Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000

I've used my original Microsoft Natural Keyboard for 11 years. It still worked fine, although some letters were starting to wear out a bit. It did look old though.

I eventually decided to get a new keyboard, and being ergonomic was a major factor. I can use a regular keyboard, but it feels too crowded. I also have one of the rounded MS keyboards, but while better than a regular keyboard, it's still not as good.

I literally been looking around for years. Ergonomic keyboards are impossible to find in Brazil, unless you want the really cheap kind - one I bought (Teclado Ergonomico Leadership) had noticeably worse keys in 6 months of use! It used a ABNT layout too, which I really hate.

So eventually I decided to buy a Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000. Well, I actually decided I wanted it - I couldn't figure out how to buy one - Amazon won't ship it to Brazil, and I couldn't find anyone else that would... Luckily I mentioned that to a friend which immediately suggested just getting it on eBay.

It ended up being a little cheaper AND including a Microsoft Comfort Mouse 3000. About the mouse: I mostly like it, except for middle click which is horribly hard. If it doesn't eventually gets better, I guess I will have to buy another mouse... Given that it was in effect a bonus, I wouldn't mind that very much. It does look great with the keyboard, though.

Back to the keyboard, I certainly don't regret buying it - the layout is very similar to my old keyboard, it has a ton of extra keys, it feels great (although some might not like the soft touch, I really do) and it's smaller than the old one. The new wrist rest feels much better than the previous plastic one. It looks great, too!

It's not perfect, though. The keys are a bit smaller, which is enough to thrown me out a bit when typing. The left Control key is a lot smaller, so it's hard to use the side of your hand to press it when typing a shortcut. I find the extra text on the keys for shortcuts and F-commands very irritating, although that's a matter of personal taste.

The whole numeric key block and other extra keys are a bit more crowded, which bothers me a bit, but it's probably a better design - I just need to get used to it.

The space key is a lot noisier than the rest - this seems to bother some people, but as it is a lot quieter than the version in my old keyboard, I don't mind.

Overall, I think it's a great buy, specially for the price...

MMO's

Since I posted a comment to another blog, I might as well blog myself :-)

Lately I've taken an interest in MMOs, and have been playing Guild Wars and Tabula Rasa. I also tried a few freebies like Dungeon Keepers, Exteel and others, but they were not worth the time.


Guild Wars is quite beautiful, doesn't have much lag (being in Brazil, how it reacts to lag is a major issue) and have a number of convenient features - such as traveling instantaneously and bots available for quest. Plus, it's a one time payment. I seem to always be needing more space though.

I like the sci-fi theme of Tabula Rasa a lot more. However, the lag here is horrible, even when the server and areas are supposed to be low on users. It's almost like it has no predictive capabilities on the client and is only updating the screen after checking with the server.

I've checked the FPS info and it's not it - even when it's at 60FPS or more it's still very choppy.

Also, it has a per-month fee. I guess I'll see if it's a keeper later.

Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk

I've recently read Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk. It covers nicely the what, how and why of Continuous Integration (CI) - the practice of setting a build system such as Cruise Control, with a full build - and usually tests - whenever something on the project source code changes.

The most important reason is that your project is always ready to go, and with good tests, you can quickly get feedback on anything that breaks them right after you add the problem.

Of course, I'd say CI is much more important to web apps/services and teams than sole software developers such as me .

I do use a build system, Visual Build. I only run a full build with it on shipping a new version, however. I have it set up to build the EXE, run a few tests (WAY too few...), protect it, generate the web pages and RSS feed, build the install, and send all that...

It was a major effort to set it up, but it did change my checklist from about 30 items to just a few that either can't be automated (sending to major download sites that don't use PAD files, running Robosoft, etc) and/or that I'd really rather not automate (sending e-mail to my lists on new versions).

It does have some CI support, too, which I didn't realize until after reading the book.

eReader

I've always liked e-books with eReader's DRM - it's based on Name+Credit Card Number, and thus device independent.

