Multiple Libraries in iTunes 7

By Josh Highland in music, software, tutorials

Yesterday I got a phone call from my friend Jeff. He had recently bought a video ipod for himself and some nanos for his daughters.

His question to me was how to keep his music seperate from their music, basically meaning seperate libraries. At first I told him that I didnt think it was possible, but I would look into it.

A few google searches later I had the answer. In iTunes 7 it is possible to have seperate libarys. To create and switch libraries, you have to hold down the shift key and then open itunes. Instead if it launching, it will present you with some options.





Now when My friend want his music, he just has to open his library, His daughters will do the same thing, but only have access to their library.

Its a cool feature, but a freaking stupid way to access it. Way to go apple I thought you cared about usability. There is nothing usable about having to hold down a special key when opening and application so you can access a new library.

IE DOM : WTF!

By Josh Highland in internet, javascript, software, web 2.0

I have been working on a help documentation system at work.
There are roughly 50,000 HTML files to deal with (yes 50 thousand).
The html files have a pretty decent structure, but they are by no means XHTML.

I dont have access to a web development language like php, cfm, for asp or this project to insert
the site navigation, page headers and footers, So I decided to go with some sweet web 2.0 un obtrusive javascript.

to make life easier for myself, I had the authors of the help system insert a single line into the head of each HTML file.
The line was a call to a javascript file. That javascript then used the DOM to insert all the appropriate CSS and other JS files I needed to make the pages look clean, and do what I needed them to do.

Things looked great in FireFox. Life was good until I loaded the site into Internet Explorer.
My beautiful project looked like a pile of crap, no styles, no javascript, just a stupid javascript error.

IE isnt known for its script debugging (another reason to no use IE). It took me literally hours to track down the problem.

I was doing this for all the css files (4 of them)

	var tmpElm = document.createElement("style");
	tmpElm.setAttribute("type", "text/css");
	tmpElm.appendChild(document.createTextNode("/some/directory/sweetness.css);"));
	document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(tmpElm);

Its clean, simple unobtrusive javascript.
create a style element, add the right attribute to it, add value to the style tag, then append it to the page head.
straight forward stuff.

Like I said, FireFix had no problem with it. After doing tons of test, i realized that IE didnt like me appending a style tag to the head!
Then I found this:

IE won't allow document.createElement('style')
If you try to add style declarations in the head of a document, IE borks at the name 'style' – "unexpected call to method or property access".

http://www.quirksmode.org/bugreports/archives/2006/01/IE_wont_allow_documentcreateElementstyle.html

IE gets confused between the head element <style> and the object property .style!

So I spend all that time debugging my code, which was perfectly fine, because IE is retarded and doesnt know the difference between <style> and .style!
WTF!

I removed all that sweet un obtrusive code and used this instead:

	document.write("<style type="text/css">@import url(/some/directory/sweetness.css");

I hate using document.write() these days, but it works in both IE and FF now.
My life sucks some times.

hacking the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000

By Josh Highland in hacks, hardware

Its not a secret that I have "burning wrist hurt disease". My doctor likes to refer to it as carpel tunnel syndrome.

Lately my wrists have been killing me. At work, I have a dell standard style type of keyboard, and a standard dell mouse with a scroll wheel. My index finger on my right hand is shot from the scrolling motion, and my hands are jacked from typing. I needed some thing better. Enter the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000.

After I did a little research I decided that the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000 was for me. The interesting thing about the keyboard is that it has a "zoom slider". The zoom slider is a cool idea but executed poorly. Who wants a "zoom" slider to change the font size of the screen?

It would be so much better if it was a slider for scrolling. I hit the web and found out there was a hack to do just this over at pain in the tech. In a few steps I was able to change the zoom slider into a scroll slider.

I was happy, but I found that a lot of applications still zoomed in on the text instead of scrolling, like outlook. I decided to hack the commands a bit more, and remove the zoom functionality all together, and replace it with scrolling.

To make things better, Here is a copy of the commands.xml file that I am running, so you can share in my joy also.

To change the zoom into a scroll, using my patched commands.xml file:

  1. Navigate to the your Intelitype Pro directory, mine is "C:Program FilesMicrosoft IntelliType Pro"
  2. Rename the existing commands.xml to commands.xml_OLD
  3. Place the new commands.xml into that directory
  4. Reboot the computer

With the scroll hack in place, I can scroll a window without having to take my hands off the keyboard. Thanks Miscrosoft for making a sweet keyboard, but no thanks for not making it a scroll slider in the first place. A zoom slider is just a stupid idea.

Recently I have started to play video games again

By Josh Highland in video games

When I was younger I would spend days on end playing video games. When I was 7 got my first Nintendo, it was 1987. I played the hell out of it, I fell in love with Zelda. Years later Super Nintendo came out. I was older and had more patience; again I fell in love with the SNES Zelda game. I like the character development and the epic story. In 1994,
Final Fantasy III was release in the United States. I ate the game up instantly. The game play was turn based fighting, meaning that I tell my characters what to do, attack, use magic, use an item, or defend. The enemy would do the same. We would trade attacks until the fight was over. Characters gained experience from the conflicts and grew over time. The story was epic, something out of a legend. The company that produced the game, Square, knew how to build a great RPG (role playing game).

Fast forward 12 years. I havent seriously played video games in about 7 years. Sure I have dabbled, but what geek doesnt play a game here and there. I know that I am behind the times, but I only have an XBOX (not-360). I decided that I wanted to play a good role playing game, turned based preferably like the final fantasy games. The FF series is only available on play station though. I looked and looked and couldnt find a good game to play, every one i tired just sucked. Frustrated and out of luck, I turned to my good friend the Super Nintendo.

With the magic of computers its possible to turn you computer into a Nintendo, or a Super Nintendo by using an "emulator" and a "ROM", which is a back up of the game. Most SNES games are smaller then a single mp3, and most NES games are smaller then an average Microsoft word document! Sure emulators and ROMS are technically illegal, but there is no other way to play most of these games anymore.

I have a windows media center computer in my living room, so I downloaded my favorite SNES emulator, ZNES, and loaded up a game that I remember loving, but I never beat, Super Mario RPG.

Super Mario RPG was released in 1996, and was an effort from Square (makers of final fantasy) and Nintendo (makers of the Super Mario). The result was a game that felt like Final Fantasy, but had the charm and good feeling of Super Mario World.

The game is 10 years old, but is so fun that it doesnt matter that the graphics are pixilated and the music is MIDI based. Super Mario RPG is proof that you dont need a cd quality sound track, full motion video, forced feed back controls, and 16 button controllers to produce a great game that holds up through time. I think that game developers and companyss have gotten to mixed up in the power of the platforms they are working on, they forget about the roping in the players imagination and selling them on the story while making them want to play to find out what happens next, instead of just throwing eye candy at them at every turn.

I have great hopes for Nintendos next platform the "wii", I hope that they bring back the love and magic that make video games like Final Fantasy and Super Mario RPG feel good to play even if they are relics from a simpler time of gaming.

If you want more information on emulators and roms, leave a comment and I'll get in touch with you.

What older games did you think still hold their own today? Please leave a comment, I'd love to hear what you think.