chiiyo

I find it amusing that nowadays when there is a photo opportunity, how many people actually just pull out their handphones and take a picture. I mean, technology has gotten to a point that people stare at me when I pull out my old film manual camera to take a photo. Though, in the end, I have a phone that plays MP3s and takes pictures and plays video, but do I actually use the functions? O_o. No. I just use it for taking an making calls and messenging. That's all. Utilitarian phones would be a waste on me.I sure hope they'd still make simple phones for people like me... =_=

I don't know about you, but the part that excites me about the Mighty Mouse (the name kinda sucks though... Mighty Mouse?? I mean, wasn't that like some cursor changing program name or something? Sounds like a cartoon character... Mighty Mouse to the rescue!) is the scroll button thingy. The whole scroll sideways, upwards and downwards, diagonally thing, sounds like they put one of them nubby trackpoints (those that you'd get with an IBM laptop) on a mouse! I mean, that sure beats my Logitech Traveller (though I still love it dearly).Next up, let's wait for the Bluetooth and Laser pointer version. But I like.... maybe I'll get one...I remember reading a rumour maybe last year about Apple coming up with a mouse that'll have a iPod Clickwheel kinda scrolling interface and three buttons. This one isn't that far off. Guess the rumour wasn't all lies after all.

By the way for those people waiting for Mint, the link I put up in my first post has changed a little, instead of just asking you to wait, it now has a "sign me up when mint comes out" sign and a place where you can put your email, and when Mint is released you'd be sent an email and a sign-up and an option to opt out.Cool. I've already sent my email address to them. Can't wait for Mint to come out.

Did something happen the past few weeks? I was offline (at least from Xisto) for about a month or so, I come back, and the board looks different again. O_o. Still no reputation points, not that I'm complaining, the pretty little pictures that say member, hosted and moderator look cool, but what happened to the pretty Xisto banner? And font is a little wonky on Safari, or maybe it's intended. O_o.But yeah, is Opaque himself alright? Read about the floods, got a little worried.

When I heard Konfabulator would be free I popped over to take a look. Actually spent around an hour searching and filtering through all the widgets for Konfabulator. My verdict? In the end, Dashboard provides me with all the widgets I need. Especially with MultiDash providing me with multiple Dashboards (btw that is one heck of a widget) I really don't need Konfabulator around. But I can see how this would make Dashboards appear around the Windows land. Good news for Windows users I suppose? And good news for the Konfab people. Whether Apple likes it or meant it or not, Dashboard did hit Konfab pretty hard, so Konfab people are pretty lucky for Yahoo to come and buy over them.

To Soleq, I would argue otherwise about the whole needing both a monitor and mouse issue, but then I realise there's no real way to prove this, since with the lid down how do I know whether it's sleeping or not when I plug in the mouse? Actually, I just realised why I think the monitor is not needed. You know how the Powerbook has that snoring light at the release catch for the lid? When it goes to sleep the snoring light "snores" right? Now you can try plugging in a USB mouse and moving it around, you realise the light goes off, which technically means the powerbook is not sleeping. There you have it, proof that the powerbook only needs a USB device (that moves about) to stay awake. Not too sure whether you'd need to continue jiggling the mouse though to keep the thing awake... To Turiddu, without a USB mouse connected to your powerbook and it still sleeps? Possibly because you have yet to change the properties in your system preferences panel? Under Energy Saver you can change the settings for both power-supply connected and battery operated, and basically you can set the time to "never" for how long till sleep sets in. My powerbook does go to sleep when battery operated, but I bittorrent at night, so I set my settings for "never sleeping" when connected to power supply. And for the screen, what I use is Radtech Wildeepz and ScreensavRs, I find the wildeepz extremely useful for keeping my screen away from the keyboard, though it's slightly high-priced for something I could fashion out of 3M products, but the ScreensavRs is very useful, both as something to prevent the screen and the keyboard from colliding, and for wiping the screen (it takes away grease, oil, dust and a lot of things just by wiping, I love it!). The package even comes with instructions on what to do as a first-time use if your screen has been "abused" previously, and comes with alcohol wipes and everything. After I first used it (bought it for my laptop's first birthday) my laptop screen looked like new. Serious.

So does anyone around here get the developer's copy of Windows Vista (the new name, I'm still so used to calling it Longhorn) and can tell us more about it? We're all still just speculating aren't we?On the other hand, since Vista is supposedly coming out the same time as the new version of Apple's OSX, does anyone know any news about the new OSX too?