As long as you keep a list with your previous CC numbers you used for buying e-books, you should be fine. I've had a bit of a problem figuring out how they used my name *exactly* - sometimes it's all in caps, sometimes without middle initials, etc.

However, since I bought a Nokia N95 a couple of weeks ago, I was bit disappointed to find out that their Symbian version won't work for it, and that they don't have any versions for Symbian S60 3rd edition.

Mobipocket does work, and although the screen *is* a bit small, it's pretty neat for reading while waiting for anything, since unlike my Palm I carry it everywhere I go. As is usually the case, the eReader DRM e-books only work with eReader.

Today I wrote to eReader support, and within a couple of hour they answered - which I found quite surprising (even as I myself sometimes answer support e-mails a couple of minutes after they are sent).

It's not all that encouraging - support for S60 3 is planned for their version 3.0, but they have no idea when that will be available - but at least it looks like they plan to continue development. And their support is much more responsive then I imagined.

Mozy.com

I've recently started using Mozy.com for on-line backups - it's pretty neat.
The background operation allows it to have very current and very granular backups.

I don't really trust their encryption though, so I'm using my normal backup program to a folder, with incremental backup on and fully encrypted and synchronizing THAT folder.
It works, although it is very inefficient compared to normal operation, of course...

For less important stuff I use the built-in (LOCAL!) encryption.

The price seems pretty good if you use the free or personal version, too.

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

I've been playing it since yesterday - bought from Steam, as usual. I had heard a lot of positive comments, and since playing, I have to agree with them!

It's pretty awesome. I miss not having real vehicles sections (at least so far), instead of the "on rails" sequences where you just aim, but these sequences and the plane and chopper carnage where pretty great.

Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Vernor Vinge is a great author. I've loved all of his books I read, and Rainbows End is no exception. Even better, it's free on the web, posted by himself.

It's in HTML format but it's trivial to convert with Mobipocket Creator if you'd prefer to read it on a Palm or another device that supports Mobipocket.

Portal

I've recently finished Portal. It was much better than I expected! Well worth the price and time. Half-life Episode 2 was great too, but very short - and that was a somewhat revolting ending...

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

I've blogged a few days ago about the Quake Wars demo, which I really liked. Since I got the demo from Steam, I expected it would be available there and was checking every day after the boxed release (October 1th in the US, September 27th on Europe).

Great news: it's now available for pre-purchase. The bad news - it's only going to be released October 9th! I imagine they are giving the stores a chance to sell the boxed release :-(

Not much danger in my case - it probably will take for it to be available in Brazil. I already purchased it on Steam.

LMD Tools SVN

Just today I got the new LMD VCL Complete, their pack that includes everything.

Since I previously had both ElPack and LMD Tools before, the actual components don't have that much of a change. The source delivery system is a different story - it's now available through SVN.

That means you can get the latest development or tested releases very quickly, and then just use an included utility to assemble the packages. It's a large advantage versus the large numbers of downloads you'd normally need, although their server's speed was very nice today (topping at about 300K/s, which is MUCH better than I usually get at other components sites such as Developer Express or TMS). In theory updates should be tiny since they'd only include the actual source changes.

It's not all perfect, though - demos and help aren't included, so there is a lot of stuff to install yet (Elpack, LMD, both for VCL and VCL.NET as well as some extra stuff). And for some reason (I'm pretty sure I followed their instruction to the later) I have several revisions of the components instead of just the latest - which adds up to several hundred extra megabytes.

But it's still pretty neat. Not as neat as DevEx unified installer, but the delivery system is certainly much more efficient.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

I seem to never get around to posting, but since I'm already here...

I got the demo for Enemy Territory:Quake Wars from Steam last week. It's a FPS with vehicles in the Battlefield style.

