Archive for November, 2004
Most people that start off blogging seem to arbitrarily choose whatever solution they trip across first, or whichever one seems like the least work. I actually started a “home-grown” solution via Flash and XML, which worked fine after I figured out some of Flash’s XML-reading quirks, but it wasn’t a very advanced application from a point of view of functionality. (Text plus optional pic, tied to date.) When I decided to stop producing a static site in favour of a blog, I created some accounts in LiveJournal and Blogger, but gave them up because customisability didn’t seem to be encouraged (or easy to achieve). Even managed to install and try MoveableType as well, just before the big 3.0 license fiasco, and while I did like it, I was a little frightened off by the community “retaliation” happening because of 3.0. WordPress was next in line, and I loved it. Easy install, easy (well, relatively easy) customisation, plenty of great templates, and a vibrant community effort behind it. It took less than two days to produce basically everything that would form a million monkeys typing.
Now, there’s a new entry over at dsandler.org: The past and future of dsandler.org. (Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love WordPress.) He goes over the multiple solutions he examined before finally choosing WordPress:
And damn if it doesn’t work. From a features standpoint, WP includes fifteen different kitchen sinks, but the administrative UI is totally manageable (and the template functions are reasonable, if not always totally consistent) . The third-party developer community is active and prolific, and I quickly found an implementation of almost every feature I had imagined for the site (including next-day/previous-day links). And after a little time with the PHP code, I became pretty comfortable that I’d be able to hack together whatever I needed if I couldn’t find it elsewhere.
November 27th, 2004
I have a feeling that this article from Benedelman.org, Who Profits from Security Holes?, is going to get a lot of traction on certain blogs and news sites:
How bad is this problem? How much junk can get installed on a user’s PC by merely visiting a single site? I set out to see for myself — by visiting a single web page taking advantage of a security hole (in an ordinary fresh copy of Windows XP), and by recording what programs that site caused to be installed on my PC. In the course of my testing, my test PC was brought to a virtual stand-still — with at least 16 distinct programs installed. I was not shown licenses or other installation prompts for any of these programs, and I certainly didn’t consent to their installation on my PC.
Ironically, I just gave a workshop session on malware to some non-profit organisations. In recent months, I’ve had to change it from being exclusively on virus issues, and now it’s about 50% on spyware. This was a direct result of the number of technical support calls I’ve received recently: about 3/4 of them were problems related to spyware infestation, including pornographic pop-ups, multiple “search-bars”, frequent slow-downs, instability, and all the other usual suspects. Most of the time, the caller isn’t even aware of what spyware is.
In the session, I find it useful to talk about spyware as a pretty flower you find in a field and bring home to plant in your garden, only to find its bloom fading fast, its roots choking out the rest of your plants and its runners spreading to the neighbours’ gardens. Most of the participants don’t understand how networks and executables work, but they understand the nature of a weed. I can’t think of a better comparison.
November 24th, 2004
Popular Science once again has a list of the worst jobs in science. (I wouldn’t read this on a full stomach.) It just shows you what dedication the scientific community has for their profession.
(And I’m so proud: my home city made job #7 possible: Ecologist at St. John’s Harbor. I used to work in a building with the wonderful view of the “floatables”….)
November 22nd, 2004
An excellent in-depth review of Firefox 1.0 over at InformationWeek: What Makes Firefox 1.0 So Compelling. Seven pages of close scrutiny and essential bedtime reading.
You’ll also find a poll in the “Related Stories” sidebar asking whether you’re going to switch from IE to Firefox (currently standing at 95% yes).
November 22nd, 2004
Yikes! This is one for the books: a worm propogated by advertising iframes. If you’re using Internet Explorer, and visited certain (very popular) sites in the past few days, then chances are that you have become infected. What basically happened is this: many sites serve up their ads using embedded frames, called “iframes”, within a page. When the page loads, the iframe is created with a call to the advertising service, and the ad then appears in all its irritating glory. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer is highly vulnerable to cross-scripting errors using iframes, which allows certain programs to be downloaded and run without you knowing it. Because of a worm on the advertising server, IE can easily become infected, and thus your whole system.
