Personal

At my day job, I spend a good deal of time working with virtual machines, whether with Virtual PC 2007, Virtual Server 2005, or Hyper-V. All three seem to work fairly well when I’m logged into my machine locally. However, when I use Remote Desktop to connect to my work machine from home, I recently noticed that my Virtual PC machines suffered from some serious mouse lag. Moving the mouse would make the cursor teleport, rather than smoothly moving across the Virtual PC desktop. The faster I tried to move the mouse, the worse the effect became. Hyper-V  had no such problems, so I began to wonder if I could do anything to solve the stuttering. Solution Thanks to a forum post, … Read more

As a guy who makes a good number of online purchases, I’ve grown familiar with the concept of coupon codes. Like their physical equivalents, coupon codes can be applied while checking out of certain stores, allowing customers to benefit from reduced prices. Unfortunately, online coupons are similar to physical coupons in that you must know about them to exploit their benefits. Thankfully, I discovered a solution to that a few years ago, greatly increasing my ability to take advantage of these coupons. Meet RetailMeNot, a site that encourages users to share coupon codes with the world. In the past, I was rarely able to partake in the coupon code mechanisms offered by retailers. RetailMeNot changed the game by introducing the … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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 … Read more

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.

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 … Read more

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 … Read more