Matt Refghi

It took me a while to warm up to the idea of microblogging, as popularized by Twitter. At first glance, I felt it encouraged the accumulation of mundane status updates, shared publicly, and communicated between accounts in an indirect, awkward way. Given that I spend a lot of time writing, I was practically insulted when I saw that they limited status updates to 140 characters. I didn’t understand how something of quality could be produced, given such limitations. I also feared that SMS abbreviations and slang would become prevalent, further taking away from the quality of such short messages.

So, when I eventually decided to create a Twitter account, it was merely to announce my new blog posts to a large community, to hopefully attract more visitors. I decided to auto-post my blog entries to Twitter via a WordPress plugin, including a special tag that would allow me to track the number of visitors I would receive. The experiment proved successful; announcing my new posts did result in a decent increase in visitors. As a result, I allowed the auto-posting to continue, and other than that, never really paid much attention to Twitter.

A few months later, something happened that caused me to reevaluate how I used Twitter. On one particular day, my WordPress database became corrupt, and after some work on my side, I managed to get it reinstalled and working… with the exception of one feature.  My comments, managed by a WordPress plugin named IntenseDebate, were not appearing along with my blog posts.  Since I placed a huge amount of importance in comments, I held back from posting, and instead waited to hear back from IntenseDebate’s support team.

Time passed, and though I contacted their support address twice, I still hadn’t heard back. I then noticed that they were happily instructing people to contact their support address from their Twitter account. Hoping to get their attention, I logged into Twitter, and directed a status update (known as a tweet) their way:

The idea of communicating with a company through Twitter had never occurred to me before. I liked the idea, given that the Twitter exists in such a public setting – I felt it would increase my chances of being noticed and helped. Unfortunately, despite further waiting on my part, I never heard back from them.

Eventually, I became quite annoyed, and decided to stop using IntenseDebate for comments, allowing me to return to blogging. As my first order of business, I decided to write a blog post about them, detailing my inability to get help from their support team, despite much effort. I titled the post “An Endless Wait for IntenseDebate“, and rather than having it be completely serious, I felt I should throw a comedic spin on the whole situation. I ended it with a poll, where I asked my readers when they thought IntenseDebate would get back to me, given everything I had experienced up until that point. The options in the poll were more towards the long-term, with the last option actually being a comical “They will never get back to you”.

About an hour after posting the article, I received an e-mail notification – one of the top guys at IntenseDebate had commented on my blog post, apologizing for the problems, offering his help. He even voted in the poll, saying I would hear back from IntenseDebate in less than a week. At first, I wasn’t sure how he found my post so quickly, but then it hit me: it was auto-posted to Twitter when I published it to my blog:

They were likely keeping an eye on all IntenseDebate related tweets, and spotted my latest, which was making them look bad. When I realized this, I immediately began to respect Twitter more; the public nature of tweeting benefited not only the companies, but also consumers. The situation sparked my curiosity about Twitter, leading me to start actively following other users. Mainly, these were comedians and celebrities that I knew of, as well as a few friends. I observed what kind of content they posted to Twitter, and kept the variety in mind. I discovered the concept of retweeting, which is pretty much repeating what another user has tweeted, while giving them credit for it. Considering my aversion to posting trivial information about my daily life, I quickly learned to retweet only the most unique updates I came across, those I deemed worth sharing. I discovered that 140 characters could very well be significant, with the right approach taken to Twitter. For example, I found writers that saw the character limit as a challenge. They manage to write interesting little scenarios within the confines of only 140 characters, not an easy feat.

Beyond content quality, I found great potential uses for Twitter’s location awareness. For example, whenever I heard about metro outages, I would tweet about it on my iPhone. That way, other people could search for tweets happening near them, and could potentially benefit from my warning. Soon enough, the actual transport company started tweeting about outages themselves, allowing me to cease this activity. It can be taken further than this, though, if you consider disaster situations, where it can be used as a means of warning others of danger, not just inconveniences.

Thanks to the experiences above, I am now an active Twitter user, no longer simply exploiting the community’s size. Though sometimes users opt to use Twitter as an online journal, there are others that find creative alternatives. If you previously decided to avoid Twitter, I hope my words have motivated you to reconsider, as there is much value in the service they offer.

When I originally bought Windows Vista, I was really excited about the DreamScene feature. It allowed videos to be used as wallpapers in Windows, something that I had never seen before. To use it, you had to buy Windows Vista Ultimate, the most expensive edition. I was happy to do this, given that Windows was the foundation of all the work I did in my career. Unfortunately, the extras included with Ultimate weren’t really worth the extra money, in the end. I’m sure they had their applications, but they really didn’t enrich my life, personally. DreamScene, in particular, turned out to be a disappointment. It was an interesting idea, but I found that if I played a game, and returned to Windows, the video wallpaper would often be gone. This problem was enough to stop me from using it. As of Windows 7, they removed video support, though some people managed to get it working.

