Global Handwashing Day, Clipart Sites, Obama/McCain, Tweaks for Vista

As you may or may not have noticed my blog entries are getting further and further apart.  Sorry.

I find myself busier and busier but having less time, it seems without really gaining on much of anything.  Isn't that the way it is with everyone? ;)

 Global Handwashing Day

Today is Global Handwashing Day.  The U.N. says that a simple act of a kid washing their hands more often could save more then 3.5 children's lives in the world.  Okay, not such a big thing here in the US but I think most people don't do it often enough, let alone kids.

After I return from Watertown I always wash my hands thoroughly, as well as from customer's places.  Some people "dip", but a good hand-washing is more involved then that.

And how about those times when you see someone use the bathroom and not wash.  Gah, disgusting.  Hard to believe it still happens.

Keyboards and mice and remote controls are terribly dirty, same with your steering wheel.  A little scrub once in a while with some alcohol or the little hand-cleaning lotion you can buy is all that's needed.  Same with the faceplate and buttons on your phone (don't get it actually wet).

Obama/McCain

I like this the above thumb came out, some interesting juxtaposing color-wise, don't you think?

Anyway...I find myself very much disliking McCain after watching him very closely during the debates.

He seems always on edge, and on the very brink of losing his temper.  It seems to be consistent and continual.

Do we want someone who some Republicans had said was unwinnable during a previous run, because of his temper?

He's twitchy, yet frozen, on edge and I find myself not believing his sincerity.

McCain's like a number of people I know who project an air of holier-then-thou mentality, an air of I'm-older-then-you-so-I-know-better.  I don't like people like that because, frankly, they usually are the last people you want giving you advice or ideas and are somewhat distasteful to be around, let alone someone you want to be the prez.

McCain - I'd probably smile and nod if he told me the sky was blue and, at the earliest opportunity, go outside to make sure it still was...

Obama on the other hand is much more likable in my eyes.  Sure, he's still a politician but take away the politicking and I think I'd like the guy.  He's smart, open-minded, and he's learning in both his demeanor and knowledge in general.

I feel much better about our choices as time goes on - not that I still don't have a LOT of concern in general.

HDTV is great, especially with a big screen.  You can sit close to the TV and get a real feel for the demeanor of a candidate.  Every twitch, every glance, every eye flick is there for your interpretation.

Maybe it's just me, but with Obama's double-digit lead I think the issue will very soon be very moot.

Enough of my aimless wanderings about the candidates, especially when I didn't even mention the issues themselves.   But, I believe, character is very much important in any power position.  And what could be more powerful then president of the greatest country in the world?

Stock Photo Sites

It's always nice to have sock photos for websites, blog, etc.  Hey, don't just grab stuff off Google - that's stealing and copyright infringement.  Use a free clipart or stock photo site.  Like Cyclo.ps.

Cyclo.ps is an open source search engine for stock photo sites.  Of course, some aren't free or require a membership to download, but many area.  It's always good to check for copyrights or Creative Commons licensing info on any photos you use, especially if you're making money off putting it on a website .

Great resource.

I still like http://www.picapp.com/ and http://www.wpclipart.com/ myself.

Tweaks for Vista

MzUltimate Tweaker is an excellent free tweaking program, with lots of support programs.  Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.

Thoosje Vista Tweaker is a bit more limited but still very good, and also free.


Another good one which is pay is here, from a company called Yamicsoft.  You can get a shareware version from the site.

You'll also find many others, like Vispa.  A bit less user-friendly but still does a great job.

As always, be careful with these and don't even give them a try if you don't know what you are doing. 


Vista Quick Image Resizer


Some of us have gotten used to many of the tweaks in XP.  They're old hat and used all of the time.  You know the things, like MS Powertoy's Image Resizer.  Right-click on and image and you can quickly resize it to whatever you want to.  How many times have you received a 6 meg photo of something that someone should have resized on the other end with this program.

MS's tech employees haven't released or come up with any powertoys yet for Vista, but others have.

You can find a clone of the quick photo resizer for Vista here - http://www.powerhourgame.com/windows_vista_image_resizer_powertoy_prish_image_resizer.htm and another one here - http://www.vso-software.fr/products/image_resizer/download-image-resizer.php

The latter one does have an annoying pop-up but works well otherwise.  The first is my choice.  There are others also.

