BrianJarrett.com

I love my iMac.  I’ve written about that in the past.  I still love my iMac.  However, something just didn’t feel right about the mouse.  At first I thought it was just getting used to a new computer so I gave it some time.  (Of course I use Linux and didn’t have the problem.) Then I thought it might just be the wireless Mighty Mouse’s weight or drag across the desk.  So I put the mouse pad back which didn’t make a difference.  I also removed one of the batteries to make it lighter.  None of this helped.  Then I thought it might just be the Apple Mighty Mouse itself.  I replaced it with another mouse I had at home, then with another.  No luck.  My arm and my wrist began to hurt.  I felt like I had a depth perception problem or I was just crazy.

After about two months I finally just looked on Google.  I searched on something vague, like the mouse didn’t feel right or something like that.  Lo and behold the answer to my question was there; it was the mouse acceleration curve.

Turns out, somewhere along the line between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X 10.5 Apple decided to quietly change the acceleration curve on the Mac.  The result is an acceleration cliff; the mouse moves quickly and then, right before the target it slows down…to a crawl.  Normally the mouse would slow down incrementally, gradually, allowing the person to place the pointer directly on the target.  Once the mouse slows down it creeps across the screen.  This was causing me to overcompensate and making my arm ache after a while.

Turns out I’m not the only one who has problems with this.  Traci, on the other hand, can’t seem to notice a difference and has no problem at all.  Some Mac heads will defend this behavior because of an undying allegiance with the almighty Apple.  That’s bullshit.  Linux does not suffer from this problem; the acceleration curve provided by X is just right like *gasp* Microsoft Windows.  Turns out Microsoft got this right.  They’ve done a lot of work on pointer ballistics and have put a lot of thought into the mouse on their systems.  I’m not part of the Apple cult; I love my Mac and I’m fond of Apple but they screwed this one up.  They don’t even offer a way to modify the curve, just the cursor speed.  Those are not the same thing.

Fortunately after some searching I found …read more »

In a previous post way too long ago I lamented about there being no viable alternative to Outlook.  As a result, Traci and I were stuck using Outlook 2000 to keep and sync our calendars.  I attempted to use Horde for a while but without a viable method of syncing our PDAs it was a no go.

Enter Vista and two brand-new copies of Outlook 2007, setting us back about $160.  We were still on Outlook but now the new Outlook was even more bloated and slow, and its e-mail client still couldn’t seem to figure out how to manage IMAP mail any better than its predecessor.  Now we had more frustration than less.  Then Traci bought an iPhone, replacing her Palm Z22, but still used Outlook (this time via MobileMe).

Outlook persisted, like a virilent fungus growing between the toes while I burned the midnight oil looking for a replacement that would do everything we needed.  Evolution looked good but I couldn’t get it to sync with the PDA on Windows.  I couldn’t just ditch everything and move to Linux either.  OpenOffice had a stagnant project designed to replace Outlook but I gave up on that.  Syncing Horde didn’t seem any more of a reality either, particularly with the new iPhone.  We needed something special, something unique and capable to make this a reality.

Then came the iMac.

We bought Traci’s iMac first and as she …read more »

I finally pulled the trigger; I’m now a Mac user. About a year ago Traci’s laptop’s video card mysteriously died so we bought her a replacement desktop computer. We were tight on cash so we bought a low-end Dell running Vista. I’ve lamented since then on my frustrations and disappointments with Vista and Traci absolutely despised it. It was then I began to think once again seriously of moving to Linux and avoiding an upgrade to Vista, but I found that Linux still just wasn’t quite there on the desktop yet. It was closer than it had been in the past but still not what I needed.

As a result I decided to take another look at the Macs. It had been a few years and since then OSX had been released and the prices had dropped some. Long story short, I began to think seriously about a Mac and began researching what it would take to switch from Windows. I found that it was easier than ever to make the switch.

So after about a year of Vista Traci finally had had enough. We decided to pull the trigger about two weeks ago on a new iMac for her. We received it on a Friday and had her completely moved over to the Mac by Sunday morning. After spending the weekend with her Mac I decided it was time to make the switch myself and ordered mine.