This can affect you unless you are one of the few people running Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP Service Pack 2. (If you don’t know whether or not you have SP2, chances are you don’t: it’s a gigantic download.) If you’re not running this combo, then I’d advise you to get a good anti-virus program (there are good free ones out there, like AVG), the spyware remover AdAware, and Firefox, a much more secure (and feature-filled) browser.
The Register was one of the many sites affected, and has put up a notice about it.
November 22nd, 2004
Oh! I wish I had some spare time to play around with this, an Eclipse IDE for OpenLaszlo.
For those of you who haven’t tripped across it yet, OpenLaszlo is an Open Source (though once proprietary) system for creating applications that run through Macromedia Flash, thus providing a rich –but not overly complex– framework for implementing and deploying applications that run within 97% of browsers.
I love IBM’s Eclipse editor, I really do, although on slower computers it tends to be a helluva resource hog: it’s a huge Java app, after all. It’s capable of doing quite a number of things (I’ve used it for Java, HTML, text, LaTeX and Python), and it’s easily extensible. Now that it supports OpenLaszlo, it’s a killer app for producing rich web applications.
The IDE provides a rich editing environment for the LZX mark-up language, including XML and script-based content assistance, XML syntax highlighting, and XML code formatting. The editor is supported by Palette, Properties, and Outline views. These views allow developers to Drag and Drop new LZX elements into the editor, edit attributes, and modify the LZX document structure within a tree representation.
It also supports a wide range of debugging capabilities, but unfortunately is only really supported on Linux and Windows. The Mac OS X has a few issues that need to be ironed out. More information, and the download, can be found at IBM’s Alphaworks Laszlo page.
Update: CNet has an interview with the CTO of Laszlo Systems, David Temkin, where he discusses the impetus between the Laszlo development framework and going up against Macromedia.
November 20th, 2004
At first, I thought this CNet article called Air Force turns to Microsoft for network security was a joke. Unfortunately not.
“The consolidation will result in standard configurations for all Microsoft desktop and server software,” the Air Force said in the statement. “The standard configurations will enforce rigorous security profiles and will be updated online with security patches and software updates.”
Microsoft representatives confirmed that the company will work with the Air Force to define security configurations for the agency’s desktop and servers.
Saving money and enhancing security thanks to Microsoft? That ranks up there with Windows for Warships (which is equally scary).
November 19th, 2004
An all-too-important site that I must take the time to mention: Digital Copyright Canada. Lately. Canada has been pursuing a number of initiatives that will prove damaging over the course of the next few years, mainly out of complete ignorance of what the Internet is, and what it’s capable of being.
As a producer of multimedia products, design work and plenty of written material, I understand the need for Intellectual Property rights. People have put plenty of time, effort and ideas into their products, and need to be compensated (that is, if they choose to be). So what’s the problem?
At issue here is the way the proposed system is a “catch-all” for all types of media, no matter what the source or intended end-use. This shows a misunderstanding of how the Net works. For example, what happens when, in this blog, I quote a passage from another blog or a news source? What happens when I put up some snapshots I took of my friend’s wedding? Creating a website of essays to share my thoughts? Even linking to another site without their permission? Copyright lawyers warn that the “Internet-friendly” update of the Copyright Act, as well as the ratification of the WIPO treaty, will suddenly legally jeopardise all of the above. Which means the potential for rampant suing, primitive hair-trigger notice-and-takedown policies, government-mandated witch hunts, and more.
It’s not the need to pursue valid Intellectual Property protection that I have an issue with: it’s the right to speak freely and without fear, it’s the right to share ideas and communicate with others, and it’s the right to learn without legal restriction. All these things and more are at risk today.
Digital Copyright Canada is a news site providing a running list of news reports, blog entries and initiatives that affect the rights of Canadians (and anybody else in danger of signing the WIPO treaty) wishing to share ideas. There, you’ll find more links than I could possibly offer in my blog.
Also, find a great summary of some of the notice-and-takedown issues on BoingBoing (written by Cory Doctorow, who is certainly coming out of his corner with fists flying), and a fledgeling online petition at PetitionSpot.