Replacing Notepad in Vista

It's very similar to the process in XP.

Get your favorite notepad replacement program, rename it to "NOTEPAD.EXE", search for all instances of Notepad in the Windows dir and sub-dirs and set the owner rights on them to admin, then copy your new NOTEPAD.EXE and replace the existing Windows ones (you may want to rename your old notepad to OLDNOTEPAD.EXE or something like that).

Depending on your flavor of Vista there may be a number of instances of Notepad in various places.  Do them all.

Make sure you are signed in on an admin account when you do this, and if you find that you can't change the rights on all of the notepad versions reboot and go into SAFE mode (press F8 when the computer is booting and select SAFE MODE), then change the owner rights from safe mode.

Of course, you can always just associate textfiles and other documents with a notepad or word processor.  But it's much better "coverage" of textfiles when just replacing it.  Also, if you are using something that has it's own install dir it may be much harder to just replace the existing one, as it must reside in the Windows dirs and sub-dirs.

I recommend Metapad for replacing Notepad, with Metapad set up to allow you to do more heavy-duty editing in Open Office's Writer and the freeware PSPad (with Metapad if you have loaded a file into it and want to do more advanced editing you use the Launch menu to open the existing file in your favorite heavier-duty editor).

Vista
I find myself having a love/hate relationship with Vista.

I love some of the new features; the history for the file management and open dialog, the built-in immediate search (with indexing turned off of course), and the speed of everyday use (with Aero and unnecessary services disabled), etc.

Sometimes when I got back to XP I think - "Wow, how primitive!".

Yet, the architecture of Vista is bloated and way too patched.  It's stable, but still very breakable.  And not always so good on some systems.  With the 4 gigs of mem it's very fast and stable.  Same with my laptop, despite the smaller memory but there's definitely more disk using on the laptop with the smaller amount of memory and a very slow shut-down and hibernate on the laptop.  Not so on the desktop.  So I normally still use XP on the laptop.  Maybe grab myself some more memory at some point.

And some common problems (one of which I ran into and finally solved) have never been addressed by MS nor resolved in Vista.

After partitioning and installing XP (and then re-installing Vista's boot and adding XP's boot entry) I could compare the speed of the two OS's.  Under normal use it seems to be the same.

But once you do things like rendering large high res photorealistic landscapes you start seeing some speed differences, in XP's favor.

For example - using Bryce 3D I rendered a small moderately complex model.  The differences between XP and Vista were consistently a half seconds difference, in XP's favor.  Larger renderings of the same model at higher rez started increasing this by a few seconds.

Not a lot of difference but a measurable amount, and incremental.

Watertown Dog Park, Firefox Memory Leaks, Google Chrome, Vista & HP

Congratulations to my niece and her husband for their new baby boy (and sympathy for the long hours of labor), named after my Dad.

Watertown Dog Park

A good example of why Jefferson County stays the same.  Some of the people of Watertown and Jefferson County were almost up in arms when a group of citizens wanted a dog park in Watertown.

I love this area; the land and landscape, the history, and most of the time the people.  But the ignorance and backwardness of some is disheartening, especially those who we rely on to govern and see further ahead then their own wallets.  

A moderator on a local webboard even closed the topic about the dog park at one point, after the city council refused to take it any further.  So further discussions were ended abruptly there on that webboard.

Fortunately there are those who are a bit more with the times and can see benefits beyond themselves.  Fort Drum now has a dog park for military people, as well as the SPCA (though only for members).

The old rednecks and staunch Old Guard/Good Old Boys of the local government always wonder why the young people leave here.  A dog park may be a small thing, but it's a reminder and maybe even a symbol of larger problems we have here.

Firefox Still Has Memory Leaks?  No!

What did you expect - they fixed Firefox up but third parties who make the addons that most of us use are under no obligation to do so.  Many of the addons hemorrhage memory like there's no limit, and sometimes the interactions between them are only making it worse.  If you find your memory consumption high in Firefox 3 try alternative addons.

Google Chrome

 

I've yet to be as impressed about Google Chrome as some people are.  It doesn't seem to be that significant in features or speed.  And Google's terms of use are scary at worse, questionable at best.  The German government even told people not to use it!  Not that that means a whole lot.

