Archive for the 'Reviews' Category

Dave Barry’s Money Secrets

Published
by
J.D.
on March 29, 2007
in Just For Fun and Literature Reviews
. 0 Comments

I was out at Barnes & Noble tonight, getting some coffee from in-house coffee shop, when I spotted a book I hadn’t seen before: Dave Barry’s Money Secrets. The first couple of chapters are hysterical. I quote from the introduction:

…

Well, no matter who you are, you need this book.

“Why?” you ask.

Because chances are that when it comes to your personal finances, you are, with all due respect, a complete moron. I do not mean that in a derogatory way. I mean it simply in the sense that, when it comes to handling money, you are a stupid idiot.

“But,” you say, “what if I follow the accepted principles of sound money management?”

Great. Except that your so-called “accepted principles of sound money management” are worthless.

“But,” you say, “what if OUCH!”

I apologize for slapping your face, but if you keep interrupting with your stupid questions, we’re never going to get through this introduction.

That was on the first page, and it was enough to get me to buy the book. You should too. It’s worth it for its discussion of the money supply alone.

I Love My Tablet

Published
by
J.D.
on March 23, 2007
in Reviews
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I’ve been spending my day getting my new computer oriented with my life: connecting it to the network at my job, transferring files, installing programs, and just playing with the thing.

I love it. I keep discovering new things I can do with it. For example, I discovered I can write “ink notes” in Excel, so I can mark up a spreadsheet. I can do all kinds of neat stuff in OneNote, a program which deserves its own separate blog entry. It’s even pressure sensitive, so I can alternately write lightly and bear down hard on a picture in Paint.Net.

I also like Windows Vista. This thing came with Vista Business Edition. The handwriting recognition in Vista is really, really good. It can decipher my hand-writing, which is not an easy thing for most people I know to do. I like that I can do minor picture editing straight from an explorer window. I like the new eye-candy, the fading in and out of windows. I like how they changed the My Documents folder to be more like a “home” folder with a Documents folder inside of it, along with a Videos folder and a Music folder and all the other folders.

And I went ahead and upgraded to Office 2007. I’m on the cutting edge! And that cutting edge sliced right into my wallet! My bank account has been hemorrhaging cash this month. No more big purchases for a while, I think.

Tumblr

Published
by
J.D.
on March 19, 2007
in Site Reviews
. 0 Comments

With my blog, I generally want to have my own content, instead of just quoting things. Just quoting other people adds to that “echo chamber” effect that blogs have and means that I’m not contributing much to the conversation. But there’s still interesting stuff out there I’d like to quote with a minimum of commentary some times.

Thats why I’ve started a Tumblog. This is not, in fact, a blog about antacids. Instead, it’s a collection of whatever neat quotes and fun stuff I find around the internet.

Tumblr is great because it’s really, really simple. Just pick what kind of content you want to add–Regular Post, Photo, Quote, Link, Conversation, or Video–then paste or type the information into the form. No categories, comments, trackbacks, or any of the normal stuff you associate with blogging. And it displays the content in a nice big, clean format that’s really easy to read.

Find my tumblog at http://jdharper.tumblr.com/

Awesome Word 2007 Feature for Students

Published
by
J.D.
on March 18, 2007
in Lifehacks and Software Reviews
. 0 Comments

Citations are the bane of students. College-level teachers tremendously overvalue the worth of putting every period exactly in the right place in the Works Cited/Bibliography page. In English 102 at BJU, a single error costs you a third of a letter grade, as I recall.

That’s why this feature of Word 2007 is so awesome: Let’s say you have a quote you want to add to cite. Click in the text just after the quote, then click the References tab.

cited1tb.png

Then click “Insert Citation” and select “Add New Source.”

cited2.png

Fill out the citations form with all the basic information, like the title of the book and the author’s name.

cited3tb.png

When you click OK, it will automatically add the parenthetical reference. Then, go to the end of the paper and add a page break. Then click Bibliography and select either a Works Cited page or a Bibliography page.

cited4.png

When you click on Bibliography, it automatically puts it together for you in whatever format you need: MLA, APA, or whatever.

cited5tb.png

I’ve been really impressed with my demo of Office 2007 so far. This would have been a huge help in my university classes. I’m finding myself grudgingly realizing that I’m about to spend over $300 on the upgrade.