November 18th, 2004
Get yer red hot Moodle 1.4.2 here. Improvements include a number of security fixes, so they recommend that anyone running an older version should upgrade to this new one.
I’m really learning to love Moodle. But I’m an education tech junkie, anyway, so it’s a natural fit. Once of these days, when I have some time to spare (there’s that old delusion, again), I’m going to delve into its guts to figure out how to add a few organisational modules.
November 18th, 2004
I was taught an important lesson over ten years ago. While teaching in France, I gave English lessons to a Master Chef (whose humility did not permit him to speak of his hundreds of awards and distinctions) in return for getting cooking lessons. Aside from raking me over the coals many times for not having adequately memorised hundreds of herbs by smell and taste, or knowing exactly which of the hundred hanging pots would be most suitable for a certain sauce, he once became very upset with me when I suggested he give up his day job —which had nothing to do with cooking— and go to Paris to work full-time as a chef. I knew his job in the public service was mundane and quite boring, but I also knew he had received offers from some very high-class and trendy restaurants in the capital, so this didn’t seem like much of a stretch. Why was he upset? Partly because he didn’t want to sully his art, but mainly because —by turning a passion to commercial use— his love of cooking would become only a job. The flame that burned within him would be extinguished, and he could not live with himself.
I’ve always been the type to have a hundred hobbies. They’ve been ways of testing the waters of a new subject area, of dipping one toe into the stream and seeing how inviting it is. From there you can decide whether to jump in —wherein it becomes more than a hobby: it’s a career— or you can dangle the feet off the end of the pier, slosh around a little, have a stress-free day, and move on. My myriad hobbies have ranged from mineralogy to gourmet cooking, from medieval longbow archery to Victorian speculative technologies, from woodworking to herbalism. All of these things, I’ve simpled dabbled in, and attained the rank of advanced amateur, taking them no further, even though my interest in them bordered on the obsessive for periods of time. Somehow, there was always something even more exciting just around the corner, and the endless twists and turns of the journey kept me venturing forward, burning with the desire to try new things.
Not long after graduating university, the real world intervened. Having taught for a one-year contract in Newfoundland, I was a victim of a job market whose glut of teachers and dwindling student population had barred most young teachers without tenure or very specialised subjects (such as Special Education) from finding work. One of my chief hobbies during high school and university was programming and multimedia work, and this skill-set provided me the only opportunities I could find. Soon, I found plenty of work developing and managing kiosk, CD-ROM and website projects. The hobby had become a job, and the endless hours of keeping up with technology had drained any degree of enthusiasm I once had for it. The flame was extinguished.
But one of the other hobbies I had in high school was photography. It was a perfect amalgram of creativity and technical know-how. My piece-meal camera kit, along with my homegrown darkroom, allowed me endless hours of pleasure in taking and developing photographs. In university, my empty pockets meant giving up the somewhat-costly hobby, and it broke my heart. Eventually the camera broke, the darkroom was disassembled, and the world moved on.
Right now, I have almost no spare time, except for the 15 minutes or so in the morning while I eat breakfast and write in this blog. Not too long ago, my endless concentration on matters for my two jobs caused me to fear for my sanity… I was even unable to sleep, thinking unceasingly about my work and upcoming projects. I had no mental playground where I could tinker with non-work-related ideas, or subjects that I could read about to relax me before shuffling off to bed.
Then, by a fortuitous turn of events, I gained a new camera —a Canon Digital Rebel— which was by far the best camera I’ve ever owned, and a very capable manual one, at that. Suddenly, I have a hobby again, a mental break that allows me to focus on an activity that has absolutely nothing to do with my work.
I’ve finally rediscovered what my life was missing: the immersion of oneself into something non-imperative. No one will get upset with me if I take a lacklustre photograph. No one will hold each picture as a symbol of my livelihood. No one will pass me quotas, or force me to spend endless hours keeping up with all the latest advances. For once, I don’t even have to use a computer, if I don’t want to. The chains are slackened, the cage is opened.
What an amazing feeling, this newfound freedom….
