March 30, 2008

The most awesome movie...ever

Surfing the web this weekend and I came across this little gem.

I seriously can't wait to see it!

Posted by yardie at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 25, 2008

Fundamentally the same, slightly different

I'm in the process of moving from a Windows PC to a Mac. I haven't decided which Mac it's going to be yet, but it's going to be powerful for sure. I was a mac user for a long time but something went down and the mac was never seen again. I've been using a PC since. The price was lower for sure. But it's been quite apparent for a long time where the limitations creep in. My budget laptop is barely capable of running Windows Vista. But it carries that stupid capable sticker like a badge of honor. If only Intel didn't screw people around. And pulled Microsoft into the scam. My laptop was only bought a 4 months before the release of Vista. It wouldn't be the fastest on the block, but it damn sure should have worked the way it was supposed to.
Now as soon as the budget clears this month I'm going for it. But with change of operating systems comes slightly different, yet annoying ways of doing the same tasks.
For example. I was using iPhoto for a few years on the Mac. The equivalent on the PC was Picasa, bought by Google. My first impression of it was a pretty good one. The interface was similar to iPhoto in many respect. The editing tools were very nice. I didn't understand it's reliance on folders. I like the way iPhoto sorted this mess out for automatically based on year/month/day hierarchy. I have multiple cameras so when I download them to the PC I use the month of the download. Picasa really made a mess of things, because Albums of the same date weren't put in the same folder 2007_4 and 2007_4_1 for example. I'm using iPhoto once again. I hope the speed has improved, one thing I like about Picasa was the speed. and the integration with picasaweb. But as a long time Flickr user I prefer to use flickr.

Posted by yardie at 7:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 14, 2008

Firefox Mac vs. Firefox Windows

I have a Mac... OSX86 :-P and it kicks ass. So after playing around with all the default stuff for a few days I download firefox. Not the crusty, memory hogging 2.0 but the brand new slick looking 2.0 beta, from here. And I must say it looks really really nice on OS X. I think the developers have been really working there ass off to get it up to speed on the Mac. It's got polish and it shows. I think a lot more Mac users are visually aware of their surroundings and you really have to bring your interface up to atleast the Apple HIG if you're going to get any traction at all. Else you face losing those users to Safari. Trust me, you don't have to try hard to get users off Safari, but first impressions are important. And if the end-user doesn't like what they see in the first 5 seconds you are dead meat.
So imagine my surprise when I download the firefox beta on vista. :-\ See what I did there? Yes it sucked that hard. I know windows users aren't the same as mac users and are willing to put up with a lot more slackness. But the windows firefox beta, looks like a beta. Garish ugly blue buttons and all it warts.
Basically, it didn't blend.

Posted by yardie at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 11, 2008

Quicktip: Using TortoiseSVN with Sourcegear Diffmerge

At work, we try to remain agnostic about the development tools we use. For source code management some teams are using Sourcesafe, others are using Sourcevault, my team is using SVN. Since we are also a Microsoft shop we use TortoiseSVN instead of the commandline tools. There are no problems with them but it's a lot easier to use the GUI.
By default tortoise installs its own diffviewer, tortoisemerge, for viewing and modifying changes. I prefer another. Sourcegear diffmerge provides a better user experience and the text is a lot easier to follow. To set tortoisesvn to use a different diffviewer we open settings and select diff viewer in the External Programs subtree. Select External radiobox.

Enter this text into the dialog box:
"C:\Program Files\Sourcegear\DiffMerge\DiffMerge.exe" /t1=mine /t2=theirs %mine %theirs

Click on Merge Tool and select External radiobox. Enter this into the textbox:
"C:\Program Files\Sourcegear\DiffMerge\DiffMerge.exe" /t1=mine /t2=base /t3=theirs /r=%merged %mine %base %theirs

Save and close the dialogbox. Fire up a file that was modified to compare and you'll be using Diffmerge instead of tortoisemerge.

Posted by yardie at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack