Mike Cohen

Getting disgusted with Parallels

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I’ve been using Parallels Desktop since the first public release. Although their Windows support gets better with each release – I love coherence mode in the recent betas, their Linux support remains abysmal. They still don’t have Parallels Tools for Linux, which keeps the virtual machine’s clock synchronized and lets you move the mouse in and out of the VM window freely. Furthermore, when you create a Linux VM, they don’t even have an option for Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution. Instead I have to use either Debian or Other Linux.

I tried the VMWare beta and found that it works beautifully for Linux. They even have VMWare tools for Linux. Unfortunately there’s no coherence mode, so it isn’t as nice for running Windows.

R.I.P. Stitch

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Stitch

Originally uploaded by mike3k.

My friend’s puppy ran out of her apartment and got hit by a car around 8PM tonight. He died immediately. Everyone loved him and we’re all in shock.

Spam filtering tip

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I’ve noticed that more than two thirds of the spam I receive contains a Thread-Index header beginning with the characters Aca6. Filtering on that header can eliminate much of my spam. Since I use Procmail on my DreamHost mailbox, I added the following rule and found that it got rid of most of my spam with no false positives:

:0
* ^Thread-Index:.*Aca.*$
/dev/null

Get rid of dialog boxes

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Coding Horror notes that most users simply ignore dialog boxes and simply dismiss them without actually reading them or understanding what they mean.

This is a result of the overuse of dialog boxes. According to the original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, a dialog box should only be used for an exceptional condition that requires immediate user action. Over time this rule was ignored and most software now puts up a dialog box for every little thing and in most cases it’s inappropriate.

Users become desensitized to dialog boxes since they appear so often and simply dismiss them immediately. Windows Vista has made the situation worse with the frequent security confirmation boxes. After a short time, users simply keep pressing ‘accept’ without understanding the situation.

Sheets in Mac OS X are a step in the right direction, since they appear in the window they apply to and are related to the user’s current activity, such as printing or saving the document.

As the article points out, software updates are a prime area where alerts can be eliminated. The user shouldn’t be prompted for important security upgrades; they should simply be downloaded in the background. If a reboot is necessary, they should simply display an icon in the menu bar to notify the user. Most operating systems have such an option. It should be made the default, since that’s the best option for unsophisticated users. More advanced users can change it.

Now with AJAX goodness

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I’ve added a few new features to MacMegasite to bring more AJAX yumminess and make it more social. Blocks and menus are now collapsable and buddy lists are supported. It can also notify Twitter when content is posted.

GTD software that doesn't suck

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Today I decided to take the plunge and look for a good GTD application. If I’m going to use it, it has to be convenient and easy to use, or I won’t bother with it. The first one I tried was Ghost Action, since I saw the announcement for it today. It looked really nice, but I decided to check out a few freeware applications. I also hoped I could find something that’s available via a hot key or menu extra rather than having another application in my dock, but I couldn’t find one like that.

Next I tried Thinking Rock, which I immediately hated because of it’s non-native feel (since it’s written in Java) and the huge window that takes up the entire screen. I then tried Frictionless, which looked nice at first but I found it buggy and too confusing with all of the different windows. It took me several minutes to figure out how to create a project, since it was completely non-intuitive.

I finally went back to Ghost Action and decided to stick with it, since it’s the easiest one to use and the most Mac-like. I also like that it syncs with iCal and will sync between my iMac and MacBook Pro.

MacMegasite Upgraded to 5.1

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I upgraded MacMegasite to Drupal 5.1. The upgrade was fairly painless except for the RSS feed redirections to Feedburner, which I had to fix in my .htaccess and make a few small changes to the node module.