Posts from — February 2007

I just ran across the coolest site for learning how to tie various knots - Animated Knots.  Each knot has step-by-step photos that you can go back and forth on to watch the process.  Knots are broken out by general application (Boating, Climbing, Fishing, etc.) and each has good application notes and history.

I confirm the reports that iTunes doesn’t fully work on Vista. None of my iTMS purchased music works. iTunes will request that the computer be authorized, says that authorization was successful, then not play the track. This has caused a bit of friction in the household since I purchased the soundtrack to Curious George off of iTunes and my four year insists on listening to it.

I don’t get why Apple isn’t ahead of this. Granted they are probably not the biggest fans of Vista, but it’s not like they haven’t had the final Vista bits in their hands for months. Yeah, Vista just shipped to consumers last week, but it has been in the hands of corporations and more to the point, developers, since November. I’d assume that Apple has at least one MSDN subscription for the iTunes team. I really wonder if they let iTunes fall on its face to try and make Vista look bad (keyword being ‘try’). Shame on Apple for this one.

Update: Lifehacker just posted a link to a utlity to supposedly fix your library. I’ll definitely have to give that a shot tonight.

Update #2: It worked.

I’m currently working on a ASP.NET v1.1 project using VS2003.  There are some places where VS2005’s ability to examine Datasets would have been handy so thinking, “VS2003’s been out for ages, someone must have something that’ll do this” I went looking and found DSWatch.  I was using it for a while when a co-worker asked where I’d got it.  I couldn’t remember where, so during a Google search I found the original site, but the second hit was “Goodbye DSWatch, Welcome XmlVisualizer.”  Hmmm….

It was then I discovered the XmlVisualizer plugin off of GotDotNet.  Dang is it nice.  If you still do any work in VS2003 and haven’t found this tool yet, run, don’t walk and grab this AddIn.

I got one of the notices to convert my “old-skool” Flickr ID to a Yahoo id and did.  There are a few folks bent out of shape at this but as Dare points out, the smell of Astroturfing is in the air.  I still don’t understand why Thomas Hawk posts so much stuff on Flickr, but his photos are georgious nonetheless.

For the record, my Yahoo ID predates my Flickr ID.  I can’t even say when I signed up for it (I couldn’t find a date on my profile page), but it was not too long after My Yahoo! launched. I do know it predates Yahoo’s acquisition of Rocketmail which was in early 1997 since I remember when they added email to the service.

Anyhoo, I wish I could have kept my old Flickr id mainly from a “I knew about this place before it was cool” standpoint, but I’ll manage.  I still can point to my fist uploaded photo which dates to 10/14/2004 (taken on a trip to Albuquerque for a wedding during the 2004 Ballon Fiesta):

Sandia Peak, NM - October 7, 2004