life with booyaa

howto: remove office for mac residue after the test drive expires

in the style of a booyaa.org handy hint/mini-hack/how to, here is a little thing i found out this weekend.

my newish iBook shipped with tiger - ggrrrr ;) - plus office for mac. i'm very much not a fan of microsoft but the advantages of being able to open documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint slides etc from work meant i decided to go with the test drive option and accept the install prompt. as it turned out, i only used the thing about three times before my test drive (30 days, i believe) was up. i got a bit annoyed how it kept reminding me to buy the package and uninstalled as per instructions. months down the line and every time i try to open a file with an office equivalent (mostly spreadsheets) it tells me that i need to buy the office for mac package. why? i uninstalled it, for pete's sake.

worse was to come, for the context (right-click) menu, where you can choose what program to open a file with, same as in windows, had all the office for mac programs set as default, an option which i never chose nor was i ever presented with an option in fact. i hate that soooo much. who gave them the right to make that decision? i got so angry when i saw it. it's like using windows all over again, with someone else - ie: microsoft - making decisions cos it thinks it knows best. well think again, buddy. it's my computer. i paid good money for it. keep your hands and your insidious, patronising practices well away from it.

sorry, i'll calm down now.

so what came about was this. i decided to find out how to clear the context menu. there was also a nagging doubt about the persistence of the items, plus the images of files used the office for mac icons. surely if it's been uninstalled these things should be in the trash?

turns out, thanks to some googling but mostly to the e2 iNode usergroup, that all the folders and the installer are still in my library. so i disposed of them all and emptied the trash. voila! gone! my default for spreadsheets is now apple works (though that's a bit clunky and unsexy and i'm not at all sure what happened there. did someone not bother to bring it into the 21st century?) and not a sign of the evil office for mac icons anywhere.

and they all lived happily ever after...

it's esperanto for the web generation.

it is, of course, intriguing to my linguistic side, that someone can make up a language and let it out into the world. i wonder what will happen if it does take off. will it be controlled by the company who made it or will it naturalise and evolve thanks to the users? as there will be no native speakers as such and those that use it will be crossing the traditional linguistic boundaires it will be interesting to see what becomes of it.

get the lowdown and the particularly bright and bouncy press release from techcrunch.

... or so say the folks over at the uber review.

jet packs are for sale, they tell us. the packs aren't actually on sale to the general public, but you can have a 'ride' if you've got a quarter of a million dollars to spend on a three minute thrill. but it's just the start. five years from now and we'll be jet-packing to work. in space suits. to protect us from the atmosphere that we've polluted so much as to make it impossible to sustain human life. but hey, we've got jetpacks, who cares? </irony>

read all about it at the uber review

nice, clean design to tidy up multiple plugs, but also turns off electronics set to stand-by, saving you a few bob and the planet at the same time. groovy.

see the pretty glow

thanks to booyaa for adding a functional sidebar with widgets. i've now got a blogroll of sorts and space to add notes or notices. and then there's the template. this is an off-the-peg movable type theme. it is customisable, so some colour will creep in eventually, just didn't have time for it this weekend.

it was all relatively painless to set up. i asked boo to do it, didn't fancy going through it myself but he said compared to wordpress updates it was a breeze. we do have issues with the blogroll though, as it doesn't come directly from my blog reader, it's static and handcrafted. so it won't update according to who recently posted, it will just sit there, and i think that's a great shame. it's really, as it is, just a link to a tiny percentage of the blogs i read on a daily basis. ho hum.

more changes to come in the next couple of weeks. we're sweeping away the cobwebs, getting a paint job and getting this thing all souped up and ready to get out on the open road again.

hello. my name's lou and i'm a twitteraddict.

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i found i would keep checking twitter to see what sarma and heidi were up to mostly, or glean the odd bit of wisdom from dru. so this weekend i finally caved in and got a twitter account. big mistake. i can see this getting addictive. i'm going to have to change my phone plan so i get more free texts. i was thinking of upgrading my phone soon, to the supersexy LG Prada phone, but i won't be able to as it's rubbish for texting. oh no! twitter is already taking over my life...

oh yes, and when i said, two weeks ago, that i wasn't going to get a twitter plug-in... well, that might change, too.

discovered on lifehacker, chore wars is an rpg of sorts.

you sign up your merry band of adventurers and set up your quests. each quest is based on a household chore, so, for instance, recycling, taking the rubbish out, cleaning, doing laundry and so on.

our group is called the fellowship of the dishcloth and we're both magical creatures. i'm the pantry elf and booyaa is red-eyed creature called arkanus. his knowledge of LotR and Kingdom of Loathing has helped considerably in setting up our adventures.

