NPR - FOX - Obama

To me it is entertaining when the liberal news media (in this case National Public Radio ) attempts to paint the conservative news media as being biased or tainted (ala FOX News ). 'No Duh' comes to mind... but it is the pot calling the kettle black. Lets be real, FOX definitely leans right and NPR / CNN absolutely lean left.

What is humorous to me is that Obama recently tried to ban FOX news reporters from interviewing members of his administration. The message from the White House was that FOX is not a new organization like CNN is. Well, I suppose in many ways that is right, CNN has tons more money, viewers and most importantly is LIBERAL leaning...

I perceive myself as a moderate conservative, I watch both CNN and FOX. I am frustrated when FOX dips into the lower end of the gene pool quoting jerks like Rush Limbaugh. I am similarly frustrated when CNN holds up Roland Martin as a moderate voice. Let's at least stop pretending that either side holds some particular high moral ground.

So where did this get amusing? Well... NPR entered the fray a few days back with a poll which basically asked people to choose on of the following answers (paraphrased)

1) Is FOX not Fair and Balanced?
2) Does FOX just simply ask hard questions?
3) Are the White House and FOX playing this for attention?

The results of the poll are overwhelmingly #2... go see for yourself.

NPR having not gotten the answer they wanted, sluffs it off to a bunch of conservatives taking over their poll. Their mistake was in making it public. Had they restricted their poll to only liberals who enjoy the NPR forum I think they would have received the answer they were fishing for.

Bottom line... if you believe the media is unbiased you are nuts... if you believe Obama is a centrist you are similarly nuts.

RoboForm

If you are like me you struggle to keep track of the myriad passwords and user accounts that you utilize on the internet. So it struck me the other day that there must be a tool that helps with this problem. So before looking I decided on the following criteria:

1) has to recognize when I am being prompted for a pwd and fill it in for me
2) integrate with my browser
3) help me generate randomized passwords
4) save this data somewhere that I can easily use it on other computers

I found a tool that does this and more. It is called RoboForm. In just the week that I have been using it, RoboForm has discovered 12 sites that I log into and captured their passwords (with my permission of course ).

Check it out, I am pleased that I did!

More Windows 7

Just a quick note...

One of my favorite online personalities is Cali Lewis. She does a daily video podcast called Geek Brief TV. Aside from being flirty and cute (only gets you so far), Cali does a nice job of finding stuff that geeks like to hear about. In episode 642 Cali presents a really nice run through of many of the new features of Windows 7 (due out October 22nd). I have been using Windows 7 for a month or two and love it. One of the new features that I missed in my last run through is the shake feature... You can grab a window's title bar and shake it back and forth with your mouse. This minimizes all of the other windows that are behind that window. I didn't even know that was available. Thanks Cali!

Browser Wars

It is hard to know who to believe when it comes to actual market share of a particular browser. If you were to poll 1,000 internet users just what % of them would be use what particular browser? It may seem like a mundane question for you, but as a content provider and web developer this ends up being a pretty important question.

Why? Simple, every browser does things a little bit differently. As a result web developers have to be careful to make sure important (or cool) functionality works with browsers that people are using.

Why don't they all work the same? Great question and the answer is they are starting to. Fortunately the standards bodies are being listened to for the most part. As a developer I want people to choose a browser that will make my application look as good as I designed it to look.

The current popular browsers are:

Internet Explorer: 65%
FireFox: 20%
Google Chrome: 4%

In 2006 this looked like:

Internet Explorer: 80%
FireFox: 13.5%
Netscape: 2%
et. al.

Personally, I am done with Internet Explorer... I have tried to love this browser and appreciate that they are working hard to improve it, but seriously... can you say bloat? For me IE is terribly slow although quite functional.

At the moment I am using Google Chrome. Chrome is very light weight and blazingly fast. Call me fickle but I tire of Chrome... Often it refuses to run things and provides minimal feedback on what is occuring. The UI is just what you would expect from Google, minimalistic.

What are the advantages of using Chrome? Primarily I use Chrome as a 'sanity check'. If my website looks nice in Chrome it almost always looks nice in FireFox, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and IE7. As for IE6... if you are still running IE6 or below you don't deserve a keyboard...

What's next? I think I will load up FireFox and run with that for a while... I have fled FF in the past for poor performance (that is to say it was very slow) but I have heard from more than one that this has been resolved.

More on this later

Windows 7

As a Microsoft developer I was given access to MS's new Windows 7 operating system early. I installed a couple of weeks back and have been trying to determine how I feel about it. Here are some of my initial reactions:

1) User Account Control - turned off and forgotten...

