Finally, after a month of waiting, my Kindle is set to ship next week. I've been anxious to get it for a while now, especially since I am doing so many more Kindle books through KindleFormatting.com. Now I can actually look at the books I do on the device instead of on the Preview only.

Labels: e-books, Technology, Work

I read this great Popular Science article last week about an ingenious way of disposing of garbage. A guy has developed, over the course of many years, a process called plasma gasification, which turns anything, and I mean anything except nuclear waste, into two things: a gas called syngas (mostly hydrogen and carbon monoxide), and a black glass-like material that is used in bathroom tiles and asphalt. The coolest thing is that once the process starts it can produce enough energy with the syngas to run itself and still put electricity back onto the grid. It can also consume up to 2,000 tons of waste every day. I've always said that we should ship our trash to the sun; it looks like this is much more economical.

Labels: Technology

Yes, you heard me right: an Apple Newton, the great-granddaddy of modern PDAs, serving as a website server. That's pretty cool. I doubt I could get my Palm m500 to do that.

Labels: Technology

If only I had known about CSS Reboot, I might have put off my redesign for a few more months. Then again, I probably would have never actually done it...

In the months leading to a Reboot, people who want to participate in the CSS Reboot sign up and upload information about their website. During the signup process you can visit cssreboot.com to see who is planning on rebooting.

Then on Reboot Day at 18:00 GMT, all participants launch their new website redesigns. Thousands of visitors swarm to cssreboot.com to view, comment and visit their favorite new redesigns. This in turn creates a lot of buzz, many blogs write about the event and feature top redesigns in their galleries. This brings even more recognition for the participants.

Labels: Personal, Technology

WOW! I never thought I would see the day... Internal builds of Internet Explorer 8 have passed the Acid2 browser standards test. IE6 was the first browser to pass the Acid1 test, but Microsoft has been beaten to the punch on Acid2 by Safari, Konqueror, and a few other minor browsers. Firefox 3 Beta 2 currently passes the test, and it will be released to the public before IE8. This is great news for developers and end users, and I hope that Microsoft continues to pursue standards compliance. Channel 9 has a great video interview with Chris Wilson and others from the IE working group about this milestone.

Labels: Technology

I purchased a Hewlett-Packard laptop last November and ran into some major issues with it not long afterwards. After working my way through tech support and finally being placed with the highest level of support available, and after having the machine sent in three times to be repaired, HP finally decided to give me a replacement. Thankfully the replacement machine is much nicer than the original one, and I have been pretty happy with it. There are still some weird quirks that are annoying, but I have learned to deal with them and find work-arounds.

The thing that I did not like the most about the replacement computer is that it runs Windows Vista. I tried my best to get them to let me have XP instead, but according to the tech support person HP has stopped making drivers for XP for new hardware. Vista was the only option available. So, after getting the laptop and oohing at Aero, I started to notice some annoyances and issues with the new OS. Here, for your reading pleasure, is my list of top Winows Vista annoyances:

