SteveX Compiled

I use Google Blog Search to search for the name of the product I work on - LiveCycle Designer - and then subscribed to the search feed using Google Reader.  This takes any blog mention of LiveCycle Designer and adds it to my Google Reader feed.

I get real traffic of folks talking about Designer, but every few days it shows up somewhere odd.  Like this:

martin cu boulder co satellite 923 0592983 sengage adobe livecycle designer impaired driving my husband is an immigrant and we are homeless debbie sanford Ossicular chain game release what to wear to a wedding shower free sex picrures

Obviously this is spam.  But does it mark some sort of popularity milestone that our product name is showing up in random bits of spam?

Jeff Atwood's "The Trouble with PDFs" post lists advanced layout as the virtue of PDF, but as he points out, there isn't much these days that you can do with PDF when it comes to layout that you can't do with HTML and CSS.

The real benefit to PDF as far as I'm concerned is that you can save the thing to disk.

Many downloaded products these days offer HTML based documentation through a link to their site.  To the end user, this means that if the site is down, or their connection to the internet is offline, they don't have access to that material.

There is no standard way of offering a single file download of a collection of HTML pages that you can just double-click on to view.  You can offer a *.zip file containing the contents of your site, but then the user must extract the whole thing somewhere and know to open index.html (or whatever the start page is called).  You can create a *.chm file, but that's an Internet Explorer specific format.

A PDF is a timeless representation of a stack of pages.  I have the owner's manual for my stove in PDF format, as well as my cordless phone, universal remote, and a bunch of other things.  I like knowing that I'll still be able to view those in 10 years, when there's a good chance I won't be able to find the original content online anymore.

I'm OK with PDF as an output format - that's what PDF is after all, you can't hand-edit a PDF - so creating HTML for online viewing and a PDF for offline viewing from the same content is a great way to go.

(And with Acrobat, you don't even need the site author to offer the PDF to download - You can hand Acrobat an URL and it will walk links and build a PDF for you from the site.  It won't be as pretty as something authored for PDF but if you're looking to archive some content, it works pretty well).

I traded in my 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan ES AWD for a 2006 Toyota RAV4 Limited 4WD, and I wanted to blog a few points about the transition.

These are obviously very different vehicles.  The Caravan is a comfy living room on wheels, whereas the RAV4 is a driving machine.  The Caravan is more posh; the RAV4 is more fun to drive.  That about sums it up.  It's not as big as the Caravan, but the Caravan was too big; we were looking for something smaller.

There are some surprises about the RAV4 though.  Here are some observations, in no particular order:

• The RAV4 doesn't automatically turn your headlights on when it gets dark.  Every car I've driven for the last 15 years or so has done this, and the RAV4 does it in Europe, but not in Canada.  This is a bizarre omission.
• The RAV4 stereo has an automatic speed sensitive volume level adjuster, which works well enough for the volume, but doesn't adjust for acoustics.  In other words, if you're listening to the stereo when stopped and it sounds good, when you get up to highway speed, all you'll hear is bass and treble; the midrange gets completely lost.  Adjust for that and it'll sound wrong when you stop.
• No power passenger seat on the Limited?  My wife is not impressed.
• This thing sticks to the road.  Very little body roll, and the electric steering system provides great road feedback.  With the Caravan you were lucky if you knew there was a road there at all.
• The seats.  Some people love them, but after putting ~800km on the vehicle over the last few days, I'm finding them uncomfortable.  This isn't the sort of thing you can really pick up on a road test, but now I'm wondering what I can do about it.  Probably not much.

There a lot of nice little touches about the Caravan that seem frivolous but that are noticeable when you take them away.  Things like:

• A handle on the rear door that lets you close it without touching the door exterior (which is probably dirty).
• Mirrors that automatically dim at night, so headlights behind you aren't blinding you.  The side mirrors really pick up the headlights.
• No digital compass (or any compass at all).
• No trip computer (so no guess at KMs until empty, no estimated MPG).

The RAV4 nails the core driving experience - it's fun to drive, no doubt - but misses out on a few little details that for me just make it a bit less than perfect.

It's cool that Microsoft has announced that IE8 passes the Acid2 test (in "IE8 Standards Mode" - I sure hope that mode is enabled by default.

But what I found interesting is how they announced it: By showing the check-in mail that signified the committing of the code that implemented the fix into the main IE source tree. Check that out here.

A few things it reveals:

• This fix touches a lot of files. This wasn't a simple fix.
• Microsoft uses Perforce for source code management. This is indicated by the //depot/path syntax used for the files.
• IE8 work is happening on a branch, called LONGHORN_IE8. Typically new features are added to the "main branch" (which usually doesn't have a name). I wonder what's on the main branch.
• Obviously some IE work started before source file names could be more than 8 characters long. LSTXBR1.H?
• Microsoft uses some sort of pre-checkin code review process. This is a good sign; we use this at on my team at Adobe and I think it's proven itself valuable.
• No C# code in sight; IE's core is still all unmanaged C++ code.
• The IE devs use a mix of extensions for C++ source and header files; cxx vs cpp, .h vs .hxx. Personally I've never worked on a project that used cxx and hxx, so they seem unnatural to me.

Nothing earth shattering, but an interesting peek behind the scenes nonetheless.

A while ago, I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what codec I should use to encode videos that I was creating of my son and the random other stuff I'd been capturing with my digital camera.  It came down to DivX, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Windows Media Video (WMV), or QuickTime. 

The AVI files that my camera generates are MJPEG which the 360 can't handle, so I can't even preview videos until I do some work on them to convert them (which I would want to do anyway, to edit and combine the clips into something interesting to watch). 

The main criteria were:

• It has to be good quality at a reasonable bitrate.
• I have to be able to play it on the Xbox 360.
• It has to be reasonably future proof.

That second requirement makes things difficult since it ruled out a few good formats that fit the third, more important criteria.  I need to feel confident that I can view these videos in 20 years, and frankly I don't know that I trust that to any of the proprietary codecs (which rules out WMV, and maybe QuickTime).

MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 aren't going anywhere, since they're part of the various DVD and HD-DVD formats, but MPEG-2 isn't all that efficient, and until a couple of dashboard updates ago you couldn't stream MPEG-4 to the 360.

DivX didn't used to be supported on the 360, but with the Fall 2007 Dashboard Update, the 360 supports DivX playback.  It's suddenly become the format to go with.

There are some quirks - I can't leave the files named *.divx because the Xbox 360 dashboard won't see them shared from Windows Home Server under that extension - but I can take a DivX file and play it directly on the Mac, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

So my planned workflow is to use Premiere Pro on the Mac to edit files and then encode them to DivX and rename them to *.avi so the Xbox will see them.  (A DivX file still uses an AVI container, so this works, but makes it harder to distinguish the processed clips from the unprocessed MJPEG ones, since they'll have the same extension).

So, what happened that made both Microsoft and Sony support DivX?  It seems out of character for both of them to suddenly support a codec that they don't control, and that is commonly used for pirated movie downloads.  I'm not complaining, of course.  Just curious. 

(Can't post about video editing without a link to a video.. here's one:  Walking is Hard).

My Xbox 360 broke on November 15th (3 red rings).  I called, and after I explained that this was the fourth 360, they "escalated" me to "priority support", said they'd send me a box to send back both the console and power supply, and that a "supervisor" from Microsoft would call me.  (I begged them to cross-ship a replacement, but they wouldn't even consider it).

The next day, a lady from Microsoft called me and said that she didn't have a status update for me but that the box was on its way.  She did this again the next day.

After about a week of this, I still hadn't received the box.  I asked her to send me another box, which she did.

A few more days goes by, and I receive a box, but it's not the box I can send the power supply back in.  I call and leave her a message asking if I should send the console back anyway, or wait for the proper box. 

I don't hear from her; I call the next day and leave a message.  Same thing the next day. 

Figuring she's forgotten about me or something, I call the main Xbox support number again and explain my problem.  The 1-800-4MY-XBOX folks inform me that they're the outsourced support organization and they don't have access to any information about my case, because it's being specifically handled by a supervisor.  They say all I can do is wait for a callback.

