Archive for March, 2007

I have posted a new photo album detailing the ruins of the Eno River pump station. It was used from 1887 to 1927 to supply drinking water to the city of Durham. Amazingly, after only 80 years, the ruins have been all but forgotten, as the forest has swallowed it up completely. I highly recommend visiting this site in Eno River State Park; it is well worth the trip.

Another photo album will also be appearing in the next day or so, showcasing some of the other things to be seen along the Pump Station trail.

A story over at Slashdot reminded me that the trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV was recently released. I took a look at it, and I have to say that I’m glad to see a substantial graphics improvement. I own all of the major GTA games (GTA III, GTA: San Andreas, and GTA: Vice City). All three games were great fun, but the game’s graphics always seemed to be “dumbed down,” no doubt to support the console systems they were ported to. Sandbox games like GTA have always appealed to me. Hopefully GTA IV will continue the fun and open-ended play while improving the look and feel. It’s certainly a title I will keep my eye on.

I stumbled across a story today at Digg that blew my mind. Scientists have discovered a method for moving fluid using nothing but a beam of light (a laser, to be specific). The attached photo in the story demonstrates the effect in a soapy liquid mixture. Even though the picture was taken at 50 micro-meters, the resulting effect is quite astonishing.

A new photo album has just been posted. This past weekend, my dad and I went out to the Eno River to hike one of their many trails. Signs of spring were all around, and I captured a few of them with my camera. Comments on this photo album are welcome.

Update: I have renamed this photo album to “Dunnagan’s Trail on the Eno.” I think that name fits a little better, especially given the nature of some of the photographs.

One “feature” of Windows XP is the built-in support of what Microsoft likes to call “compressed folders.” But nothing new was introduced here; the zip file format is all that’s being used. When I first learned of this feature, I was fairly excited to see that Microsoft was actually trying to make life easier. No longer would I need a zip tool like WinZip to do my extractions. Instead, I would just use the features in Windows Explorer to do my compressing and uncompressing as needed.

That was an idealistic view if there ever was one, and I’m not too surprised to say that it was grossly mistaken. The zip support offered in Windows XP is utterly horrible. My work place is fairly strict about not having shareware applications installed on our personal workstations, so WinZip isn’t an option for me. As a result, I’m relegated to using the native support offered by Windows. What I’d like to know is this: what the heck are they doing when unzipping a file? We package stuff up in zip files all the time around here (since we often have tons of source code files to deal with), and unextracting them through Windows literally takes 5 to 7 minutes. Literally! WinZip could chew through these files in less than 30 seconds (I know, because I’ve tried it at home). Is the Windows stuff just horribly inefficient? Are they doing more complex file system stuff than WinZip? Whatever it is, it makes file extraction very slow.

I use the Cygwin package all the time at work, and so I occasionally use their command line zip utility. It’s way faster than what Windows provides, but it has the occasional problems with file ownership, which is why I use it sparingly. For instance, I’ve encountered the case where I extracted a zip file using the Cygwin tools, then tried to open a subsequent file for viewing. Windows then tells me that “I don’t have the authority to open that file.” I’m the freaking administrator of the machine! I should be able to do whatever I want, right?

If anyone has tips on how to improve things in the “compressed folder” world, I’d be glad to hear them.

Ever have the experience where something that you were sure was right turned out to be wrong? Last night, while browsing the web for some new jazz fusion albums, I happened to read the Mahavishnu Orchestra article over at Wikipedia (MO is one of my favorite jazz fusion groups). I have always assumed that Jean-Luc Ponty was the violin player in the classic line-up of the Mahavishnu Orchestra (the line-up that I prefer; the later incarnation of MO isn’t nearly as good, in my opinion). This assumption led me to buy a number of Mr. Ponty’s albums, all of which I thoroughly enjoy.

It turns out, however, that Jerry Goodman was the violinist in the original line-up! Jean-Luc was the violinist in the later line-up (ironically, the one that I dislike). All this time I’ve been mistakenly attributing the awesome musicianship in the group’s first albums to Jean-Luc Ponty (that being said, Jean-Luc is an awesome musician). Needless to say, my mind was blown at how wrong I was. I’m really surprised that I have lived under this illusion for so long.

Several videos of the band are on YouTube, strangely enough (the original line-up was only together for a few years in the 1970s). The audio in the videos isn’t the greatest, but it’s definitely cool to see the guys in action (Billy Cobham on drums is phenomenal). Here are a few links for your enjoyment:

• You Know You Know
• One Word (one of my personal favorites)
• Resolution

The next version of CoLT is under development, and more importantly, nearly complete. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, below is a screenshot of what I’ve put most of my effort into:

As you can see, CoLT 2.3 will allow users to have as many custom formats for the “Copy Both Link Text and Location” action. This should make many people happy, based on the number of requests I’ve gotten for this feature. One other improvement is the ability to have menu separators in the “Copy Both” popup menu. That should make things a little nicer on an organizational level.

This new system for custom formats also provides one other benefit. When only one custom format is available, I now show a single menu item in the context menu, rather than the standard sub-menu. A number of people apparently only use one custom format choice today, and they dislike the fact that the one item lives in a sub-menu (they would rather it live one level up). CoLT 2.3 will bring this wanted feature to reality.

There are a few things I still need to polish up before I send it to the translators to be translated (the final step before a release). First, I need to figure out how (or even if) the old custom format data will be migrated to this new system. Second, there is a strange XUL bug lurking in the listbox element that I’m using. When no child elements appear in the box initially, and a new child is added, the box is resized vertically, subsequently pushing the OK and Cancel buttons in the dialog box out of view. This makes those buttons inaccessible, which is clearly a bad thing. Granted, this is an edge case, but it needs to be handled somehow.

Stay tuned for further updates on this new version. I’m excited about this release, as it should please a number of people who have been patiently waiting for these new features.