Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Yesterday I was caught by surprise when I learned that there was a Windows XP keyboard shortcut with which I was unfamiliar. To open the System Properties control panel, you can press Windows+Pause and you're done. One other (longer) way to do this is to press Windows, then press C enough times to get to Control Panel, then press S enough times to get to System (then press Enter). This presumes that your mouse is not within the area in which the Start Menu appears—when the mouse is in that area, it can muck things up. Another way to do this is to press Windows then press M enough times to highlight (but not select) My Computer then press Shift+F10 (or press the context menu key if your keyboard has one), then press R to select Properties from the popup menu that appears. Windows+Pause is a lot easier. In comparison, OS X doesn't seem to have an easy way for me to assign a keyboard shortcut to open System Preferences at any time. I have System Preferences in the dock, so for right now it's a Ctrl+F3 and a couple of arrows and an Enter key away. Woke up too early, said goodbye to Patrick as he leaves for Nola. I learned at work today that some places document Windows+Pause as Windows+Break. It's been so long since I've had to actually distinguish between using Pause versus Break or Print Screen versus SysRq (what is SysRq used for anyway?) that I really don't know whether Windows+Pause or Windows+Break is correct. Let's go with Windows+Break since that's what Microsoft's documentation says. (I personally think Windows+Break should generate a Blue Screen of Death, however, since the mnemonic works beautifully for that.) Today at work I got a lot of stuff done. Tweaked the SATE poster I created yesterday. Assisted Carol with installing sound themes and setting up e-mail archives—had trouble with both after some time. The e-mail archives problem was resolved (we're pretty sure someone else had a lock on the file) and the sound themes problem worked itself out after some experimenting. Graduation registration form updates for Joel. Administrative privileges reconfiguration. Image processing for the student database project. Installed Windows Vista Business on a spare Dell GX240. Had trouble with the first restart after install—it wouldn't recognize the NVIDIA graphics drivers properly. Had to force a power down and multiple tries getting back in eventually permitted me to start in low resolution—what an awful introduction to Windows Vista. During setup, at least one dialog failed to use standard Windows keyboard shortcuts (tab, spacebar, Enter) and I was forced to use the mouse against my will. I spent a few hours playing with Vista, and my initial reaction is that I'm mostly disappointed. The backup solution it offers sounds promising—I'll have to try it out. And I found two particularly pleasant niceties. One is a new folder option permits you to make selections with checkboxes which is handy for non-expert users who have yet to master Shift and Ctrl used in control with the arrow keys and spacebar. Unfortunately, this feature appears to be off by default. The second one is web-breadcrumbs-style navigation for filesystem browsing—very intuitive, useful, and elegant—I am quite pleased with how Microsoft is evolving this portion of the interface, particularly since Apple does so poorly at it in OS X—e.g., there's still no easy way to copy a full path to the clipboard from within Finder. (The "solution" involving Terminal has already been suggested to me—it works, but it's not easy or elegant, and to me that's essentially an admission that the Finder interface is wanting in this respect.) Much of Vista's interface isn't that much different than XP—just glossier, and of course on this older computer with only 512 MB of RAM it's on the slow side of usable. The desktop wallpapers include a beautiful image from Hiroshige—perhaps the best of the lot. Many of the other wallpapers are surprisingly disappointing—you can easily find much better photography in searches of Flickr and Stock Xchang. The logon screen is really ugly: PRESS CTRL + ALT + DEL TO LOG ON or something like that in all caps in the center of the screen. Tremendously disappointing is the redesigned Start Menu which has significantly different—and worse—keyboard shortcut behavior than XP. The new Start Menu makes it much harder for me to navigate to what I want with the keyboard as compared with Windows XP because it defaults to the system search feature reminiscent of Apple Spotlight or Google Desktop. I can configure it to revert to a Windows 2000-style Start Menu but not a Windows XP-style Start Menu (which is the one I prefer). I'll see if I can disable searching in the Start Menu entirely and rely on Windows+F when I want to search. Ordered a copy of SQLyog Enterprise. Helped Sue set up Outlook for Esther. Orientation web page updates for Joel. Recordings policy work. Remote desktop work. Installed Office 2007 file format converters for our staff. (We're still using Office 2003 Pro.) More administrative privileges configuration work. More recordings policy work. Manual PharmAdMIT backup. Left work late—around 8:30 PM. I was surprised when I stepped outside—the world had gotten all wet while I was working, and the weather report predicted rain for tomorrow but not today, so I had no raincoat or umbrella. I got dinner by myself at You See Sushi—prawn tempura roll special which included eel and avocado roll and 4 pieces of nigiri: albacore, salmon, yellowtail, and (something else). Home. Worked late on Corinna's website. I'm finishing up the print stylesheets—only a few more tweaks to go—and then I'll be ready to send her a summary for review probably within the next week. Weight training: barbell curl, shoulder shrug, push up.