Microsoft Milan coffee table
June 2nd, 2007This is pretty cool product, and it comes from M$…that’s something new!? Anyway, the technology is nothing new (I wrote a post about Jeff Han’s presentation on similar technology last year: link) but it seems to be very well executed.
Price is something around $10,000 so it’s not for every home yet. But I would think (hope) that this type of solutions will become affordable for consumers because the technology itself is not that expensive. For a long time I’ve been thinking about embedding a screen into my living room’s coffee table. I just haven’t yet figured out how to build the interface (keyboard and mouse is not an option).
Here’s a clip from DL.TV (one of my favorite shows):
Windows Live Writer
May 26th, 2007Just found this application from Microsoft. Now, I’m not really a fan of M$ but this app is working very well. It’s easy to use and has some cool features. Basically WLW (Windows Live Writer) is a WYSIWYG blog editor for desktop. I’m using WordPress as my blog engine and until now I’ve done all posting inside FireFox through the web page. That works just fine but it’s a bit slow and uncomfortable.
I’ve looked for this type of (free) desktop blogging editor but none of them works as well as WordPress’s web editor. However, WLW comes very close. One very nice thing about it is that it can use the styles of the web site in it’s WYSIWYG editor. That way you’ll immediately see how the post is going to look once it’s posted on the site.
Here’s where you’ll find it:
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/
It’s still beta but I haven’t had any problems so far. Needless to say that this post it written with WLW 
.
My Firefox add-ons
April 21st, 2007Here’s a list of my Firefox add-ons.
Tab Mix Plus
This add-on let’s you customize how tabs are handled. Also it adds many new features to tabs. One of my favorite features is the “Undo Close tab”. It’s a real time saver when every once in a while you accidentally close tab that you still need.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122
NoScript
This add-on adds some extra protection by automatically enabling/disabling JavaScript. If you are visiting some dubious sites, I highly recommend using this tool.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722
CustomizeGoogle
This add-on let’s you customize Google sites. Very handy and also can protect your privacy a bit more.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743
Thunderbird 2!
April 19th, 2007Finally it’s ready! It feels very nice and stable. Also there’s some nice new features like tags and advanced folder views. One very nice touch is the built-in support for GMail. Unfortunaly there’s still no tray icon, which I just don’t understand why. But I’ve been using Thunderbird-Tray which works just fine with this new version also.
Tray tooltips show behind taskbar.
April 12th, 2007I had this very annoying problem in Windows XP (SP2). When I hovered mouse over a tray icon to show it’s tooltip, the tooltip was showing behind taskbar. I don’t know if there is an official fix to this issue but the following worked for me:
- Open regedit (Start–>Run–>regedit)
- Go to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\VisualEffects\TooltipAnimation - Create (Right Click–>New–>String Value) or modify value:
SetWindowPos=HwndInsertAfter, Hwnd_Top - Create (Right Click–>New–>DWORD Value) or modify value:
SetForegroundWindow=1 - Restart Windows
Rare Exports
April 8th, 2007Lightbox plugin for WordPress
April 4th, 2007I just installed a plugin made by Kjell Bublitz. It enables you to use the excellent Lightbox script made by Lokesh Dhakar. This plugin was very easy to install (just upload and activate). It works very well and integrates into WordPress perfectly.
You can find the plugin here:
http://www.m3nt0r.de/blog/lightbox-wordpress-plugin/
Here’s few demo images:
Single image 
Series of images 
Back in business!
March 27th, 2007So I had a Windows melt down yesterday. I powered up my work computer in the morning and Windows didn’t boot anymore. Instead, it showed this message:
Delphi app preventing Windows to shutdown?
March 15th, 2007Whew! After about 6 hours of constant debugging and testing in VMWare I finally managed to find the cause for a problem that prevented Windows from shutting down if my Application was running. The solution is very simple, in my case at least. Basically I had one component that used AllocateHWND to create a handle. In my WindowProc I didn’t have a call to the DefWindowProc, so the WM_QUERYENDSESSION didn’t get handled properly.
A cooler Segway
March 13th, 2007This is just cool project. I could definitely see myself using this type of device to move around in the city. It’s a pretty simple design using PIC16F876A as it’s brain. Seems like a nice weekend project