For those of you who are curious about having video wallpapers, I recently read that you can have VLC Media Player play a video directly to the Windows wallpaper. In case you never heard of it, VLC is a free, open-source media player that is available for most platforms. Though the interface is nothing special, it is the only media player I know that can play pretty much any file I throw at it, without me needing to manually download the proper codecs. I highly recommend it.

Once you have it installed, here’s how to get the video wallpaper working:

1. Considering backing up your existing wallpaper, just in case.
2. Launch VLC.
3. Click Tools > Preferences in the menu bar.
4. Click Video in the left sidebar.
5. In the Display section, you’ll find an Output field. It will most likely be set to “Default”. Change this value to “DirectX video output”.
6. Restart VLC.
7. Open a video file. In my case, I tried an .AVI, and Windows automatically switched to Windows 7 Basic. This is normal – when you close VLC, your previous theme will return.
8. Right-click the video output you’re seeing in VLC, and select Video > Direct-X Wallpaper.

You should now be seeing the video instead of your wallpaper. VLC will be looking fairly strange during this, so I suggest minimizing it. If that interrupts the video, you can try making the window as tiny as possible. Either way, the VLC window needs to remain open. It is powering your wallpaper, and is still useful for the video controls. When you’re finished, repeat Step 7, or simply close VLC.

I initially discovered this trick by reading a Lifehacker article: Set a Video as Your Wallpaper with VLC.

Soon after writing the first “Peculiar Ways of My Cat” post, I bought two seven foot cat towers. I figured the offering would be my best chance at preventing the critter from shredding the contents of my home. Though it wasn’t completely successful, it at least proved to be partially effective. At this point in time, the towers have taken quite a beating, and may not survive for much longer. Clawed nearly beyond recognition, they offer a mere glimpse at their earlier days. Too bad, considering I originally thought of placing the cat’s food bowl on the highest level. I figured it would be a good way to keep him in shape, while I would benefit from the entertainment. Having no easy way to secure the food dish up there, I decided against it, ultimately.

Besides the towers, I’ve taken steps to train him beyond his existing ability to follow a particular procedure whenever it is time to eat. As my next challenge, I’m teaching him to come to me at any time, not only when he’s hungry. To do this, I will discreetly pick up some treats, and call his name from a distance. If he approaches me, he gets a treat. Once he starts to understand that I have treats, I have to utilize the stop command – keeping him in place. Then, all I need to do is move across the apartment, and call him over.  If he starts moving before I call him over, he doesn’t get a treat, and the exercise starts all over again. So far, it is working well, but much more repetition is needed before I am ready to write another “Turning a Cat into a Dog” article.

The more I observe his behavior, the more I become aware of the intelligence he possesses. For example, he has learned to associate the squeal of my mother’s brakes with her arrival. The squeal itself is fairly subtle, but very often I will see him dart suddenly across the room. This usually means he heard the brakes, and wants to get to the balcony as fast as possible, to confirm that she has, in fact, arrived. Once he does, he will sometimes proceed to run back and forth across the length of the window, in excitement. If that’s not the behavior of a dog, I don’t know what is.

On the transportation side, there have been new developments. Originally, I would simply put him a fabric grocery bag, and hand him off to my mother, who would then bring him to her place by car. Once he arrives at my parents place, he had other cats to play with and/or terrorize, and that always brings good physical exercise.

Eventually, I had the idea of walking to my parents place with the cat in tow. Since they leave only 15 mins away on foot, this was a realistic possibility. To accomplish this, I wrapped the cat up in multiple fabric shopping bags, creating a very complex restraint with the bag handles. Only his head was out in the open, the rest of his body was completely wrapped in the bag, and tangled with the handles. My entanglement approach was designed to decrease the chance of him running away, should he to somehow get free while in transit. My plan worked well – I was able to walk to and from my parents place by simply carrying him with one arm. Despite being an indoor cat, he proved to be quite the professional urbanite, rarely getting nervous from what he was witnessing. The only signs of nervousness were perfectly understandable, for example: a loud bus drove by, relatively close.  All I had to do was use both arms in these moments, to calm him down and prevent him from moving. One day, I will look into getting some sort of an animal carrier, as it should make the whole process easier. During these adventures, the cat seems to enjoy being out of his limited indoor environment. Also, the reactions I get from random people are too priceless to pass up.