I agree with all of the above, it's not SUGGESTED that you keep it closed when running stuff on it, what is it that prevents you from keeping the lid open when running applications?Besides all that, the most common solution to this is simply to plug in a USB mouse. It takes the powerbook out of sleep mode even when the powerbook's lid is closed. I'm not too sure whether you have to occasionally move the mouse about though, but this solution is for people who use an external monitor for the powerbook.

Hmm. What I usually do to "clean" up is basically run one of the many maintenance apps around, such as Onyx, MacJanitor http://forums.xisto.com/ or Yasu (Yasu is the one I use, but I've tried the other two before), to basically run the cron scripts, and to repair permissions, reset logs and optimize the system. Then I go manually into, first my home folder's library, and search in certain folders, specifically the Application Support folder and the preferences folder, and basically look for any program that I had already deleted, and then just the delete the files or folder. When I first got my Powerbook I used to go into every single folder of my Library, just to see what's inside, to familiarize myself. Most of the time if the thing is something you don't recognize (not a program that you had deleted) you probably shouldn't touch it. Then I move up to my computer's library folder (since I'm the administrator of my computer) and do the same thing (note there will be less things to delete, because most programs install themselves only in your home folder) and then finally, just pop into the library folder inside the System folder to take a look, there are almost never traces of programs there. Note that if you're unsure of your way around the Mac as yet, I suggest just going in and taking a look, instead of happy go lucky deleting files from the library folders, especially if it's your computer's one, and ESPECIALLY be careful of the library folder inside your system folder, that one mostly contain OS library files, you don't want to be fooling around there unless you're very certain of yourself. To be honest, there really ISn't much to clean up on the Mac, I do this routine maybe once in three months, when I remember? My powerbook just feels cleaner after it, it doesn't necessarily speed up by quite a lot, mostly because the Mac OS is clever enough to clean itself up on a everyday basis, not like Windows which likes to leave ugly traces in the registry and stuff. On the mac it's usually as easy as deleting a file, not like plunging yourself into the registry deleting lines of code or something. So don't worry too much about cleaning up the files, I would try one of those maintenance apps though, for starters, or just repairing permissions would help tons. Hope this helps...

Glad we were of help. Actually if you want to know more about those types of graphics program a good place to start is just by searching the Xisto forums. We get regular tutorials, short and long, as well as links to good tutorial sites for graphics quite regularly around here, and some of them are really useful. Most of the tutorials are written step-by-step, just follow through, and you will, at the same time, get familiarised with the program that you're using. A google search on the net should also come up with more understandable help files and tutorials for whatever program you're using. And at the very end, you can always purchase one of those "Dummies" or O'reilly books. They are always helpful.

Sunblind, by the way, livejournal does not go by ljcodes anymore, it is an "apply" and get an account thing now. They did away with the whole lj-code thing a few years back... Just for your information.

Okay, so you're asking how does one make an avatar?? Or make special cool effects with it is it? How did you make your own avatar in the first place? I think I know what you mean, like a lot of people only make LJ-icons all the time, and they have like words and designs on top of a photo or a picture, or they animate them and stuff. That's what you're asking right?Basically you just need photoshop or paint shop pro or gimp, and lots of originality and creativity. There's no such "formula" for making an avatar. Just take any picture you like, crop it to 100x100, and then add filters and layers of different colours and words, and if you want to animate it probably use a gif animating program or something. If you want to know how to make a particular EFFECT then maybe someone can reply...

I actually have "screen.css" and "print.css" so I can have one set of CSS for screen layouts (normal day-to-day browser usage) and one for printing only (without menu, in serif font, text extends to whole of page).I do wish they'd make a decision on the screen reader and accessibility CSS.

It looks to me that you did some post-prodcution? The first and the third picture especially look like some photoshop artistic filter has been overlaid to create the slightly paint-ish kind of edges... What exactly did you use? Or was this a side-effect of your compression?The first one is nice, thought a bit cliche. I like how you managed to just capture the sun being totally hidden by the clouds, it's normally quite hard to capture the sun directly, but you captured the rays coming out of the cloud quite nicely.The second one is not too bad, would have prefered a little bit more ocean, but the composition you have works too. I like the composition of the birds, they make a nice angle and the picture is nicely spaced out. Colours are good and contrasty too.I don't exactly know what the third picture is about, but I'd venture that it's a pretty good black and white picture, has a good range of greys and enough contrast. Other than that it's not too bad, doesn't exactly grab you like the other three though.Last picture is nice. Great composition, the colours are nicely muted to fit the mood. I like how the little tap at the side adds another point of interest to the picture, whilst various other things like the red paint, the green grass and the window remain the main focal points of the picture.Very good so far. I'd say you have a good eye for composition.

