When I was 15

When I was fifteen my biggest concern was passing Drivers Ed. William Kamkwamba’s biggest concern was trying to figure out how to build a windmill out of spare parts. It’s purpose? To power a couple light bulbs and a radio.

I think it goes without saying that William’s life is a lot more complicated than anyone I know.

Show Me Everything

I’ve been using Photoshop CS3 for awhile now but there’s been one thing bothering me. This little menu option:

 

By default Photoshop hides a vast number of menu options. So each time you want to select a menu option that is hidden you have to select the menu, click “Show All Menu Items” then navigate to the menu item you wanted in the first place.

Now there is a solution. You can visit the Menus option under the Edit Menu and modify what is hidden by default.

From here you can select the different menus and their respective menu items.

 

It’s rather time consuming but you can select every item to be visible by default. After making your changes you can save it as a menu customization file.

I’ve taken the liberty of creating a custom file that has every menu item on by default. Download and extract this file and place in in the following directory.

~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Presets/Menu Customization/

Now you can select the “Everything On” Set from the Menu options and have instant access to all the previously hidden menu items.

Operating Systems as Presidents

  • BeOS was JFK. – They both got gunned down before we could possibly see any downsides to them.
  • MS-DOS 1.0 was Herbert Hoover, aloof to the problems of the common man but friend of the engineer in all of us. Also discovered Transformers.
  • Mac OS 7-8-9, all Franklin Roosevelt, very competent, lead us through difficult times, but left a legacy of programs which have become quite a mixed bag.
  • Windows 3.1, Dwight Eisenhower, amiable enough, competent, but leaving historians (and many contemporaries) very wanting.
  • Windows 95 thru ME, Lyndon Johnson, one of the boys, very able at getting things done, but in the end a disaster, rightfully ceding his throne.
  • Windows NT, Richard Nixon, the archetypal back-room politician, ruthless, and ultimately brought down by little faults, but many believe he was a great president and did much to modernize the Republican Party.
  • Windows XP, Ronald Reagan, everybody who hates him never met him, he could charm anyone, the Great Communicator. Bought Iranian weapons for contras with drug money.
  • Mac OS X, Bill Clinton, cheerful and smart, if not the most productive. Known for his speeches.
  • Vista, George W. Bush, elected because of his name, even though the prior iteration wasn’t especially respected or well-liked. Introduced instability and performance issues, all in the name of “security”. Many of the corporate interests who promoted him early on are having second thoughts.

Taken from this discussion on Slashdot. Credit to cmowire and iluvcapra.

New Job

Today I accepted a new position in the School of Business. I’m told it’s a Desktop Support position, similar to what I’ve been doing, but it also has a large web developement/design component. I’m really excited to start and can’t wait to learn some new skills. The people I’ve met over at the B school all seem like really good people who are driven in making their department the best in the country.