Another (Astonishing) Hard Disk Update

Hello, world. I have some incredible news. The crashed hard disk I blogged about (lamented, mourned, etc.) last Spring has been cloned. I have all my old data back. Not only that, but in the process, my dad found that the old one is still working, and not exhibiting the classic "Click of Death" it was that fateful day in April. It can be used as an external disk now, since it's been cloned. Only problem is, nobody can access my old Windows profile folder. For better or for worse, who knows. It's not a major inconvenience; all the data is on the new disk anyway.
Since it was recovered, I spent some time removing some extraneous programs to make the machine run faster. I removed five redundant ZIP utilities (two or three had Windows Explorer extensions in the context menu), an FTP client that I don't even remember, an ancient text editor I replaced with another program on my current (locked down) computer, and many other things too numerous to list here. Stay tuned for status updates on this miracle.

Website (Redux)

'Ello, everyone. A while ago, I blogged about updating one of my websites with an LCARS template (you know, the Star Trek interface?). I also posted an update to that same post that said the upgrade was canceled. I regret to say that this is true; I didn't have time to implement the design. It would have required editing graphics files, using all kinds of absolute positioning, etc. It just wasn't worth the trouble. I did say there was a new template in the works, though. That is true; I've been working on it for a while now, say two or three weeks solid.
It's starting to look pretty cool. It's a center-column, fluid-width layout done in pure CSS. And the best part: It degrades in IE. Not "degrades well," mind you, just "degrades." IE6 adds space where there shouldn't be any, and it doesn't support the :hover effect used on the navigation links. Nor does it support the "generated content" that I am planning to use (CSS rules like "a[href$=.pdf]:after {content: " (PDF)"}"); it was implemented in CSS2, and IE6 doesn't have full support for that standard. I regret to say, almost, that IE7 removes many of these bugs. It displays the :hover correctly; there is no extra space (just two borders adjacent instead of overlapping); and the PDF LINK (PDF) would appear instead of just PDF LINK. Unfortunately, Microsoft has done a good job on IE7's CSS support, so I'll just have to live with it. All versions under 7 will get a nice little surprise on top, besides the missing functionality.
Anyway, I am planning to release the new website, fully formed, some time before 4th quarter starts. Whether it will be in the current location or a new one (I'd like to run a MediaWiki wiki, too) I haven't decided, but it will look a whole lot better than the boring, search engine-hating, kludgy, framed design I have right now.

Web Analytics? Nah! Hard Drive Analytics, Yeah!

As long as we're on the subject of SourceForge freeware, I'd like to mention another program I found out about. It's WinDirStat, and it's freeware. It allows you to visualize all your drives using nested boxes. You let it scan your disk and it presents you with a graphical representation of all the files and folders, plus percentages in a directory list. It's really great. With my 30GB HD, it took about 15-20 seconds to scan the whole thing. Try it out!

WinDirStat [via Lifehacker]

FireFTP vs. FileZilla

I have been using the FireFTP XUL application for months now. It is a Firefox extension written by Mime Čuvalo that is a really good FTP client. And it's integrated with Firefox. Since then I was poking around on the Internet, looking actually for Notepad++ (the programmer's editor) on SourceForge. In one of my searches I found FileZilla. Now here is a real FTP client.
FireFTP was good, but it was unable to use SFTP (that I could find), so connecting to Web storage at the University of Minnesota, where I have 20MB of space, was not an option. They said to use WinSCP, but that didn't connect to my non-secure site. A dilemma, and I was using two programs to do two sites. Not very efficient.
Now that I have found FileZilla, though, I am very happy with it, and am going to continue using that instead of FireFTP. I'm still keeping the latter around just in case, but I don't plan to use it all that much.

Filezilla | FireFTP

Glob@t is Criminal?

Hi again. Here at Technobabbles I usually express opinions on various things, but in this case we are posting a warning. According to some of the the more-recent reviews at http://www.webhostingjury.com/reviews/Globat, the cheap web host Glob@t is running a scam. Nefarious business practices like hidden charges (up to $39.95, from what I saw), and horrible tech support combine to give this hosting provider a very bad reputation. From what I can judge by the reputation data from WOT, this site does a very bad job with personal information, and reviewers back at the Web Hosting Jury say this host charges you even after you cancel your account...if you can manage to cancel it.

