yamahito

Particularly for those of us running parallels across multiple monitors, here is a method of creating a floating Windows SystemTray using Geoshell:

For those of you not running parallels across multiple monitors and who are wondering what the problem is, parallels doesn’t reallly ‘do’ multiple monitors properly. It just resized the windows desktop across all monitors. I’m using parallels 2.5ish, but they still haven’t implemented proper multi-monitor support in 3.0 - it does make me wonder how well they’ll cope with Spaces when 10.5 is finally released. Anyway, it means that the Task bar is spread across both monitors which is a) ugly as sin and b) a right pain, hiding the system tray if, like me, your monitors are on different horizontal baselines.

I’m assuming you can edit the registry. If you don’t know how to do that, I wouldn’t recommend any of this. I am not responsible for you screwing up your computer.
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For those not in the know, I got some new macs in at work, including a 20″ iMac for my desk.

I’m enjoying having a play and trying to get things up and running. It’s actually nice to be a user and a newcomer again.

Lotsawater is a pretty screensaver. And this guy has done other pretty things with it:

No, I’m not talking about going linux or BSD. I’m talking about the latest version of Parallels.

Yes, I know everyone is getting sick of me talking about my imminent move over to Mac OS X. But I think people may not realise how blurry the lines between my two primary OS have become. Check out this video; the last sentence is why I’m ‘making the change’:

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I’m not saying I entirely agree with it, but Robert Scoble wrote an interesting post this weekend about what’s wrong with Microsoft.

I’ve been talking for about nine months about moving to apple as my main desktop OS. It’s also the main direction my career seems to be moving towards. A lot of people tend to think this means that I’m pro-apple and anti-microsoft. Funny, because most of my mac-cy friends have always thought I was pro-microsoft and anti-apple.

The truth is, both companies are doing things wrong. Scoble’s post talks about microsoft’s oversights, but apple surely has some, too. They’re wrong about their attitude to security updates, as SilentBob will tell you. I also think that in the past they’ve been less than adequately open with prospective developers - that almost put them under in the past, and it looks like they’re doing the same thing with the iPhone.

At the end of the day I’m choosing mac because it offers me the most flexibility. I can open a bash terminal on a mac. Applescript, to be frank, has been a revelation to me. These days, I can even change hard drives or add OEM memory/graphics cards. But the deal clincher? Parallels. I can run windows on a mac, but not vice versa.

I’ll be ordering my mac pro in the next two weeks.

A week after the iPhone is launched in the states, there is a rumour of an ‘inferior’ clone on its way from china

No, not really, it’s a spoof article. But it raises a couple of interesting objections.

Being involved in a VOIP company, of course, the ones that strike home for me are the lack of voip integration for the phone’s 802.11x connection and the tight control of 3rd party software cripple the phone’s potential somewhat.

I still want one, though.

Google’s driving direction system’s latest tweak is AMAZING.

Go to google maps. Get some directions. Click on a point on your route and start dragging around.

Now tell me that isn’t something you’ve wanted on any route finding package in existence. Tell me that’s not perfect User Interface design. Google, baby, you’re so good I find myself just not caring about all that data mining.

less than a month after Microsoft announced Silverlight, an open source linux variant, Moonlight has been announced.

Miguel de Icaza, part of the team who wrote Mono (the linux framework equivalent of .net) announced it earlier on his blog.

I think this is a good thing for Microsoft. Not only will it give market penetration, it will force them to keep a good pace with features and implementation. Whether they see it the same way, I don’t know

you think being the Cop/Janitor/Sewer Worker of the tech revolution is some kind of glamor job?

Don’t get me wrong. I love IT. I love building systems and infrastructures that make the job easier, or better, or both. I get excited by the idea of being involved in innovation. But I’m sick of my job. Why?

Well, reading John C Welch’s post (quoted above) gives you a clue.
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I’ve been looking at changing how I view RSS. Instead, I’ve found a way to integrate my web presence.

At the moment, I use my IM client to also read my RSS feeds. With friends’ blogs, news sites (topical and technical), technical interest groups and forums, there’s quite a few posts bubbling under, and it slows the IM client down a lot. Plus it’s a bit of a pain synchronising feeds at home and at work (OPML files would make it a little easier).

At the same time, there are things I haven’t yet started using RSS for: sites like flickr (and if they ever add syndication, facebook) take up too much of my time to go and read individually.

So, having noticed that iGoogle (google homepages was a better name) would give me better access to some of these features plus my under-used google calender, I decided that perhaps I should have another go at configuring it. Naturally, that let me to google reader.

I’m a fan of gmail, so I can see the interface for skim-reading posts very advantageous, but it doesn’t end there: by aggregating and sharing threads I can collate my activity across those various sites into a single handy feed.
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Just to prove Microsoft can still do some things better.

Does anyone know if there’s any reason why font rendering would be different on different platforms?

–Edit–

Codinghorror seems to be slashdotted or otherwise down. Here’s a graphic from the original post which shows what we’re talking about: the top line is safari, the bottom line is IE with ClearType.