Sure, I know - the argument is that if you're not doing anything wrong with it why do you care if they know what you're surfing.  Same with their e-mail, online applications, etc.

Many down through history have thought similar.  And fervently regretted giving up their privacy.

Google is a bit scary in general.  They've far surpassed Microsoft in terms of the niggling feeling at the edge of my thoughts that whisper "World Domination" ;)

Vista and HP Computers

My new HP computer with Vista continues to perform well and impress me.  The occasional older program doesn't work in Vista of course, I guess I've run across four or five so far.

And some of the features they did away with is perplexing.  

Sound recorder is nearly useless.  I normally use Cool Edit for heavy duty sound projects but there's still a need for a simple sounded editor.  Fortunately you can just copy the old one out of XP and it works fine.  

You can do this with some other XP programs too, though if you are actually replacing a Windows Vista program instead of adding one, you will need administrator privileges.  Like for Notepad.

But the number-crunching ability of the computer, the 64-bit dual-core processor is impressive.  Rendering photorealistic objects is blazing and working with multiple graphics programs and websites is smooth and fun now. 

I ran into a bit of an issue yesterday.

One of the reasons I got this computer was the ability to make a recovery disk(s) from the recovery partition.  If the hard drive goes flooey two days after the year long warranty runs out I have an option; outside of buying a new copy of Vista or going back to XP.

So I went to the HP Recovery Disk Creator, only to find that it won't let me create a disk now.  It only allows one creation (easily hacked) but I hadn't even made one as yet!

Why?  Well, apparently you can't add a partition or mess around with the hard drive too much, as it detects size changes, etc.  And won't let you make the recovery copy.  I even tried setting the partitions back (overwriting my XP partition), no luck.  I tried hacking the config for it, making the sizes line up again.  No luck.

After doing some checking online it seems to be a common problem (a few years back HP got into some trouble for problems along these lines, if you remember).  

The only alternative is to back up everything, and use the recovery partition to set everything on the computer back to stock, build the recovery DVD's, and then restore everything again.  A huge PITA.  But I see no other way.  

Though I bet there's a way to hack the recovery disk creator to ignore the changes.  Ugh.

A few good links - if you miss the "Copy to" and "Move to" here's how to add them to Vista.

New Computer

New Computer

I haven't actually bought a new, non-laptop computer in many years.  

I usually make my computers out of a combination of parts I have, parts from current computers, and new parts.

But this time I wanted to just go out and buy one; a damn good one, and not screw around with it very much.


Of course, as things go - especially in the computer and Windows world - there's still a lot of screwing around to do.  At least for a perfectionist and power user like I.

The computer I found is an HP.  A good company, and pretty much always has been.  They sell a good range of computers falling under any price and level of features that you want to pay for.

I didn't want any crappy Gateway's or Dell's, no factory-built jobbers (I'd just build it myself), no refurbs, no cheapos (like eMachines - though they're a perfectly fine computer).



I perused online, then headed out to the great megacity of Watertown.  After trying to work through the semi-knowledge some of the guys at various computer stores have about the specific computers they sell (though the guy in Best Buy that I talked to knew a lot about computers and hardware/software - he wasn't familiar with any of the computers enough to tell me their specs without looking on the side of the box; which is of negligible help and that I could do myself).  I found a couple good ones at Best Buy, comparable in price and features to what I found online. I wrote the models down and headed home to look up the exact specs, and compare prices.


Only a few days later I'd settled on this one articular computer over all the others.  Best Buy had the best price for it too, surprisingly.


I also had to update my multiple USB 1.1 distribution boxes to 2.0.  And I threw in a new power strip while I was at it.


The little cutie who helped me out the second time around didn't maybe know that much about the computers but she was very very helpful and happy to do so.

That is; once I stopped staring at all of her fascinating piercings - and sure; I may have wondered a few times where else she may have had piercings...  But for the most part I kept my mind on the computers.

And yea - maybe at the end of it all she may have had a hard time actually getting the money out of my hands (a la the typical sitcom joke).  After all, I'm a cheap bastard and I was paying cash - nothing like seeing that much money leave my fingertips after holding and cuddling it lovingly in my sweaty, shaking hands.  Heh heh.

