The Panther is coming! It will be here tomorrow. Looks like MacMall.com shipped it FedEx Priority Overnight! For only $10! Totally cool! I can't wait....

Oh yeah, my new keyboard is awesome! I love it. It's perfect. Macally iceKey. I found something to raise the front up and now it's perfect. It's really really white though... heh.

Jane has gone professional with her eBaying. Now she has custom HTML descriptions. Check it out here.

I got my new Macally iceKey Keyboard today. So far so good. It does have a strange blank key under the right-shift. I'm not sure why they did that. Seems like they should have made the space bar a bit wider and nixed that key. Maybe I can map it to some function.

So far the typing on it is awesome. The keys react very well. They have just the right spring to them and they sound really cool. This is the keyboard that is like a lap top keyboard. It has a really short travel. So you don't have to push as far to type a letter. Also the keys are very flat. This makes the whole keyboard very thin. Very low profile.

About the only problem that I have so far is that my wrist rest is too high. The front end of the keyboard is so low that I really have to reach down to get at it. When I take my wrist rest off the table it is better. But I don't have anything to rest on while typing. I don't know that I need a rest, but it's kinda cool to play with.

As you can tell, I'm just typing a bunch of stuff. This is kinda the testing point of my new keyboard. So far so good. I'll make another update to this tonight or tomorrow.

Anyway, I'm getting back to work.

Back to PNG's

A while ago I wrote about how MS IE does not do PNG's right. I even urged people to sign the petition to get MS to fix the problem. Microsoft isn't going to fix anything. They are perfectly content with having a broken browser and making life hard on 90% of the web developers on the planet.

Well, I've found a how to for displaying PNG's correctly in MS IE. You can find that page Here.

One thing I want to note that;
It turns out that most of the latest versions of the major browsers fully support alpha transparency with PNG-namely, Netscape 6, Opera 6, and recently-released Mozilla 1, all on Windows; and, for the Mac, Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 6, Opera 5, Mozilla 1, OmniWeb 3.1, and ICab 1.9. Incredibly, PNG even works on Opera 6 for Linux, on WebTV, and on Sega Dreamcast.
So the article tells how to display the PNG, then tells you;
And you're in business. Perfect alpha transparency. This code works great, with only the small drawback that it's not part of any accepted web standard, and no other browser on the planet understands it.
So by the end of the article you have a browser detect script that tries it's best to figure out what browser your using, then adds the stupid MS IE code if your using it and your on Windows. Adding a bunch of bloat to your code. Making it slower to load. Making my life hard.

I've got a better solution. Just use PNG's and if they don't display right in MS IE, tough. Tell the users to get a real browser. Oh, and tell them to stop using Windows. You will be saving them a lot of hair.

I ordered the Macally iceKey Keyboard. It has low profile keys using scissor action. It suppose to be really nice. I guess I'll find out when I get it. Right now anything is better than the new Apple keyboards being sold.

"Hell froze over." This is what it says on the front page of Apple Computers' web site. Introducing the new iTunes for MS Windows. I bet Jobs just cringes every time he looks at it. It just makes me sick.

I think I'm finally getting used to my 23" HD. Check out this screen shot of me working my butt off. See that I'm using every available inch of it. This is why a programmer needs a 23" screen. Any less just isn't usable for my type of work. I've got to be able to switch back and forth from different apps to get my job done efficiently. This is the setup that I'm used to, and the setup that I get the most work done.

Now back to work...

I was doing some spam analysis on BMG50 today. I have found that Spam Assassin is identifying 411.8 out of 756.6 emails a day as spam. That makes 54.4% of all email processed by BMG50's email server is confirmed spam. This does not include all the spam that actually gets through each day. I could add about 10 a day just for my personal account. Times that by 30 users and that makes 300 more per day. That would make it 94% of all email is SPAM.

I wish there was something I could do about SPAMMERS using almost 95% of my server resources.

Working with the Finder. My first step to moving away from the command line.

Normally I would load up Terminal to do all my work. Using 'cd' and 'rm' to take care of files. I used to 'cd' into my work directory and 'vim file.php' to edit a file. It was quick and easy. Mostly I was used to it.

I upgraded to the latest version of MacOS a few days ago to check it out. My favorite editor, VIM, does not work with Panther. I needed a new editor and quick. So I tried out a few like BBEdit and Text Wrangler. They would have problems saving work. I could not use them.

I then started using SubEthaEdit (Hydra). It does PHP highlighting and has good editing abilities. It saves files on the SMB mounts just fine. But, it does not have a CLI launcher. I could probably make one, but I decided to use the Finder.

The new Finder is ugly, but usable. It is a lot easier to mount network file systems for one thing. I have learned to drag the files I want to edit over to SubEthaEdit and up they pop ready for typing. I have also associated them to SubEthaEdit so I can just double click them. This is working out well. I use the column view to navigate to the folder I want and start working. Easy as pie.

I still need to be integrated with CVS. So the CLI is still around for that, but that's an end of day event for now.

Welcome to the Finder.

Went the the skate park today with my bike. It was fun. I haven't rode my bike in a long time. I guess I'll feel it tomorrow.

It's been cold here lately. Real cold. I guess winter is finally here. Time to light the pilot light on the heater....Maybe.

I still love my new Cinema HD, and I still need a new keyboard. I can wait until christmas though. I sure wish Apple made a fancy ergonomic keyboard. I really would not want to put a MS style on my system. I totally don't like MS, and I will not have anything MS on or near my system.

Well, I guess it's time for bed. I'm going to the gun show tomorrow with Johnny and Cyndie. That should be fun.