we've got a bunch of regular tasks set up as well as some one-off tasks. they all have silly names, such as grooming the dragon = washing the dishes, casting a spell of protection on armour = washing clothes, raiding the lord's larder = grocery shopping and so on.

one friend i mentioned this to thought it was defeating the object. that whole procrasatination thing - writing the list rather than doing the task - but it's all set up now and we just do our job and claim our xp. unfortunately i know boo is going to read this and it might break the spell but... he is a lot more eager to do the washing up these days! ;)

anyone building or maintaining websites should read this and refer to it at regular intervals. really good stuff.

taken from the personal blog of a BBC employee, i present the BBC's 15 web principles:

1. Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that set new standards. (nicked from Google)

2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less, but execute perfectly. (again, nicked from Google, with a tip of the hat to Jason Fried)

3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people’s content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.

4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.

5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don’t restrict your creativity to your own site.

6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.

7. Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.

8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.

9. Remember your granny won’t ever use “Second Life”: She may come online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.

10. Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.

11. Consistent design and navigation needn’t mean one-size-fits-all: Users should always know they’re on one of your websites, even if they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they won’t ever get lost.

12. Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users

13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes: Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them, with links back to your site

14. Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale

15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent: After all, it’s your users’ data. Best respect it.

you can find the original article here: http://www.tomski.com/archive/new_archive/000063.html

found this via lifehacker. it's a really nice wake up call when you need motivation to get something done or deal with a personality flaw. quite inspiring and just the right tone to work for me. go read it: hackyourself.org

serendipity is one of my favourite words. apparently i'm not alone, as it scored in the top ten of various versions of 'Britain's favourite words' type lists, so prevalent at the end of the year. but anyway. serendipity in my life comes along most often thanks to the wonders of the world wide web. not least because that's how i met YummyHubby (tm), which has got to be the best thing to ever happen to me...

sorry about that, got distracted.

so, from hack yourself i jumped onto one of the social bookmarking links in the sidebar and ended up at a wordnerd's ideal shoot em up :) you have to type the word you see in order to destroy the oncoming tanks and save your skin. good typing and spelling are essential. i thought it was fun for a few minutes then i looked at the high scores list and was utterly shocked that people must have been bashing their keyboards for hours on end to get those kind of points... scary.

go have some fun, wordnerd style: cognitivelabs.com/word_shoot.htm

and more fun for wordnerds to be found thanks to this rather cool interpretation of a thesaurus: www.visualthesaurus.com. cool as a concept from a linguistics-semantics standpoint, how the brain works, serendipitous word-surfing and so on, but also the technology involved in presenting words in this way.

the only caffeine round here since i gave up coffee three months ago is this handy app for OSX. what does it do? it keeps your mac awake. cool.

when you're sitting up in bed watching your juicefeast videos - or, whatever, getting your vintage duran duran fix - on you tube, with one click of an icon this little cutie stops your screen from dimming/turning off/launching your screensaver by preventing energy saver mode from kicking in.

easy download and install and totally worth it. but remember to leave it off by default and on for special occasions or it'll drain your battery (bad) and you'll lose eco-cred points (very bad).

more info and download available here

they just don't make enough t-shirts for linguistics nerds.

but at least there's one.

currentconfig.com have pulled out all the stops here. this is one of those things you know, dammit, are right, but it always felt like gut instinct. now you have reasons. valid, robust, scientific ones at that.

why [over+toilet paper=good] and [under+toilet paper=bad].

here's the skinny. go get some learning.

I've just set up a new website using WordPress (more on that in a separate post) and since WordPress allows for Typekit font replacement I decided to give their free trial version a spin. I replaced the header fonts with a soft handwriting style font (the one I really wanted was only available in the pay-for portfolio, but I might upgrade one day) using Typekit. It was really easy. Here's what you do.

Go to Typekit and open an account. Takes two minutes, if that.
Generate a tag for your site. Go back to your WordPress settings and paste the tag in your website header scripts. WordPress make this easy to do, it's very similar to setting up your Google Analytics tags, just paste it in the box and save.
Now, choose your font(s) and the weights and styles you're after - light, bold, black, oblique, normal etc.
Decide which CSS styles/classes you're using the font with - you can also do this directly in your website CSS, up to you.
Save.
Check out your website with your lovely fancy fonts.

recommendations, notes and stuff I learned
firefox font replacement delay: known issue
I use Safari most of the time, but when I tested out my new site on Firefox i saw that the delay, even on our superfast broadband &emdash; or maybe because of it &emdash; means you can see the fallback font before your Typekit font appears. The font I chose is a compact one and I'm using a light variation, too, so the overall size is much less than a standard sans-serif would be. I suspect it's not as noticeable with similar sized fonts.