Despite the numerous graphical advancements introduced in Windows 7, the Command Prompt has remained largely unchanged. Yet, it has always remained a useful, lightweight tool for interacting with the file system. I remember using it often in Windows XP, which was really when I was getting serious about Computer Science. In fact, I looked for ways to improve the command prompt experience. I eventually discovered a power toy for Windows XP titled “Open Command Window Here”. When installed, it would add an extra option to the context menu, which simply said “Open Command Window Here”. It would typically be visible when you right-clicked a folder, and, once selected, would make a new Command Prompt window would appear. This new window would have current location automatically set to the folder you right-clicked. This was particularly useful when you want to access a folder that is deep in the folder structure, and were already seeing it in Windows Explorer.

Unlike Windows XP, Windows 7 ships with this feature; however, it isn’t immediately visible to the user. To access it, you have to hold SHIFT, and then right-click. This will make numerous additional options appear, among them, “Open Command Window Here” can be seen.

In general, I suggest experimenting with the SHIFT modifier – some of the “hidden” contextual options are very interesting.

When looking at search results in Google, you may have noticed a link titled “Cached” that appears alongside most results.

Here’s how Google explains the feature:

Google takes a snapshot of each page examined as it crawls the web and caches these as a back-up in case the original page is unavailable. If you click on the “Cached” link, you will see the web page as it looked when we indexed it. The cached content is the content Google uses to judge whether this page is a relevant match for your query.

Whenever I encounter a search result that isn’t loading when clicked, I try using the “Cached” link. As Google warns, it isn’t necessarily up to date, but it usually reveals what I need: the content that made the page a relevant search result. As great as this feature is, if you click on any of the links within the cached page, Google will automatically try to load the live version, not the cache. If you’re accessing the cache because the site is down, this will likely fail.

Fortunately, I recently read a post on Lifehacker that solves the above problem through the use of a user script called Google Cache Continue Redux. Once installed, it will make a button appear next to all links, when you’re viewing a cached page. This allows you to keep browsing in cached mode, if desired, making the cache feature all that more powerful.

To install the script within Google Chrome, simply visit the page and click “Install”. With Firefox, the same approach is possible; however, you first have to install the Greasemonkey plugin, and restart the browser. Opera supports user scripts as well, but the instructions are a bit longer, so I suggest looking at their documentation.

Ever find yourself missing the good old days of Internet Explorer 6? No? Well, me neither; however, if you want a mild chuckle, I suggest visiting this Internet Explorer 6 crash simulator:

Glad we don’t have to deal with that anymore.

If, by some chance, you are still using Internet Explorer 6, I highly suggest installing an updated version, or selecting any other major browser listed on this Wikipedia page.

As I was searching for tools to help me with my general writing process, I found one that was particularly interesting, and worth sharing. Write or Die is an application that uses negative reinforcement to keep you typing. As long as you continue writing, you’ll be fine… but if you stop, Write or Die starts to get aggressive. As a first step, it will start changing the background color of the window to red. As time passes, the red gets more intense. If you don’t keep typing, and you let it get totally demonic, you will face one of three possible punishments, depending on your settings. The mildest of these punishments involves a simple pop-up, reminding you to type. Not really significant, as you just click OK and you can continue. The mid-range punishment involves playing very annoying sounds, until you keep typing. This is the default setting, and while fairly effective, it isn’t my favorite. The harshest, and my favorite, is accurately called “Kamikaze mode”. It will cause your text to consume itself until you start typing again. By that, I mean it will start deleting words you’ve typed, starting from the end, working its way to the start. That’s just about as scary as you can get, without deleting the whole document.

I found this application intriguing enough that I paid 10$ for the desktop edition; however, you don’t have to do that. There is an online version of Write or Die, as seen in the screenshot above. To give it a try, visit the Write or Die homepage, and look for “Write or Die Online” on the right-hand side. Choose your settings, then click “Write!”. The 10$ desktop version runs on Adobe Air, and gives you much more flexibility when it comes to configuration.

It does have some bugs at the moment, but also introduces interesting ideas, like the ability to have a competitive “word war” against a friend. Essentially, this involves competing to meet a word count goal within a given time limit. Definitely the kind of creativity I want to support.

Long ago, Opera used to be my browser of choice. I eventually migrated to Firefox, and now Google Chrome. It was always obvious to me that some of Chrome’s features were highly influenced by Opera. Since Opera 11 was recently released with an intriguing new feature called “tab stacking”, I thought I’d go over how it works.

Consider this scenario:

I have five tabs open. Let’s assume I was working on a research project that somehow involved Beluga whales, sharks, and trout.  At the same time, the two remaining tabs have both my webpage, and my blog loaded. The underwater project has nothing to do with my personal website or blog, so I will use tab stacking to merge those three related tabs into one. To do this, all I need to do is drag the tabs onto each other.