So what that really means is you can do normal surfing, but just make sure you don't log in into sites or FTP or email without securing your connection, is that it? O_o. I've never tried using one of those wireless connections but this sounds like good advice that I could use.

I agree with vizskywalker. I thought it'll be better if the reciprocal link was to Xisto, not actually to this 4ppl.com?Dunno, seriously thought it was some kind of spam right there and then... O_o.

I believe a lot of us find testing our sites in different browser quite the problem. There are sites that do provide screenshots of your site in different browsers, some good ones are BrowserCam and SiteVista, but these services often require payment, which might be okay for full-time working professional developers, but is not practical for hobbyists like me. Surfing around, I found Browsershots, which is an open-source, free version of such services. They have a main server and "screenshot factories" to handle the workload, and true to the open-source spirit, they encourage people to download the screenshot script and help out with some of the work. Currently they only have Linux browsers, and one Windows 98 factory, but think about it, these are the browsers that are exactly the ones that are harder to find screenshots for, especially if you do know services like iCapture are already free. I thought this open-source project is really cool. Now if only their port of the screenshot program to Mac OS X would move faster, I feel like contributing to the cause!

Went google-digging for you and found a few pertinent posts on the movabletype weblog regarding comment spam, as well as stumbled upon this Guide to combating comment spam article on the sixapart website. I think it's worth taking a look. Besides that one, I found some other entries regarding comment spam, one from last year recommending you use Dynamic templates in order to combat the additional server load, and another more recent that talks about using the No follow tag that prevents comments from getting high ratings on search engines, which is one of the reasons for comment spamming (so this kind of solves the problem at the root, per se). All three are worth looking into if you're really that affected. Good luck!

Hmm, I don't know, for me the very fact that they can open a unnamed javascript window on top of a verified site is still rather disturbing. Yes, even a new computer user would notice the new window opening, but it's not the noticing the new window, it's more of if the hacker decides to exploit the vulnerability, makes his pop-up dialog box really authentic-looking, and thus gets information from not-so-experienced computer users, and then use that information. I mean, I think people like my dad or my brother, though they are not total-computer-idiots, might fall for a dialog box that seems to come from Google.com or Amazon.com asking for passwords or stuff like that.

Oh dear, this sounds pretty serious. All my browsers are vulnerable... O-o. Wonder whether there'd be any patch soon?

Hmm.... this contest should have been closed last month or something... I'm guessing by the no response some banner was chosen from the Xisto side? I want to see the winning banner!

Yup, looks like you got the idea already. You might want to ask your friend to stand a bit more still so as to make sure he's not too blur. You are using a tripod or something similar right? Also, what's the white thing at the bottom of the photo? Looks like paper of glass or something... *puzzled*

I think, at the end of the day, even OpenOffice is attempting to become more and more like Microsoft Office, no? I mean, all the development of OpenOffice just brings it closer and closer to Microsoft Office, correct? Doesn't that imply that at the end, Microsoft Office is still "better", in the sense that OpenOffice tries to emulate it?You hear people getting more and more excited about OpenOffice, because over the years the functionality of it has evolved and increased till it is now almost similar to Microsoft Office except for several advanced functions. If you want to say which one is a better program only based on the functions of the program, then inevitably that would be Microsoft Office, well, until Open Office surpasses Microsoft Office and adds some other advanced functions of its own. On the other hand, you could always compare them based on ease-of-use, availability to public, concept, price, and then maybe OpenOffice would win. Because OpenOffice is open-source, it attracts all the open-source supporters, who are more than happy to use an open-source program that is similar to a program by the big Microsoft. Microsoft Office also doesn't run on several alternative OSes like Linux and BeOS, so probably (I'm not too sure whether OpenOffice is available for all other OSes) OpenOffice would have more "functionality" on those OSes.But based on functionality alone, I still would have to say Microsoft Office still reigns.

Has anyone heard of Shortstat? I was intrigued by it whilst checking out the Shortstat widget for Mac OS X Tiger's Dashboard, it seems to be a "short and sweet" stats package for tracking referrals and hits. The developer's initial post about Shortstat would probably explain this better than I can. It's really pretty too, judging by the various screenshots of it. Here's a working link to the developer's own copy of Shortstat. I'm still trying to figure out how to use it though... *embarrassed laugh* Whilst digging around I also found Mint, which seems to be the in-development next stage of Shortstat. Cool. Will be waiting for it... Anyone else around here use Shortstat?

By the way I just want to say the new skin, the one with the Xisto logo on top, is just beautiful. Really really pretty. *fangirls it* Just waiting to be surprised by all the new stuff and old stuff yet to be added to appear. Cool.