Introduction About Site Map

XML
RSS 2 Feed RSS 2 Feed
Navigation

Main Page | Blog Index

Archive for December, 2005

Merry Christmas (or ‘Other’)

Christmas tree

I tried not to offend anyone by choosing banners that make no direct mentioning of Christmas, only implicit (see below). Today, however, is the day for those of us who celebrate Christmas. Some will be enjoying the sweetest day of all, yet often it is also among the most boring days. Different stokes for different folks.

More holiday greetings:

Virtual Desktops & Dual-Head

3-D Desktop
A 3-D visualisation of virtual desktops
switching under 3-D Desktop (click image above for homepage)

VIRTUAL desktops are means of extending one’s workspace. Given the finite size of a monitor, one wonders if that size also imposes strict limits on the (in)visible window environment. Well, it does not. It is possible to treat the monitor as just a rectagular box or a a ‘sliding window’, which metaphrically glances at something much larger. It enables the user to view smaller segments of the whole at any one time. Most commonly, the user would watch only a quarter of the workspace at any one time.

Virtual desktop environments have been available for a long time to Linux user. They will also be officially introduced in Windows Vista, having encountered third-party software that achieved this in the past. Apple Macs have commercial add-ons that achieve the same thing — presenting the users with a pager to control multiple virtual desktops.

The Pager is a small widget which enables the user to select which segment of the screen should be viewed. More specifically, it enables switching from one virtual desktop to another. It often reflects on the content in all virtual desktops. In KDE, for example, the pager contains a schematic of active windows and their positions. In GNOME, it appears to even embed application icons. I used the Pager with virtual desktops about 4 years ago, but not excessively. I needed them when doing some programming jobs, but wasn’t competent with the corresponding CTRL+[1-4] shortcuts, which make the transition between one desktop to another very smooth and rapid.

On to page 2

Artistic Bug

THIS not truly a bug, but rather an interesting occurrence, which has come up purely by coincidence. KasBar (part of KDE) gets snapshots of applications every 30 seconds by default. By doing so, it can display previews in a pseudo-taskbar that is visually rich. It gives a rough sketch of applications instead of text.

Earlier on today, I happened to hover over KasBar; subsequently I went away for a few minutes to prepare lunch. Here is what I saw when I came back. The preview had that ‘infinite mirror’ or picture-within-picture effect. Amusing or interesting at the least, no?

CD's pile
A screenshot was automatically grabbed in
my absence to produce some arbitrary ‘art’

MySQL Beats Commercial Database Software

CD's pile
More bad news to commercial software

LAST week I decided to explore performance issues with MySQL, which is a ubiquitous system over a large specrum of Web sites. In particular, I wanted to look at comparisons and benchmarks involving PostgreSQL, which is yet another FOSS database system. I came up with the following two links, which indicate that a comparison would be hard to conduct and assess:

Then, just a short while ago, I came to discover an even wider-scape benchmark. It suggests that MySQL is superior to databases from Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Without a doubt, applications that are based on LAMP technology gain tremendous strength and popularity. They have become mainstream, as a matter of fact, and WordPress is a model example.

Let us wait for a heavily-invested FUD campaign is launched to avoid deterrence among companies that use commercial databases. My Steve Ballmer/FUD comes to mind.

As a side note, what worries me most is MySQL’s partnership with SCO, who are of course a sworn enemy of Linux.

Keyboard Navigation in Search Engines

Shortcut keysOne of the commonest Web activities involves information discovery and fetching using search engines. It is worthwhile to adopt habits that make that activity a more efficient and productive one. For example, the user can be delivered 100 results per page (in Google at the least). When using GoogleBar, the plug-ins can be configured to get 50 results by default. This is valuable to users on a fast connections.

I am sometimes surprised, on the other hand, by the lacking support for efficient keyboard navigation. Neither Google nor Yahoo use accesskeys in the results page. It always bogs down to having to scroll down (or go to the top of the page) and then aim at the fine numbers to skip to the next page.This is laborious if there are many pages to browse through. Some arrow-shaped buttons exist for that reason in various toolbars, but no keyboard accelerators are bound to them. Moreover, they only accommodate the more basic functions.

I am aware that my request is a ‘power user’ feature, but why not incorporate some keyboard shortcuts (accesskey) to make SERP navigation quicker? It is very simple to implement and it adds just a few bytes to the page. Size-wise, it is affordable even if the large majority of users take no advantage of it.

Related items:

The Era of Bundled Open Source

Firefox in the dock
Milestone reached: Firefox to be pre-installed rather than downloaded

EARLIER this week I mentioned Blake Ross; The context: the demise of the Windows brand name. Apart from this thought-inspiring quote from Blake, I now come to discover that Hewlett-Packard began bundling Netscape. More recently it was confirmed that Dell pre-install Firefox in the UK.

Next milstone: OpenOffice bundling with all desktops and laptops. This would enable users to work on documents and spreadsheets ‘out of the box’.

Decade of Exercise

Roy as a baby
I looked rather different back in 1984

ONE major aspects of my life is exercise — weight training in particular. On pretty much this date, precisely 10 years ago, I began to work out. The road has been long and I now reap the benefits. Today is by all means a personal milestone.

Christmas appears to be the time of many resolutions and changes for me. It was around this time (22nd/23rd of December) in 2001 that I joined the health club, which I have cherished ever since. It was only yesterday that I decided to take the WordPress forums more seriously as well, especially because of the upcoming release of WordPress 2.0 (probably this Monday).

All in all, this time of the year, only a few days before Christmas, has special magic for these peculiar reason. These days of significance, namely those that go back to December 1995, still are and will always retain a sentimental value. As I have worked out regularly ever since (i.e. no breaks) this also symbolises the time when I got ‘shackled’ for good. Yes, for good, for the better.

Retrieval statistics: 18 queries taking a total of 0.189 seconds • Please report low bandwidth using the feedback form
Original styles created by Ian Main (all acknowledgements) • PHP scripts and styles later modified by Roy Schestowitz • Help yourself to a GPL'd copy
|— Proudly powered by W o r d P r e s s — based on a heavily-hacked version 1.2.1 (Mingus) installation —|