trueSpace may be daunting for those who are not familiar with it’s user interface, but once you get used to how tools and tool bars are arranged, it becomes much more intuitive than you may originally think. Since I haven’t used a new version since trueSpace 5.5, looks like I’ve got some catching up to do. They’ve added tabbed interfaces for views so that you can switch between workspaces and multi-angled model views and a panel with library browser and settings tabs. One of the reasons I’ve stuck with version 5.5 for so long has been that it can import stl, igs and other industrial modeling files. I use these at work to render products that are in concept phases of production or that we can’t get samples of in time for photos we may need. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be supported under the new version. Guess I’ll have to keep digging to see if I can find out anything more about this.

Step 1
Navigate to the Prism installation directory, in Windows this is:
C:\Program Files\Prism\

Open up the extensions folder, then the DOM inspector extension folder:
C:\Program Files\Prism\extensions\inspector@mozilla.org

Now open the “install.rdf” file and find this section of code which can be used (usually) as-is in most extensions pasted in the right place (just use the extension’s preconfigured targets as your guide on where to place it):

<em:targetApplication>
<!– Prism –>
<Description>
<em:id>prism@developer.mozilla.org</em:id>
<em:minVersion>0.4</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>1.0.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

Step 2
Open up your extension’s xpi file using 7zip or your favorite archiving tool and extract the install.rdf file.

Open that install.rdf file with a text editor (other than notepad which doesn’t understand the line breaks used by other editors) and find the area where it lists the installation targets and insert your copied text into that or modify one of the install targets with the appropriate information from the DOM inspector extension install.rdf file.

Step 3
Install the extension. This will get tricky due to the way Prism’s developers have modified the profiles and what not. Well, I say that, but it really only gets that tricky if you’re manually installing the extension. Prism developers have seen fit to include the Addons menu item from the Prism menu in the lower right of Prism’s window to help things go more smoothly.

One of the ways to use this new install feature for an extension is globally, which means all webapps will be able to use the extension. This is the least preferred manner due to the fact that you won’t want all extensions available for all webapps in most cases. An example would be having the Better Gmail extension available for Bloglines - don’t think that’s real necessary, do you? So plan accordingly.

Using the second, and more preferred method, you just open your webapp. Open your webapp’s Addons panel, then install by either dragging and dropping the extension onto it, or by clicking the “Install…” button and navigating to the extension and selecting it for installation.

Conclusion
That should be about it. My next Prism post will be about how to make one of two stand alone Firefox/Prism exention webapps - POW local server or Scribefire standalone webapp. Stay tuned, we get to play with chrome!!

Links:

Prism

One of the major points of his post is how our economy has shifted to a service base, which is largely non-exportable (at least to smaller, more locally oriented businesses). This also means we’re not manufacturing as much as we used to, and therefore don’t have the export power we’ve had in the past. In other words, as the dollar has fallen against the Euro and other currencies, we’ve not seen an increase in exported manufactured goods as you’d expect.

This is an extremely important point to take in. If the current administration can’t see that the single most important thing we need to do in order to help the economy is to save/rejuvenate manufacturing jobs (read as: jobs that create exportable products and services) in the US, then we’re really sunk.

I tend to think, however, that the market will correct for this. We’ve already heard of some manufacturers moving operations to the US from the EU as a means to cut manufacturing costs. This is a trend that will probably continue, but only if businesses wake up to the fact that the current downturn in the economy isn’t a short term anomaly. Rather, it’s a long term (think several years) condition.

Link

SAHANA runs on a LAMP/WAMP server and enables fast setup and web based management of disaster recovery networks. Features include a missing person registry, organization registry, request management system, camp registry, volunteer management, inventory management, and situation awareness. SAHANA has been used in several recent disasters for various applications. More can be found on its website.

