I just finished a really enjoyable book called The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution . Highly recommended. I’ve been planning my midlife crisis for awhile. These things need planning of course.  Last year I hit 40.  That’s the age where denial over middle age is over. It’s arrived. I’m a man of many interests. I just don’t know what to focus on nor do I know if I want to focus on anything in particular. The problem is incentive. I’d rather have more hours i...

Update:  Hour long AI test video for the truly die hards who want to see all the mistakes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnPKHQIksrA&feature=youtu.be   I see all. I know all. At least, when it comes to this map. In the top left we have Markin, leader of the AI civilization of Gilden. In the bottom right, we have me, Draginol, leader of Pariden. How many turns will it take me to wipe them out? What mistakes will the AI make that can be exploited (and...

From the day we migrated from OS/2 to Windows, every new version of Windows meant Microsoft was going to lift some ideas for the next version of the OS from Object Desktop. And we would have to adapt.  Think I exaggerate? Look at Object Desktop for OS/2 (which was developed prior to Windows 95) with its ZIP files that worked as folders, DesktopX with its widgets and gadgets, Control Center with its side bar of “gadgets”, GUI Skins (where uxtheme.dll so blatantly borrowed from th...

Object Desktop has evolved greatly over the past two decades. In its original OS/2 incarnation, it was designed to be a subtle, but important, upgrade to the OS.  When it migrated to Windows, it helped spark the “skinning” revolution where users used it to radically alter the look and feel of Windows. Here in 2012, Object Desktop has again begun returning to its roots of providing important but often subtle improvements. Let’s look at the above screenshot: ...

I’ve spent weeks trying to figure out why I was getting “Error downloading content” messages from Apple TV as well as aborted download attempts on my iPad and even my Mac and PCs. Eventually, after a lot of effort, I traced it to the IPS feature on my router.  Disabled that feature and all worked well.

The puppy likes our sons but absolutely adores the 5 year old. It’s a weird thing.

I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since OS/2 2.0 shipped!  It certainly changed my life. To recap, here’s an article I wrote…for its 10th birthday .

In Windows 8, you can create a column of tiles in it and label the tile. This is Microsoft’s idea of a “group”. Here’s a couple of videos showing off the pain: Windows 7: The Start Menu   and… Windows 8: The Start “page”:   And a follow-up to show you about column headers (what Microsoft is calling groups):   Now, I’ve gotten a lot of email from people saying that I’m “obviously” a Microsoft hater or an ...

Got to play around with the February beta of Windows 8. It is terrible. It is beyond terrible. It is so bad that I’m a little panicked about the future of Windows. People won’t use this. I could have teams of people working full time to develop products to fix it but we’re not in the business of making a terrible experience good. We’re in the business of making a good experience better. No sane person, will consider the user experience of this beta acceptable. Even a die hard Windows a...

I was reading on the forums today people complaining that even in a post-civilization world (one where people are basically getting together from the ruins) that they would “know” how to do all kinds of things like make bows, swords, etc. I have a lot of friends who are active in the Renaissance and Medieval communities out there who always laugh at this kind of thing. The conversation goes something like this: “Really, you think you can make a spear? Ok. Let’s see you do it. Let’s see...

As some of you know, the latest iPhone update caves into AT&T’s request to have their HSPA+ connections labeled at 4G. AT&T: I’ve used 4G. I’ve spent lots of time with it. You sir, are not 4G.  When I use my iPhone for data and I’m using AT&T’s “4G” network, it is note terrible. It’s definitely a fast 3G. I get typically 3 to 5 Mb/sec. However, when I use my LTE hotspot with it, I get 15 to 20 MB/sec. THAT, to me, is 4G. It is a huge experience difference too...

  Andrew Orlowski has a really good article about the the state of Windows 8.  Check it out here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/03/andrew_does_windows8/

  The lack of a start button and start menu in Windows 8 has made using Microsoft’s new OS a non-starter for me and a lot of other people.  I like Metro, I really do – for tablets. But as a desktop user, I need a consistent work flow that lets me have my windows together on my desktop and don’t want to be jerked out of that environment every time I want to start some new program. So here’s a free utility we put together that brings the Metro start menu onto the Windows ...

We’ve got N resources and M things to work on. Based on your experiences with beta 2, where would you like N to go the most? Vote here: https://www.elementalgame.com/journals

Update : We've made a Start button for Windows 8 that brings up a Start menu. Click here to sign up .   So here’s my Metro desktop.  Now, I’ve only been using Windows since v2.1 so maybe I’m missing a few things like… 1) How do I sort the tiles? 2) How do I organize them into groups? 3) How do I change the size of tiles? 4) How do I change the color? These aren’t customization requests, these are basic organizational feat...