One of the new features of OS X Leopard is the 3D dock. While not the worst thing I've seen, it just seems out of place for the normally minimalistic Apple environment. What I do like is the look of the dock when moved to either to the left or right hand side of the screen. It becomes 2D with a dark transparent background and a single clean line surrounding it. Unfortunately having the dock on the sides never works for me. I usually have my IM open on one edge and desktop icons on the other side, not to mention the chaos caused by adding multiple monitors.

After a brief search I came across the free application 2DOrNot2d by Eternal Storms Software that can change the bottom dock from 3D to 2D. Once you launch the app you get a single button window that toggles between the two layouts. It could not be simpler, yet the effect (in my opinion) is dramatic.

Before:

After:

[Eternal Storms Software]

As an IT professional I get asked a lot of questions everyday. Some are complex requiring my in-depth knowledge and years of experience, but alas, most are answered by a 5 second Google search that a trained monkey could have done. I'm sure anyone in IT support or even the poor soul that's the 'tech' person in the family knows what I'm talking about. Well someone felt our pain and created a site that both answers the questions posed to us and subtly reminds the end user that they could have done it themselves... and how easy it would have been. It's called LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com. You enter the search parameters and it creates a custom link that you then send back to the confused person as a answer. The results are.. well... spectacular and must be seen for yourself.

For example.....

As one who is constantly looking at a computer screen all day, the desktop background can get old quick. Sometimes you just need a change to reflect the mood of the day, the change of season, or to just make you wish you were somewhere else. Finding good quality, high resolution wallpaper is not always easy. A few years ago I found the website InterfaceLIFT which contains great photos specifically designed with the desktop in mind. They come in widescreen, full screen, hdtv, dual monitor, heck even three monitors wide. While it doesn't seem to be updated all that often, there is usually a new picture a day, and worth a look every few weeks.

I've been very impressed with the way safari on the iPhone displays web pages. Even the most complex pages, full of javascript, show up perfectly. I was surprised today when I loaded paulmaleck.com on my phone and noticed that the font sizes were all wrong in some areas. This was causing overflow of text and resulting in the page being unreadable. I spent a good amount of time looking for code errors I had made, either in the HTML or CSS, but found none. After some googling I found that mobile safari can at times try to auto-adjust the font sizes. Not sure the logic behind this, but I know it's not something I want. The great thing about the iPhone is that it shows the web in the exact same manner as it appears on my Mac.

Here is the fix to turn off this auto-adjust. In the CSS file, under the HTML section add:

html {
        -webkit-text-size-adjust: none;
}

It all started a few weeks a ago when I was playing around with my desktop background. I was home and on my main monitor, a 20.1" Dell from years back. It was at that point I noticed a dark area towards the bottom of the screen. Dirt maybe?.. nope. It was a permanent burn in, or dying pixel, not sure, but now that I see it I cannot ignore it, no matter how hard I try.

Ok, well it's been a few years and I could use some more real estate and perhaps a higher resolution... ok, time for a new monitor. Now I looked around at Dell's and HP's, but I was really hooked on the Apple cinema displays. What I did not like is $900 price tag for 23", that's almost twice what anyone else charges. At the same time it would look good and it matches my MacBook Pro... So I looked on eBay and found these monitors going for ~$500. On my second bid attempt I got a uses 23" for about that price and was very excited. I even paid extra for 2nd day in hopes it would arrive around my b-day. This was the last time I was happy about any of this.

Two days came and went.. nothing. And the tracking number I was provided game no information. I thought for sure after the weekend it would be here... I was wrong. After about 5 days I got ahold of the company that sold it too me, a brink-n-mortor eBay re-seller called 'iSold it'. They said it had shipped and blamed the USPS for the slow delivery. Well another weekend came and went... nothing. The following Monday I had enough. I wrote a email letting the company know that if they could not tell me where my package was by end of day that I wanted my money back or good old Mr Visa was getting involved. Well the threat seems to work 'cause 20 min later there was a knock at the door and the package was dropped off. What was odd is that the shipping I paid for required a signature, yet the postman was pulling out by the time I looked out.

But now all was well, The monitor was here and I could finally bask in 1920x1200 of goodness. I did look at the shipping label and it said "Media Mail", which I now understand is the slowest, cheapest method around. Well, that explained it. I wrote the company back and expressed by displeasure that the package was not sent via the method I paid for. And too their credit, within a hour, they credited back all my shipping cost. The monitor just got that much cheaper... woo hoo!. Then I turned it on...

At first it seemed OK, different, but OK. Surely it just needed some calibration. I noticed that the edges seems a bit pinkish. When I but a white background on the monitor, it was very pinkish. Not good. I tried for a day to get the colors right, but to no avail. Then I looked on line and found that this was a common defect for early cinema displays. There was no way that the seller did not notice that, and it sure as hell was not mentioned in the items description. So I've emailed the company back and said I want my money back. They've asked for some pictures as proof and I've sent them some and this is where we currently stand.

So far this b-day gift has not gone over as well as I hoped, and I think it's back to buying items new from now on.

The other night was Bill Gates last CES keynote. While I was mostly watching in hopes for news on new media center features (and was disappointed), they did play a funny video about what it will be like on Bill's last day at Microsoft. It did, however, remind me of another video that was made for Bill Clinton's last days in office.

I had in the past used the away messages in IM as a method to convey to the world my immediate (and mostly pointless) thoughts. Problem is that now I use IM a lot at my job and putting "Sleepy.. looking to leave work early" or something like that would not be the best idea.

There is now a site call Twitter that basically does this same functionality. You post a short message and anyone who's subscribed to your feed will get the update. It works via the web, IM, and cell phone test messaging. It honestly reminds me of the mass text massages that we'd send via pagers (yes pagers) in the East Lansing days. "Meet at Peanut Barrel".. or "The office tonight" (Spartan Sports Den.. not the TV Show).

We'll see if it becomes 'a thing'.. or if it's the next friendster that I got bored with after a few days.

I'm 'BandiTT' on twitter.

Such as myself, who's been running RC2 as my main OS at home for a few weeks now. I found this site, that list real world software compatibility issues. Nice to know -before- you install something bad...

But on the flip side, it's a user driven page, and therefore, not perfect. For example...Virtual CloneDrive.. Not a good move last night... Killed my system and would not boot to anything. Had to do a repair from the Vista DVD to get it back. YET, it's listed as OK on this page. Go figure.

Not to be outdone... Firefox 2.0 came out today.

Download here.

I'll perform testing of both and give my opinions in a few weeks.

It's strange how preferences change over the years. Back when Internet Explorer came out around the same time as Windows 95 I was a big fan. It was the new kid on the block trying to break Netscape dominance. And for many years it's what I used, but at some point it became bloated and a hog. Probably when they integrated it into the shell. Then, what made it worse, it's been neglected for years and years now. IE 6 was awful. Very insecure and speaking as a web developer.. a nightmare of bugs and non-compliance to standards.

When Firefox came out it was breath of fresh air. Secure, fast, and actually had new features like tabbed browsing and the such (calm down Opera fanboys.. ya you had it first.. but honestly.. who cares? I use opera on my phone.. that's it).

Well now Microsoft, after over a year of Beta testing, has finally released IE 7. I -strongly- recommend everyone get this. Not to use... I still say Firefox, but to remove a huge security risk in your system. Microsoft should call it a security patch and not a update. But I will say that in my testing it's much more compliant to web standards. I do not have to code every page twice.. once the right way.. and once to make it work in IE6. For that alone I'm very excited to see it come out.

As of today I will no longer support IE6.

Whew... feels good to say that.