Category: Geek Stuff

Computer Virus — It All Started on An Apple Computer

I know the old Mac OS had troubles with computer virus. But I had no idea the whole thing all started on an Apple Computer!! According to the article, the first Mac virus even predated one on a Windows OS by a whopping four years! This is further proof that Apple is always ahead of Microsoft in everything (ahem, sarcasm at work here). 😉

Further reading here.

More Volusion Woes and Praises

After my last project using Volusion as an online storefront, I left with some bitter-sweet taste in my mouth. Volusion was excellent in a few things but wasn’t so great with others. This year, I got another chance to work with them again. And I noticed the following:

1. Extremely fast and responsive email tech support. When I say fast, it’s Apple-esque fast, not DELL. This is consistent with the last time I used them over a year ago.
2. Constant improvements on user UI and “some” ease of use. They’ve consolidated some features while making others a lot more usable.

However, there are still other problems they haven’t fixed, the most obvious is the lack of support for CSV files exported using a Macintosh. I’d forgotten that CSV files exported using Mac version of Microsoft Office didn’t play well with Volusion’s import tool. So I ran into the same problems I did last time. Good thing I blogged and documented about it though. Too bad Volusion didn’t bother with fixing that minor issue for Mac users (nor have they improved the documentation for it either).

For Apple’s Numbers users, they are out of luck. Numbers does not have the option to save a Volusion-compatible version of the CSV file. It was rather disappointing to see Apple leaving out a potentially show-stopping feature for a lame import tool such as Volusions.

Okay, enough bashing on Volusion. Obviously I liked them enough to send them another client for me to work on the storefront. The last time I was using them, they’d just upgraded their administration console to 4.0. This time around, it’s 5.0. Though I didn’t see too many obvious changes, I can certainly appreciate them constantly improving on their system. And a lot of the stuff I wrote about have become irrelevant after the v.4 and v.5 releases. For the price and performance, Volusion is a decent vendor to go with for an ecommerce storefront.

Inkless Printing — Zink

Murdza sent me a pretty cool video clip on this hot new company called Zink (which stands for “zero ink”). They introduced this technology where “ink” is essentially embedded into the paper itself. All the printing device does is to manipulate the microscopic ink particles in the paper itself to form the appropriate color compositions for the images being printed.

Pretty freaking cool! In a day and age where inkjet printer inks and bottled water cost more than gasoline, this is a welcome change. It’s good that we’d never run out of ink with this new technology. But then at the same time, consumers are pretty much locked in to this technology, and without competition, its high prices too.

Now I wonder how much the paper costs…

Parallels v.s. VMWare Fusion

Ever since Mac’d gone Intel, a number of virtualization options have opened up for us Mac users. Among them, the biggest names are Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac and the much anticipated VMWare Fusion. I’ve also tried lesser known contenders CrossOver Mac (except it was the Linux version that I used) and Wine. But the results were less than satisfactory. So I am not going to bother with them.

This CNet article covers some pretty basic benchmarks for using Parallels and Fusion v.s. Apple’s Boot Camp. My own experience echoes that of CNet’s results.

Parallels
Pros: Nice touches on providing Windows Task Bar when in Coherence mode. I find myself needing access to the Windows desktop from time to time. I also like the fact that I can access the full “Start” menu from the Dock. Boots and runs fairly fast.
Cons: Somewhat awkward to use when Mac’s Exposé is invoked. Fusion does a much better job at this; seems to slow down the overall performance of the machine somewhat. But I can’t prove it scientifically.

Fusion
Pros: Excellent integration with Exposé — each window that belongs to Windows actually scales! Supports both cores of my MBP! Virtual Appliances can be really helpful!
Cons: Poor implementation on giving user access to the Windows Desktop or the Task Bar when in Unity mode. Awkward “Launch” tool bar — I wish I can make the damn icons smaller. Instead of the “Applications” menu, Fusion should implement what Parallels does, full access to the “Start” menu from wthin the Dock.

It was relatively easy to enable my MacBook Pro’s iSight to use it with Windows Live Messenger (I hate it) on both softwares. But I did have to get iSight’s driver for Windows (stripped from Boot Camp) to get it to work.

