Chasing My Own Tale
For all future references, HTML e-mails that are viewed in 10.2 Mail *must* have at least two images (elements?) in each cell in order to maintain pixel-perfect positioning.
After 2 days of wrangling this, I’ve beaten this e-mail to a pulp.
Oh, and animated GIFs neither run nor loop.
Just thought You (I) should know.
If you’re running Mac OS X.2, hold down the following keys:
[Control-Option-Command]-
and then press [Keypad *], the * key on the Numeric keypad. If you have a laptop, make sure your num lock is turned on and hit the ‘P’ key which is the same thing.
Do it right now.
leet!
Updated Oct 12, 2003: A better link via Slashdot: donotcall.gov/Complain/ComplainCheck.aspx. Haven’t tried it yet, but here’s hoping.
It took me a while to find this, but here it is, How to file a complaint about Telemarketing Calls
What the FCC Can Do to Help
While the FCC may not award monetary or other damages, it can issue citations or impose fines against those violating the TCPA or other FCC rules regarding unsolicited telephone marketing calls. If you would like to send the FCC a complaint about suspected violations of the TCPA or of the FCC’s rules, you can file it by e-mail (fccinfo at fcc.gov), by the Internet (www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html), by telephone 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322) (voice), 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-835-5322) (TTY), or by mail:
>Federal Communications Commission
Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau
Complaints & Inquiries Division
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Include the following in your complaint:
I just came across a great “No Search Results” page at sheetmusicplus.com. When you get a results page back for a term that is not found (c.f. Nick Cave), they’ve got the following text in bold:
0 Search Results for nick & cave
Zero results? Don’t give up yet! Try again:
1. Check the search category you chose. Are you sure you want an Artist search?
2. If searching for a song title, type the exact song name only and make sure to choose Song Name or Composition from the pulldown menu.
3. Use just the last name of artists/composers.
4. Enter fewer words – try just part of a title, exclude instrument, etc.
5. Check your spelling. Try browsing Artist A-Z for those hard-to-spell names.
6. Still can’t find it? Click here to learn more.
Isn’t that great?! How many times have I battled with developers who just want to have a page that says, “0 Results Found. Try Again.” which does nothing for users.
This page, however, not only grabs your attention with the text “Zero Results? Don’t Give Up Yet!” in Bold on a grey box, but it’s well written too.
This is excellent because A) It has a converstational tone rather than some formal text that explains why your search sucks, B) It has a bantering feel which says, “hey, we’re in this together. Let’s do what we can to find what you want.” rather than a comment that makes you feel like a moron, C) the response is highlighted to the point that you can’t help but read it, without being obnoxious.
I applaud the work and refinement that has gone in to this page.
Of course, this week, Apple introduced their Wireless Mouse that uses Bluetooth. This is fixes the ‘one step away’ issue I noted about the Kensington PocketMouse Pro Wireless. See, once your laptop has Bluetooth built-in, the receiver dongle goes away completely! So now all I’ve got to do is buy a new laptop. The most recent one I’m drooling over is the latest rev of the 12″ Powerbook.
I’ve talked about why I would not have wanted one of the Rev A 12 Inch PowerBooks:
Both of these issues have been dealt with. The new 12″ goes to 1.25 GBs and the previous Mini-VGA port that requires an adapter is now a Mini-DVI port that requires an adapter, but also supports VGA.
There’s still no FireWire 800, and no PC Card slot, but I think those balance out with the new items noted above… and below.
From what I’ve read it’s got two things that I *really* want: The first is the Bluetooth built-in (like the last version) in order to get that dongle-less mousing solution. Now that Apple has committed actual hardware to BlueTooth for desktop stuff, I’m ready to hop on board.
But also I saw mention (somewhere) that the 12″ can run while its lid is closed! This is a big deal, because I could use it as a portable music device. And maybe more.
Admittedly, a small MP3 player would be more portable, but the real value comes when A) I have the machine running and in a backpack, B) I plug in a microphone and maybe headphones, and C) I can control the machine with voice commands and have it respond with speech synthesis.
Suddenly it becomes a Wearable computer!
Going beyond that, I could get a VGA headset that would give me the floating screen. How much would that rock!?!
Of course I haven’t seen confirmation of the ‘run-closed’ ability, but I’m looking for it. If I can get it confirmed, I just might have to figure out a way to get it…
Anyone interested in buying a great iBook?
—
Update: I found it. Confirmation. I just watched the webcast of the introduction, and both the 12″ and the 15″ have “Lid-Closed” operation specifically noted… drooooool….
So it was my Birthday this last week and it was really nice. Finances being what they are, it was nice and quiet. But that didn’t stop Amy from getting me some k00l gadgets such as:
The Lexar JumpDrive Trio, which is a memory card reader the size of your average pen drive. The trick here is that you use it like a pen drive, but you can put your own memory card in it. MultiMediaCard (MMC), Secure Digital (SD) and MemoryStick all fit inside.
