News and Views

I love the FoxIt PDF reader; it’s much faster and cleaner than Adobe Acrobat. However there were a few printer bugs in the version I have been using — some things didn’t scale or rotate correctly.
Foxit Software has a new realease out (still version 1.3, but build number 1413) that seems to fix the printer problems.

Download it and replace the existing version. Note that they took the space out of the name (FoxitReader.exe instead of Foxit Reader.exe), so if you just replace your old one programs won’t find it. Either spell it the same as it was, or run it once to activate it.

This is a pretty cool illusion.
Stare at the center cross. What happens to the pink circles?

There are lots more here. I know some of you have seen some of these before, but this pink dot one was new to me.

Here are three more free programs that I’ve found useful.

KeePass is a program to keep all your passwords. It requires a password to access, so you still have to remember at least one. You could do the same thing with a password protected Word file or something, but this is pretty convenient. If you do set it up, look at configuring it so it comes up with the default password database when you run it, so you don’t have to search for the file each time.

Speaking of passwords, I’ve had occasion to help people who have (for whatever legitimate reason) forgotten the administrator password to their computer. There is a program here that will allow you to reset the passwords on any NT, XP or Win2000 system. The program creates a boot disk that lets you access the registry. It won’t work if the hard drive has been encrypted or compressed, but that’s not very common. The instructions walk you through a typical application.

Audacity is an excellent sound recording and editing program. You can connect a microphone to your PC and record WAV files or MP3s. You can also use Audacity to edit recordings you already have, for example taking the hiss or click out of recordings made from a vinyl record, or add sound effects such as reverb, fade in, etc. It’s a very nice program.

“Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware-infected PC than people who go online with Mozilla’s Firefox browser, academic researchers from Microsoft’s backyard said in a recently published paper.”

Read more here.

I know that I never get spyware anymore, just a few innocuous tracking cookies.

Last week Mom sent me an email. She has started doing the daily “Sudoku” puzzles in the local Tribune newspaper , but she asked me if I could create a computer program to make it easier for her to play them. She complained that she was erasing holes in the paper!

So I threw something together, and here it is, complete with help file and 5 games to practice on.

As I developed the program I had to play the games to make sure it worked, and became intrigued by them. They are more interesting than I thought at first glance; some careful logic can usually solve them pretty quickly, though for the more difficult ones I’m sometimes reduced to trial and error in places.

Anyway, give it a try and you might find that you enjoy them too.

If you installed the new 1.5 version of Firefox, you may have noticed a bug. If you print a selection, or a selected set of pages, images don’t print correctly. They come out all black, or black and grey stripes.
The developers are aware of the problem and there’s a Release Candidate version available that fixes the problem. I installed this version and that problem has gone away, but as an RC it might not be completely stable, and there are risks of other bugs

However, if this printing problem bugs you as much as it bugged me, you can download the RC 1.5.0.1 version here.

I’m flying out to California tomorrow (Thursday) morning to see if I can fix Devon’s computer. My return is scheduled for Friday evening, but if things go very well I may try to come back earlier. We’ll see!

We’re driving Devon and Keri back to California and college tomorrow (Sunday, 1/15). Over and back in one day again, as usual.

Our thoughts are with our “other” Carrie, Brian’s wife, as she goes through eye surgery.

The Mozilla Foundation has released a new version of their Thunderbird Email client, Version 1.5.

The release notes are sparse and vague. Looks like mostly security and stability improvements, with a few new features. One improvement is that it will recognize headers set by Spam Assassin on your mail server, and automatically classify the message as junk.

I downloaded it and ran the install, and it found and replaced my version 1.07 with no problems.

I just saw that you can set a filter to automatically delete messages from the POP server based on criteria you set. I set up a filter that will delete messages that have “****SPAM****” in the subject, so I guess I don’t even need the “recognize SpamAssassin” improvement mentioned in the paragraph above. Don’t do this unless you are comfortable with the way your filters are set on SpamAssassin, or you will lose valid email!

Derek has been participating in a class at school that competed in the “We The People” competition. The students represent their schools, and are judged on their understanding of the constitution and US government.

A few weeks ago Derek’s school (Marcos De Niza) won their district, and yesterday they went to the state competition.

The judges were state legislators, state judges, lawyers and educators. They were very complimentary towards the students from Marcos, especially their understanding of the issues, their quoting of relevant Supreme Court decisions, and their poise. Derek was singled out with a compliment on a comment he had made.

We really felt that they had a good chance to win, in which case they would have gone on to the national competition in Washington DC, but alas they “only” made third place.

Their high hopes were dashed, but I think in retrospect they will look back with pride at what they did achieve. Third place in the state is very good indeed. I know we’re very proud of Derek, how hard he studied and how well he performed.