• The Automatic Discovery of Folder Type setting is not well implemented and not easy to change. It would be great if you could at least choose manually what template to use in a specific folder, overriding Vista's choice. A drop-down like the Views drop-down would be prefect. For now, I have disabled it with this great little command tool.
• Related to that, if I set a view setting on a window (Tile, Details, List, etc.), I expect it to stick, not for it to be overridden by Vista.
• Also, in Windows Explorer: in all the previous versions of Windows, in details view, clicking on the details to the right of the file name did not select the file. This change in Vista is annoying, especially when you want to move a file between two Explorer windows and the destination window has a lot of folders in it. Instead of the file being dropped in the main folder, it gets dropped in whatever folder you happen to be hovering over the details of. The only ways around this are to make the window wider, creating whitespace on the right side next to the details, or to be very careful to drop the file in between folders, which is tricky to do sometimes.
• The default color of a selected file in Windows Explorer is too washed out, and it is also not configurable, even in a non-Aero environment. I liked the previous Windows coloring (dark blue), which is very easy to see.
• One of the best utilities I had on my XP machine was Folder Size, a little tool that adds a column to the Details view in Windows Explorer that has the size of folders, not just files. The program does not work in Vista because Microsoft removed the IColumnProvider API. Regardless of that, this should be a default feature in Windows Explorer. Seeing the size of every resource in a directory is important.
• When I drag a file to an open application window to open it there Windows Explorer takes a long time to respond afterwards (20 seconds sometimes), not letting me select another file until it finishes thinking. I suspect this is an indexing issue, but whatever else it is, it is annoying.
• UAC is annoying for a power user like myself. I understand the security measures and agree that they are important, but when I am logged on as an administrator I do not want my every action questioned twice. I wish Vista would make a differentiation between actions resulting from a user activity and those not. That way, if I double-click on an installation program or try to open a Command prompt with Admin access I don't have to confirm twice that I really do want to do that. I have ended up turning off UAC because it was reducing my productivity too much and making me want to shoot my computer.
• Networking is still not improved over XP. If I put my computer into Sleep mode and take it from the office to home, or vice versa, I invariably have to reset the IP address manually to make it connect to the Internet again. Using the built-in "diagnostic" tool in IE7 does not always work, and sometimes the tool responds that it can't fix the problem at all—when all it needs is a refreshed IP address. (On a related note, why was the command changed from "ipconfig /release" to "ipconfig/release" (with no space) in Vista? It makes no sense to change a DOS command, and it took me weeks to figure out why the command was not working.)

Those are the things that come to my mind right now. Again, overall my experience has been okay, but these issues all add up and give Vista a bad aftertaste. I am actively considering witching to XP again, if I can get drivers for my machine.

Labels: Technology

I have decided to re-design The Four Questions. Some of you may ask, "Why do that? It looks fine now." I think my best responses are:

1. I am not happy with the current look, and would like to make the site more Web 2.0/contemporary-looking.
2. I have been unhappy with the lack of new content on the site, and I hope that if I make the site easier to update I will actually post on it more often.
3. I am compelled to make the code on my site as clean and valid as I possibly can. I am not happy with the non-compliant code Blogger adds to my blog, and I would love to move to an XHTML-compliant engine.
4. I want to integrate Chaya and Emuna's websites into my own or possibly combine their sites together. That will make picture galleries easier to put up, since many of our pictures are of both of them, and that will become even more common as they grow up.
5. I want a new challenge.

So, the question for you, my dear readers, is, "What do you want to see? What can I do to the site to make it more accessible, more interactive, easier to navigate and to read, etc.?" I want to make sure that you are all happy with the end result, so please add a comment to this post with your ideas and requests.

Labels: Personal, Technology

I have been noticing for a while now that this website is on the first page for a wide variety of Search results, especially on Google. I thought I would post some of those searches here and also tick off some other stats about the site while I am at it. Skip this post if unabashed self-advertising is not your thing. ;)

Stats

• New Visitors Since 11/14/06: 7843
• Pageloads Since 11/14/06: 12,923
• Most common browser: 73.31% IE6 and IE7 (Why?!?! Switch to Firefox!
• Average Daily Pageloads: 66
• Month with the most traffic: April (Hmm... might have something to do with Pesach...)
  
• Interesting Recent Countries: Pakistan, Australia, Venezuela
• Visit Length: Most people get scared off pretty quickly...
  
  (out of the last 420 people to drop by)
• Most Popular Pages:
  • Master Links
  • Photos
  • Glossary
  • Hechsherim
  • Real Messianic Judaism

High-ranking search results

Some of these are searches people have used recently when finding the site, and some are searches that I have done just out of curiosity.

