Dave Beauvais' Web Site » General

Coolest dining room table ever

Dave Beauvais — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 01:17:57 +0000

As I contemplate the purchase of a house, I’ve been giving some thought to what kinds of furnishings I’ll need to make into my home. For my dining room table, I think one of these will suffice. I have no idea how much they cost, but I suspect I won’t be getting one anytime soon with my current job.

Spyware screenshot

Dave Beauvais — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 21:58:24 +0000

This is a screenshot from a system I had to clean of spyware a few weeks ago at work. (Click the thumbnail for the full-size image.) You’ll note that not only does the system have three different spyware search toolbars installed, its home page has been hijacked, and it’s also running DateManager and PrecisionTime from the assholes at ~~Gator~~ Claria Corporation. Before I could make this screenshot I had to remove some other spyware in order to get the system stable enough that Explorer (and Internet Explorer) wouldn’t crash on startup.

Thank you, Microsoft, for making it possible for garbage such as this to install itself via Internet Explorer with little to no help from the unsuspecting user. That’s very kind of you since so many people are out there who would otherwise be unable to install this wonderful software. And an extra special thank you goes out to all the companies who are creating the garbage; I appreciate the job security that you provide me with!

Date and time standards

Dave Beauvais — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 04:06:13 +0000

I’ve been asked a couple times why the dates on my site are displayed the way they are. I use ISO 8601 for writing dates because it removes any ambiguity and eliminates confusion between the various common regional and international formats. YYYY-MM-DD is also logical for sorting and categorizing data using computers. I use a 24-hour time format, but tend to use my local time zone rather than UTC. The linked document above goes into detail about why ISO 8601 exists and why it’s a good idea to use it.

My PDA history

Dave Beauvais — Sun, 04 Apr 2004 19:08:54 +0000

This is a list of the various electronic organizers and PDAs that I’ve owned over the years. (Hey, judging from some peoples’ forum post sigs, some folks are interested in this kind of stuff for whatever reason! )

