| Profilo di BenBens HouseFotoBlogElenchi |  Strumenti  Guida |
|
07 dicembre "Double Decker" TaskbarEver since Long Zheng blogged about the "Double Decker" taskbar that never came to being, I've wanted that desktop. Now that's a bit hard to do, so I've had to make do with the next best thing and just double the size of the ordinary taskbar. Surprisingly, I quite like it...
It doesn't take up *that* much extra space at the bottom of the screen but has allowed me to clean my desktop a bit because I can now see every icon that resides in my quick launch bar. I also get a much fuller "date" section which let me know it was Friday and not Thursday. And the notification icons take up slightly less horizontal space. As an added bonus, the transparency of the taskbar also comes through a bit clearer and makes it look rather beautiful. The only problem is that because the open programs line up along the top of the taskbar, they are no longer of "infinite" vertical size. This means that you have to target them vertically as well as horizontally and can no longer slam your mouse to the bottom of the screen to select a task window (cause you'll have to move the mouse up off the bottom of the screen). But to be honest, I don't believe this affects me at all - my mouse targeting skills have been proven by a researcher here in the University of Reading.
I like this desktop a lot.
BTW, you might be able to see that I took this screenshot while waiting for a game known as War Rock to update itself. If you haven't tried it, it's a free online multiplayer first-person shooter that's actually rather good. Although recently my connection to the servers has been a bit dodgy. Not sure why... 03 dicembre Playing with colours......Unless you're American/a Web Developer in which case the title should be "Playing with Colors". Anyway, my point is that I'm been messing around with colour schemes for the site cause there seems to be a general indecision about the Orange. So, click below for...
Until I have a change of mind, Orange is still my favourite, followed by Brown. See what you think and let me know your preference. Or suggest a new scheme and I can quickly draw up a link that'll show you what it'll look like... EDIT: I should mention that some of these are clearly not competitors for the main colour scheme (Seriously? Purple?). However, I included them to give an idea of how easily the site can now be changed. I actually use a link of my own to test out new colours, so as an example http://www.benshouse.net/index.php?ss=custom&l=003366&d=006699 links to a darker blue version of the page. Unfortunately, that link will only work in IE and Safari; Firefox doesn't seem to cope with CSS extensions that end in php... UPDATE2: Got it working in Firefox. A mixture of setting the http headers correctly and something wierd that must have happened when the code file got edited. Retiring the list.If you're on the BensHouse.net homepage, you may have noticed that it's turned orange. This is in part to a minor redesign which will eventually cumlinate in a few content changes on the site. The major one being the removal of The Media Center Add-ons List.
When I started the list 2 years ago, there were a handful of addons for Media Center and no particularly easy way finding them. I like to think that, for a while, my list changed that, if only by boosting a Google ranking a little bit. Today the list stands at 147 add-ons, but has done for several months - I've struggled to find time to update it and still have emails about new add-ons in my inbox dated from February. I imagine the actually number add-ons now stands well in the hundreds. There are also a number of things I wanted to do to make sure people could differentiate between an addon for XP Media Center and one for Vista Media Center. I imagine the impending arrival of a couple of service packs would complicate things further and unfortunately, I just don't have the time anymore. Anyone who emails me is welcome to the use the list elsewhere - I can provide it in XML or plain text, but you could also get the same information from the page itself. And if you plan to make your own list, good luck and share it with us all!
To everyone else, let me know if you like the orange. I get worried about every change I make to the design of the site because I'm never quite happy with it. This time, I've aimed at "neat" rather than "shiny" and hopefully by turning it into a more personal website I won't constantly be thinking "it's time to redesign BensHouse".
Right, off to work... 02 dicembre Woah, woah, woah...So one of the Mac ads is "Stuffed" which talks about how Macs don't come with trial software. Er... Am I missing something? Or is the MacBook different somehow? Because that comes with a trial of iWork and Office 2004. Apple: Stop being smug.