I originally thought I wanted the 24″ display but after working on Traci’s I decided 24″ might be a little too large. I instead opted for the 20″ display but increased the hard drive to 750 GB and the memory to 4 GB. I also bought the wireless keyboard and mouse …read more »

Traci picked up a Wii Fit about a week ago and those things are not easy to get!  She actually bought one from some dude on eBay because all the local stores had sold out.  Apparently after a national spot on a morning show the pre-orders went through the roof and there are just not enough extra to go around.

The Wii Fit, like the Wii itself, is pretty awesome.  It focuses on balance, stretching, cardio, and strength training.  Exercise is like cleaning the toilet to me; I hate every second I spend at it and can’t wait for it to be over.  This thing, however, is actually a lot of fun.  If I only had more free time I’d do it more often (that could be said for the Wii in general though).

It’s more expensive than a game by itself because it comes with the Wii Fit board.  The board and the controller are used in conjunction with the game.

It also tracks your progress and goals, and allows you to set up a personalized fitness plan.

Overall I think if you’re wanting to exercise even a little and you’ve got the cash pick one up.  Just don’t be surprised if it ends up on backorder.

Recently I’ve started making real use of portable applications running from my thumbdrive. There are a lot of portable apps available but I’ve also had to search for some of them. I thought I’d use this page to showcase the portable apps I use in hopes that it’ll make your search easier by organizing them all in one place.

Many of the portable apps I use on my thumbdrive come from PortableApps.com. They also have a really nice start menu that, once installed on your thumbdrive, will allow easy access to your portable apps. What’s also nice is that it’ll work with any .exe so it’s not restricted solely to apps from PortableApps.com. I have several apps I’ve downloaded from elsewhere but have easy access to via the PortableApps start menu.

These are the same apps I use on my home computer so I’m getting the same …read more »

After an excessive amount of hacking CSS and Wordpress php pages I’ve finished the changes to the site design (for now). For the most part it should look pretty similar but now my sidebar and my main content area are truly in two columns instead of the old jacked-up “two columns in one column” approach. I’d been wanting to fix it for some time but just hadn’t.

I also added some cool little arrows at the bottom for previous and next navigation and improved the footer while I was at it. I’m all about increasing my pieces of flair.

I originally based this on the Simpla theme by Phu and then …read more »

The server is now upgraded from Fedora 5 to Fedora 8. I normally don’t trust upgrades (thanks to Microsoft) but I decided to chance the Fedora upgrade. It’s been about a week and so far all is well.

While in Chicago I ran across a really cool service on the Internet. phpBB3now.com offers free, ad-free forums for the making. They use phpBB’s top-notch software for their forums and they also offer the phpbb3 portal, all integrated and ready to go. Setup is really simple; they walk you through all the steps and essentially do all the work for you. You provide the topic for your forum and in a matter of minutes it’s done.

I originally setup my DSSForum on the phpbb3now servers but …read more »

This past Tuesday I attended a presentation by Bill Inmon concerning his new concept: DW2.0™. I already knew a little about Inmon methodologies, at a high level, and-ironically enough-have recently become familiar with his “Corporate Information Factory” (CIF) approach because of my recent Kimball training in Chicago. I’ve never really put a lot of faith into most of Inmon’s methodologies, frankly because they seem to make more sense in the world of theory than they do in application. Kimball works and it works well. I could devote and entire article to the differences between Kimball and Inmon methodologies but that’s out of scope; I’ll maybe tackle that another day.

The scope of this article, however, is the Inmon presentation. Or maybe I should call it a sales pitch. Regardless …read more »

Someone in my Data Warehouse Lifecycle class in Chicago took up a list of e-mail addresses so we could all keep in contact and utilize each other for information. To more easily allow for this I quickly threw together a forum that we could all use, particularly because I found very few, if any, DSS (Decision Support Systems) forums that were worth anything.

So I decided to go ahead …read more »