2) User Interface

- Not a lot different than Vista, aero glass is still cool

- I like their 'themes' for the desktop, nice sounds and pictures

3) Big change to the task bar at the bottom... When you start a

program it creates an icon in the task bar. In XP this was a small icon plus some text. It is not just a regular sized icon. Where cool enters for me is that if you start multiple copies of that same program ( like Internet Explorer ) you don't get multiple icons in that task bar, there is still only one. So here is my current task bar:

From left to right is; 'Start Button', 'Internet Explorer', 'Wind

ows File Explorer', 'MS Outlook', 'Command Prompt', 'Visual Studio', 'Google Chrome',

'SQL Enterprise Manager', and 'Paint.Net'

If you notice the 'Windows File Explorer' you see that it doesn't have that highlight around it like the rest do. That is because I am not running that program. So why does it show up on the task bar? Well that is a feature that is cool. When you start a program and it shows up on the task bar you can 'pin' that program to the task bar. It will always be there even when it isn't running. This makes it easy to start that program without having to create a new shortcut or navigating your menus.

Take a look at the 7th icon from the left (chrome):

Notice that the icon is not only highlighted but it appears to have a second window behind it? Well that is because I am running multiple copies of that program.

If you are reading this and you haven't run Windows 7 you are probably wondering how you can switch between the two different Chrome windows. In Windows XP and Vista you have two different things in the task bar to click on; Chrome 1 and Chrome 2. In Windows 7 you get to move your mouse down and 'hover' over the icon. Once you do you get a really cool mini translucent rendering of both windows, allowing you to visually choose which one you want to switch to. Here is what I am running as I write this:

I am sure there is more that I am leaving out on the Task Bar but I think you get the general idea.

4) Windows Gadgets are now placable anywhere on the desktop and don't need to be placed near eachother. In Vista you had to create a gadget's bar and then place your gadgets into that bar. It took up too much real estate. This is a nice tweak. If you aren't familiar with gadgets, there are a bunch of them. Personally I use two at the moment; system performance and weather:

5)...? I have seen some other Windows 7 features but I would be hard pressed to enumerate them. I like the fact that it uses IIS 7 instead of IIS 5... but that is a programming thing and most people could care less..

I am curious what peoples plans will be. Windows XP is an old but very viable operating system. Microsoft, however, would love to make new money on people upgrading. It will be interesting to see if Windows 7 receives the same 'yawn' that Vista received.

For me it is a 'want to stay in the now' decision. I don't have to pay anything for it so why not... I can tell you I won't be upgrading computers at home. They fall into the... if it isn't broke, don't fix it...

Summer Haiku

A friend of mine on facebook has challenged us to respond to her haiku posts with our own. She is attempting to do one a day for 30 days. Personally I don't think I can get one a day because I like to keep myself busy with many other things. Here are a few that I have come up with. Feel free to comment with things you don't like about it. I am pretty liberal in my use of the rules of Haiku.

Three varients of same idea:

inky blinky tool
the frames make me feel so old
glasses on my face

inky blinky tool
the lens make me feel disgrace
glasses on my face

inky blinky tool
the frames make me feel a fool
glasses on my face

My first three haiku

just a simple guy
counting syllables endured
finds me quite inured

haha too verbose
should you really hold your tongue
could make you morose

summer is for fun
but school break is nearly done
know you why so glum

Tomorrows Facebook Post

faded aspen tree

spring's growth you could not hold back

withered leaves now black

Moth and Rust..

A question you should ask yourself before purchasing or accepting an item from someone is; do I have the time and inclination to maintain it?

I remember a quote from the movie Fight Club; "The things you own end up owning you"

So I am whining because I had to get out in the lawn and fix sprinklers. We have been in our current home for roughly six years. The lot was basically scraped clean before the home was built and being in a dry section of Nebraska, if you want a lawn here, you will install underground sprinklers.

I didn't do the work, rather I had a local installer do it for us. The guy did a decent job and for a couple of years there have been no problems. But over the last several years we have had a growing problem. Clay. Yeah, that probably took you off guard. How is clay a problem you ask? Well, grass isn't all that happy to grow in clay but over time it will do alright. You have to water it pretty heavily as the water mostly runs off. Keeping it fertilized also helps the grass retain some water.

So what is the problem with clay? The problem is that the clay, over time, expands. I suppose not all clay does this, but at least the clay at this house and my last suffers from this problem. What does this have to do with sprinklers you ask? Well, the sprinkler heads don't do a very good job of 'growing' with the clay. In some cases this was so remarkable that the sprinkler part of the sprinkler head barely got 1/2" above the roots of the grass. Just locating those heads is a major victory.

This summer we have raised 10 out of 40 of the heads in the lawn. It was a bit of triage, which ones are the worst... focus on them. We probably need to raise an additional 10 heads, but they aren't in as bad of shape as the original 10.

So... all in we have spent four to five hours fussing with our sprinkler heads to water the grass, which points out that I need to purchase and apply fertilizer. Did I mention that the sprinkler spray gets blown onto our rock driveway? Yeah, this causes the weeds to grow prolifically if I don't apply weed killer 3-4 times a year. It takes about 1.5 gallons of weed killer to accomplish the task each time...

My sister is a new home owner and how proud she is. She has a right to be too, completely on her own she has scraped and saved on a teacher's salary enough to get into a home that suits her very well.

Clover, chiggers, wasps, and five different varieties of grass is apparently 'the best' the family who owned it before her could manage. She is just starting her journey to being owned by her home.

So I am thinking... was it really that bad living in an apartment? The grass is always greener, but you know that guy works his ass off for it...