• fringe christians - Google Canada - #4
• reasons judaism is real - AOL search powered by Google - #1
• origination of the Hebrews - Yahoo! España - #2
• issues of kashrut regarding milk - Google - #7
• Messianic Judaism anti Christian - Google UK - #7
• four questions in hebrew - Google - #1
• torat hashlichim - Google - #1
• meshuval - Google - #3

Conclusion

"How do you get so many visitors and high-ranking search hits?" you may ask. Frankly, I don't know. I think that the biggest factors are:

1. Content, Content, and more Content: I spent a lot of time putting togther the Glossary, Links, and Hechsherim pages, and those have contributed substantially to the draw. My photo albums are also popular.
2. Clean code: Remember, a robot program reads your website and tries to gather information. If it cannot figure out what you have, your rankings will be lower. This site is compliant to XHTML Strict standards and uses CSS for formatting. I firmly believe that helps tremendously.
3. Word commonality: Lots of people come here looking for the four Pesach questions. The other four questions are not so commonly known...

Update: I have been asked to add a reference on this post to how many people use the Opera browser to visit The Four Questions. As I suspected, Nick, you are the only one. Standing all alone on top of a lonely mountain. Even the Safari users have you beat seven to one. So, does the site look okay in Opera? If so, I should probably add their logo to my homepage.

Labels: Personal, Technology

A very uptight employee at Google has posted a rant on the Google Blog on the use of the word "Google" as a verb by us common folks. While I can appreciate his need to clarify terminology (I have some of the same feelings about "Messianic Judaism" and related terms), bringing up what "Our lawyers say" is, in my opinion, a bit too far. I don't think many people will be dissuaded from using the verb form of "Google" by the fact that Google's lawyers don't like it. Is using the verb form illegal on a blog? I don't know... Maybe I'll have to Google that.

Labels: Technology

I have switched over to Blogger Beta, and I am quite impressed. The transition was not a long process, and I now have the ability to add labels to every post. If you are a Blogger user, I highly suggest you switch over!

Labels: Personal, Technology

As you may know, I work for WORDsearch Corp., a Bible study software company. We have two main programs, WORDsearch 7 and Bible Explorer 4. Well, we have just made Bible Explorer available as a FREE download! This program has many features that make it a better choice than other free Bible study programs, and I highly encourage you to check it out. Let me know what you think about it, too!

Labels: Biblioblogging, Technology

I have been looking for an easy way to track my time at work for a while now, but my desire to find the right tool recently became more important with my promotion at work to eBook Development supervisor. I have been able to keep track of my time spent on individual projects in the past, but I now have more duties and I want to be able to see where my time is going.

So, I started looking around the Internet last week for a decent solution to my problem. Unfortunately, none of the free timers and trackers I found are easy to use. Most of them require that you fill in tasks manually in an interface before you can start a timer to track yourself.

A few weeks ago, Gina at Lifehacker posted a small VB script called QuickLogger that garnered a lot of attention. The script opens an input box when it is run, you type in your current task, and it adds that to a text document. That's cool, and it is certainly closer to what I was looking for, but I am not hot on tracking time in a text document.

Then, last Friday, Gina posted another VB script called xlsQuickLogger that adds your work entries to an Excel spreadsheet. I was much more interested in this one, but it was not really robust enough, and the spreadsheet was not formatted at all. So, over the last few days I have tweaked it and added some functionality and formatting, which is no small feat, considering I don't know VB script. My programming is limited to Perl and WordBASIC (the precursor to VBA found in Word 95, but looking nothing like VBA in form), but Google is a decent teacher.

xlsQuickLoggerPlus will:

1. Create a new workbook if the one specified in the file does not already exist
2. Format new workbooks with a title and set column widths
3. Format new days as separate sections with a date header
4. Place a timestamp in column A, user text in column B, and time difference in column C.

This upgrade to xlsQuickLogger is also released under the GPL, so feel free to mess with it some more if you like.

Download xlsQuickLoggerPlus.vbs

Labels: Technology

Here is an amazing technology that I would love to have in my car: burning water instead of gas... YouTube video, company website.

Labels: Technology

Well, after dealing with this issue for 2 months, it has finally been resolved. I spoke with Mr. Fontaine at IRIS this morning. He has sent me a free upgrade to ReadIris Corporate 10, which does not have the limitations of the Pro edition. I think that that is an acceptable resolution strategy, and one that I fully expected to see happen.

