August - 2005

Archive for August, 2005

This and that

Friday, 26 August 2005

Some random things:

The FishCam has been working very well. I would have expected the connection to drop intermittently (after all I am using a freeware cam app,) but it hasn’t. The cam keeps snapping shots, the fish keeps swimming.

I’ve found that my i3 is much easier to read at night compared to daytime. The night mode color scheme is also very cool. I have the i3 set to automatically change from day mode to night mode at sunset. However, even with the easier read, I seriously doubt this will increase my night driving because I don’t like driving at night to begin with (blue eyes = greater light sensitivity = headlights from other cars look like oncoming beacons of doom).

The silver coating on my Dell Inspiron 6000 is wearing out on the left side under the keyboard and somewhat on the right side now as well - the places where my wrists rest. I looked to see if Dell offered anything that would cover those areas, but all they offer are cheesy snap-on kits for the back of the LCD only. I will probably have to invest in a sticker or two.

Actually, fuggit… I’m going to go out to Wal-Mart and buy some right now. Hopefully they’ll have something cool. So much for not driving at night. ;-)

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New tunes, sorta

Sunday, 28 August 2005

Added some new tunes to the music page from the archives.

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StreetPilot i3 cheers and jeers

Wednesday, 31 August 2005

Now that I’ve used my i3 for a little while, I’ve got a few more things to say about it.

Cheer: The mounting bracket does keep the unit put.

Jeer: I wish it was a shock-style mount to accommodate for bumps in the road because it shakes like crazy over less-than-perfect terrain - but then again I do have it mounted on the dashboard. Were it on the windshield I probably wouldn’t have that issue.

Cheer: Auto day/night color scheme is really trick. When the sun goes down it changes automatically. Very nice.

Jeer: Night colors are ugly, but very readable. I can just imagine the Garmin researchers scratching their heads when they were developing this. Should roads be orange.. or yellow? I dunno, man, flip a coin.

Cheer: I like the fact it states how fast you’re going.

Jeer: This feature is only available when the unit is not in Navigation mode, which sucks (it switches to “arrival” time). I wish that the two fields at the bottom left and right corner could be programmed to display what you want it to display. The Rino 130 has this in abundance (with four fields mind you…) why doesn’t the i3?

Cheer: Zoom in/out feature is absolutely 100% cool.

Jeer: Adjusting that while driving = bad idea. Yes, I know - the unit states up front to not adjust settings while driving, but you know… we’re all gonna do it anyway - right before we smack into somebody else’s car (insert sheepish grin here).

Cheer: Controls are easy.

Jeer: Some menu functions you have to dig for, but not many.

Cheer: “Avoid highways” really works.

Jeer: None. It works.

(Note: Haven’t tried “Avoid Tolls” yet, but will do that probably before the end of this month)

Cheer: Priced right at $400.00

Jeer: Feels like I paid too much, considering the Rino 130 has a ton more features in it and is much less in price. Then again, it is one of the lowest-priced mobile specific GPS’s out there and the construction is Garmin standard (meaning very sturdy). I’m pretty sure the i3 will dramatically drop in price once more people start buying them.

Cheer: Being able to pick places by category is very cool (like Parks, Shopping and so on)

Jeer: None. Works and it’s accurate.

Cheer: Gets signal easily.

Jeer: Sometimes has issues with a signal during inclement weather only on startup, but then again, all GPS units have this problem when trying to punch a signal through a storm cloud, so no biggie.

That’s pretty much it. If there’s any more to it I’ll be sure to write about it.

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Quick! Everyone switch to Google Talk!

Wednesday, 31 August 2005

Did you know Google has an instant messenger? Yep. Go git it. Use it.

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Bring back Earl the Cat!

Wednesday, 31 August 2005

I reloaded the old IBM StinkPad 390 with Windows 95. Why ‘95? Because I think ‘98 sucks. Anyway. I had a really old copy of Microsoft Office 97 “Small Business Edition” lying around (which came with bundled with my Compaq Deskpro 6000 back when it was new). I remembered that you could go download (and still can) different “assistants” directly from Microsoft’s download center. So I downloaded all the ones I could find just to check them out.

MS Office’s help section sure used to be a lot more entertaining.

Assistants that came with MS Office 97

We all remember this guy - and we all remember hating him.

I never liked this one too much, but it was better than the paperclip.

I liked this one. The Genius wasn’t as intrusive as the other characters.

Mother Nature is an artsy-fartsy character therefore I never liked it.

This is the one I remember most people using. He’s very “cartoony” and it’s neat that he’s a superhero.

Good ol’ MS Office logo. Boring.

Will had bad drawing, very few animations and wasn’t entertaining at all.

Assistants that were only available by download

F1 also made a later appearance in other versions of Office. Cute at first, but downright freaky looking with that “Return to Oz” animation style.

I’m pretty sure this one was an extra download that didn’t come with Office. Either way, Hoverbot sucks. Boring and uninspired animations with annoying sound effects.

A lot of people didn’t believe me when I would tell them Yes, there is a dolphin character for Office until they actually saw it. Kairu is one of the best characters ever made for Office - no doubt about it. Friendly, fishy and fun.

If you thought the first MS Office Logo was boring, this one doesn’t move at all! It was created in response to Office 97 users who wanted a character that didn’t move - period. Easy enough to create, I guess.

Another artsy-fartsy character - yeech. This cat was replaced by another cat “Links” in Office 2000.

Okay - the best for last: Earl the Cat.

This character seemed to come right out of left field as far as the design department was concerned. Earl was downright hilarious. Sound effects were awesome, animations were extremely good for 256 colors and you really wanted to watch this guy.

Here’s a few more stills I captured of Earl.

Microsoft has since completely abandoned all help characters in favor of a more traditional help system in the latest version of MS Office. Granted, it’s more useful, streamlined and whatever - but I really do miss these characters sometimes. I mean, sure, those chracters didn’t improve productivity whatsoever, but I think that’s the whole point. Sometimes you need the fun counterproductive stuff.

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