10 Easy Kitchen Improvements

1.       Replace your kitchen knobs with something more creative that fits your tastes. If your kitchen is color oriented, then buy knobs that match those colors. Knobs usually run between $8 and $30. http://www.niftynob.com

2.       Add contact paper to your cabinets. It makes it easy to clean them and look nice. Contact paper usually runs around $10 a roll. Get it here.

3.       Get tall colored  or clear glass jars to fill with things such as beans, spaghetti, cookies, crackers, etc. It gives you easy access to dry food, look nice and frees up space in your cabinets. These cost $5 and up. Get them here.

4.       Paint the cabinets if they are old. You can also add flair by using stencils to add flowering patterns or designs. If you are going to use stencils I suggest going with white paint for the background.

5.       Change the lighting to mellower warmer colors which will add to the feel of the kitchen.

6.       Add small potted plants to your kitchen windows sill. Usually the window is near the sink which makes it easy to water them.

7.       Add  lights inside your cabinets. You can pick up small lights that you press the cover to turn on and they stick anywhere. They usually cost around $11. You can find them here.

8.       Replace your dishwasher detergent with phosphorous free versions to help the ground water.

9.       Buy Russian Khokhloma spoons to decorate above your stove. They are beautiful and only cost around $11. Buy some spoons here.

10.   Add a pretty mat in front of the sink to collect water and make it easier to sweep your floors. Check out the floor mats here.

Amazing Gypsy Jazz

Windows Vista give me XP back!

So I joined the beta of Vista as Microsoft gave the impression that you were able to run Vista for a year. I was foolish enough to believe that they would allow us to upgrade to the release version. Instead you were stuck with a beta copy. So I download the release version off of torrents and used a technique to validate it with my beta key. This loop hole was soon closed and they shut down my copy of Vista. There was lots of ways to hack Vista which are quite complicated but it can be done. But after running Vista for three months I found that a number of issues made me want my Windows XP back.

Vista Issues:

DRM - Microsoft has taken all your control away and gives it to companies. So basically if you have want to make a copy of of a video or game you bought you will have a tough time doing it as the DRM will try to prevent you from doing it. I have also discovered a paper that shows that the quality of all multimedia is downgraded and then upgraded to perform this kind of control, so you actually get reduced quality. You can read the whole paper here.

The DRM protection layer also allows for another issue which has yet to happen. If a virus writer can infect the protection layer then they can reduce your copy of Vista to a basic level as if you were running a copy that wasn't validated. The reduced functionally limits your internet access after an hour, among other things.

Forced to Upgrade - you will be required to upgrade to more memory, a better processor, a new video card, basically a whole new computer. So you aren't buying just a copy of Vista, you are being forced to upgrade your whole system to what a gamer uses.

Annoying Features - Vista has tons of annoying features that have nothing to do with usability or improving the user experience. For starters the start menu is a worthless piece of garbage where all your programs are trapped in a tiny space. The only saving grace is that there is a search bar to find your applications. The gui is a mess with different modes of using the forward and back buttons that you are often confused and you don't realize you had other choices. The 3d alt-tab isn't done via alt-tab, you have to click on it to activate it (talk about dumb). Security that is always popping up in your face warning you that you are doing something dangerous (it also slows down your system so you will end up turning it off for the speed boost). Networking is now hell due to the security; I couldn't share my printer over the network or even share a folder over the network. It is about three or four times more complicated than in XP. CTRL-ALT-DEL now sends you to the log out screen and then you choose that you want task manager (yay for extra steps). This happens with lots of dialog menus in the control panel so it take you three steps to get where you are going rather than one step like in XP. Many things are renamed so you have to relearn the whole system all over again.

Incompatible - The screen flickers many times as the system drops out of 3d mode and back to 2d mode for apps that aren't compatible like Java. I found many of my games didn't work as they have copy protection that won't work under Vista. Other games just run and then fail. For example Gothic III just bombed upon launch. The compatibility mode blows and usually doesn't work. Older hardware which works just fine on XP won't install. It appears that they are working with hardware manufactures to force you to upgrade. For example I have a Philips USB webcam and it gets detected and installed with XP but Vista won't find it and use it. As it is USB there are no drivers I can go get and install, so I would have to go buy a new piece of equipment and throw away a good working item.

Vista is really a bloated OS that doesn't offer any business any reason to upgrade to it. As a personal user it offers some eye candy but for the price and he problems it really isn't worth it. They only rock solid feature which isn't out yet is DirectX10 which won't be available until later this spring. There will be very few directX10 games until late 2007; most likely they won't appear until 2008. I suspect that Microsoft will be forced to release DirectX10 for XP as they will have pressure from the game producers and video card manufactures.