We spoke at length about the problem of IRIS not letting potential buyers know about the limitations of their software. While Mr. Fontaine agreed with me that users have a right to know, he did not actually tell me that the company would add the information to their website. It will be interesting to see if and how they address that issue.

Prior Posts: I, II, III, IV

Labels: Technology

See Prior posts in order: I, II, III.

Well, it appears that my letter to the Better Business Bureau has made some heads turn. I got the following e-mail this past week:

Mr Tallent,

I am picking up a copy of your email. I am back from a business trip and your letter is on my desk. Question. Has your problem been solved?

If it isn’t, could you call me on Monday at the number below and either talk to me directly or leave me a phone number I can call you. We are capable of landing on the moon, I do not see why we can’t find a reasonable solution to your problem.

Best regards,
Jean-Marc Fontaine - IRIS Inc
Director of Operations

I will be calling Mr. Fontaine back tomorrow to see what he plans to do to make this whole situation right. I hope that he is able to see that IRIS has a responsibility to its clients to give them all of the necessary information on a product before they buy it. I have already received one e-mail from another ReadIris 10 user asking if I had seen any resolution to this problem, and my original post and first update are the top two results on Google for "readiris 50 page".

I will post again after I get off the phone and let you know what happens.

UPDATE: A Final Resolution has been reached

Labels: Technology

No, this is not a post about joining a nudist colony. Wednesday, April 5 is the First Annual CSS Naked Day, a day designed to boost awareness of Web Standards. I have gone to considerable effort to develop this site in strict XHTML, so I will be participating in the CSS Naked Day. If your site is not Standards compliant, I encourage you to read up on what getting compliant is all about, and how beneficial being compliant can be for you. The possibilities are endless!

Labels: Technology

(Update to this prior issue.) After running into brick wall after brick wall with I.R.I.S., I have finally decided to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. You can read my letter to the BBB if you are interested.

Whatever you do, I highly suggest that you never buy a single product from I.R.I.S. Inc. The company has some major issues with dishonesty and has an apparent inability to address customer complaints.

UPDATE: An new update to this situation is here, and the final resolution is here.

Labels: Technology

Over the course of the last week or so I have ben playing around with some options for converting video files into different formats. Our digital camera takes video in Apple's .MOV format, which is pretty much incompatible with every video editing software out there. I have wanted to make montage videos of Chaya or cut out less important parts of her videos in the past, but I never had the time to investigate my options.

After playing around with at least three different options for converting and editing video files, I finally found a link to Blaze Media Pro. I'm sold. This software is amazing. It slices, it dices, it extracts, it converts into more file formats than I have even heard of. After taking some time to get used to the program and figure out its features, I have been able to actually do useful stuff, like extract the audio from the two videos in my Israel trip photo album for easier downloading.

The software has a 15-day full-featured trial period, and only costs $50 to register. No, I don't get anything if you go out and buy it, but I do give it my highest recommendation.

Labels: Technology

Here is the e-mail I received in response to my complaint to IRIS about Readiris 10 Pro not handling more than 50 pages in an opened PDF document:

Hello,

Readiris Pro 9/10 is limited to process 50 pages per batch. If you would like to be able to process more than 50 pages at once, you can:

Split the document in several parts of 50 pages

Get Readiris Corporate Edition, which does not have this limitation and that has many other features like recognition of business cards, ...)

Best regards,
David Boizard
Technical Customer Support
I.R.I.S. Group

Here is my response:

Mr. Boizard, or to whom it may concern:

I find this whole situation to be extremely unprofessional and deceptive. I paid for a full-featured OCR program (it is called Pro, not Basic), and nowhere on your website or in the program's documentation do you alert consumers to this limitation on project size. On the contrary, your description of the program's ability to handle PDF documents says that it provides "Extensive PDF support" (Readiris-Pro Features).

This is not acceptable. I am not able to use the product that I purchased, and, honestly, I am no longer interested in using your product if I cannot trust your company to be forthright about the restrictions placed on my work.

I formally request that you buy this software back from me. It is not worth the $100 I paid for it because it keeps me from being able to do the work that I purchased it for. I will gladly send you the CD and remove the software permanently from my computer. If you are unable to help me in this regard, I kindly request that you pass this issue to your supervisor or further up the chain until it reaches someone with the authority to be of assistance to me in resolving this problem. Please respond in a timely manner.