Travel Binoculars

Published
by
J.D.
on March 12, 2007
in Reviews
. 0 Comments

Last week, while Dad and I were at Radio Shack picking up an HD antenna, I found a neat pair of binoculars on the top shelf of a display in the back. Since Dad was busy talking with a salesman, I picked them up and tried them, looking across the mall into a clothing store. I was impressed with them, since they worked very well, seemed well-constructed, and cost less than $20.

I was about to buy them when my Dad, who knows a lot about telescopes, microscopes, and the like, pointed out that these same binoculars were available at Meade’s website for just $11, with free shipping. I ordered them when I got home, and they just arrived today.

binocularstb.jpg

I’m amazed at what you can get for just $11. The binoculars feel solid and well-constructed, while still being small and light enough for carrying comfortably.

The image is razor sharp. You can focus with the dial in the middle of the binoculars, and you can even adjust the right eye’s focus to be different from the left eye’s focus. (This is good for me, because without my glasses, my right eye sees much worse than my left one.)

In addition to the binoculars, you get a travel case, a big storage box, and a lint-free cloth for cleaning the lenses.

I really like these binoculars. I’m not sure when I’ll ever use them, but they’re cheap enough that they’re worth getting anyways. I’ll have to go hiking or something now so I can try them out someplace other than my front yard.

Twitter

Published
by
J.D.
on March 9, 2007
in Site Reviews
. 0 Comments

Astute readers will notice that there’s a new badge in my Social Networking sidebar. It’s from a site called “Twitter.” Basically, Twitter is a way to constantly update folks on what I’m doing or thinking about. It’s sort of a nifty “stream-of-consciousness” miniblog. John Edwards has one, as does prominent productivity blogger Merlin Mann. It’s pretty nifty.

It’s also a great source of interesting quotes like these:

  • At Ritual Coffee, the hand-crafted sign by the register now reads, “Please, no blogging in line.”
  • Internet, I’m in labor. Do something.
  • Tshirt I just saw: dolphins are gay sharks.

You can update by text message, instant message (I use google talk, personally), or by the website. It’s just a neat way of logging your life. I haven’t decided if I’ll stick with it or not, but it seems like fun for now.

Texter: TextExpander for Windows

Published
by
J.D.
on March 8, 2007
in Lifehacks and Software Reviews
. 0 Comments

There’s a new free tool available for Windows users called “Texter.” Made by the great folks at Lifehacker, Texter replaces your own customized abbreviations with longer passages of text. So, for example, you could have it replace “addr” with you home address, or “eml” with your email address, saving you typing time.

The thing that really makes it cool is that you can have it put any text on the clipboard into the expanded text. You can also have it move the cursor to any point in the expanded text. When you put these things together, you can make it really easy to automate some common HTML tasks, like making a link. So now, when I want to link to something in my blog, I copy the link into my clipboard, then type “hre” and hit tab. It replaces the “hre” with <a href=”link URL”></a> and places the cursor in between the two tags so that I can type the link text.

There are some videos on the site that explain how to set it all up. It’s easy to use, and it looks like a real time saver.

Explorer Breadcrumbs on Windows XP

Published
by
J.D.
on March 2, 2007
in Lifehacks and Software Reviews
. 1 Comment

Lifehacker linked to a neat program today called Explorer Breadcrumbs. After you install this program, a new Breadcrumb Bar sits at the top of the explorer window and gives you an easy way to navigate quickly throughout your file system. The bar lists all of the folders above the one you’re looking at in the file system, so you can jump back to any point you were at before.

