Archive for rants
For about eight years now, I’ve been hapily using Crimson Editor. At its simplest, Crimson Editor is nothing more than a fancy Notepad; however, it is so much more than that. While it doesn’t have all sorts of fancy tools that some editors have, it does support customizable syntax highlighting, customizable colors, line number, visible whitespace characters, basic smart indenting, a file/directory navigation pane, project support, and a MDI interface. Those features aren’t really the reason why I use it as almost all programming editors support such features. I use it because it gives me tools that help me program without doing things that hinder my productivity.
Continue reading “I Still Don’t Like Fancy Programming Editors”
If you ever need to work with DNS servers or domain management, you find tools that help you get an outside perspective of what is happening with DNS invaluable. Years ago I found DNSStuff and immediately fell in love. They have tons of tools that give a wealth of information. I configured some quick bookmarks in Firefox that made making specific requests more simple than doing a dig from a command line while returning more data than any of my system tools could possibly offer.
A little more than a year ago, DNSStuff changed from free to a paid service. Since I found their tools so valuable, paying a few dollars a month for the service was a small price to pay. In fact, I was happy to pay for the service and quickly purchased a subscription for a year.
Things were going well with my Linux trials. I ran Ubuntu through its paces with the Live Distro with great results. I was really excited to get on with the installation when I ran into problems. Apparently I have too many drives in my system and GRUB didn’t get loaded properly. Working late Sunday night, I thought I had finally found the problem. So I went to bed satisfied that everything would work well when I started working on it again Monday; however, my computer had different plans.
I woke up yesterday morning to a dead computer. We had a storm roll through, so I thought that the power supply’s protection circuit was tripped. After trying to get the system to start for a few minutes with no sign of life, I started to get really concerned. I thought maybe my motherboard had fried. After testing the power supply removed from all the other components, I found that it was the problem. The power supply was completely dead with not even the faintest hint of fan spin when supplied with power and switched on (yes, I did short the green wire to tell the unit to turn on).
Fortunately, my power supply has a three year warranty, so I plan on doing an RMA for it to get a refurb. However, that does little to help me now, so I ordered a new unit to be overnighted and should get it today.
After I get my system back up and running, I’ll resume my Distro testing. I hope to start posting results soon.
Over the past few years, I have developed a very strong desire to dump Windows entirely from my day to day computing. I tire of the obscure errors that no one has answers for yet are easily reproducible, the way that Microsoft is enforcing its “genuine Windows” initiative in ways that irritate paying customers while only mildly bothering pirates, and how Windows always has a black box model of operation which always keeps me, the user, out of the loop on what my own computer is doing. The final insult: User Account Control. I disabled that within minutes. Talk about a useless feature. People who know what they are doing will always click yes because they know what they are doing. People who don’t know what they are doing (the ones that were the primary focus for this feature) will quickly learn to always click yes because clicking no may prevent them from doing what they want.
Good news. I was contacted by someone with AnimeFest earlier today, and I got my registration taken care of.
So, let this be a lesson. If you having a hard time getting a group to contact you, call them repeatedly, send emails to every address you can find, post on the forum, and send PMs to every person on the forum who has a title.
So AnimeFest is about a month away. My friends and I have been planning on attending for about six months now, and we’re really getting excited. About three weeks ago, I tried to register and hit a big snag. The payment page apparently has problems since it refuses to try to process my card and tells me to call a number instead.
Fast-forward to today, and I have called that number many times and left a number of messages with callback details, I have sent multiple emails, and I have posted on the official forum. To date, I have not received a single call, email, or forum response. From looking at the forum, I’m not the only one having problems as artists and merchants are running into problems and pulling out their hair since no one will confirm or deny their registration, give them information that they require to be able to set up their table, or give them any type of response to their questions.
Worst case scenario, I have to pay for my registration when I get there. It won’t kill me, but my biggest concern is how this will affect the con in the long run. They obviously have some core logistical problems. If these problems aren’t dealt with in a timely manner, this might be a sign that AnimeFest is starting to fall apart.
I found this gem right before going to bed, and I’m so glad that I stayed up to check it out. It’s a series of three short musical-style episodes about a mad scientist with aspirations for villainy who longs after a woman at the laundromat.
Starting a little over a month ago, I started submitting plugins to WordPress.org’s Plugin Directory. Overall, the system is great for developers since it offers Subversion and enables the automatic plugin upgrades that the latest WordPress versions support. However, it has some major problems that causes developers like me some headaches.
Continue reading “WordPress.org’s Plugin Directory Needs Some Changes”