Sincerely,
Joshua Tallent

I intend to continue pursuing this to the top of the chain if necessary. I think it is shameful that this company does not inform potential users of the limitations of its products before purchase.

UPDATE: Here are further updates to this situation and its resolution: I, II, Final Resolution.

Labels: Technology

One of my jobs in recent months has been creating CROSS eBooks for a company called Doxa Digital Press. Pretty much all of these eBooks have to be OCR'ed from scanned images inside PDF files, which means that I have to have an OCR program that handles PDF files reasonably well. The main problem I have run into on this front is cost. I could go out and spend $500 for ABBYY FineReader, but I don't have that kind of cash just sitting around. Unfortunately there are not many other options on the market, especially for a guy on a budget, and especially ones that I can download a trial of.

Enter Readiris Pro 10. This OCR program was really the only other option I could find that fits the bill in the main ways. It handles PDF files and it is only about $100. SO, I tried out the trial version and noticed that it is not as full-featured as ABBYY, but it is usable. I also noticed that the Demo version did not allow me to open more than 50 pages of a PDF document at a time, which was annoying but was an understandable restriction for a demo program. So, I purchaed the full version from Amazon.com.

After installing the full version, I loaded the PDF file for my next project and came to the realization that that 50-page limit is actually a PROGRAM FEATURE. The idiots who designed this program did not consider the idea that customers would want to open documents that are larger than 50 pages. After playing around with the progam more, here are all of my observations on this total waste of money.:

• The program does not input more than 50 pages at a time: This means that if you have more than 50 pages in the PDF you want to OCR, or if you have more than 50 pages in any other source that you want to OCR, you have to split them up into groups and save the groups individually. Additionally, this issue is not revealed at all on the company's website or in the documentation. As a matter of fact, I found this "Tip" in the Help files related to working with multipage documents: "Tip: when you're loading multipage images and PDF documents, you can define the page range! (Why load an entire book into Readiris when you only need a specific chapter...?)"
• The program does not allow you to save a batch or project: If you want to come back to a scanned document or project you have to do all the work over. If the program or your computer crashes you have to do all of your work over. I guess this could be the reason IRIS decided to limit projects to 50 pages...
• Every time you change pages the tool you are using changes back to the default: This is an annoying function. The default tool is the text block tool, and the programmers decided that you should always use this tool first when you go to a different page.
• The program does not use keyboard shortcuts for tools: I have yet to find any keyboard shortcuts that will let me change between the tools. This is really annoying when you consider the point above. I end up having to use my mouse a lot more than I should.
• The program does not offer a Preferences or Settings list to allow the user more control over their workspace: I guess I can understand setting up a program with a certain user base in mind and making the default functions cater to that crowd. However, not giving users the opportunity to make changes to this defualt behavior and customize their settings is illogical.
• The program does not export clean HTML: Since I am a web developer and an eBook editor, this is something that I feel very strongly about. If a program creates an HTML document for you it should at least attempt to follow the recognized standards. Readiris Pro 10 saves each page of a project as an individual HTML page—complete with headers and inline styles—even if you are explicitly saving the project as one document. You end up with lots of HTML documents thrown together into one file. In addition, the source code is so messy that I have to go in and make major changes to the the document just to get the code clean enough to actually make into a useable eBook. Saving the same project in the three different "Text Format" settings only changes the number of styles added to the style attributes in each tag (yes, they put styles in every tag, not just in the style list in the header...), not the actual layout of the HTML. To beat it all, the DOCTYPE tag at the top of each document is the XHTML Transitional doctype! I ran Tidy on samples of all three formatting types and got errors on all of them.
• The program does not tell you what errors, if any, it found in the OCR process: Unlike ABBYY, which highlights possible OCR problems in a separate frame and allows you to actually edit the text that you will be exporting, Readiris Pro 10 does the OCR and automatically opens the Save As wizard. There is no possibility of seeing what words it had problems deciphering.

