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http://chris-russell-v2.spaces.live.comThe pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. - Oscar Wilde
Invoice ChargesI'm sitting here looking over my Internet service bill. There's one line in the itemization that has me scratching my head though. What the frik is an "Invoice Charge"? It appears to be a superfluos fee for printing and mailing me an invoice that otherwise informs me that they received their autopayment and have added $5 to next month's bill for the priviledge of letting me know that I paid them. Hmmm. I hear FiOS is on its way. I'll believe it when I see it and will be psyched when I do. Dave Russell Sr.'s 95th BirthdayMy grandfather, Dave Russell Sr. of Springfield, Vermont (no he doesn't watch the Simpsons) is turning 95-years old on Sunday. My dad and I recently put up a website for him which will be used to promote a book he published two years ago entitled "Verses from a Vermont Hillside". I spent many happy days during my childhood up on the farm in Vermont and will always remember my grandfather's office in the basement and his old typewriter and hundreds of short stories and poems strewn about his old rolltop desk typed on carbon paper and on the back of discarded scraps of paper. The book compiles the best of his stories, poems and essays and is a great read. We hope to get some additional information posted that will allow people to order copies soon.
Happy 95th Birthday Grandfather. You're a great man and I miss being within driving distance of the farm.
Ascribe vs. Imbue vs. ImputePop quiz vocab hotshots:
What's the difference between these three words?
I had to look them up recently while reading though a whitepaper. As I expected, the author was incorrectly ascribing the semantics of the word impute to the word imbue. Anyway, I had to look it up to be sure so I guess I might have made the same mistake. At The Risk Of Ripping Your Ears OffZune "Premium Earbuds" (they're pretty good) ship with a cloth sleeve which protects and stiffens the cabling. It looks nice and is functional. However, when the cloth rubs against the zipper of your jacket, the vibration is transmitted along the cable to your ears. I read this suggestion on a Zune mailing list and although I do not recommend getting your ears ripped off, with a little care you can avoid peril and lose the noise. "... [the] Secondary benefit to cord wrapped behind ear is that when you are working out the earbud doesn't fall out as easily. [of] Course then if you catch the cord on something you rip your entire ear off instead of just yanking the buds out, but to lose the rubbing sound transmission it is worth it." Joining Windows CoreAt the end of February, I transferred inside the Windows Division and joined the Application Platform Team (part of Windows Core Engineering). This is a big deal for me personally as I have been hired to help solve some vexing problems that have interested me for years. Broken RSS AggregationHmm... Looks like something has gone wrong with the RSS feeds displayed on this page. Seems like they have all been reset to pull from the New York Times. In Memory of Kyra HuskyI am extremely sad to report that our female Siberian Husky Kyra died today two months shy of her tenth birthday due to liver cancer. We first became aware of a potentially serious problem on Tuesday and an ultrasound, an exploratory surgery and three days and she's gone. She was loved dearly and will be sorely missed. New England Down In FlamesI don't want to talk about the Superbowl. Windows Vista Slideshow Screen ResolutionThe "Windows Photo Gallery" application bundled with Windows Vista supports a full-screen slideshow mode that sometimes tries to be a little too smart about choosing an optimal screen resolution for slideshow viewing. Specifically, the slideshow viewer may decide to reduce the screen resolution for full-screen viewing when invoked and doesn't expose any obvious way to override this default behavior.
For most people this is not a huge problem (if they notice it at all). Discriminating viewers may note a degradation in image quality. But you really run into a problem if your video adapter is driving a display device that (a) isn't recognized by plug-and-play (thus defaulting Window's knowledge of your dislay's actual capabilities to "Generic PnP Monitor" which is assumed to support a wide variety of different video modes) (b) doesn't actually support the display mode automaticlly selected by "Windows Photo Gallery" for full-screen slideshow viewing.
In my case, this Vista box is using an NVidia Quadro FX1000 (a dated but still kick-ass video adapter) connected to a Samsung DLP HDTV which I've configured for full 1080p (1920x1080 @ 60Hz) viewing on the desktop. However, when I flip to slideshow mode I'm toast - the Samsung supports only a view different display resolutions and the one chosen as I enter slideshow mode is not supported. The display flickers and then bluescreens (Samsung video input not detected NOT a Vista BSOD). So for me on this particular PC configuration slideshow just doesn't work out-of-the-box. Parenthetically, the standard Photo Viewer screensaver bundled with Vista is just a wrapper around Windows Photo Gallery's slideshow mode so it too is busted for this particular configuration.
