May 2007 Archives

So Microsoft calls its powertools 'powertoys', but they're tools nonetheless. Toys? Some marketing genius needs to be fired.

The biggest question in my mind is, of course, why in the name of all that is geeky aren't all these tools installed by default in Windows XP? Seriously. It would make life so much easier on the poor, already bedraggled Windows user.

Here's a link: XP Powertoys

Not everything there is particularly useful, but most of them really are. The ClearType Tuner is an absolute must-have for absolutely everyone that has Windows XP. I can't understand why it's not part of the basic installation. The alt-tab task-switcher replacement is exponentially better than the original and much friendlier to use.

There's a few other neato utilities, like the image-resizer and RAW viewer, that are must-haves for power users, and wouldn't hurt to have available to the casual monkey.

The neatest tool here, though, has to be the desktop manager.

Now, it must be said that a desktop manager is not for everybody and it takes some getting used to. Linux users have had it since the dawn of time, and Apple users will soon have one that (from what I've heard) doesn't suck (but Apple users don't miss it thanks to that wonderful 'hide' functionality). Windows users haven't really had an integrated solution for this until now, and it's actually not half bad. Download it, install it, and remember to activate it by going to your 'toolbars' option (right-click on the taskbar) and activating the "Desktop Manager" toolbar. For those of you scratching your heads, what it does is effectively give you 4 virtual desktops. You can have different application open on each desktop, so you might have Photoshop on one, email on the other, and coding on another.

But what does it all mean, Basil? Easy: you can group your tasks into different desktops. Again, the concept isn't particularly difficult, but it'll take some getting used to for the neophyte. Especially by the hard-core uber-indoctrinated Windows crowd. It's pretty well-implemented though, and seems stable enough, so I say go grab it.

Some of the tools are more useful than others, and some are very specific (like the RAW tool for photographers)... but why not include them all? It seems silly to leave some of these out in favor of the plain-vanilla crap that ships with XP. Meh.

Robot Chicken has it's moments. Not a heckuva lot of them, mind you, but the Voltron/You Got Served sketch is frakin' hilarious. And "Lemmings: Nature's Retard". Gitterdun.

At the risk of sounding exceptionally geeky... and I mean exceptionally even by geek standards... the Star Ship Enterprise show is surprisingly good.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a Star Wars guy (if it comes down to one or the other, of course). Star Trek has some entertainment value, if only to watch William Shatner's career-defining moments with green-skinned hotties and sending off red-shirted guys to their doom. In general though, it's written pretty badly. Star Trek Enterprise, though, seems to have all the same great entertainment (except for, you know, Bill Shatner), and the story is significantly better. Couple this with the Sci-Fi Channel's marathon mondays of STE, and I can tell you that from 7pm on, I'm very much into it.

It's pretty amusing, though, how they continuously recycle plot elements. Right now, for example, they've traveled through time (a plot cycle that has been used, and reused, and reused, and reused even by the original series) to - you guessed it - World War Two. Once again, serious recyclage. It's engaging though; I recommend giving it a shot.

Day two of my new job with Motorola has begun with a bang. A sloppy wet bang. The Jeep, which I've slowly started to despise, is literally just a bathtub on wheels. Driving to work shouldn't require goggles and a snorkel. I've put serious consideration into wearing swim trunks to work. Or drilling extra drains into the floorboards (which should help a bit.)

So I get to work, moistened to the core and ready to roll out a fancy shmancy website in high style. Not bad.

Motorola is pretty intense place - the campus is huge. There's cafeterias, gyms, clowns, daycare centers. It's like some crazy anime floating city. Color me impressed. Moto's marketing is pervasive; the hallways have lots of Motorola posters, there's full-on displays with old technology, new technology, up-and-coming technology. It really is pretty darned sweet. There's even production lines. For some reason, that makes me smile inside.

Don't get me wrong - it's still a cubicle city. But interestingly enough, it's not as bad as all that. And the WIG (Web Intelligence Group) gets the mad flava: we share one really enormous cubicle, a desk at each corner. The 4 corners of creativity, that's us.

Just like any place this big, the bureaucracy is a little cumbersome - I'm still waiting on my ID and badge, my workstation's still being imaged, etc. Still, it's not too bad, and in the meantime I get it done on the flaptop. The workstation's a beast though, so I'm looking forward to pushing that around.

Gotta get me some coffee. I wonder which corner of this million (yes, million) square foot facility dispenses the caffeine?

Everyone's a freakin' poet. No training, no studying, no background. There's no structure, no timing, no rhyming, no reason.

Just a bunch of words and sentences spaced dramatically. I might be wrong (it's been a while), but I believe that's called 'prose'.

But everyone's a poet. I'm a poet. I like the sound of that. It sounds artsy, and people can dig artsy. Maybe it'll get me laid, or make me some new friends. And the best thing is that you don't even have to show any work to still be a 'poet.' And if you do, it doesn't have to be good. Because most people (most people) couldn't tell good poetry from the menu at Denny's (which, by the way, is poetic in its own special way). I could scribble a bunch of lines on napkins or take-out menus and stuff it all in my back pocket, or carry around a notebook where I write observations (the sky... is blue today...) and say "Hey. What's up. I'm a poet. Check out my sweet, sweet poems."

"I'm a poet", a poetrist, the vocal stylist who puts words together in his/her own way and wants to sell you on their poetic identity. Maybe they want attention, maybe they really do love their art. No, not me personally, but I know plenty of people who do. Want attention. And love their art. And say they're poets. Sometimes it's a combination platter with extra cheese.

I don't know if I could do it... don't know if I could resist the urge to laugh. Especially if I ran across someone who read one of these seemingly poetic observations and said "Hey, yeah, that's really cool... you're really talented!" When they're actually thinking "Okaaaay... what's the point?"

What a line of crap all that is. If you want to take a dump in the woods and call it art, do it. I know plenty of people that do exactly that (and it smells terrible.) There's a great sales/business adage that says: "What's a nuclear submarine worth? Whatever someone will pay for it."

Definitions and structure lose their value in an ever-evolving field. I might go so far as to say art (and all its cousins) would be considered ever-evolving. Unless you're a creationist. Then you're just screwed.