They also make it very difficult to cancel accounts, probably figuring most people will give up. I have the distinguished "fortune" of knowing someone who is signed up with them, and he just found out what they do today when I inquired about his hosting provider. He now wants to cancel his account, for obvious reasons.

My point in writing this is simple: I would like to prevent others from falling victim to this host's seemingly innocent practices. They offer ridiculously good prices on enormous amounts of storage, bandwidth, and features, but you will eventually end up being charged the proper price for this.

Strangely, McAfee SiteAdvisor's review page for this site gives it a Green rating. If anyone who hosts with Glob@t is reading this, please, register for a SiteAdvisor account and give them a "Phishing or other scam" review. Same for any hosting review sites, and a report to the BBB and/or the FTC couldn't hurt. Let's keep this business from conning anyone else.

Update (2008-03-19): Trimmed some weird markup, including a comment that was hiding the last paragraph. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was up with that? I could have sworn I published the entire post...

Microsoft Dumbernet Explorer

Microsoft's Internet Explorer program has never had good standards support. Not for CSS, at any rate. Now I find that the new version, IE7, has little better support than IE6, or even IE5. The cause? Badly written CSS parsers and just plain ignorance. Microsoft has had many opportunities to update IE with the new standards, but hasn't. IE7 was years in the making, and its support is almost worse than IE6.
A new website I am developing works perfectly in Mozilla Firefox versions 1.5 and 2.0, but breaks something horrible in IE 6 and 7. The code, validated by the W3C, checks out perfectly within specs, and I was even offered "Valid CSS" and "Valid HTML 4.01" icons for my site. They'll be worked into the design, but IE mangles the test page. Borders disappear, content is overlapped by things that aren't even there, and it doesn't support the :before and :after pseudo-elements. I used conditional comments (like ) to notify my future visitors of the problem. I shouldn't have to do all this, but I have to because Microsoft just doesn't get it.
I aim to keep the site CSS hack-free, and refuse to use anything but valid code that gives me the right to display W3C buttons on my site. If it doesn't validate, I won't use it, and visitors to my site will need Firefox to view the content properly. It's readable in IE, but not very elegant, and definitely not attractive. Maybe it's arrogant, maybe it's stupid; but maybe it's a good example that all web designers should follow.

Was That a Glitch, or am I Dreaming?

Hi, all. Here it is, the finished list of what was wrong with each performance of "A Christmas Carol" this year. I have categorized them by performance.

Thursday, 12/21:
Marley skipped many of his lines, the bed was quite misplaced, my costume change from a caroler/dancer into the Spirit of Christmas Present was too short, and Theresa missed a few light cues. "Touch my robe" began the "Streets of London" sound cue, but she was supposed to wait until Scrooge actually touched Present's robe. That, and she brought up too many lights after the scene change into Present. I wasn't supposed to be visible until I said something ("Scrooge!" perhaps?).

Friday, 12/22:
Kathryn couldn't change dresses for the Char Woman/Old Joe scene; Theresa still did the sound cue for "Streets of London" too early; Marley skipped lines again and repeated himself; the bed wasn't pushed far enough to stage right during "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear".

Saturday, 12/23:
Marley's scene was rushed; Scrooge missed his "Lo-lo-long past?" line, and therefore cut Past's "No, your past" line; Present yawned on stage; the lantern got kicked over during the scene with the Cratchits.

These are all the glitches I could remember. If I missed something, or included something that didn't happen, let me know in the comments.

Firefox 2.0.0.1 Update

Last week, I blogged about the increase in new-window time from ten seconds to 26 with the upgrade from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0. I am happy to say that, whatever the reason, it has been fixed in the new update (version 2.0.0.1). New windows now open in only five seconds. That's 80% less than before. Firefox just keep on getting better. Now if they would just fix the issue of it terminating at random...

"A Christmas-Caroling Performance"

Tonight was the first public performance of the Stagecoach Performance Company's version of "A Christmas Carol". It went off nearly problem-free. I'll detail the problems with each performance at a later date, but for now, suffice it to say it was OK for the first run. Expect a list of problems with each performance sometime next week.

