so an installation just means copying those files, and they should presumably be movable without any issue. But you still have a few files though (if only as a packaging convenience for the developers).

How do they do it on the Mac? Either it's the same as .net, but taken to the extreme (one file contains everything), or the Finder fakes it...
This article gave me the solution: indeed, the Finder fakes it. And it's very nicely done.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

VS 2005 really wants that update

September 11th, 2007. Go to Windows Update. Install all updates. All updates install successfully. Go back to Windows Update. You will still see "Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (KB937061)". Install the update. It installs successfully. Go back to Windows Update. You will still see "Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (KB937061)". etc. etc.
You don't need to watch Groundhog Day again.

[Update] See this thread on the Microsoft VS forum. No solution to this yet, except for installing CrystalReports.

[Update 2] September 14th. Microsoft has now fixed the issue.

Apple Expo Paris 2007

Apple Expo Paris will take place on the 25th of September. The fee is 12 €, but here you can get your badge to visit the expo with no limit (and for free).

Live translation

You already knew about the Google translation service? Well, Microsoft have also started their own: Windows Live Translator. The interesting thing about the latter is that it allows you to compare both the original text and the translated one side-by-side (and that is also the case for web pages). Just like Google's though, it would not translate text that was part of images (I can understand that), but also would leave the text it could not translate as it was, with no particular hint.
By default, the Windows Live Translator uses Systran services, but if you check the "Computer-related content" checkbox, they use their own translator...

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Eating secret stuff

In-n-out is a famous burger chain in the United States, and takes pride in proposing a very simple menu (burger-fries-drink). It is not as big a chain as, say, McDonald's, but Yours Truly has come to like those cheap and simple burgers (especially their sauce). McDonald's and others have gone down as my age went up (let's not talk senility today).
Badmouth gives us all the nitty-gritty details about a secret menu that In-n-out would have available...

Tabs, trees, windows... Don't get me started...

Jeff Atwood, of famed Coding Horror has some issues with tabs in user interfaces. Don't get me started: not only do I have issues with tabs (and that's an understatement), I don't like tree views, or even windows for that matter.
Why? you might ask. Well, I would reply, the reason I don't like these now standard GUI elements is simple: you constantly have to micro-manage them; you constantly have to move them around, switch from one thing to another to see what you are interested in, using the keyboard with them takes ages, which leaves you with the mouse (which I have no problem with, thank you very much).
Expanding, collapsing, moving up, moving down, resizing, minimizing, switching... Aaargghh... This is a good summary of my life...

It took me a while...

OK so it took me a while to start this blog. Many (mental) tries. As many (mental) abortions. The will was there, but it seemed too much of an effort.
But this time, I was so bored at work, I thought, what the heck, let's at least prepare the templates for this blog, so that maybe, in a year's time, when I'm bored again, I will actually want to add something to it.
Well, amazingly, I decided to go ahead nonetheless. So here. There you are, soon-to-be loyal reader. I will try to not disappoint you.
Welcome.