Overall, my experience on both Parallels and Fusion is a pleasant one. Windows seemed to install faster on my virtual machines than they ever did when I had a real PC hardware to play with. Actually, it took longer to get Windows Updates to run and complete than the initial installation process. Oh, the ironies… I hope Microsoft continues to crank out crap ware like this for as long as they can afford to. The world just loves more crap ware shoved down its throat.

Viewing Javascript Generated Source in IE

After having battled IE for the past two days, I am glad to report that I actually learned something new and valuable when debugging for Javascript codes in IE. One of the chief complaints web developers have towards IE is its lack of a decent Javascript debugger. Hell, none of IE’s SEVEN versions even have a usable Javascript error console! After having written about my frustration finding a debugger, another useful thing a web developer would love to see is the actual HTML source code generated by all that wonderful Ajax/DOM scripting… Thankfully, there is a way.

It’s documented here by Eric Appel. Basically, I just need to type in a one-liner Javascript in IE’s URL to show the source.

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javascript:'<xmp>' + window.document.body.outerHTML+ '</xmp>'

In case you didn’t already know, viewing generated source is quite simple in FIrefox via an addon appropriately called Web Developer. In Safari 3, the closest thing is to right click and select “Inspect Element” from the contextual menu.

I am still stunned at how far IE has fallen behind in feature set for both users and developers in its seventh iteration of the software (having zero development effort since it drove Netscape into ground). But I am still thankful for conditional comments the IE team has decided to support. At least it’s made life with IE using CSS a much more straight forward task.

Updating Windows — What A Joke

Because of the previous post on having to debug Javascript for IE, I’ve had to run Windows Update. I was shocked to see no less than 85 “high priority” updates directly coming from Microsoft’s server… This is on a fairly updated install of Windows XP running on my Parallels virtual machine… The last time I ran an update was a couple of months ago.

Running Windows Update

How can people tolerate this kind of B.S. from the largest software maker in the world? Don’t they spend billions a year on R&D? Here’s an idea, spend more of that resource on better software… I can’t believe I am writing two entries on Microsoft in one day…

Javascript Debugging for IE

In 2007, the year when the word Web 2.0 is taking over the world of Internet and seen as the resurgence of the another wonderful dot-com era, the world’s favorite web browser, Internet Explorer, still does not have a proper Javascript debugger. You’d have to go through hoops just to get one working by alternative means. How can developers working with IE’s framework love its technologies I guess I’ll never understand…

Some people claim MS is all goodies under the hood for developers. Com’on, where are the goodies? I haven’t met a web developer who doesn’t hate IE.

People who continue to use IE by choice are idiots. There. I’ve said it. Idiots. Idiots. Idiots. Start using better browsers from companies who care so that the World Wide Web can be a better place!

Ok. I feel better now… Back to dealing with crappy IE for idiots who prefer it.

Microsoft should change their marketing tag line to: Your Misery. Our Passion.

Jason Taking the Leap

So Jason finally did it. He finally got a Mac. And it’s not just “any” Mac… It’s an 8-core Mac Pro (as in 8 processors)! For someone who always tried to quarrel with me on the age-old issue of “Mac v.s. PC”, he certainly took a big leap of faith in a completely different direction.

In college, I always got calls from Windows/PC friends for support (we had no choice; the only 3D apps worth our time were all on Windows/Unix); but very rarely from Mac people. And then slowly, over the years, people started getting Macs. And the weird thing happened — Once I help them get over the initial “culture shock” of the way the Mac OS works, I rarely get any support calls from friends/families anymore… EVER! Sweet.

But I still miss the “support calls” sometimes… They also served as “what’s up” calls as we got busier with our professional lives.

Bloating iPhoto Library

Digital photography has really changed everything for avid and armature photographers alike. We keep all of our digital photos on Grace’s Mac in iPhoto as the master library for storing and managing images. But today I noticed the photo library has really grown HUGE over the 4 years that I’ve owned digital cameras. We now have over 9000 images!!

Over 9000 images in iPhoto

This number is going to go up quite a bit now that I have access to a DSLR camera and continue to pack the memory card. Just for you geeks out there, 9000 images roughly translate to about 26GB in data storage. Amazingly, Grace’s Mac only shows signs of slow down when using certain iPhoto features. It’s quite a feat for a seven-year-old computer that still runs the latest Mac OSX without any hint of hiccups. But I look forward to a day when we can get her a newer machine so that she can just zip through those images like with the latest iPhoto ’08.