Link
UNESCO Free & Open Source Software Portal

Xara Xtreme

A while back, Xara released their vector graphics program Xara Xtreme into the wilds of the WWW as open source software. While the Windows version is still payware, the Linux version is completely free (as in speech!) and makes a great addition to any Linux graphics suite. While Xara Xtreme is comparable to InkScape, they don’t share all of the same functions, and they are a good complement to one another. GNU/Linux only.
Link

Artweaver

Artweaver is a freeware program for use with tablet PCs and pen tablets. It can simulate paint brushes of various types, includes layering, standard image formats and plug-in support, and has standard editing features like croping, area selecting and some built-in image effects. Not bad for around 8 Mb. Windows only.
Link

ArtRage 2

Along the same lines as Artweaver, but more focused on the painting aspects of pen input, ArtRage 2 is a free, limited feature download with a payware, full feature version available. The main advantage of ArtRage 2 is that it really does feel like an honest to goodness drawing pad right there on your PC. The free version, includes pencil, paint brush and a few other tools that allow you to really have a lot of fun with your tablet. Windows only.
Link

FastStone MaxView

FastStone offers several freeware and shareware programs for manipulating and viewing images. FastStone MaxView is a great freeware replacement for Windows XP’s Photo and Fax Viewer. MaxView is faster and has more options and features than Photo and Fax Viewer, and has a borderless window as well as auto-hiding controls and hotkey support. Windows only.
Link

Photoscape

Photoscape is a freeware photo editing program which includes features that allow you to do general photo editing and enhancements. You can also use it as a batch editing tool and it also allows you to make animated GIFs. Windows only.
Link

BONUS!! Imageditor

I’ve recently come across a handy tool for editing the Windows registry to change which programs open image files by default. Windows automatically associates certain right-click actions (chiefly open and edit) with built-in programs. I’ve been using Paint.net as a replacement for MS Paint for a while, but I wanted to associate it with all the same image formats that Paint was. This way, Paint.net would use the built-in “Edit” context menu item.

Imageditor allows you to do just that, with no manual editing of the registry or going through the hassle of changing multiple items in the Folder Settings dialog. There are instructions on the Imageditor page on how to use it. Windows only.
Link

LifeHacker’s linked to my post on how to install extensions in Prism/Webrunner. For anyone having trouble with some extensions, have a look at my comment dated today (080404), I’ve addressed Better GCal specifically, but this should also work for Better Gmail and a few others as well.

Prism/Webrunner extensions post

I had read this morning that there was a new Ubuntu release and, as I was having problems with Debian and was about to reinstall Ubuntu 7.10, so I decided to give it a try. Well, it’s a Beta, but I’m not going to hold that against it! Compiz is installted by default (but just subtley enough you don’t know it till you’re seeing the tell tail fades and such), Firefox 3 Beta 4, wireless support includes WPA (which it has had built-in since the 7.10 release), improved dual screen support for laptops, hell - I didn’t even have to install 915resolution to setup my Intel display to 1440×900! I still had to install Amorok and vlc manually, but that’s cake compared to recompiling a kernel.

1. So far so good, performance is a bit sluggish (especially with the extra visual enhancements enabled), but I’m thoroughly tickled pink by the feature set and compatibility! THANK YOU UBUNTU COMMUNITY!!

Link:

Ubuntu Test Releases

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

With his passing, the genre of science fiction looses one of it’s greatest creators and has been dealt a serious blow.

Links:

Los Angeles Times Article
Via Boing-Boing
Photo Credit: Anuradha Ratnaweera, anuradha on flickr.com, source
Arthur C. Clark on Wikipedia.org

1. “Bioethical” violations such as birth control
2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty

The original seven deadly sins:

1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Gluttony
4. Lust
5. Anger
6. Greed
7. Sloth

The first two new sins might as well be the same. I’m still trying to figure out what the deal is with the catholic church being ok with not advocating birth control (24 million cases of AIDS and 2 million deaths in 2005 due to AIDS in Africa is A-OK with the Pope, just as long as they’re not using condoms). The last three new sins could also be the same. Granted, contributing to poverty, possessing great wealth, and creating more poverty are morally reprehensible, but could easily be grouped under - oh, let’s say - “Fiscal Immorality.”