Luckily it's not hard to fix.
Refer to the Windows Knowledge Base Article 930102 for specific details.
Summary:
Add the DWORD value WinSATScore = 500 (decimal) to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\SlideShow key in the registry to instruct Windws Photo Gallery to use the desktop display settings when switching into slideshow mode. This solves both the image quality and the unsupported display resolution problems. Please insert a CDI'm sitting on the sofa with my wireless keyboard/mouse typing this message. My workstation is ten feet away from me connected to an HDTV. I want to rip the audio CD that I just dropped in the tray before I sat down. But, I forgot to retract the drive tray.
Right about now it sure would be handy if the right-click conext menu item "Eject" normally associated with Windows optical drives toggled state to "Retract" when the drive tray is ejected. Sounds like a good lunchtime hack to figure out how to change the behavior. I'm getting up to push the button now.
ObjectGraph Web 2.0 Dictionary/ThesuarusI was customizing an installation of Opera and stumbled across an optional side-panel dictionary plug-in from ObjectGraph.com. Basically, they present an AJAX-powered web form that retrieves/displays dictionary queries for each character you type. Even over my crappy HughesNet satellite "broadband" connection the form is responsive enough to be useful. There's also an online Thesuarus.
Windows Media Player 11 Taskbar SettingsBooting a clean install of Vista Ultimate, the first time you minimize Windows Media Player (WMP) 11 you're prompted to decide if you want WMP to display itself as either a standard taskbar task icon OR a taskbar-embedded mini-player. I elect the taskbar-embedded mini-player-on-minimize option and continue on. Later, I decide I prefer the standard taskbar icon-on-minimize display option because restoring the mini-player window requires a precise mouse action. But how to restore the standard behavior?
After drilling through all the WMP option menu dialog boxes I've come up with nothing. WMP prompts you but doesn't appear to expose the setting anywhere. As with most things Winows, the work-around is trivial if not a little counterintuitive. The WMP mini-player embedded in the taskbar is a so-called taskbar toolbar. Toggle mini-player vs. standard-taskbar-icon-on-minimize behavior as follows:
Let There Be Bass (Electric)Sitting here half watching the Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival on PBS Great Performances and suddenly - wow... Okay Jeff Beck (one of my personal favorites from way back) is jamming... But, who is this kid he's got up on stage on bass? Man, it's amazing to see so much tallent stuffed into someone so young... Absent credits for Beck's band, a little digging on the web revels that a young woman named Tal Wilkenfeld appeared with Beck for the Chicago 2007 Guitar Festival. I'm definitely going to buy her debut CD and dig through my jazz CD's (because I haven't listened to any of them for what seems like years).
Here are some links:
Tal Wilkenfeld (Wikipedia) .::. Tal Wilkenfeld (Official Site)
Jeff Beck w/Tal Wilkenfeld "Big Block" @ Crossroads 2007 (YouTube video) Rockies SweptSweet. I orderred my Boston Red Sox 2007 World Series Champions baseball cap this AM. I'll keep it next to my 2004 World Series cap  WS Game Four and Slam the Door?Well... I really didn't expect that the Red Sox would go up 3-0 on the Colorado Rockies in the World Series. There was a lot of hype about the Rockies in the press but so far, there's only been a few brief moments where Colorado has seriously threatened to take the lead let alone win a game. Tonight's game four starts in about 45 minutes in Boston. At this point, the Rockies are in a giant hole staring at four back-to-back win-it-or-hang-up-the-cleats games. The Red Sox need only win one out of the next four to become World Series Champions for 2007. It should be a good game tonight. Ishkur's Guide To Electronic MusicMan this is great! Check this out: http://www.di.fm/edmguide/music.swf Yankees Down in FlamesSweet. Sox vs. Indians for the AL Championship Friday night, 7:30 EST in Fenway broadcast on FOX. Live Spaces and IE 7 Crash...Here's a good one: If I log into my Live Spaces account and attempt to change the layout, IE7 crashes with an unhandled exception every time (running on Windows XP). Hmm... maybe I'll submit some feedback. Or file a bug report when I get into the office tomorrow... Xcerion XiosXIOS, an "XML Operating System" from Swedish Xcerion is an interesting system. However, XIOS is not an operating system. Rather, it is a fancy scripting host that sits atop a real operating system. Safe Labels in C++An excellent new article on Artima C++ describes techiques for leveraging macros and templates to perform compile-time validation on normally error-prone (i.e. dangerous) bit-level manipulations.