So far, I've played it for several hours, both with bots and multiplayer. Bot performance seems to be much better than Battlefield's (where it seems more like an afterthought), and the gameplay is much better.

I hope (and expect) that it will be offered through Steam - I will buy it as soon as it is available.

I've also played the beta of Team Fortress 2, but while it isn't bad, it seems pretty simplistic in comparison to Quake Wars...

Codegear RAD Studio 2007

I was interested in getting the latest version of Delphi, either in the form of Codegear RAD Studio 2007 or the latest update of Delphi 2007 (my latest Delphi is BDS 2006).

And I would already have if I could just buy the downloadable version. The US store won't sell to Brazilian users, and the local version of BDS 2007 is 71% more expensive, while Delphi 2007 had a 40% increase.

Adding to the mix the dropping of Winforms support, Visual Studio and .Net never seemed so good... :-(

Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

I've just finished reading Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. It's a pretty good coverage of the best practices on design of dashboards, including type of graphs and media and how to emphasize and de-emphasize items.

This is a topic I'm interested in due to my intention of having a dashboard in the Pro or Enterprise version of STG FolderPrint Plus... More to follow in that subject in the future. :-)

Variable Star

I've just finished reading Variable Star today - around 2 AM - I just couldn't stop reading...

It is a book by Spider Robinson based on the a recently found outline for a juvenile by Robert A. Heinlein. It is a very good read.

The tidbits on the end about how he wrote it in Heinlein's cufflinks and how the first book he ever read was written by Heinlein are quite interesting,too.

The ending did feel a bit Deus-Ex machina, though. That said, I'd love to see a sequel! Looking around I found a interview with the author, who said he haven't thought about it. That is a bit hard to believe, given how the sequel was left nicely open AND sounding interesting.

Search System with The Bat! Support

Archivarius is a search system (like Google Desktop or Copernic Desktop Search), but it supports many formats, including The Bat's mail files.

I didn't try it (and it's NOT free), but that is interesting.

There is also a plug-in for Google Desktop elsewhere, but I use Copernic, myself.
The Bat support is almost enough to make me try it again, but not enough. The first version was pretty bad - locking up and wasting resources - and it seems that the options to choose what you want to scan are still shaped presuming you want to scan all your drives, instead of just a few folders, which is what I do.

Both options are very easy on Copernic Desktop Search. The only options I'm missing is one to index filenames only - useful for folders with large files you don't want fully indexed but where filenames would be useful.

Find All Domains on Same IP Tool - SEOLogs.com

Find All Domains on Same IP Tool - SEOLogs.com: "
7) ucpco.com"

Nice tool. Works ok with some of my domains, but not all. Interesting anyway.

Freehold and Net Assets

I've recently read Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson. I got it on one of the packages at Webscription .

These packages are a great deal all around - the books are very reasonably priced for the reader, and since so many are series every time I buy a package I end getting another to cover the rest of another series. That part is great for the publisher, of course...

Freehold was very nice. The Freehold of the title is a planet that has an anarchy based society, in which everything goes great - crime is non-existent (even if everyone is heavily armed), taxes are minimal to none, etc.

(I can almost believe that could work - the citizens would need a completely different upbringing than any I've heard of, though)

The UN-unified Earth, very incompetent, of course, enters war because they can't tolerate how well they are doing without a heavy-handed government. Now that I can sure believe in...

One thing I thought was interesting were the paralels with Net Assets .

Net Assets is a (now free) e-book by Carl Bussjaeger with has strong anarcho-capitalistic leaning, in which a tiny, private company makes space launches possible by using a ground-effect based launcher and a small shuttle, and using simple off the shelf components whenever possible. Making NASA and the government look bad, at which point there is a war that ends in a very similar way to Freehold.

I have no idea if that launcher concept is really viable, but I do know that some of the "outside the box" techs mentioned are being developed (I even sold some of my software to a company that worked on inflatable space habitats - not as cool as my other sale to JPL but nice none the less).