November 17th, 2004
Over at Best Tool for the Job, Marcus as an entry called Mission “Choose a Wiki”: Accomplished. His thoughts on the various wikis were much the same as mine, but his choice was a different one, owing to different needs, no doubt.
I quite enjoy Marcus’ weblog, as he seems to have quite a number of interests similar to mine, but comes up with different ideas and conclusions that I hadn’t thought of. If you’re a regular reader of my blog, I highly recommend having a look at his.
November 13th, 2004
I’ve been using Adobe Illustrator for many years, and CorelDRAW for a few years before that. While I wouldn’t consider myself an expert in either one, I can do everything I need to do, quickly and effectively: I’d probably fall into the intermediate or advanced category of users. But lately, I’ve faced a few problems, and started looking around for a solution. You see, Illustrator has a number of strikes against it (at least for my purposes):
- It’s expensive, even the upgrades;
- I have to buy a new copy for both my OS X and Windows uses;
- It’s overkill for producing simple posters;
- I can’t recommend it to people or organisations without deep pockets or big budgets (I work in the volunteer sector, and money is hard to come by);
- I can’t actually send source material in AI format to those people, because few of them have AI;
- There is no version of AI for Linux, which I spend much of my work day using;
- I don’t want to have to continually reboot into Windows just to make a simple poster (frankly, that’s about all my Windows was being used for);
- Even teamed with Acrobat, I find that the PDFs produced by AI are overly large, and often don’t work on the machines of people I send them to;
- Each file is only one page long (and “emulating” multi-page documents using layers is a ridiculous hack;
- It doesn’t always integrate well with objects from MS Office (OSX or XP); and
- Did I mention it was expensive?
So I started looking around for a replacement, one that met four criteria: it had to be inexpensive (or free); it had to read and write many standards; it had to work cross-platform; and it had to achieve a certain standard of functionality that I demand in vector-based graphic design. With regard to the latter, it doesn’t have to shoot the moon, but it should be handle all the basics, including text, node-based drawing, alignment/arrangement, shape union/intersection, layers, EPS/SVG import and embedded bitmaps.
What I finally decided on was fairly surprising, especially since I’ve had it on my system for years, but never really fully explored its potential. I’m talking about OpenOffice.org’s vector-based application, Draw.
I had dabbled in it before, and even taught a couple of design lessons for a beginner’s class using it. But I was so caught up in “everything-Adobe” that I quickly turned back to Illustrator, where I remained for years. But my frustration with that application hit a peak a month or so ago. I had been producing a poster for some training, and needed to send the final version as a PDF to some people for printing and posting in their respective workplaces. The poster itself was nothing to write home about: it had a few paragraphs of text, a headline, a set of vertical “tear-off” contact strips at the base, two logos, and a vector drawing of a person at a computer. Using Illustrator CS and Acrobat 6.0, I set all the PDF optimisation settings on max, but the smallest I could make it was 1.9 Mb. Not only was this size problematic to those recipients with only dial-up access, but at least two of them could not open the PDF —even though they were using the latest Acrobat Reader.
Purely on a whim, I decided to cut and paste the logos and drawing into OpenOffice.org Draw, where they showed up without a problem. Cutting and pasting the text objects yielded some kerning problems, but I simply created new text boxes in Draw and pasted the actual paragraphs into them, which worked fine. For the tear-off strips at the base, I created a single vertical strip of contact information, then ran “Duplicate…” to produce the same thing 14 times across the bottom. In less than 15 minutes, I had an almost perfect duplicate of the Illustrator poster. It wasn’t exact: Illustrator gives you the ability to fine-tune text kerning far beyond what Draw does, but it was close enough that anyone except a very advanced designer wouldn’t notice the difference.
But —and here’s the big finale— I could export the drawing as a PDF natively without using Acrobat filters, and it looked perfect. The size, you ask? 110 Kb.
I was floored. All along I had this little unassuming poster-making machine on my boxes, and I hadn’t even thought to use it for this purpose (even though I do use OOo for word processing, spreadsheets and first-draft presentations). The PDFs produced also worked perfectly on every PDF reader and operating system I could find. I thought, Finally: every volunteer organisation I deal with can actually use these posters, regardless of Acrobat version or Net access speed.