Your avage pen drive puts a 10% to 20% premium over the cost of simply buying a memory card flat out. With the Trio, I can buy the memory separately, and when the prices plumet for these memory card sizes, I can pick one up on the cheap and ‘drive home happy’.
So one quick run to Fry’s later, I’ve got a 32mb MMC card for just $15. I’m ready to go for my class at PSU. (Moving files around to the lab, to my laptop, to home is a drag… now it’s a drag and drop.)
Amy also got me the Kensington PocketMouse Pro Wireless, which is one small step away from the perfect mouse. See, it’s an optical wireless mouse that is great for laptops. Wireless mice (for the most part) need to have a reciever that will put the mouse in contact with the computer.
With this mouse, that reciver is about the size of 2/3rds of a stick of gum. Now here’s the cool part: when you’re ready to pack up and go, the receiver comes out of the USB port and stores inside the mouse! There’s a little compartment on the side that it fits into. Storing the receiver also switches the mouse off. It’s so James Bond!
It will be great to take to my class at PSU, because I won’t be completely tied down to the teacher’s station.
—
After all this preparation, it turns out that due to low enrollments, my Intro to Web Graphics course has been pushed back to Winter term. Amy and I had been counting on that money for Christmas shopping, but it looks like we’ll have to figure out something else.
I was looking at the lastest edition of This Is Broken that Mark Hurst publishes and there is an entry from September 8 that refers to Newark International Airport.
Brad, my boss, just got back from a trip to the east coast and had been there. I wanted to send him a link to the entry and expected to send the entry-specific ‘permalink’ to him just like I’ve sent other links to people.
Well, Mark’s list doesn’t have permalinks. No it doesn’t. My first impression was to send in a screenshot of the site, saying that “This is Broken” is broken. But down at the bottom of the page I found a link to this:
Q: Why are there no permalinks on This Is Broken?
A: Because I never got around to setting up a weblog tool like TypePad or Blogger. I just don’t have the time to figure it all out and get it plugged in, and I’d rather not pay subscription fees, given that this site makes no money. If you want to help install a solution that (a) is free and (b) retains the look and feel of the current site, drop me a note.
So I ended up sending him this e-mail:
I almost submitted a screenshot of TiB to you for the lack of Permalinks. Instead I did something constructive. bad-seed.org/broken/:
Blogger, 20 minutes, Free.
…Ross…
It actually took a bit longer than that because of some weirdness with getting the system to work with my ftp account, but the point is made.
Blogger is an excellent solution for some things. I think it applies here.
This weekend I found a number of great resources for learning about Mac OS X. The root of this exploration stems from the macosxlabs.org
For those of us who are the go-to guys at our workplace when it comes to helping out with Macs, there are some great resources here. I’m enjoying a couple of the archived Webcasts to learn about some of the admin tools for taking care of a good sized network of Mac OS X machines.
One page in particular that I’ve found interesting is the Resources page which has some great software links, including a free gui Cron tool called CronniX.
Cool stuff.
I took a short trip over the Labor Day weekend down to Grants Pass for a family reunion, as it was my aunt’s 50th birthday. It was a really nice trip and the first time I’d seen my cousins from that side of the family in 5 years or so. Considering there’s only the two of them, you’d think it would be easier to keep up, but in the years since, they’ve both gotten married and each have a child and Court’s expecting a second.
Got a chance to stop in a see Bob, Bo and Jan. We sat around and talked shop and a bit about Bob’s family. It was nice to reconnect.
But it sure is nice to be home again. The trip was exhausting, and the car ride (in particular) was brutal.
I updated Dwelling’s tempaltes and infrastructure a bit, something which I’ve only done a couple of times in the past year.
The most visible change is that the Archives page is no longer a single mass of links, but it now an organized long listing of all of my entries. It’s interesting to see that monthly, I’ve keep a pretty consistent pace in terms of posts, though over the last year, it feels like things have slowed down a bit.
The second change is the addition of a meta tag: <meta name=”ICBM” content=”45.52361, -122.675″ > which identifies the location that I’m usually posting from: Portland, Oregon.
This actually feeds into another item which is the listing of Dwelling at OrBlogs.com. This has a lot of Oregon-oriented blogs, which I was already on, though I didn’t know it. It’s been a goal of mine to find more local feeds and to keep up with local news and such. Local-news-wise, there’s two sites that suck: oregonlive.com and kgw.com (intentionally unlinked) because of their sucky load times/or required registration. I’ll look at www.katu.com if I want to know what’s happening ont he local media, but I’ll be checking orblogs.com more often now.
It seems that my *really* early listing of Dwelling on my.userland.com’s RSS aggegator and Netscape’s “My.Netscape” continues to impact the spread of my journal’s feed, even without any effort from myself. How early was that? March 1999 or there abouts…