After keeping you all on the edge of your seats for nearly three weeks, it’s time to reveal my grades.
I’m adding my earlier prognosis so you don’t have to weed through that post again. Brace yourselves.
| Subject | Prognosis | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| System Analysis & Design | 16/20 | 16/20 |
| Computer Networks IV | 12/20 | 16/20 |
| Algorithms II | 11/20 | 15/20 |
| Operating Systems III | — | 16/20 |
| Network & Computer Security | 15/20 | 16/20 |
I’ll admit I may have gone a little overboard.
I couldn’t decide between two topics for this post, so I’ve decided to cover both briefly instead of one in-depth. They’re both about freeware, so prepare to get downloading.
The first is foobar2000, which is still my favorite music player on the Windows platform.
foobar2000 already had the minimalist UI, the global hotkeys, the massive extensibility, the insanely low memory footprint, the cue sheet support, the overall versatility andsoforth. But version 0.9.5 adds a major feat with layout editing.
Before the release of foobar2000 0.9.5, the playlist view was a bit too minimalist. Specifically, it was literally a simple list. Thanks to the wonderful component-based architecture, you could easily set up (and tweak) Columns UI to replace the default playlist view. Now, Columns UI was (and is) pretty great, but version 0.9.5’s layout editor goes far beyond that.
While user-customizable layouts aren’t new—with Opera leading the pack in customization, I’d say—, I like how foobar2000 0.9.5 manages to avoid the bloat that some customizable software—again, Opera—suffers from. It does this by keeping with the minimalist approach. There is no drag-and-drop action involved. You just switch layout editing mode on, right-click on a layout element, and select an action: replace it with something else, or—and this is really quite nice—cut and paste an existing element. This means that you can cut an element, right-click the empty space to add a (horizontally or vertically) split pane, right-click either subpane, and paste the element you were holding on to. As basic as that sounds, it really is very intuitive, especially if you dislike drag-and-drop in general, like myself—which is why I could never get used to Mac OS X—but I digress.
In short, if you haven’t done so already, try foobar2000. There’s also a more recent beta, which is great as well.
On to topic number two. Enter FeedDemon, my new favorite feed reader.
As you may recall, I started using GreatNews a while ago and already did some nitpicking. While I was still pretty happy with GreatNews, I’d heard some good things about FeedDemon and decided to try it.
Since FeedDemon claims to be “the most popular Windows RSS reader”, I’m sure I must’ve come across it at some point in the past and decided there was something wrong with it. Maybe it was the fact that the same guys make NetNewsWire. Whatever it was, it’s not an issue anymore.
Migrating from GreatNews was a snap, as it is intended: export my feeds to OPML and import the file in FeedDemon. Done.
As for the configuration, I’m not sure how to describe the Options dialog, as layout-wise, it’s different from anything I’ve seen in the past. It’s functional though, and reasonably intuitive.
FeedDemon is definitely more customizable than GreatNews, and is actually quite similar out of the box. It’s got your basic tray icon support and a nice tree view, and it doesn’t seem to use much memory. The difference lies in some useful options, like full keyboard shortcut configuration, (Windows) profile support, and the ability to allow videos in articles (like GreatNews, FeedDemon removes <object> elements by default) and to specify which enclosure types you want to allow. Also, you can change the color theme and the newspaper style, and align the panels just the way you like. Another nice thing is that, whereas GreatNews forces a cleanup of old articles upon you every month, FeedDemon has a less obtrusive cleanup wizard. In addition, the “Panic Button” will instantly mark all old news as read. And finally, FeedDemon can generate some interesting reports regarding your feeds’ popularity.
If you’re a privacy nut, however, you might not like FeedDemon. It’s pretty tightly coupled with the developers’ NewsGator product line, in that it suggests registering for a NewsGator account, so you can access your feeds from any of their products. Personally, I think this synchronization support is a nice bonus, and I’m sure most of you agree. However, synchronization directs all your feed traffic through the NewsGator servers—Google should decide to buy them out at some point. Apart from exposing your interests, this also delays new entries a bit. My advice would be to turn synchronization off unless you actually use it.
So, yes, I have uninstalled GreatNews. FeedDemon is a keeper. Go get it!
Even though it’s been around for a good three years now, I’ve only just heard about the Alesis Micron. Needless to say, I’m definitely contemplating buying one.
It may look like an eighties toy—and if you ask me, that’s part of its charm—but after doing some reading and watching a couple of YouTube videos, I’m convinced it’s a gem. Look at this performance, for example:
If it ran on batteries, I’d probably end up taking it anywhere.
Say goodbye to the old theme, because I’ve just set up the new one. Minimalism is where it’s at, bitches. Enjoy!
Update: If you’re a Firefox user and the big header is bugging you, try View → Page Style for a more compact layout.
While I was doing some initial refactoring on the code that handles searches through my blog posts, I added support for the OpenSearch standard. What this means is that decent browsers such as Firefox will now inform you of the presence of a custom search engine when you visit this site. Notice the blue glow on the search toolbar and bring on the oohs and aahs.
Update: I’ve taken the liberty of adding search suggestions, as described at MDC. You should now be presented with some suggestions as you start typing in Firefox’s search toolbar. I say “should” because it doesn’t seem to be working, even though offline tests were successful. Some packet analysis confirmed that the suggestions are in fact coming through, yet Firefox adamantly refuses to display them. Any help would be appreciated, as I am at a loss.
Update: With a lot of help from biesi and gavin, I managed to figure it out: the server is just too slow to respond. Firefox’s timeout for suggestions is set to half a second, and the server generally doesn’t complete the request in that time. I’m pretty sure DreamHost’s configuration is to blame, specifically the MySQL over their LAN. Anyway, the whole ordeal did teach me a couple of things about Mozilla development:
Setting javascript.options.showInConsole to true in about:config directs chrome errors to the error console.
You can edit any JavaScript file in a nightly build’s components directory as long as you restart Firefox afterwards.
Calling Components.utils.reportError(String) inside chrome JavaScript logs that string to the error console.
The string (new Error()).stack gives you a JavaScript stack trace.
So I’m going to be keeping search suggestions around. Theoretically, there’s nothing wrong with the code, and even if it only succeeds every 100 attempts, at least it succeeded at all.
Update: Still, if you want to see it in action, you can go into your Firefox program directory, open up components/nsSearchSuggestions.js in a text editor, find the line
_suggestionTimeout: 500,and change that number to 5000 (milliseconds) or so. That way, the request for suggestions won’t time out so fast—obviously, this will affect all search engines. When you’re done, restart Firefox and voilà.
Honestly, after this, I’m not touching this post anymore.
Well, to make a long story short, exams are over. The word I’m looking for to describe these last two months is intense. But, even though all I know so far is that I got a nice 16/20 on one of the exams, I’m quite pleased with how they went.
Now, without getting presumptuous, I’m going to indulge in a bit of harmless guesstimation. In case you’re unfamiliar with our system, and you care at all, we get scores out of 20 and a 10/20 means you’ve passed.
So, evidently, I’m hoping for some lenience when it comes to Algorithms. You may recall I had some trouble with it last year as well—which is somewhat awkward, since it’s also my favorite subject. I guess time will tell. Check back in 3 weeks or so—or sooner, if you want to read some stuff that’s more interesting.
