The Dancing Poodle

I just downloaded IE7 Beta 2, and initial impressions are pretty good. Call me superficial, but the installer was pretty nice. Yeah, it just installs the program, but it looks nice! Hey, these are important things!

IE7 requires a reboot before using, which is acceptable - especially with the amount of integration that IE has with Windows.  The new interface looks pretty slick, but my continual beef with Microsoft is their ability to avoid the fact that not everyone lives in the USA!  When I install Windows, I say I live in Australia, and it then by default gives me US dictionaries, US time zone, etc.  Now I’ve set all that up, and IE7 gives me by default US English as the default.  C’mon, Microsoft!  Why do we set all those preferences if you never USE them??

Gripe over.

The zoom feature on IE7 is pretty cool, and the tab bar seems pretty usable.  A really cool feature is the Quick Tabs button - how handy!  My only request would be a setting to allow the current state of the browser to be remembered when it’s closed - similar to Firefox’s SessionSaver plugin.  Oh, a decent developer bar would be nice too, but then again, it’s IE.

I’ve been listening to The Best Damn Tech Show, Period recently, a group of guys sitting around talking about the latest and greatest in technolgy and other nerdy stuff.

Subscribe to the podcast here.

I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.0, and now they go and release WordPress 2.0.1. Time for another upgrade…

Found something interesting this morning on IE 7.  I was complaining they didn’t include something akin Firefox’s SessionSaver plugin.  Well, turns out I was wrong.  Upon session restart, just right-click in the tab row (above the main window) and choose ‘Restore Last Tab Group’.  Cool!  Possibly even better than Firefox, it allows the choice of restoring the last session or not.

Not that I’m saying that IE7 is better than Firefox.  They just got a couple of features right.

(Obviously they copied Firefox - don’t flame me…)

8P

I’ve uploaded an installer for Preach It! (v1.3), software designed for recording church sermons and converting to MP3, for the purposes of podcasting and archiving. Samples of the output of this program can be found here, or subscribe using iTunes using this link.

The file is available from the project’s SourceForge page, and is a Click-Once deployment. Should work fine, but seems to need the full DirectX SDK installed to work correctly. Not sure why - if anyone has any clues, please let me know. There’s a few software changes I want to do before I put source code up, but it shouldn’t be too far away.

Windows Defender is the name Microsoft have given their updated Anti Spyware package, and it’s available for free download.

Funny about the name - I seem to recall a story not so long ago about an Aussie guy (I think) who had written a program called Windows Defender, and was approached by Microsoft warning him off the use of the name, “not that we have any immediate plans for that name…”

Anyway, despite the naming issue, the software seems pretty good at first glance…

If a buck can be made, someone will try. On the Encyclopedia Obscura site, there’s a reference to Dr. Evil’s Bag of Shhh. I’ll let them explain…

“Remember the scene in Austin Powers when Dr. Evil tells his son that he’s got a bag full of shhh? Well, guess what, now you can own one too! If you squeeze this bag, it will - you got it - say shhh!

. . .

Who the hell thought this was a good idea?! It can’t possibly entertain anyone for more than ninety seconds, and if word gets out you’ve bought crap like this, even your own mother will disown you. This is the kind of thing your thirteen years old cousin buys for himself, gets bored with, and then gives to you when Christmas comes around.”

Just realised that last Wednesday marked the first anniversary of The Dancing Poodle blog! Three hundred and seventy three days and 115 posts later, I think I still only have three regular readers (Hi to Glenn, Sim’ and Hannah). Oh well, it keeps me sane. That, and the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes…

Here goes another year…

Sourceforge have just made an announcement that Subversion is now available for all projects. More details here…

Version 2.0 of Preach It! has been uploaded to the project page on Sourceforge.  Also, the source code has been uploaded to Sourceforge’s Subversion system.  Next job is to create a web site for the project and start advertising…