08.30.06
Posted in mac/os x at 8:54 pm by Clinton
I haven’t been as vocal about this as Andrew (parts [1], [2], [3], [4]), but I too have joined the mac world with the use of a nice silver intel-based MacBook Pro replacing my desktop. Now many thoughts have been accumulated during the learning process :) but I guess I wanted have some “well-formed” ideas before posting (and so avoid showing a greater-than-necessary amount of ignorance!). But now I have to post on my fun with .chm viewers…
I have been happily using parallels to get back to the XP/Visual Studio world as needed, and rebooting with bootcamp when I need DirectX 3D acceleration. (I’m sooooo looking forward to a VM that can give me that without a reboot).
However, although I can do all the things I’ve wanted so far, I have been frustrated by the limits, such as not being able to browse to my bootcamp XP partition and just open a windows compiled help file (.chm). So today I started my search.
Here’s my list
My testing process is a bit of a blur, but some programs crashed… to be honest I didn’t care why, I just moved on. However, significantly for me, only xCHM correctly showed (buit?) an index/contents for the DirectX .chm files I wanted to read.
Having the contents/index to look at is essential. Not having it is like reading a book but you can’t turn the pages! Almost useless. I don’t know why the DirectX help files had indexes that didn’t show (I’m sure its something different about those files) but the bottom line is I needed to read those files with indexes and xchm did the job.
So, that’s my pick for the day. ymmv, but it was a good Google/test/win day for me.
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08.23.06
Posted in teach, byteclub at 11:15 pm by Clinton
I know this is a late post many days after, however just to let ppl know that as far as I am concerned, Lucien doesn’t get away that easy and any excuse I can find to involve alumni staff, espically officially in his new job, in our byteclub business - it’s happening! Lucien was the founding force - I mostly tried to nod in the right place. Its been great to work with Lucien and i’m really missing that. Lets just say IM chats ease the pain.
Also, knowing my human limitatins I am actively seeking help from other staff with byteclub and making plans. Okay, it’s not “all happening” at the moment the way we wanted, and I honestly (sadly) don’t have enough time for cool stuff here on byteclub as is, but the byteclub project is definitely an on-going and supported venture.
Here’s some ideas I have - and I would really like your help and feedback (easy on the “pain points”).
- Get the onine registration form happening again. (Mark is ready to help here, so that’s in my entourage todo list after open day!)
- Actively seek out past and present students - maybe some finders fees are in order? Hm… “Bounty hunters”…
- We need more than just “online” events. Speakers are good. Food, games nights, videos…
- game development competition
- newsletter (any volunteers?)
- posters/flyers etc
- online project repository/bug tracking etc to help group members develop projects
- … others?? let me know
So, do I have any helpers? Comments? Suggestions? Comment or send me emails or just plan knock on my office door and have a chat - that would be nice.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
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Posted in general at 1:00 pm by Clinton
I recently sent an email to an IT service department (the reason is not important). Knowing that in the past this department had simply been called “helpdesk” (as in “helping” right) I made up the email adress “helpdesk@…” and clicked send.
Then I got an auto-reply, which basically said that the “helpdesk” is no longer the “helpdesk” - it is the “servicedesk@…”.
I must conclude that there is no longer any “help” in helpdesk… and that explains a few things. :)
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