This is actually a feature of Windows Vista, but this program allows Windows XP users to enjoy it as well.

I’ve recorded a quick video to demonstrate how it works.

(Higher-res WMV version of the above video)

Find Explorer Breadcrumbs at minimalist.com.

February Upstate Board Game Day

Published
by
J.D.
on February 25, 2007
in Game Reviews and Personal
. 1 Comment

Today was another one of the Upstate Board Game Group’s Game Days. This time, my little brother was at a friend’s house, so I ended up going there by myself. Although I was sorry he missed it, I did get to meet several other board game enthusiasts: Allen, Karen, Robert, and “Scooter.” I also got to learn about four games I had never played before.

We started off by playing Colossal Arena, a game where you place bets on up to eight mythological creatures, betting on which will survive five rounds of combat. The earlier you bet, the more points you get, but the greater risk you take. Also, if you have the most bets placed on a given creature, you can control that creature’s special power. For example, one lets you draw additional cards, while another lets you remove a power card from another creature. These power cards each have a number, from 0 to 10. Each round, players take turns placing bets, playing power cards, and drawing cards. Once each of the surviving creatures has a card on it, the creature with the lowest number dies. After five rounds, only three creatures will be standing, and whoever bet the most on these creature wins.

It took me a few minutes to understand exactly how this game worked–mostly as a result of the pace at which the game was explained to me–but once I did, it was a lot of fun. I might have to buy this, as it’s only $15 at Board Game Geek.

The second game we played was Caylus. This one took forever for Scooter to explain, but once he did, the game moved along quite nicely. The game is set in medieval France. The king is building a castle in the town of Caylus, and you and your opponents are master-builders. Each turn, you hire workers to work different tiles along a winding road, and each of these tiles has a different effect. Some give you money, some give you one of the five resources (cloth, wood, stone, food, and gold), and others let you build different kinds of buildings. I won’t go into a full explanation of how the game works, but I will say that it was a lot of fun to play. There are a ton of different was to get prestige, from building buildings (with still more new effects) to building parts of the castle to earning the King’s favor to selling off gold and other resources to building monuments and other prestige buildings. It’s a little overwhelming at first, but it’s a blast once you get into it.

The third game we played was The Downfall of Pompeii. In this game, you try to get as many of your people as you can to escape from Pompeii. The game begins a little slowly: you place people in the various town buildings, placing them as near a town gate as you can. Eventually, the volcano erupts, and lava tiles start to appear in the city. From that point, you try to move as many of the people in the buildings out of the city as you can. It’s a fun little game, although not worth the $45 retail. I might have to find this one used.

The last game we played was Management Material, in which you play an office worker trying to avoid getting into management and losing your soul. It doesn’t have the strategic depth of the other games, but it’s fun and a little silly.

Overall, I had a really good time. I’m looking forward to next month. I want to learn how to play Battlelore and/or Battlestations, so I hope that someone brings one or the other. Even if they don’t, I’m looking forward to next month!

Adventures in Linux

Published
by
J.D.
on February 11, 2007
in Software Reviews
. 2 Comments

This weekend, on a whim, I decided to install Ubuntu Linux onto my laptop. Previously, when I tried Ubuntu on my desktop, it worked, but was a real pain to use; it seemed like on every hand there was some new driver issue or problem to deal with, each of which would take the better part of an evening to fix.

On my laptop, it’s the complete opposite. Ubuntu has been an absolute joy to use. It’s even been able to do stuff that I would have thought impossible for this older-model Toshiba. For example, it’s capable of running Beryl, an awesome 3D desktop program, even though the laptop has a pitiful video card. Here’s an example of what Beryl can do on a system with a good video card:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lJZ1wnQX6s

On mine, it’s not nearly as smooth, but it still works pretty well.

Anyways, I guess the lesson here is: Ubuntu is a lot better on older, more common hardware than on Franken-PC’s like my desktop. And when Linux is working properly, it can be a lot of fun.