The Plague of Windows WiFi Support

May 14th, 2007

Why is it that every vendor of Wi-Fi client hardware without exception insists on creating their own wireless configuration utility?

When trying to assist end users with wireless setup over the phone, it is cumbersome enough having to memorize the ever changing Windows Control Panel layout without the added kludge of a distinct wireless configuration utility.

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PNGOUT Binaries for FreeBSD

April 30th, 2007

After writing my previous post on Batch PNG Optimization, I decided to e-mail the author of PNGOUT, Ken Silverman, to see if there was any hope of a future FreeBSD port.

Ken was impressively quick to respond and forward my request to Jonathon Fowler whom previously handled porting PNGOUT to other platforms.

Well lo and behold, as of today PNGOUT binaries for FreeBSD are available!

First Anniversary!

April 29th, 2007

How the time flies by! Today marks one year since Jessie and I agreed to permanently wear each others rings. Being the laid back type that we are, we opted simply to spoil ourself with dinner out followed by an evening at home with a DVD disc spinning.

Although we find opportunity to drive each through the occasional insanity, all in all we’re still holding things together as tightly as ever. I’m sure this is the first of uncountably many more.

Batch PNG Optimization

April 24th, 2007

When designing web sites, squeezing your design down to as few kilobytes as possible is a critical operation to keep your site responsive to visitors with low-bandwidth internet connections.

In a well designed web site, markup is almost insignificant in size relative to the image files that make up a visually rich presentation. In order to create image files that are as tiny as possible, I use Ken Silverman‘s PNGOUT utility.

While PNGOUT serves my purposes very well, it has two flaws:

  1. No batch operation
  2. No support for FreeBSD

Fortunately, I can do something to address the first issue.

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Electrocutions, Sliced Fingers and Switches

April 16th, 2007

Most of the light switches in our house are the Leviton decorative types. We only had about four switches that were of the ugly, old fashioned variety.

Jessie, for some reason, had the ambition to see to it that we replace the eye-sore light switches yesterday evening. Seeing as how I’ve also been thinking of doing the same thing, I agreed that yesterday was the time and we picked up the appropriate number of switches and plates.

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