If you read it and enjoy it, please donate something. I did.

The lack of sequels because of piracy is sad. However, I'd guess it is more because of being available only as an e-book in a single site (vs a large e-book site such as Fictionwise) than P2P users...

Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

I've read Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master last week. It was pretty good, although if you have a few years of experience and good practices, you should be familiar with most of what it says, even if you don't follow it in practice :-) .

Some of their bullet points are:
- Don't duplicate
- Write flexible code
- Use Contracts, assertions and exceptions
- Test
- Automate where possible
- Use a version control system.

Obviously, many of these points have a lot to do with refactoring and XP.

They also have another neat book on Automation, Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps. Obviously that is much less relevant to a Delphi programmer, but you can still learn quite a bit from it.

After I started reading it, I automated large sections of my build and release process (in PHP - it's easy to use in the command-line, too, and some parts are re-usable on the site). It saves a lot of time and enables you to stop worrying if you missed some small detail before releasing.

Their books are also available on their site as PDFs. I'm not such a big fan of PDF since I started using Plucker, though. Plucker can convert sites and HTML files (with associated graphics) for use on a Palm, and it's much, much better than the PDF reader and converter for Palm.

Working Effectively with Legacy Code

I recently read Working Effectively with Legacy Code .

It was an excellent book. It focus on legacy code, defined as code that doesn't use unit testing - yes, it is a narrow definition :-) .

It has an excellent range of techniques for refactoring and getting older code under test, as well as adding features without breaking anything. If you have an older program that you are moving under a testing framework, the insights on the book are well worth the price.

In particular, the various ways to get objects decoupled so that you can get them tested without creating a lot of support code are very useful.

Last week's books

In his image
(Book One of the Christ Clone Trilogy)

*Very* good. The basic premise is based on cells being found still alive in the Shroud of Turin. These cells are used to create to a clone.

The pace of the book is excelent, although the nuking might have been a bit excessive :-). Lots of questions unanswered on the end. I've already gotten the second one.

Crown of Slaves

Yet another Honor Harrington book. Honor shows just a bit on this one, just like on Shadow of Saganami. It was pretty good - Victor Cachat (which appeared on several of the short-story Anthologies) makes a great showing as usual, and the trend of making books on the HonorVerse without the focus on Honor seems to be working well.

Nick Bradbury: Depressing piracy statistic

Nick Bradbury: Depressing piracy statistic

On his blog, Nick Bradbury, of HomeSite, TopStyle and FeedDemon fame, (I use TopStyle and FeedDemon myself) mentioned that the previous week's Feeddemon activations were 90% cracked serials.

Ouch.

I'm still struggling with the question of adding activation to my own products.

Obviously, the big question is if it would add more sales than would be lost by those who hate activation. In Nick's case activation is almost invisible since it has to access the net anyway. My utilities don't so it's bound to be much more annoying...

FTP Voyager

A couple of days ago, I've started using the excelent FTP Voyager , instead of my *very* old copy of WS_FTP Pro. While it did take a bit to get used to the new interface, it was well worth it.

Some of the neat things:
- SSH: I feel so much safer
- Compression: now my logs are downloaded 90% faster. It's not so much for less repetitive file types, but still a lot on most text based files.
- Synchronizing: instead of picking the files that changed manually, just tell it to synchronize.
- Scheduling: it's very easy to schedule downloads and synchronization (both sides, server to client or client to server). I've added an item that grabs new log files, for example. And if you don't want to schedule, you can run it manually when you want to.
- Multiple downloads/uploads: it automatically generates multiple connections when downloading several files. That saves a lot of time, specially if you are sending several small pages.

Support is pretty good too - I had a question about the interface and got an answer within a couple of hours.

BTW, I recommend Simple style, tree views off (I'd rather have a typable combobox, which takes very little space, instead of those space hogs, but I guess you can't have everything...), on Options, User Interface, Look and feel. You can turn the Trees on with Alt+I.