~~List updated 2004-10-25~~
List updated 2010-04-12

PDA and Organizer History

Sharp 128K Wizard (Gave to a former girlfriend)
OS: Proprietary
CPU: Unknown
RAM: 128 KB
Screen: 16 character, 4 line black and white display, no backlight
Misc: Keyboard input, clamshell case
Casio 256K B.O.S.S (Stolen)
OS: Proprietary
CPU: Unknown
RAM: 256 KB
Screen: Black and white, EL backlight
Misc: Keyboard input, clamshell case
Texas Instruments Avigo 10 (Sold)
OS: Proprietary
CPU: Unknown
RAM: 2 MB
Screen: 160×240 (I think) 4 grayscale, EL backlight
Misc: Built-in protective flip cover, touch-screen stylus input, on-screen keyboard, and T9 predictive input
Uniden Unipro PC100A (Sold)
OS: Microsoft Windows CE 2.1
CPU: 33 MHz MIPS
RAM: 8 MB
Screen: 240×320 4 grayscale, EL backlight
Misc: Built-in 28.8 Kbps modem, CF II slot
Palm m505 (Sold)
OS: Palm OS 4.0
CPU: ?MHz Dragonball
RAM: 8 MB
Screen: Reflective TFT, 160×160 16-bit color
Casio Cassiopeia E-200 (CompUSA warranty exchange for Toshiba e740)
OS: Microsoft Pocket PC 2002
CPU: 266 MHz Intel ARM
RAM: 64 MB
Screen: Reflective TFT, 240×320 16-bit color
Info: I went through four defective units before finally deciding to make use of my CompUSA TAP to get a different model Pocket PC.
Toshiba e740 (CompUSA warranty exchange for HP iPAQ h5455)
OS: Microsoft Pocket PC 2002
CPU: 400 MHz Intel Xscale
RAM: 64 MB
Screen: Reflective TFT, 240×320 16-bit color
Info: Two defective or malfunctioning units made me use another CompUSA TAP to get the following Pocket PC…
HP iPAQ h5455 (CompUSA warranty exchange for HP iPAQ hx4700)
OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC (Upgraded from Pocket PC 2002)
CPU: 400 MHz Intel Xscale
RAM: 64 MB
Screen: Transflective TFT, 240×320 16-bit color
Info: The first h5455 I bought had a defective touchscreen, but the second one performed virtually trouble-free for about thirteen months. It developed a problem with the charge/sync connector which I lived with for nearly another year. When plugged into a PC, Windows would display an error bubble which stated “Unrecognized USB Device.” I tried three different cradles on four different PCs with both Windows XP and 2000 with the same results. Additionally since the connector was damaged, I could no longer charge the device in a cradle. Instead, it had to be placed flat on the desk with the charge cable plugged directly into it. In order to make contact, something had to be placed under the charge connector to hold it up at an angle. Aside from that problem, I loved owning this device and had no complaints whatsoever. To date, I owned that Pocket PC longer than any other PDA.
HP iPAQ hx4700
OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition for Pocket PC (Later upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 via cooked ROM)
CPU: 624 MHz Intel Xscale
RAM: 64 MB
Screen: Transflective TFT, 480×640 16-bit color
Info: Wow. Just wow. This is, by far, the best Pocket PC I have ever owned or used. The large VGA-resolution LCD is simply stunning. The CPU is speedy and for everything that’s crammed inside, it’s remarkably thin. It’s also nice to have dual card slots back so I can use large CompactFlash cards again.
Palm Treo 700w (Sold to former coworker)
Carrier: Verizon Wireless
OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 5
CPU: I don’t remember
RAM: 32 MB
Screen Transflective TFT, 240×240 16-bit color
Info: Aside from the front-facing keyboard, this phone was very disappointing. Not enough RAM and the tiny screen really killed this one for me. Simply loading a Web page in IE would consume so much RAM that all other apps running in the background would quit.
Verizon xv6700 (Still have, but never use.)
Carrier: Verizon Wireless
OS: Windows Mobile 5 (Upgraded via cooked ROM to Windows Mobile 6, which really revitalized it and got rid of a lot of the useless Verizon crap. I used this phone for almost another year because of that upgrade.)
CPU: Don’t remember
RAM: Enough to get by
Screen: Transflective TFT, 240×320 16-bit color
Info: Slide-out keyboard. Very brick-like, even for its time, but a very capable phone. The keyboard backlight was blue, and very difficult to see. I believe the Sprint version had a white backlight, which would have been much more usable.
Samsung BlackJack II (Still have, use for testing.)
Carrier: AT&T Wireless
OS: Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard Edition
CPU: Don’t remember
RAM: Don’t remember
Screen: Non-touch transflective TFT, 320×240, 16-bit color
Info: Probably the best non-touchscreen Windows Mobile device made. Lack of touch really got frustrating, though.
Palm Treo Pro (Sitll have, use for testing.)
Carrier: Unlocked, use with AT&T Wireless
OS: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition
CPU: Don’t remember
RAM: Don’t remember
Info: Best. Treo. Ever. (In my opinion.) Still like this phone, but finally so frustrated with Windows Mobile that I felt I needed to move to something else…
Google Nexus One
Carrier: Unlocked, use with AT&T Wireless
OS: Android OS 2.1
CPU: 1 GHz Qualcom Snapdragon
RAM: 512 MB
Screen: AMOLED 480×800, capacitive touch
Info: My first non-Windows Mobile Phone in almost twelve years. I was expecting the transition to be painful, but I miss only two things about Windows Mobile: seamless Exchange support, and S/MIME support for e-mail. Seriously, that’s all I miss. This is one amazing phone. It has some growing pains to get past which I hope will be addressed with a future software update, but I really love this phone quite a bit.

Want to write like an AOL user?

Dave Beauvais — Thu, 25 Dec 2003 04:06:55 +0000

I saw a link to “The English-to-12-Year-Old-AOLer Translator” on someone’s blog this evening and thought I’d pass it along. If you ever need to write something that will make you look like an AOL subscriber, just use this free service to translate it! It’s guaranteed to take even the most well-crafted language and turn it into the kind of meaningless drivel you’d find in an AOL chat room.

User-hostile software

Dave Beauvais — Sun, 24 Aug 2003 03:50:59 +0000

I have just experienced what I believe to be one of the most user-hostile pieces of software I have ever seen: Memorex CD Labelmaker v5.0.

The downloaded “Setup” program is actually just a stupid self-extracting archive file which decompresses itself into the root of C:, creating a directory structure. It dumps files into C:\Program Files\Memorex\CDLabelmaker, as well as C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\CD Labelmaker. This is crappy for two reasons:

Not everybody installs software to C:\Program Files, and
The Start menu does not exist in C:\Windows\Start Menu under Windows NT, 2000, XP, or Server 2003.

As if the brain-dead “install” procedure were not bad enough, the software itself has a horrible, horrible interface. When I zoomed in, the zoom percentage on the menu changed from 100% to 500%, but the label image in the window didn’t change a bit. The dialog boxes look like software from the Windows 3.1 days, toolbars can’t be modified, and every “tool” for adding an element to a label design does not work the way you’d expect it to.

Adding a text box is an exercise in frustration because you have virtually no control over the text. It scales to fit the dimensions of the box. If you draw a long rectangle, you get squished text that’s nearly unreadable. If you can figure out how to change the font â€” which even for me took about four attempts â€” you’ll end up with distorted characters.

And printing… you know, that thing you bought the label kit to do? Apparently the text is rendered as an image prior to printing, so when your out-of-proportion, squished text is output onto a label, it ends up grainy, distorted, and nearly unreadable.

At least the software was easy to remove. So what’s the worst software you’ve ever used?