Better to give it to Best Buy and get something out of it rather then having Uncle Bush and his cronies get their greedy oil-stained mitts on it.



Anyway, it is 2.4 Ghz, 4 gig of RAM, dual-core, real Intel, Nvidia card with separate memory (if you want to do graphics applications, video editing, or heavy duty games make sure your video card isn't sharing mem with the computer - blah), Dolby Surround Sound card, lots of Firewire and USB and audio (front and back) and digital video ports, SATA drives (the specs mention it's IDE - strange), DVD writer with Lightscribe, lots of ports, expansion front and back, super quiet (compared to the relatively high decibels of my 'industrial fanned' bastard computer - a good computer and fairly fast and resource-filled but a bit slow when doing some of the work I've been doing), etc etc etc.  I won't bore you with any more specs.  


Suffice to say it's a pretty nice medium-range computer.


The hardest parts are 1) installing/copying stuff over from my old computer and backups and 2) figuring out which operating system I want to use.


The latter was the hardest.


On the one hand XP is well-established and frankly, I'm extremely familiar with it. It runs everything I want it to run.  But XP can't usually take advantage of even 4 gigs of RAM (this particular system combined with XP only uses 3.12 Gig of the available 4), and the availability of drivers can be extremely problematic; to say the least.  Sometimes a particular XP driver can't even be found for a newer system, or if it can it's severely out of date.  Or doesn't support all of the features.  

A good tip for finding drivers is to look at the manufacturer's website for other countries where XP hasn't been pushed out.



On the other hand Vista has come a long way with SP1 and the tweaks people have come up with.  It's modern, and does have some nice features.  And it o course takes advantage of newer software and hardware.  Plus the drivers are already there and installed.  Downsides - it's can still be annoying, lagged, and questionable.  It's big, bloated (like all Windows software).  And a few programs here and there won't run, older stuff.



I would either have to A) re-install a new OS and find sometimes-nearly-impossible-to-find drivers to work with it, THEN re-install all my stuff or B) optimize and hack Vista to make it work the way I want to.


I went back and forth for a few days.  As I knew would happen ; finding drivers for this brand new system running XP was hard-to-impossible for some of the devices.  I never did find one for the network card or SM Bus Controller.


At some point you have to re-evaluate things and how much time is going to be invovled and, indeed, whether you can do something and still have a few strands of hair left afterward (and I can't spare any).


I use Vista occasionally, for myself as well as customers; enough to know it annoys me.  But never have I used it exclusively and for long periods of time.


Despite previous efforts to force myself to use it and tweak it and learn everything about it I never could stomach it long enough.


This time (through what I believe is an extreme force of will ;) I sat down and started seriously using it (without the thought at the back of my mind that I really was going to go back to XP at some point).


As I said - SP1 has made it much better.  Combining a few simple things like turning off UAC, Indexing, and various other miscellanea makes living with it much easier.  Not to mention faster.  Turning off the Aero theme is even better, even though this computer ran very fast with everything mentioned above turned on.  I in fact turned off themes completely, not just switched to the classic theme.


I uninstalled and/or disabled a number of other things including a bunch of media desktop stuff, media sharing, little tray icons for this and that that manufacturers install, dumped Norton (actually this was the very first thing I did), put on my own anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software.  And did a little registry hacking.



I continued (and continue) to dive into optimizing the system, getting rid of things that aren't needed (like the many services).


Now the Vista system is (mind-blowingly surprising to me) very fast and compares very favorably to the speeds of Windows XP.  Things blaze, the graphics are fast and smooth (Flight Simulator 2004 is beautiful, gorgeous and realistic - in fact I find myself getting motion sick while flying occasionally).


It came with an HP keyboard and mouse (optical, but slightly cheap-feeling - the Logitech I've had for years is discolored from many years of finger-rubbing and button-clicking but it's solid and I can easily solder on new button switches when I [inevitably] wear one out once a year).  


I'm not a big fan of multimedia keyboards (nor wireless keyboards and mice - though they are great for presentations).  I tend to not use them, and people in general tend to not use the extra buttons after the initial fun of having them wears off.  But I find myself actually using some of the functions on this one. 

So far this has been a good computer and I've put it through it's paces.  We'll see how it goes.