Backcountry Bicycle Trails Clubhttp://bbtc.org
It is BBTC's goal to make Washington one of the best places in the country to ride a mountain bike. We are doing this by:
Live Spaces and CookiesImagine my annoyance to find that I need to relax my IE 7 cookie security in order to log into Windows Live Spaces.
IE7 Privacy was: High
- Blocks all cookies from websites that do not have a compact privacy policy
- Blocks cookies that save information that can be used to contact you without your explicit consent
Okay - I don't know what a compact privacy policy is... But whatever. The second item isn't really clear to me either. But again, whatever. I don't want people to contact me without my consent so don't allow it. But this doesn't work with Windows Live Spaces. You can't log in unless you relax the restrictions on cookies.
IE Private now: Medium
- Blocks third-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy
- Blocks third-party cookies that save information that can be used to contact you without your explicit consent
- Blocks first-party cookies that save information that can be used to contact you without your implicit consent
So now I can log into Windows Live Spaces. Why can't I log in with cookie security set to High? Anyone? Stroustrup Talk on C++0xA very interesting talk by Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup given earlier this month at University of Waterloo about C++0x. Paint .NETI've been using a shareware photo/image manipulation software application called Paint .NET that I first learned about on the Microsoft-internal toolbox intranet website (Paint .NET was originally written as an MS-sponsored school project if memory serves me correctly). Anyway, it's a solid piece of work and well worth checking out (it reminds of the old versions of PaintShop Pro from JASC software before they ruined it by trying to compete with Adobe PhotoShop).
http://www.getpaint.net/ Odds and Ends News UpdateIt's been awhile since I posted so I thought I would do a quick round-up of the happenings here in Washington State since May.
Vicki has a new job over in Kirkland. She's now managing the Multiple Sclerosis Center at Evergreen Healthcare in Kirkland. She really likes it and is settling into her new set of responsibilities.
Cody & Kyra (our Huskies) have been getting a lot of walks in the Tolt Macdonald Park in Carnation where they enjoy crusing through the big cedar trees and swimming in the Snoqualmie River. Both are doing well and have acclimated to West Coast life (i.e. they sleep out in the yard all day while we're at work). Kyra objects to the carpet color in the house and has been taking matters into her own paws recently (read steam cleaner rental will be required at some point).
I have been spending somewhat fewer hours at Microsoft as the project I've been working on since the beginning of the year is nearly complete and is slated to ship with the next release of the Windows Logo Kit. The project, KitSetup, is a generic configuration manager for software kits (i.e. complex software distributions comprised of many smaller interdependent components).
On the home front, I spent a few weekends building 18" x 8' x 8' shelf units for the garage. Altogether, I built six or seven of these units - enough to cover most of the exposed wall in the garage and get all the moving boxes from the barn in Maine off the floor. I still need to go through all the boxes and sort everything out so I can find it. But, that can wait until it starts to rain.
Bought a $45 used lawn mower which is receiving a beating. I miss the fancy John Deere riding mower from Maine but couldn't really use it out here even if I had it. Two of three giant brush piles from last summer's tree work operation got burned early this summer with help from Kenny and his excavator. One additional pile (half the size of the house) remains from last summer and Kenny and I created another one last week clearing windfall from last December's massive windstorm. We got another load of logs (mostly Douglas Fir) out of the windfall which I'm going to sell to the mill to defray the cost of Kenny and his excavator. I've definitely been getting my money's worth out of the Stihl MS390.
I gave up on my old GT zero-suspension mountain bike (basically every component was broken and needed to be replaced). Vicki and I both are getting new mountain bikes (I'm getting a Specialized and she's 90% fixed on a Trek). I was down at the Marmot Mountain store in Bellevue earlier this afternoon and picked up several Washington State Department of Forestry maps that show all the logging trails out behind the house in the Alpine Lakes region of the Cascades. We can get out to trails directly from the house without ever hitting paved road and have access to hundreds of thousands of acres of logging road and single track. We should be able to get some fantasic vistas as it looks possible to ride up to 4 or 5K feet and get a commanding view of Puget Sound out to the Olypics to the West and Mt. Rainier to the South. Cool. I'll post some pictures and try to outride the couugars and bears :)
We've been talking some about coming back East this fall to visit friends and family in New England but there's nothing definite yet.
Talk to you all soon!
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