I think the Vatican would be better served looking outside their own ranks for more universally accepted truths rather than trying to update their narrow views to “jive” with todays youth (geez, how old do I sound there??) or current technologies. In other words:

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

If this is true, then we’ve already gotten ourselves figured out, and all we have to do is listen to the voices of the past and allow that to point our way. For instance, the Vatican should really have just gone with the original Seven Social Sins as written by Mahatma Gandhi around 1925:

1. Politics without principles
2. Wealth without work
3. Pleasure without conscience
4. Knowledge without character
5. Commerce without morality
6. Science without humanity
7. Worship without sacrifice

From “Young India”, 1925, Mahatma Gandhi

Notice numbers 2 and 6. Huh, way back around the turn of the century people were worried about science/wealth and morality too. All-in-all, this list is more eloquent, more thoughtful and better articulated. These seem to be better oriented towards modern lifestyles and concerns. They even feel more universal and timeless - like they’ll even withstand the test of time - go figure. Sounds like Vatican scholars really need to do a better job of researching their subject matter.

Links:

News item on Bloomburg
via BoingBoing
The complete works of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (see Volume 33 page 135 for his list)
Image Credit

You will read his every word.

You will learn!

I’ve been reading Mr. Taplin’s blog now for a few weeks. Everything I’ve read on his blog has been incredibly well thought through, logical and currently relevant. He is in the know, and amongst those who are in the know. I’ve not seen any of the stupidity and short sightedness found in the position of pundits of either wing nut variety (right or left) in his writings, and that more than anything else is a tremendous tell.

In short if you don’t read his blog, well, you’re missing out…

Maybe too incredible, many concerns over the design (especially the hull which is said to be unstable during high seas) have made this class of Naval vessel controversial to say the least. With the USS Iowa (BB-61) being stricken from the Naval Register in 2006, no more battle ships exist in the US fleet, which means there are no ships with the capacity for truly frightening naval surface fire support. That’s one of the roles the Zumwalt class should address, but even that is role is in doubt.

Still, have a look at the specs, pretty impressive…

Images courtesy of Wikipedia, the US Navy and the Public Domain (link, link)

This is Pumpkin. She’s a fosterino who came to live with us on Halloween (hence the name). She’s made herself at home and we’d love to keep her, but our 900 sq ft just isn’t enough house for four cats (barely enough for the three we have). I can post more later, but for now, have fun bathing in her cuteness.

We’re keeping her for the local animal adoption group AARF. She’s been a bit sick lately, so she hasn’t been able to get all of her shots, but when she does, she’ll be able to find a permanent home. She’s extremely playful, affection aggressive, and a great lap cat.

Any-who, one of our labs has us using mount and umount (did I mention that RHA030 is a basic GNU/Linux skills class with a RedHat flavor?) with a floppy drive. There are a couple of problems with this, however. One, there’s no virtual floppy disk on the virtual machine that’s been configured for class. Two, VMware Workstation 6 has this weird quirk (at least the version we have) that won’t allow you to create floppy images in the img format. It adds flp to the end of whatever you put want to name your file, and then gives this error that the file already exists, which doesn’t make a lot of sense since the Workstation just created the file and should know that.

So, here’s a (mostly) graphical tutorial that allows you to create your own floppy image and use it with VMware Workstation 6.

Step 1. Open VMware Workstation and select the virtual machine you want to add a virtual floppy drive to.

Step 2. Select “Edit Virtual Machine Settings” from that virtual machine’s “Commands” menu.

Step 3. From the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog’s “Hardware” tab, click the “Add…” button

Step 4. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, select the “Floppy Drive” hardware type and then click the “Next” button.

Step 5. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, choose the “Create a blank floppy image” radio button and then click the “Next” button.

Step 6. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, click the “Bowse” button to choose a location for your floppy image.