So, once I’ve stacked those three tabs into one, here’s what I have:

The Shark tab is now surrounded by a gray border, and an arrow button can be seen on the right of it. If I want to see the tabs contained within the tab stack, I can either click on the arrow button, or double-click the Shark tab. When I do this, the tab stack expands, revealing its contents:

Once expanded, the tabs function exactly as one would expect. They are just logically grouped together, and can be collapsed again to gain space for other tabs. To collapse, simply either click on the arrow button, or double-click any tab within that stack.

When a stack is collapsed, it isn’t necessary to expand it to take a look at the contents. Even before tab stacking was created, Opera allowed users view a thumbnail of the tab contents just by hovering the mouse cursor over any tab. With tab stacking, they extended this feature, allowing users to hover over a stack, and see thumbnails of all tabs within.

Once those thumbnails are visible, you can click on any one of them to bring it into focus. It reminds of me of how the Windows 7 taskbar works, though it isn’t exactly the same.

If you’re wondering how CTRL+TAB will work in conjunction with this, don’t worry. Opera has a different approach when it comes to CTRL+TAB; it will actually bring up a list of tabs, and allow you to step through them. You will see a thumbnail as you’re doing this, facilitating the task. Let’s say the tab stack was collapsed, and the tab you were currently viewing was the Shark tab. When you CTRL+TAB to the Beluga tab, it will actually make Beluga the active tab, but will maintain the collapsed state of the tab stack.

So, all-in-all, I think this is a great step for a browser. If I were working on a desk with multiple sheets of paper, I’d certainly aim to organize them into stacks. The feature is therefore fairly intuitive, at least in concept. Still, I’m left wondering how much better the feature would be with intelligence, rather than relying on manual user actions. Is there a way it could automatically create stacks whenever it made sense? Internet Explorer 8 actually does something like that: If you launch tab B from clicking on a link found within tab A, it assumes tab A and tab B are related, and gives them the same color. What if that intelligence were combined with tab stacking?

Having worked with Valve’s Hammer Editor in the past, I recently decided to get back into the whole map-making vibe. Upon trying to launch the Hammer Editor from the Source SDK, I got hit with this error:

Strange. As you can see, I had the SDK configured like this:

Engine Version: The Orange Box

Current Game: Half-Life 2: Episode Two

I made sure my Half-Life 2 Episode Two download was complete before trying to open the Hammer Editor, so I was surprised when I encountered the warning. I immediately began to search for a solution online, and I found a few posts that recommended that I try running the “Refresh SDK Content” and “Reset Game Configurations” actions from the Source SDK Utilities menu:

Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me.

Solution

It turned out all I needed to do was load the game at least once – as this would trigger the creation of the configuration information file required by the SDK.

In my case, the file itself was located here:

C:Program FilesSteamsteamappsyour_username_herehalf-life 2 episode twoep2GameInfo.txt

After I ran the game, that file was generated automatically, and I never saw the warning again.

See Also

Forum post: GameInfo.txt is missing

When I use a browser, I typically focus on using keyboard shortcuts, rather than the user interface. Since I’ve been using Google Chrome so often, I thought I would reveal the shortcuts that I’ve been using. Most of these shortcuts should work in other browsers as well, whether natively, or through the use of extensions.

CTRL + T

Opens a new tab in the current window.

CTRL + SHIFT + T

Opens the most recently closed tab. Chrome will actually remember the last ten tabs you closed, and work its way back in time with repeated keypresses.

CTRL + W or CTRL + F4

Closes a tab in the current window. If you close the last remaining tab, the window will close as well.

CTRL + 1, CTRL + 2, CTRL + 3, etc

Allows you to switch to a specific tab within a given window. To better illustrate this, see the following image:

Pressing CTRL+1 will do nothing, because in the image I’m already on tab 1. Pressing CTRL+2 will switch to Wikipedia, and CTRL+3 will switch to Microsoft.

CTRL+9 is a special shortcut that will actually move you to the last tab, regardless of the number of tabs. In the example above, pressing CTRL+9 would bring me to tab 3.

CTRL + TAB

Switches to the next tab.

CTRL + SHIFT + TAB

Switches to the previous tab.

CTRL + N

Opens a new window.

CTRL + SHIFT + N

Opens a new incognito window. I use this shortcut whenever I access my e-mail from a shared computer, to help protect my account.

ALT + F4

Close the current window, regardless of how many tabs are open.

ALT + HOME

Loads your homepage in the current tab.

For a full list of shortcuts in Windows, see the Google Chrome Keyboard and mouse shortcuts page.