I wait.  The supervisor lady calls me and when I asked if she got my voicemail, basically explained that she's too busy to check her voicemail.  She says to send the box back anyway and that she'll tell the depot to send me a 360 with a power supply.

That was about a week ago.  I know I can't call her and ask for status because she doesn't get messages and doesn't answer the phone, so I call the 1-800-4MY-XBOX people again.  Once again, they explain that they can't do anything at all, not even see the status of my repair.  All they can tell me is that my new console hasn't been shipped yet.

So the 360 has been out of commission for a month now, and I can't even get order status.  And this is the "priority", "escalated" support with my own personal "supervisor" to ensure that I get prompt service.

And what can I do at this point?  When I did talk to the "supervisor" lady at Microsoft and she told me she doesn't pick up her voicemail, I said I wanted to talk to someone higher to complain to about the service I was getting (not just her, but the whole support case).  She said there was nobody I could talk to, and that I'd have to write a letter, and gave me the corporate headquarters mailing address.

Recap:

• The outsourced support folks can't help me.
• I can't contact anyone at Microsoft who can help me.
• There is nobody I can complain to.

Maybe having your case escalated to a supervisor is some sort of penalty box in which they put people whose consoles break too often.  I use the 360 a lot - both for games and as a media center - but it's out in the open on top of my stereo cabinet, so it's not like I'm mistreating it. 

Any goodwill they may have gained by extending the warranty to 3 years, they've lost to this ridiculous repair process.

Want to make a 360 exchange less painful?  Cross-ship a replacement.  Even if you have to charge my credit card and credit it when you receive my return, I think most people would be willing.

Well, thanks, I guess. The video marketplace is live now in Canada, so we can rent HD movies and have them downloaded to our consoles.

The cost varies depending on the movie - a way to gauge how tolerant we are of high prices?

Believers, for example, costs 440 Microsoft Points for the standard definition version, and 580 points for HD.

Points cost $15.50 for 1000 points in Canada, or 1.55 cents per point. So the cost for that HD movie rental is 580 * 1.55 cents, or $8.99.

$8.99 is a lot for a movie rental.

In the US, they pay 380 gamer points for an HD movie rental, and they pay $12.50 for 1000 Microsoft Points. That same movie would cost $4.75 in the US.

Our dollar is at par, and yet they're getting us on the price of the points, and getting us again on the higher cost of the movies.

I appreciate that it's probably taken them a ton of effort to offer this service in Canada, including cutting some deals with the studios that probably make them charge this much - but wouldn't it be better for everyone (including the studios) if they were willing to make deals that made HD movie downloads attractive in Canada, instead of pricing it out beyond reason?

This is good:

Google is getting into the energy game.  I wish them as much success there as they have with every other business they've entered. 

But isn't it ironic that they chose a non-Googleable name for the initiative?

Searching for RE<C turns into a search for RE C, and the punctuation is ignored.

There have been quite a few stories lately about "taser deaths".  Basically, police say they're using them correctly, Taser International says they're non-letal, yet sometimes, people die after being tasered.

Often the stories that make the news as controversial are the ones where a taser is used on someone who is already restrained, basically to force them to be more compliant.

Thing is, tasers were supposed to be an alternative to guns.  If I recall correctly, that was the justification for them in the first place.  They weren't supposed to be an easy way to bring someone into compliance, they were supposed to be a way to keep from having to kill a person.  In other words, a taser would only be used in a situation where a gun would have otherwise been used.

Because of this, I think taser usage should be treated the same as if a gun had been discharged.  If a police officer shot and killed someone who was in handcuffs because they wouldn't stop struggling, would that be OK?

No; the officer would be in some serious trouble.  The same should be true of hitting them with a taser.

This image is from a "Taser C2 Personal Protection System" ad on their website - actually their whole website is like stepping into some bizarro world where everyone is armed and ready to retaliate to any annoyance with force.  "In today’s world, maintaining self confidence involves the need for self protection".  Or maybe that's the United States.