I also think that the most intuitive double-click action is transferring the file. Took me a bit to find the option, it's on Option, User Interface, List, Activate Action - set it to Transfer.

I was unable to transfer my old WS_FTP site list, though. The import didn't work (just created the categories, empty). Ethereal was neat for getting the old passwords I couldn't remember. :-)

Half-life 2

...and the other reason was Half-life 2. Yes, I hate their delivery system and activation in general (but I'm still thinking whether to use it on my own software or not), but all in all, this is an awesome game. The *LOADING* time is very annoying, but the gravity gun and the neat physics system and the puzzles make it well worth the time spent.

Far Cry still beats it on outside views such as jungles and water (and by a lot!), but other than that, HL2 is probably the best FPS shooter ever done.

I also like the fact that it must be one of the first major titles to be distributed through the net at launch. I got a few games from Stardock's Totalgaming.net , but they are not anywhere in the same league as HL2. I still would rather have a download system that is less intrusive, like Stardock's, but I guess you can't have everything...

State of Fear, by Michael Crichton

I've just finished reading State of Fear, and it was very good. The best part is easily the enormous amounts of graphs and data on global warming and the consequent discussion on what we know, as opposed to what was made up. Also great were the reflections on the state of scientific research and the increasing lengths to which media will go to increase the scale of turning pure speculation into major scares.

The extra essays (on the e-book, not sure about the print versions) were very nice, too.

Of course, it also helps that it just being released and I got a 100% rebate on Fictionwise .

Some of the particularly scary parts is how much of the nuclear winter theory was made up (but hey, are you in favor of nuclear war?) and the DDT ban.

One of the reasons I started posting at the blog again was this book. I just felt the need to post my opinion on such a great book. And the other reason...

Honor Harrington

I haven't posted in a few months. In that time, I read all available books of the Honor Harrington series , including both Anthologies available at Fictionwise. Not to mention several dozen other books...

That particular series is just great, I've liked several other series by David Weber (Empire From Ashes and the Prince Roger series), but that is easily the best. One of the points I like the most is the tactical setup. The technology of the series is very well suited for complex (sometimes a little silly, but most often not) scenarios.

Empire From Ashes

Empire from Ashes

I got started about a week ago reading this 3-volume pack, and it was spectacular! I finished it just today, and it was well worth the time spent - I'm only sorry the series doesn't seem to continue...

Tabbrowser Extensions

XUL Apps > Tabbrowser Extensions - outsider reflex

If you use Firefox (or Mozilla), go get this now! Yes, it's that good.
There is an absurd amount of options. Some of my favorites are undoing close of tabs and launching new windows in tabs (plenty of options on that too).

Books this week...

Stories of your Life, by Ted Chiang.

An excellent collection of short stories. Very creative.

Ground Zero, by Bonnie Ramthun.

Pretty good sci-fi thriller, about a murder in a group of Missile Defense developers.

Spaceland

There were quite a few Rudy Rucker's books I enjoyed over the years. Hacker and the Ants, the Software/Freeware/Wetware trilogy, White Light... All were fun, quirky, and incorporated some math aspects.

Spaceland is certainly no exception. The action revolves around the 4th dimension (no, not time, a physical extra dimension). There is a plot involving the 4th dimensional beings and the spaceland - a semi-3 dimensional slice (a few nanometers "thick") in the 4th dimension that happens to be our universe.

There are a lot of cool insights into dimensions in the book, mostly about how a 2 dimensional universal would look to its inhabitants (since this is easiest one for readers to understand) and 4 dimensional space and objects to 3 dimensional eyes (since it's how we'd see it). Other dimensions make brief apparences as well (0-d and 1-d too, around the end of the book).

Pretty cool. I really recommend it, but if "thought experiments" aren't your thing you might not enjoy it as much as I did.