Step 7. Type in the name of the image file you want to create. Notice I tried to input an “.img” extension which is one of the types listed in the file type select box. Don’t bother trying that because Workstation will automatically tack on a “.flp” extension regardless of what you input.

Step 8. Check your file’s path and then click “Finish”. What’s supposed to happen is, Workstation creates an image file with the name in the text box.

Step 9. What happens is Workstation adds the “.flp” extension, creates the image file, then gives you this Alert box stating: “Unable to create floppy image. File exists.” Idiotic really. Just click the “OK” button and proceed as follows.

Step 10. You’ll now see that your file name has been appended with the “.flp” extension and that and further “Finish” clicking will merely give you to opportunity to view the Alert box again. But don’t worry, because even though you’re getting error a strange and magical thing has happened. Click “Cancel” to proceed to the next step.

Step 11. Click “OK” on the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog.

Step 12. Ok, this is less of a step than just a view of the results. Remember that “strange and magical” thing I mentioned? Well, as it turns out Workstation has added the floppy drive to your virtual hardware and created and added the floppy image to your floppy drive just fine even with those errors. Weird, weird, weird, but I’m not really complaining, now I can do my lab!

Hope this helps anyone still having problems with this.

“She was not drafted. This was a job choice. She went into it with open eyes.”

It’s stupidity like that that makes you want to get rid of all lawyers - in a permanent sort of way. Why do we feel we can treat people in such a way just because they’ve done their duty to they’re country in time of war?!?

Links:
the NASA Image of the Day Gallery
The above photo

This video reminds me of that mentality. Truly a weapon with an enormous fear factor.

Link

{click it to go to the images page}

UPDATE - 080312!!
Updated the link so that it pointed to the right photo on the NASA image gallery site and not the thumbnail on this site. Sorry for the mix up!

The font I’ve used for the site logo on these came from the Sull-A-Day blog, another site you should definitely checkout. Anyway here they are, to download, right-click and do a “Save Target As” (IE) or a “Save Link As” (Firefox):

LD_BG01_1024×76 LD_BG01_1280×960 LD_BG01_2816×2112 LD_BG01.7z	LD_BG02_1024×768 LD_BG02_1280×960 LD_BG02_2816×2112 LD_BG02.7z
LD_BG03_1024×768 LD_BG03_1280×960 LD_BG03_2816×2112 LD_BG03.7z	LD_BG04_1024×768 LD_BG04_1280×960 LD_BG04_2816×2112 LD_BG04.7z
LD_BG05_1024×768 LD_BG05_1280×960 LD_BG05_2816×2112 LD_BG05.7z	LD_BG06_1024×768 LD_BG06_1280×960 LD_BG06_2816×2112 LD_BG06.7z

Download all these in a single file:

backgrounds_luckydisasters.com.7z [080207]

At some point I’ve got to make some 1440×900 versions of these too, that’s my laptop’s screen size after all…

These wallpapers are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\

Add a new key called “cmd” and set it’s default value at”Command Prompt Here”. Then to “cmd” add a new key called “command” and change it’s default value to “cmd.exe /k pushd %L”. Do the same for:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell

In other words add the “cmd” and set it’s default value, then add “command” to that and set it’s default value as above. Or you can download this reg file (CAUTION! Event though I use this myself, editing your registry may be really bad. Like no more using your computer bad. DON’T ADD THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!!):

MyCommandPromptHere reg file

In order to remove these entries, you can manually delete these keys, or you can right a reg file that looks like this:

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\cmd]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\cmd]

Neat eh? To remove registry keys, just create a plain text file, paste in the registry entry you want to remove, add a minus sign in front of the key and inside the bracket, and save the plan text file with a “.reg” extension. Run the file and presto, no more entry. Almost scary how easy that is…

I’ve included the above code already in the 7z file with the MyCommandPromptHere.reg as well, and you can find out a little more about modifying registry entries here. Enjoy!!