http://www.realbt.com/content the (un)real, often nerdy, sometimes insightful thoughts of Brett A. Taylor Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:54:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en While everyone is busy talking about getting the new 3G iPhone, I'm happy to stick with my 4 year old off-contract Audiovox cell phone with no data plan. This is largely because I barely pay $30 per month for it including more minutes than I ever consume. On the other ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/cell-phone-usability/ I have complained before about Acrobat Reader's poor usability. Tonight, I want to point out another flaw in the way Acrobat deals with PDF links from within a web browser. For example, if you search Google and find a PDF link, click on it, and Acrobat opens as an embedded window ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/acrobat-reader-browser-plug-in/ I think I've written about this before. But I'm going to do it again with a different spin. Why are traditional media web sites (CTV, CNN, the Globe and Mail, Canada.com, etc.) always the worst? They are quite possibly the most poorly thought out, the least accessible, and the most annoying ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/traditional-media-web-sites-are-always-the-worst/ I find the reply flag on email in Outlook only somewhat useful. But regardless, it would still be nice if it was consistent. When using Outlook Web Access (OWA) to connect to the Exchange server at work, the reply flag on an email is set immediately after I click the 'reply' ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/inconsistent-reply-flag-in-outlook/ Do you use Adobe Acrobat Reader on Windows? Note this doesn't seem to be the case with Acroread on Linux; I can't speak for it on Mac OS. In any case, the Hand Tool, which is the default selected mouse tool when you launch Acrobat, serves two uses regrettably. First, it ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/adobe-acrobat-zoom-annoys-me/ After running into problems (and quite frankly, being too lazy to fix them) running my old 3dfx Voodoo3 with TV-out to my TV, I decided to look for a device that would play the movies and TV shows that I had on my computer on my TV without a whole ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/hauppage-mediamvp/ I have a problem. I believe that AI algorithms for predicting my behaviour within user interfaces (specifically for my interaction with the interface: think resizing windows, positioning on screen, tab selection, etc.) are usually quite dumb. Maybe that's because they aren't really AI routines to begin with, but dumb rudimentary logic ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/ai-and-ui/ The assert method is a very useful debugging macro for C/C++. It's great when developing code that other people will be using and extending, to ensure that someone doesn't do something unintentional. In cases like this, a useful assert(0) will spew an error and abort the instance of the application. ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/c-assertions/ Cracks me up. In other news, my heatsink fell of my cpu/motherboard on my new computer today. That is definitely not a good thing. http://www.realbt.com/content/post/unix-commands-can-be-funny/ After four years of the same old Athlon 1 GHz, I finally have some new hardware. It's quite fun not to have to wait for anything to load. I'm not going to a big nerd and go on about the specs, however, I do want to write a bit about ... http://www.realbt.com/content/post/new-hardware/