What the ad was really trying to say though was that your PC often comes with extra crap you don't need that runs at startup. This isn't a fault with Windows, this is the PC manufacturer adding this stuff, and in some cases it apparently makes the PC slightly cheaper. But it does mean that your brand new Dell machine won't be as fast as it could and should be. A week with the MacBookI'm currently result number 9 if you search Google for "Reasons to buy a MacBook" and although the event passed un-blogged by me, I received my new MacBook late last week. So what's the Mac like? Well first of all, the keyboard is a little weird being an American keyboard really (the @ and the " are the wrong way around for instance). There's no # and although I've learnt how to type it (ALT + 3), it took some random keyboard presses to find that out. On the other hand, I also discovered I could type a bunch of other random characters that normally follow a more complex pattern in Windows, so I won't comment further. I still do a lot more typos on this keyboard than any I previously used. For whatever reason, it sometimes feels as though the Mac just isn't registering keys, but I can't prove it, so maybe I'm just hitting them wrong. The touchpad is a little laggy. It's a minor problem and a little difficult to describe, but basically when I move my finger, the cursor on the screen is always a fraction of a second behind - and it's such a small fraction of a second that only a few of the people I have demonstrated this to can see it. I played with another MacBook in the Regent Street Apple Store earlier today and they suffer the same problem, but it's getting difficult for me to tell now that I'm getting used to it. The pad is also quite large, which wouldn't be a problem except if you are using it and another finger happens to touch an edge - your cursor will stop. Once you know to look out for it, it's less of a problem though. There's no right-mouse button. Which isn't a problem in OSX because we Mac users have other ways of doing these things and right-clicking is in any case frowned upon. However, I also have Vista on the MacBook and when I run that I have no way of right-clicking at all. And in Windows, we take the right mouse button for granted. So, onto positive things - it's all rather shiny and pretty. It's the bog standard MacBook, but there's a build quality to some bits that exceeds expectations. Like the battery that looks to be coated in a brushed metal and can blind people at 1000 yards. And the fit of the magnetic power cord. Ignoring the last couple of hours since I got back from London, it's a fast machine. Things open and close pretty quickly, even better in Vista. Putting the laptop to sleep is a matter of closing the lid and it will be done. Waking it up is a matter of opening it again and it'll be there. If it got any faster you'd be wondering if it did go to sleep or not. The battery life appears to be fantastic. Using it at DDD6 last weekend, it demonstrated that it could stay on and in use for about 6 hours. In Vista it's about 4 - 5 hours. Still better than my last laptop which started with a battery life of 3 - 4 hours and now has 1 hour in it if you can find a way of keeping it cool. I've also been using it at work and leaving the power adapter at home, so that's another way of judging battery life. The screen is bright and sharp and, again, Vista looks fantastic on this screen. I would without doubt recommend that if you know someone with a MacBook, persuade them to let you see Vista running natively on it. You'll never be happy with your PC again. I'm keeping this post to hardware stuff and I'll do another post of software at some point. Although I have ben using the MacBook (and OSX 10.5 Leopard) for over a week now, I only got a copy of Parallels today and I can see reasons for why it might change what I have to say. To be honest, Parallels versus Boot Camp could be a whole post on it's own. Anyway, in summary MacBook hardware is getting a solid 8/10 from me. And any typos you find here a) weren't picked up by Safari's built in spell checker, and b) can be blamed on this keyboard. Ben - On a Mac. 01 dicembre What are your weaknesses?I just want to quickly expand on something I wrote in the last post because I'm not sure it's as well explained as it could be.
I think there's a possibility that that paragraph comes across a little defeatist and I didn't mean it to at all. My point was that when someone applies, they should be thinking about how they would fit in and what thier strengths/weaknesses are in comparison not only with the other candidates, but also with the current employees. For example, I know that to get onto the DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) Team I would need both brilliant presentation/communication skills, as well as some good technical skills/experience. I also know that whilst I wouldn't call presentations one of my weak areas, it certainly isn't a strong point either. So whilst I could apply for a position, in the meantime I had better be thinking about how (or even better, actually doing something) to improve in this area. That might mean thinking about presenting at DDD7 and other events, or it might mean giving short grok talks to other groups.
It is my belief that when applying for a job anywhere, you should know your weaknesses and have a plan to deal with them. Your interview might not focus on your plus points... What Interests You In Technology - Question TipsSo, on the 4th of January 2006 I wrote an entry entitled "What Interests You in Technology?" and almost 2 years later I still get emails about this. It might be obvious that I didn't get into Microsoft, but then again I did get a phone interview that year, so maybe I can add some extra advice to help those applying relax a little. Or at least get them thinking...
Top of the list is don't email people asking them what you should write as an answer to "What interests you in technology?" They don't know you and even if they did the answer they write isn't going to be in your style. If you can't write your own answer then you have to ask yourself if you think you're really suitable for a job at Microsoft. I mean, us MS fanboys really put Microsoft on a Pedestal here, with the guys in Redmond being Software Gods and in my mind the guys in the DPE Team in Reading (or at least the ones I've seen present) are the Jesus' and Holy Ghosts of this religion (Daniel Moth and Mike Taulty can fight over which they want to be). Each time I've applied to Microsoft, I've looked at these sorts of people and thought "what do I need to learn/do to become better than them?" The important word there is *better*, because when Microsoft already has people who do the job fantastically well, why would they need more? And doesn't everyone aspire to be better?
I've gone off on a tangent there, but I don't mean to sound harsh to anyone. To those who have tried to answer this question and still can't quite word it properly, here are three simple tips that might help -
|
|
|