Hacker and the Ants is well worth a read and more conventional, too. Some VR parts of the plot might feel a little dated, though. (Note that I read the original and the link is for version 2.0)

Firefox

A couple of months ago, I started switching to Mozilla from IE. There are a few reasons for that, the biggest being how wonderful middle-clicking to open new tabs are (I tend to browse quite a few at the same time...), as well as how poorly IE reacts sometimes, also slowing the rest of the Windows Interface (apparently the worse side of browser/OS integration).

The numerous (and serious) security issues were also a factor. AFAIK, there is still an open Javascript program that allows anyone to install spyware.

Last week I tried Firefox, and it's even better than Mozilla. The interface is superior, and it feels a bit faster, too. The extensions available are great! I installed a lot of them. For example:

1) Adblock : Blocks ads using Regular Expressions. Some ad heavy pages, such as Yahoo, look so clean they seem weird
2) Googlebar (although the cute Google/etc search on the right of the toolbar cover most of my use). It does have a keyboard shortcut for showing up or not, which is helpful to get more screen space.
3) IE View: good for opening any page which might not be showing correctly on IE, or testing a page on IE.

The Dark Tower 6: Song of Susannah

Read it last week. It's not fantastic, but it's pretty good. I was very surprised when I saw it was out (on Fictionwise's newsletter) - the delay between the other books was several years!

Of course, I bought it right away and was reading it a few minutes after that (oh, the joy of e-books instant delivery).

If you didn't read the rest of the series, of course, it won't make any sense. Otherwise you'll probably like it.

The end of the series (volume 7) should be available on September 21, according to Amazon...

Annoyances.org - Change the icon for Internet Shortcuts

Annoyances.org - Change the icon for Internet Shortcuts

Today I decided to switch my default browser to Mozilla, in particular because of "the middle-click opens the link in a tab, on the background" option, which I use a lot. There are a couple of other neat things too, like easily blocking images from a server with just a context-menu option.

Anyway, the Mozilla icon is just awful, and suddenly all the URL shortcuts I dropped in my desktop were an annoying Mozilla red instead of the much nicer IE icon.

Took me a while to figure it out (by using the linked page) since the normal way won't work without a registry hack, but it's ok now.

I was just about switching the default back to IE... Yes, it was easily that annoying...

E-mail Confidential - Who's afraid of Time Inc.'s legal disclaimer?

E-mail Confidential - Who's afraid of Time Inc.'s legal disclaimer?
Interesting article about e-mail disclaimers.

Nerg's web server

Nerg's web server

Check out NergAmp - it allows setting system-wide hotkeys for Winamp. That way you change the music or the volume from within any program or game. Neat.

E-books this week

Hi,

This week (so far <g>) I've read a couple of e-books, both good.

The first was Candle, by John Barnes. Very nice - mostly it's about a world taken by "memes" - in this context AIs that were designed to spread through "skull jacks" (brain-computer interface) and take some amount of control, usually total. (Originally "meme" is an idea considered as an replicating entity that uses people to spread)

The Earth was taken by a particular meme completely, with just a few remaining people not taken by it. These are called cowboys. The story goes by the focus of a cowboy hunter. I felt the end was quite surprising...

One slightly off-putting part is the dates - the book was released on 2000 and yet has a major world war in 2002. Duh!

Other excellent book by Barnes is Mother of Storms. I can't recommend this one highly enough!

The other book was Spider Man 2. I just bought it because it had a 100% rebate on Fictionwise (which is where I get almost all my e-books) - otherwise I probably wouldn't. It was quite entertaining, however, and I finished it within the day.

The book was by Peter David, which has quite a few excellent books. The first to come to mind are Babylon 5 related, The Centauri trilogy, which was pretty good.

Welcome to my blog...

Hi,

Welcome. I thought I'd like somewhere to comment on sites, books and software. Blogger being free and all, it seemed easier than finding and installing a free script.

I will probably be posting praise of my own software , too :-).