CSS
If you know some CSS you will have more control over how things look on your site. But you really only need to know a little. Since I was changing the headers (the branding is separate in the theme I'm using) I added this code to my CSS file:

h2, h3 {
font-family: "sovba-1","sovba-2",sans-serif;
font-weight: 400;
font-size: 18px;
}

tread lightly
You can choose to install just the weight and style you'll need or the whole lot. The less you choose the lighter the kit (font package) and, I expect, the less impact it will have on your website loading times. I added only the two weights I wanted. I'm an inveterate tweaker, so it's likely that in a few weeks I'll update my kit with a different weight, or italic, or even a new font face.

fallback font
You can choose a fallback for if the font replacement fails (we're promised it's never going to happen, but hey.) Otherwise the browser defaults will kick in, and the viewer will see Verdana, or Times New Roman (god forbid, on your lovely minimalist site) so it's worth doing that.

pricing plans
The trial plan gives you access to around 150 fonts while the personal library includes over 500 fonts. So if you find the font you want within the trial library, and it's for a low-traffic website, you're laughing. Up to 25,000 page views a month, I think that's really generous.
For $25 a year, you can access the personal library and use 10 fonts across 2 websites, with double the page views, too. I'm certainly considering it. I could then tart up booyaa dot org, too. Which is the plainest website in the world right now.

This here blog is running off an ancient MoveableType install. I love MoveableType, but my SysAdmin (aka YummyHubby) hates upgrading it, so it malingers. It's 2 full versions behind, and it shows. I have no fancy bells and whistles and I can't use most of the standard plug-ins. So for my new website I decided to go with WordPress, which seems to be hitting the ball out of the field as far as usability, easy upgrading, plug-in directories and so on are concerned.

Along with that I'm using Platform Pro which is an amazing CMS and design framework for WordPress. You should definitely consider it if you want to set up an easy-peasy website and make it your own, make it look like a website rather than a blog, instead of a) using a WordPress theme which inevitably never quite does what you want it to or b) paying a designer to build you a custom theme.

The one caveat I'd give here is that you have to be sure it's the right thing for you. I'll try to explain why as I go through the steps I followed.

set up an account with pagelines
Once you have an account with them you can set up as many test websites as you like. At this point you don't need to pay for anything. The test sites are handy for trying out designs before you choose. I also used it to show a friend with a crappy old website what she could have for just a few quid if she moved it over. So now I'm building her a new website, too.

create a test site
Test it out, see if it's flexible enough for you to do what you want. If you have a design in mind then try to create it using the in-built tools, comps from iStockphoto or wherever. If you get somewhere near then it'll work for you. If you want a very plain site then you'll find it will definitely work for you as its presets are a joy for minimalists.

Now you're convinced, you have to part with your cash. I can't help you there. Let's assume you've paid up. Next.

set it up for your site
It works just like a WordPress theme as far as installation goes. We have our own domains and our own server, so we installed the package there, but you can use it on your wordpress.com site equally well. Then it's time to implement the design you practised earlier on the test site.

There are tons of style switches so you can choose your layout — fixed width, full width, canvas or no; background image, wallpaper or plain colour; fonts, colours and sizes; widgets and footers. It has so many options. I haven't had the chance to use all of them as the two sites I've done so far are very pared down, 'cos that's what we like, but I have tinkered on the test site. Pretty much everything is widgetised and there are image carousels and fancy footers available. You can use other WordPress plug-ins with it, and those which are compatible will be restyled by the Platform Pro settings — see the Twitter widget, for instance, on the booyaa dot org homepage.

CSS-fu
If you want to, you can override the built-in styles with CSS. There's a horizontal line under the nav and each content block in the default which I've "turned off" on my site, and that was achieved by rewriting that element with 0px instead of 1px. The forums are really helpful and you can ask for help if you get stuck (though I want to scream at some of the users who demand custom CSS overrides to make changes to their site without ever reading any of the posts which already explain it. Moving on...) but if you haven't got a clue you can still make an attractive, stylish and original site without needing to understand how it works under the hood. The basic, unchanged style is a great start to a modern website. If you like flashing sprites and comic sans then this is not for you. You don't deserve a website anyway. Sorry. (Not actually sorry.)

licenses
The standard license is enough for most websites, but your site will have an unshiftable promo for the product in the footer. If you get the full developer license you don't have the promo link, and there's support for extras, like a user forum. Whichever you go for, you can use it as often as you want across as many sites as you want, and you can build a child theme if you're setting it up for others, which is great for developers/designers/small business website builders. You hand over the child theme which you have fully customised for your client, and that's a tangible product you can charge for, on top of whatever you want to charge for the use of your Platform Pro license.

Right, now I've extolled its virtues, I'm off to build my third Platform Pro website.