Those are just the most egregious issues I found with this program. How can this be the 10th version release?? I have contacted the company's support staff by e-mail to find out if there is a way to get around the 50-page limit. If there is not a way to open more pages as part of a project, I will most likely demand that the company buy back the CD that I purchased. I can overlook the other functionality problems if necessary, but having to break up my documents into pieces for no reason is a design flaw that should have been remedied before the product was released for sale. At the very least, the company has a responsibility to alert potential buyers of this restriction before they spend their money.

UPDATE: Well, here is an interesting bit of info: The e-mail I sent IRIS came back to me undeliverable....

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
support@samson.irislink.com... Deferred: Connection timed out with 
samson.irislink.com.
Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours
Will keep trying until message is 5 days old

UPDATE: Here are further updates to this situation and its resolution: I, II, III, Final Resolution.

Labels: Technology

I have been using Bloglines for a few weeks now, and I have noticed some quirks in the frequency of its refresh rate on some blogs. All I am looking for is a blog reader that I can use at work and at home but that will stay synchronized at both. After trying for a while to find another option, I decided today to try out Pluck. It works in Firefox, which is a definite plus, and it synchronizes like I want it to. It also allows web access to your account, which you can use if you out of town or something.

After installing the extension I imported my blogs and tried to use Pluck. The problem is that it is interminably slow. I ended up waiting for 5 minutes or more to get one page of blog summaries to load, and I finally gave up. Regardless of the reason for the horrible speed, I am not happy with the service at all. That is not what I expected when I signed up for a new service.

Does anyone know of a good blog reader that does what I want it to?

Labels: Technology

I am very happy when I find free software, but sometimes there is free stuff out there that is much more valuable than the normal fare. Last week I caught two such offers, one for Opera, a browser that quite a few people like, and one for Linspire, a Linux distribution that is supposed to be a lot like Windows. The Opera giveaway is over, but the Linspire giveaway is good until September 6. I went ahead and downloaded both, even though I am not sure I will need them anytime soon.

Labels: Technology

I have moved the hosting for this site to a new server at Host Gator. I was getting more and more annoyed with the "service" I was getting from eDataRack. The site was mind-numbingly slow to load and the service went down twice in the middle of the day. On Thursday it went down again, and this time I thought for a while that I had lost eveything that I had on the server (no problem for the website, for which my master copy is on my computer, but I would have lost eveything on my blog, which was not backed up).

So, eDataRack is trash, and HostGator rocks. I can host an unlimited number of websites with no extra charges, sharing 50GB of bandwith and 5 GB of disk space for only $10 per month. That is just amazing. I have built/am building about 5 other web sites for various people, and hosting them off of this server will allow me to save lots of money. I have also contacted their online tech support chat twice and received quick, easy responses to my questions. That is the service I am looking for.

If you notice a speed difference, that is the reason why. If you find any problems with the site, please let me know. If you are interesed in trying out HostGator, they have a 30-day money-back guarantee and there are one-month-free coupons on the web if you search for them.

Labels: Technology

Okay, there is a bit more going on in our lives... just probably more than I can put down in too much detail, but I'll try anyway:

