20 Sep 2007
I’ve had a fairly painful day experimenting with the One True Layout Equal Height Column technique in conjunction with a design that requires lots of rounded corners in all the wrong places (no, design will not yield to CSS!) and put out a call for help on the WSG mailing list for the first time in a while.
That place is magic. Gunlaug Sørtun came back in under six hours with another technique I hadn’t even heard of that looks pretty good, the companion columns method. He also has a page dedicated to CSS table- styled columns, but it looks like it could involve a bit too much browser hacking (yes, IE) in order to be worthwhile.
More experimentation doubtless to come.
19 Sep 2007
Irony is winding up with the same brand you were whinging about. But it was the only one in stock and I wanted on that day, and it had Nero bundled. So there we go. $55 for a DVD burner isn’t all bad, especially when it’s relatively quiet (compared to my Pioneer 108, anyway), and crazily speedy (I confess I’ve only tested burning on CDs yet, no DVDs). It’s black and remarkably unshiny, but SATA and in need of smaller cables, which can only be a good thing!
A full review of a similar model is here.
16 Sep 2007
Nero is a fantastic piece of software. It is sorely missed. RIP, bundled CD burner. (Ironically, the only burner I have that was ever ‘new’ in my possession was also the first to give up the ghost on CD burning). Bizarrely, it still works for DVDs just fine. Not a driver/OS-level thing. It’ll boot off a DVD, but not a CD. I think it’s a Sony, but that surely doesn’t mean much in this twisted world of re-/OEM-branded hardware. The thing that killed it was probably another Sony product that didn’t follow the real CD spec :P
15 Sep 2007
Apparently I’m not the only one thinking this way about Vista. Though it looks awful pretty, and if I bought a PC with it installed I’d probably have a hard time convincing myself to buy another XP license just so I didn’t have to use Vista for a few months! On the flip side, I would definitely consider holding off a hardware purchase that included a Vista license for a few more months, knowing a Service Pack is imminent.
Of course, if they’d got it right from the start, I’d be running Vista already… as it stands, I’m not too likely to drop $200 on something that runs slower than XP, supports less hardware, has arguably-worse power management, and makes the occasionally excruciating UI mistake (most notable is the automatic replacement of the “sleep” button with “install updates and shutdown” where updates are available). Really, the main reason I’d switch is to have consistent UI between Office 2007 and the rest of the system (instead of the presently absurd Vista-ish (but not actually Vista) UI available on XP), newer hardware (insofar as XP isn’t available), and a paid-for upgrade path… I’d rather fork out my money now and trust that another 3 service packs are coming, rather than pay full price for an OS and then pay full price again, and again. I acknowledge this is partially a psychological thing stemming from my opposition for paying for point-releases, but even so… many of the alleged ‘upgrades’ in OS X are thoroughly trivial.
12 Sep 2007
Oh, someone please stop these people. Even my Sony Ericsson (yes, half owned by a notoriously evil record label) ships with software to rip CDs into non-DRM’d MP3s that function just fine as ringtones. What startling level of idiocy causes someone to think that bundling more software on CDs is a remotely good idea I cannot fathom, but clearly one of the brains in a record company came up with this gem. It doesn’t really affect me on account of pretty much never buying CD singles, but even so… yuck.
If this ever finds its way onto real CDs (i.e. albums), I may just cry. I probably spend in the vicinity of AU$60-75 a month on new albums, which is likely more revenue than you’d get if I bought things online… and I reckon a good half the reason I do that (aside from knowing what DRM is and why I don’t want it on my music) is for the packaging and associated retail experience. Most recent purchases include Gotye’s Mixed Blood, MoS Australia’s Electro House Sessions (it’s completely different from the global MoS release of the same name), Bob Sinclar’s Soundz of Freedom, and the super duper excellent soundtrack to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
I have ripped each and every track from them all as WMA Lossless. I wouldn’t have bought… about three of the four… if it wasn’t for retail CD stores.