Going back to XP was hell because Vista changes many things on your system. For starters you will find that you have no permission to alter directories on the system so you can't rename the windows directory; you end up having to install into it. This will fail but you will now be able to rename the windows directory so you can install a good copy of XP. Alas there is another issue. NTFS has been altered so that it can create symlinks. Thus Documents and Settings has been changed to Users. This will cause some problems for some applications. I couldn't remove the Users directory and finally when I did rename the User directory it was recreated when I reinstalled XP. For some reason XP couldn't create it's Admin and user accounts so I was stuck in a weird default account. Finally I gave up and wiped out the entire drive and reinstalled just fine.

Beware if you are using linux to read Vista drives it may cause corruption as the NTFS is different.

Suse Experience

I recently commited to using Suse Linux instead of Windows. The road has not been easy but it is getting easier.

Right off the bat I had problems with other Linux installs and that is why I choose Suse 10.1 as it installs very easily.

The next step is configuring your video driver which is a real pain. It took me numerous times before I was able to do this. Once you learn how to do it, it is easy.

Next if you want to run your old windows apps you will end up installing at least two different programs. One for games and another for applications. For games you will need cedega and for apps you will need crossover office. Both cost money. You can try using the free version of Wine but it just isn't as smooth and it could take you a lot of time configuring the app/game.


Next I to learn how to install applications and ran into a number of problems.

1. Apps don't ask where to install. They all just go to the default location. So you will run out of space. This is why you should just have 1 partition. This is from a linux guru. Otherwise customize how much space is being partitioned or you will run out. My Suse default install only set aside 20 gigs for apps and now I will most likely reinstall.

2. I had to learn how to install an RPM, not a big deal. I had to learn how to compile, make and make install so I could install non-compilied apps. Now that is a real pain because they require lots of other development software that you will need to install. Many times I had no idea which ones it wanted so I installed a whole bunch of development software until it worked. This means you will have lots of extra crap sitting on your system. You will also install tons of junk you don't need.

3. If you install apps manually by extracting and running, many times they don't work right because they aren't linked into the rest of the system. I still haven't totally figured this out and thus I removed a beta version of Firefox because it just doesn't work right without being linked in.

Sofware

There is a ton of software for linux and very good software but I have found that major apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator just don't work and there is no apps on linux yet that really work with their files. Inkscape will soon be able to import illustrator files and Pixel is working on importing photoshop so that will soon be resolved.

Flash is a huge problem and everyone is waiting on the beta of Flash 9.

Skype didn't work with my usb mic or a mic plugged in but the windows version worked under Wine. Go figure, this is the kind of shit that pisses me off about linux. The sound stutters though so it really isn't good for talking and playing games.


Hardware

I had problems with sound not working correctly with Alsa and OSS. Certain apps seem to be able to take total control and not give back control of the sound. Then I end up no being to hear sound in my browser or music player. I still haven't figured out what the problem is.

My 5 year old USB webcam just doesn't work very well and I had to install a newer driver. A new web cam would work much better so I will just upgrade here.


Conclusion

Linux is great but it has pretty steep learning curve. There are a number of changes coming down the road that will greatly improve the OS overall. I keep being able to figure out the problems I have and my system gets better and better.

I find I almost never have to reboot, and the whole system is very customizable. I will keep updating on my adventures here.

CSS Image Rollover With No Javascript

This technique is a rather simple workaround that is supported by most browsers. I am still learning CSS so there may be better and cleaner ways of doing this. If you have suggestions please send me an email at: chris@lavendise.com

1. Create a div layer that will be your background layer showing the rollover state when your mouse is not on the rollover.

2. Create a transparent gif which can be 5x5 and you just expand it to be the size you need.

3. Create a div layer that uses the transparent gif and place this over the background div layer with the image you want to turn into a rollover:

<div id="menu">

	<a class="button" href="who.htm">

		<img border=0 src="images/blank.gif">

	</a>

</div>

4. For each rollover you need to add one of the following statement and the
rollover graphics that are supposed to swap out:

#menu {

	position:absolute;

	margin-top:15px;

	left:393px;

	display:block;

	width:72px;

	top: 69px;

	z-index: 11;

}

a.button2, a.button2:visited {

	display:block;

	width:72px;

	height:38px; 

	background-color:transparent;

	text-align:center;

	color:#000;

	line-height:28px;

	text-decoration:none;

	font-family:arial, sans-serif;

	font-weight:bold;

	margin-top:5px;

}



a.button2:hover {

	background:url(images/rollover.jpg);

	background-position:top left;

}



a.button2:active {

	background:url(images/holdmousedown.jpg);

}

Now you are done! You can see my a live version at:
http://www.boomerangauctions.com

MosquitoZen

Subtraction: Putting the Dubya in AWOL

Subtraction: Putting the Dubya in AWOL

How I wish I was sleeping.

Well I have been bitten alive by mosquitoes. Thus I kicked the cat out it's chair and it is sitting there going why, why, why I awake. Well it got me to start this new blog.