BinaryWolf

Halloween - Comments On

October 29, 2004 | In blogging | No Comments

It’s almost Halloween so I’ve decided to do something scary. Comments are ON! Longtime lurkers and new readers are invited to come forward and startle me with your thoughts and opinions on what you see here at this blog. Happy Halloween!

Manual Trackback

October 28, 2004 | In blogging | No Comments Simpletracks and Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger will send Trackback pings even if your blogging tool doesn’t have a Trackback feature. What’s up with that Blogger?

So, in other words you can send a trackback pings to any blog that accepts Trackbacks. You do not need to have a Trackback system on your blog to send pings.

Mystical Yellow Form Fields

October 27, 2004 | In software, search engines | No Comments

HTML Dog answers the question about Mystical Yellow Form Fields:

I have received a number of emails asking why certain form fields on HTML Dog have a yellow background.

“Eh?” was my initial dumbfounded response. There’s nothing in the CSS of the website that sets the colour of form elements. But I even saw it with my own eyes on someone else’s computer - there it was, a form field with a pale yellow background. Not all form fields, just one apparently randomly coloured input box.

Is this due to different versions of Windows? Odd releases of Internet Explorer? Well no, as it turns out the culprit is the Google Toolbar, that widget thing that you download from Google that adds a search box and some other stuff to Internet Explorer.

There is an ‘AutoFill’ option on the Google Toolbar (switched on by default), that will ‘helpfully’ highlight form fields with certain names such as ‘email’ or ‘name’. The only thing is, I don’t think that’s particularly helpful. No software program can possibly know what are the most important fields to draw to a users attention. As the designer, I should choose how to best highlight areas and what methods I use to attract users to areas that I think are important. I certainly don’t want an automated tool messing up a carefully thought out design.

As so many people use IE and the Google Toolbar is undoubtedly popular amongst those users, this is a real issue for web designers.

Jenseng has more information that includes some JavaScript workarounds, but I think the best and most simple method is to just use names that the Google Toolbar won’t recognise.

HarddiskOgg Sound Recorder

October 26, 2004 | In software | No Comments

HarddiskOgg captures analog audio from line in or microphone directly to Ogg Vorbis/Wave/MP3 format. It takes a wave input stream from any Windows 95/98/2000/XP compatible sampling device (including microphone input and line in) and converts it to an Ogg Vorbis/Wave/Monkey’s Audio/MP3 (optional) stream. This happens in realtime, so basically it is a harddisk recorder in Ogg Vorbis.

Originally, HarddiskOgg was written to record the sound channel from TV, in particular music channels like MTV. Without HarddiskOgg, you would have to record to WAV first, then convert it to a space saving format using an external converter. While this is possible, it has one big disadvantage: it takes loads of disk space. While it is ok for recording one or two songs, you most probably cannot record more than a couple of hours.

With HarddiskOgg, you can record approximately 11 times longer, that is 18 hours per GB. So why not record one day (or even several days!) of MTV so you can fast forward through songs you don’t like?

On decent PCs, you can even play the Ogg Vorbis or MP3 file with your favorite player while the recording goes on. This means you can listen for example to the radio in near realtime, but you can take a break whenever you want.

With some TV card/sound card combinations it is possible that sound recorded from TV is very low on volume. HarddiskOgg will automatically amplify the input signal before the encoding stage.

Who’s Linking to You?

October 25, 2004 | In web apps | No Comments

Three Easy Steps to See Who’s Linking to You, a service “for the ultimate narcissist within you”.

Step 1. Highlight the linking code and copy it (CTRL-C on most systems) into your clipboard.

Step 2. Paste the linking code somewhere into your blog/site template. Rebuild your template if necessary.

Step 3. Load your blog into your browser and click through on your newly added WhoLinksToMe.com link.

or you can go to MSN and enter linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com or Google and enter link:www.yourdomain.com.

Build It - DIY Resource

October 22, 2004 | In hardware | No Comments Build It from Extremetech (build it, tweak it, know it) offers some fun projects, primarily pc systems.

This Milwaukee cordless screwdriver would come in handy for building a system.

or maybe this more affordable Black&Decker cordless screwdriver.

Both tools offer clutches to avoid stripping screw threads.

Hack A Day

October 21, 2004 | In general | No Comments

BinaryWolf comments on wireless antennas at HackADay, a recently launched site about cool modifications and clever circumventions, better known as hacks.
Timeline of the noun “hack” :

During the 1950s ham radio fans borrowed the term hacking from riding and defined it as creatively tinkering to improve performance. The modern, computer-related form of the term is likely rooted in the goings on at MIT in the 1960s, long before computers became common; the word “hack” was local slang which had a large number of related meanings. One was a simple, but often inelegant, solution to a problem.