"A Christmas-Caroling Rehearsal"

While I have never posted about my theater exploits in the past, I find it necessary to do so now. Just today, I began tech week for "A Christmas Carol". For those of you who do not know this term, it is the week, give or take a few days, preceding a play's performance run. During this week or so, performers spend long hours rehearsing and working out technical issues so the performance can be as perfect as possible. For more information, see the tech week article on Wikipedia.
This particular tech week is only three days, since performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. The first three days are the longest; six hours is the average length, though arrival times are flexible to accommodate school schedules.
Even with this flexibility, just half an hour of one of the first technical rehearsals can seem like two hours, especially if one is on stage running the same snippets of a scene over and over until it is perfect. That said, there is no substitute for the intense joy of knowing it is over at the end of the week. I look forward to that feeling. For now, I will try to keep busy during rehearsals; that often makes them go faster.

Gmail Security

I have found a petition on the Internet that advocates making Google change Gmail to use HTTPS by default. Gmail has a secure interface, but Google makes the unsecured interface the default. This is exposing your private correspondence to anyone who wants to read it as it is transmitted from Google's servers to your browser. Please sign this petition; it will make all users of Gmail safer from online threats including phishing and identity theft.
The link is here: http://www.petitiononline.com/gmailssl/petition.html

Updating Firefox is Good

Just a note to those of you who haven't yet switched to the new version of Firefox, here's a little incentive: if you're having troubles with extensions and still using version 1.5, try upgrading. Though my extensions still have occasional problems, I find that restarting often fixes the problems, so the upgrade works better than the old version.

Firefox Extension Incompatibility (?)

I recently noticed that some menu items were missing in my copy of Firefox, like "Restart Firefox" and "Extension Options". I analyzed the errors and realized that they were all supposed to be written in the menus by one extension: MR Tech's Local Install. After some diagnostics, disabling certain extensions, and disabling recently installed extensions, I found the culprit: GMarks. It seems the two extensions are incompatible. GMarks blocks the menu access or something. I've had to disable it, but it's not as big a deal now that I have the Google Toolbar 3 Beta for Firefox, which has similar functionality. Just a heads-up: anyone out there who's reading this and wants to use both of these extensions, don't. At least, not yet. I've emailed a bug report to the developer of MTLI, and hopefully he can fix the problem in the next release. I'll keep everyone updated through this blog.

Update: This may or may not be a compatibility issue. Firefox is still having occasional problems, and the menu items have disappeared a couple times without GMarks. I continue to be mystified, and will have to investigate further between semesters, when I will have time.

Oh, Such Exquisite Timing...

Picture this: You're in the car, in a parking lot, about to pull out to go to a theater rehearsal, which starts in five minutes (giving you just enough time to get there). Your mother, who is driving you there, has a conference call with family in a few minutes. She shifts into reverse, begins moving, and the car swings out into the traffic lane of the parking lot. Shift to Drive. Hit the gas, and the car starts to thump. "We have a flat tire."
It may seem hard to believe, but this is what happened to me today. Imagine my surprise when my mother stops the car at the end of a row and sits, talking to my aunt, uncle, and grandmother, oblivious to the traffic going around her. She tells me to get out my laptop and do homework. I thought it was a good idea, since I had assignments due. So I did.
Then some guy gets out of his car, bangs on our window, and yells something about, "Move your damn car!" I, of course, have to get out and find the tools in the back, at which point said man honks at me -- twice -- as he pulls away.
I now have a problem. I'm already half an hour late to the aforementioned theater rehearsal, and the tire has yet to be changed. Finally, my mother decides to let everyone else on the phone know the situation and hangs up. Now we can change the tire. The rest of the story is irrelevant, but the timing was great. Rehearsal in five minutes, conference call in five minutes, flat tire: boom! right there. Wonderful. Anyone want to meet with Murphy?

This Just In: Gmail May be Run by the Borg

Google has definitely been working on a lot of new features for Gmail. They recently added a new feature, for a select number of users only, that allows fetching mail from up to five external accounts, indexing the contents, and searching that from within Gmail. They are currently working on expanding the functionality to include all users.

Life Fitness? This is NOT Phy Ed...

OK, never believe the name of a course. Ever. A course titled "Life Fitness" sounds like it involves assigned activity and, well, physical stuff. Dream on; it does nothing but talk about the virtues of fitness and assign essays and research papers on the subject (and very obscure portions of it at that). Is this an indication that physical education is no more physical than writing?