• Chaya is growing up fast. She is now about 20 pounds (?) and has 5 teeth. As I was making her photo gallery tonight I was struck by how small she was when she was born. Does anyone have any bricks I can borrow?
• My computer has been on the fritz since I loaded Windows XP on it. I finally figured out that the problem was mostly my ATI Radeon 9600 Pro video card not being liked by my NVIDIA-based motherboard (which is new, by the way--an Asus A7N8X-X, better than the MSI K7N2 Delta-L that I had before with all of its sound issues). I replaced the AGP 8X with a PCI card, much to the detriment of my graphics abilities. At least it does not restart of its own accord any more.
• Shane's motherboard (also an MSI K7N2 Delta-L) gave up the ghost, leaving me with few options in helping him out. I finally decided to get him an HP with a long warranty and let someone else work in the tech support field. I ended up being able to get him a nice computer through CompUSA's HP Configurator system and a helpful employee on the phone for only $380.00 (including a 3-year CompUSA warranty. Without the warranty, the computer would only have cost $280.00 (after the $50 mail-in rebate). G-d was good about that, too. I was able to build a whole system from the parts of Shane's computer and my old MB, and a guy bought it for $270 (gotta love Craigslist). I also sold some other stuff, which meant that Shane only had to come up with $40. I am strongly tempted to get me one of those computers and sell my current one to make up the cash. I should have no problem getting $300 out of this one since it is a decent gaming system (when it has a decent video card in it...).
• We are still looking for a house, though still not in the active sense. There is one on the Rabbi's street that is great: all ceramic tile floors, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2-car garage, built-in bookcases, fireplace, oak trees, a covered patio, and a skylight in the living room. The main problem with the house (aside from the price: asking $138,500) is that it has a pool. I am not hot on pool maintenance, but the idea of having a pool is kind of neat. We'll see. I don't see us being able to afford that kind of house without some help, but there is always the chance that we will find the cash somewhere...
• I have recently signed up for a Bloglines account, which is helping me keep up with the goings-on in the world. I like being able to use the same account at home and at work because it stays updated. Do you have any experience with services like that? Any suggestions?

I think that is about everything. Now that I am keeping up with the news maybe I will have more to talk about. Don't forget, though, that I still post tech articles with opinions every day at Geek.com.

Labels: Technology

My web site is finally up and running! This blog is now being hosted at http://fourquestions.us/blog/index.html. If you have any trouble with Atom or anything else, give me a day or two to get the bugs worked out.

Labels: Technology

Josh Waxman, writer of parshablog, has developed a very cool extension for Firefox called Tanach Linkify. It turns references to Tanach passages into links to the interlinear Hebrew Bible on Mechon-Mamre and turns references to the Talmud into links to that page on E-Daf.

I am very impressed with Josh's work, and I can't wait to see where he goes with it. I am also planning to do some extensive testing of the extension so that I can pass on an helpful info that I find.

On a related note, it sad to me that E-Daf does not display properly in Firefox (nothing major, just the navigation links are bunched together). I will have to check on Monday at work, but I suspect that it will also have issues displaying in Safari. I think I might take a little time and work on that. I am sure that they would like the input.

Labels: Biblioblogging, Judaism, Technology

I have been thinking about working on my web site recently and actually getting it online. Of course, I think about it at least once a month, but I never actually take the time to work on it much. I guess the main problem I have is that I am such a perfectionist. I want my site to have everything perfect before it goes online, but I just don't have or take the time to research and write all of that content out.

Anyway, I am coming up on a deadline soon. Shane's site hosting is coming up for renewal at the end of this month, and I am planning on moving his hosting to eDataRack, which offers a great starter hosting deal: 2 domains, 2 gig disk space, and 60 gig monthly bandwith for $47.40 per year. I figure I can save him some cash and have a professional host for my own site. Of course, that means that I have to get off my lazy rear and get my site ready to go online.

Which brings me to the real topic of discussion: CSS. My current web site design looks a lot like this blog, with the same colors, background, and logo. The only main difference is that the site's navigation bar is on the left and is currently Milonic's JavaScript menu (it's great!).

I have been thinking lately that I should allow users to choose among a few stylesheets that match their preferences, especially since so many people don't like dark-backgound/light-text styles (they can be hard on the eyes). So, I decided to make a lighter version of the current theme, as well as a very slimmed down format for those with a preference for extreme simplicity. Allowing users to switch between stylesheets is a great idea, and I found the Alternative Style article at A List Apart to help me out. It looks fairly easy to implement, but if you have any experience in this area, please feel free to pass along your thoughts or ideas.

I have also been considering dropping the Milonic menu, since it is JavaScript and some people just don't like JS. Don't get me wrong, it is a great menu; I just want to make the site completely accessible. Once again, A List Apart has two great articles about CSS-powered dropdown menus, and I am excited about the possibility of making the switch to 100% CSS.