Is this going to replace Illustrator for me? No, that wouldn’t be fair to say. Sometimes, when I have to work on a very difficult and advanced illustration, the tools in OOo Draw aren’t up to the task, at least not without experiencing a degree of frustration. (However, I can bring a finished AI illustration into a Draw layout afterwards.) The fact is, though, it’s good enough for 95% of the work that I used to do in Illustrator, but without any of the problems I mentioned at the outset of this entry. It’s free, it’s cross-platform, it produces wonderful (and very small) PDF files, the documents aren’t limited to just one page, it has a good “style” system for format control, and it possesses a set of very robust tools that can handle most tasks. What’s not to like?
The application is part of the OpenOffice.org suite found for free download at www.openoffice.org, or as part of the “Sun-enhanced” StarOffice package at wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/ ($80 US for basic retail, free for educational purposes or with certain new machines).
Windows and Linux users can just download the latest versions for a simple install. OS X users have a choice: they can use the regular OpenOffice.org suite mentioned above, which needs to run via the Apple X11 server (on disk three of the Panther install), or they can get the OS X-”friendlier” version NeoOffice/J, which is a little more unstable, but offers more compatibility with OS X. Neither one provides a standard Aqua interface, although the latter is closer, and the current version is 1.1.2, not 1.1.3 like the Linux/Windows versions.
(By the way, one last tip: if your fonts aren’t showing up, or they look ugly on the screen, run the spadmin program as the administrator. Add your fonts in there. This makes a world of difference for me under Linux.)
November 12th, 2004
Well, I had been wondering if this were going to happen, but now it looks like it is. MSNBC claims that, over the next few weeks, Gmail is going to offer free POP access to users. This means that you don’t have to remain connected to the Net to do your email (a boon for dial-up and road warriors), and you can take advantage of your favourite email client (Thunderbird, anyone?) to handle your email.
Personally, I’ll probably be sticking to the web interface, since it’s just so much more convenient —and even fun— to use from multiple locations and computers. I gave up all my regular email addresses (with the exception of my spam-only accounts) to use only Gmail, and I can’t say I’ve regretted it one bit.
November 11th, 2004
Since the Firefox 1.0 release, there’s been hundreds of stories all around the world about it. Check the ongoing Google News related stories for the latest. There’s everything from The Motley Fool to Al-Jazeera , from USA Today to the Hindustan Times.
As can generally be expected from Wired, there’s an excellent and in-depth story over there called Firefox 1.0 Makes Flashy Debut.
November 11th, 2004
Now that Firefox 1.0 has finally been released, and the poor servers are able to deal with the heavy download rates, the Net is awash with announcements, news stories, reviews and how-to articles. Here are just a few I’ve tripped across today.
Ben Goodger, Lead Engineer for Firefox, announces the release of 1.0.
The official press release from the Mozilla Foundation.
According to developer Asa Dotzler, Firefox was being downloaded more than 50,000 times an hour yesterday.
From BBC News: Firefox browser takes on Microsoft.
From Reuters: Firefox Browser, a Microsoft Rival, Fully Released.
From CNN: New browser to challenge Microsoft.
CNet has a Review of Firefox 1.0:
Move over, Internet Explorer. Feature-studded and secure Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is a safer, better choice for Internet browsing. […] Bottom Line: Firefox’s tabbed browsing, RSS support, security features, and overall cool factor make it more attractive than Internet Explorer.
and you can also find a review of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6.0 (sorry, can’t resist):
Suffers from chronic security holes; no RSS reader; available only within Windows XP SP2; expensive technical support. […] Bottom Line: Unless your business has specific ActiveX technology needs, you are much more secure running Firefox than Internet Explorer.
From News.com: Mozilla releases Firefox 1.0 and Firefox Fans Clog Mozilla Site.
eWeek has a new article: Review: Ten Extensions Enhance Firefox.
I’m sure there’ll be more later.
Update: eWeek interviews the President of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker, in a lengthy article called Firefox and Beyond: Mozilla President Browses the Future.
November 10th, 2004
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