My only concern is that it looks like I will need to have the entire list of links on each and every page, which means adjusting that list on each and every page every time I add a new page to the site. I can create a Perl script to make the adjustments, I guess, but it would be nice to have a system that allows me to make those adjustments in one place for the entire site. I guess I could mess around with CSS-powered frames, but I want it to be simple. Hehe... looks like I'm getting into wishful thinking now...

I am also interested in moving my blog to my web site and off Blogger. Derek told me that he had found a Perl-based blogging engine, and I think he might have been talking about Blosxom. From what I can tell, it appears to be a great, free, easy-to-use blog software. Do you have any experience with it or thoughts on other similar blogging software? I want to be able to keep the same features on the blog as I have on the rest of the site (CSS control, etc.), and to completely integrate the two (the blog as my front page, and the rest of the site as extra information). It's also cool that Blosxom is written in Perl, since I am in the process of learning it.

Anyway, if you have any thoughts or experience to share about any of these three areas, I would love to hear some input. I am especially interested in seeing some other ways to implement the alternate stylesheets and menu functions in CSS. I am trying to keep away from PHP, JavaScript and other lanugages that I don't know, since even just learning enough to get myself in trouble will only make my site that much more likely to stay where it is... on my hard drive.

Labels: Technology

Well, although I have attempted to get my web site online by hosting it on my own computer, SBC has decided that I can't have anything related to a stable IP address, so the DNS system can't stay updated. I am also not able to get access to the site from outside with my IP address (probably some setting I have not set properly), so I am just going to give up for now.

Of course, that is probably best, considering I am not even finished with the site yet, and I hate putting things online that I am not finished with... hence my sporadic and mostly uninteresting posts to this blog...

Labels: Technology

Eliyahu passes on a challenge:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

“Of course, that’s the default.” From Learning Perl (O’Reilly) — I'm at work...

Labels: Technology

Labels: Technology

I've been a little busy the last few days... I got a gift card to Wal-Mart from the boss the other day, and I had to figure out what to buy. Since I could not get the cash out (they actually want you to spend it there!), I had to think long and hard about what I wanted that I could get at Wal-Mart.

At the top of my list was Call of Duty, a computer game that I have wanted for over a year. I have never had the free money to warrant buying it before, so I jumped at the opportunity.

It is such a cool game! I am impressed by the clarity of the graphics, and the single player storylines are pretty good. It is very challenging, too. I am almost finished playing through the single player missions, and I will probably go back again and do it over to get better at it.

If you get a chance to try out this game I highly suggest you take it!

Labels: Technology

Google has done it again. The search company has formalized a deal with five libraries, including Harvard University Library and the New York Public Library, to digitize most or all of their books, making the first big push to make the information in books available online. Public domain works will be fully searchable and readable online, while books under copyright will be fully searchable, but only small snippets of text will be returned to the user.

As an eBook editor, I have to say that this is one some of the biggest news of the year. Not only has Google jumped into the biggest and most interesting area of information technology, eBook publishing, they are making the biggest investment I have ever heard of in this arena.

I wonder if they need any help...

Labels: Technology

Labels: Technology

Intersting little quiz here... Actually decently accurate, if I do say so myself...

Which OS are You?

Labels: Technology

Labels: Technology

Labels: Technology

Microsoft is really having issues... When they sent out info on their new search engine to the press they included a screenshot. However, whoever made the image forgot that they were using Firefox to view the search page...

Look at the toolbar. You can clearly see the Google search box in the upper right-hand corner.

In case you did not know, Firefox is a more secure, more powerful, and easier to use browser than Internet Explorer. Lots of people are changing to other browsers like Firefox.

Labels: Technology

Am I the only person missing the Googlebar on Firefox 1.0? I have been dying without it, and I am starting to wonder if Google missed the fact that they were supposed to update it for the 1.0 release.

I have also been having some annoying issues in Firefox today, mostly not being able to copy and paste text from the address bar or from a form here on blogger's site. Not critical functions usually, but annoying nonetheless. Restarting the program didn't really fix it and I ended up getting the Netscape Quality Feedback agent twice... grr...

Labels: Technology