microUgly Blogs

XML Design Guidelines

Wed, 2 Jul 2008 2:44:46 EST

I've recently started a new job as a PHP and MySQL developer (which I'm super excited about) and a portion of the project I'm assigned to relies heavily on XML files. I'm familiar with XML as far as XHTML and RSS feeds are concerned but when it comes to designing an XML structure (which I'm not currently doing) I'm certainly not familiar with best practices.

So I found this great resource on the IBM site which breaks it down nicely - Principles of XML design: When to use elements versus attributes

I felt I needed to familiarise myself with this because I'm working with PHP 4 which is aweful for working with XML files, so you need to convert the XML to an array to be able to work with it, but arrays really aren't a good replacement for XML. You really need to have a good understanding to properly work with the data. If we could rely on PHP 5 we could use any of a number of XML functions that would make working with XML files a breeze.

Samsung PS50P91FDX

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 8:27:18 EST

Last week I bought a Samsung PS50P91FDX 50 inch 1080p plasma television. The purchase was motivated by recently purchasing a new house with a larger lounge room that made my Samsung 40 inch LCD TV look small (now I have a 50" it looks REALLY small). The 40" has been moved to the rumpus room for sporting events and Guitar Hero.

I was looking to buy the TV from a online store listed on Shopbot.com.au which was listing it at $2,550, which is about $450 below any brick and mortar store. But I took this price to JB HiFi who were selling it for $3,000 and after an initial hesitation they matched the price. Sweet!

I'm very impressed with this TV. I read a rather long thread on DTV Forum about problems with this mode. That might deter some from buying the TV, but I like knowing what I was getting myself into. The known problems included a noise coming from the back of the TV, the TV having a slight tilt on its stand, and HD signal over HDMI having some display corruption. I haven't been able to test a HD signal over HDM, so the only known issue I can confirm is that it doesn't sit level on it's stand. This is an annoyance, but I intend to mount it on the wall anyway.

I gotta say, Samsung has really improved their firmware since the one they used in my 40" LCD. The menus and displays are all glossier and take advantage of the display being high resolution. I also found that my PVR looks a lot better now. I thought my PVR must have had desaturated colours, but it seems this was the fault of the SVideo input on my 40" as the colours look rich on my new 50". The built in tuner also doesn't produce artificially warm images compared with the 40". It's definitely a much better display.

HD DVB-T programs on my plasma doesn't look anymore crisp on my 50" than on the 40", but this should be expected since it's not a 1080 program anyway.

The only real issue I've seen with this TV is with movies that have a slight green tinge, like the Matrix (when they're in the Matix). There seems to be a sharp transition from the green in the mid-tones of someones face, and the pink of their skin. However, this might not be the fault of the TV, rather a result of DVD compression made obvious on a larger TV.

Finished Metroid Prime Corruption

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:11:07 EST

I finally finished playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption today. I haven't had as much time for gaming these days as in the past. So this post is really for those who haven't yet purchased the game.

Straight up, MP3 is a 5 star game. There is no faulting it. If you like like the original Metroid Prime, you'll love MP3. Some review sites refused to rate MP3 higher than Metroid Prime because it's not as ground breaking, but this is stupid. We don't rate every FPS game lower than Wolfenstein 3D because it was the one that made the leap to 3D. MP3 is better than Metroid Prime and deserves a rating that suggests so.

So why is it better? MP3 is proof that the Wii is not Gamecube v1.5. MP3 is visually stunning. The screen shots I seen before playing the game didn't impress me that much, since Metroid Prime, and Metroid Prime Echoes were both beautiful games as well. But seeing MP3 in motion is amazing.

Using the wii-mote to aim in MP3 works beautifully. Although it's best to use the advanced configuration option. You still get to z-targetting which keeps your enemy centre of your view, but you aim anywhere within that view. This is also one of few games that uses gestures well. Yanking back on the nun-chuck allows you to pull away enemies shields or armor. Other gestures are used to open doors, or remove objects. It's all done well, adds a comfortable amount of interactivity, and never feels clumsy.

MP3 is overall a more epic game than past Metroid Prime games. Characters speak, you fly to various planets, events are of a larger scale. The story feels more significant and you are less isolated, less of a loner. The game seems to flow far more easily than past games. It's more fun.

But the game may have flowed more easily for me, and felt more fun, because it felt less challenging. This was a good thing for me, as in past games the difficulty of some boss fights bordered on infuriating. MP3 still offers a good challenge, but it's perhaps more accommodating of new players, casual gamers.

Strangely, I've completed the game, but it says I've only 72% completed it. In past games this was a measure of how much content you scanned during gameplay. I thought I was extremely thorough with scanning everything in MP3, so I'm not sure what I have not done.

If you own a Wii and enjoy gaming then you should definitely get Metroid Prime 3.

Convert Drive Snapshot image to VMWare virtual machine

Fri, 6 Jun 2008 7:11:30 EST

Before disposing of my previous PC running Windows XP, I took a backup of it using Drive Snapshot. I like this utility because it is somewhat free, and allows you easy access to the files within the image. However, this was before I was aware of VMWare converter, which is even more free and has the added benefit of allowing you to actually boot up the backup as virtual machine. This will allow you to boot the OS and export information from the installed programs that my have otherwise been inaccessible via the file system.

So my goal was to convert my Drive Snapshot backup of my old PC to a virtual machine so I could load some of my old software when required. It's not difficult to do, but when I was searching the web in hopes I of learning from someone else I found nothing (useful).

Insight on music piracy

Thu, 5 Jun 2008 8:34:44 EST

Last night on SBS, Insight brought together Artists, record labels, P2P users (who were promised not to be prosecuted for talking about illegal download) and ISPs to discuss music downloads.

Thousands of Australians download their music from the Internet, and don't pay for it. Some say it’s stealing, others say sharing. But who's making money from these downloads?

You can view the episode online (MiTunes) if you missed it. Unfortunately the discussion was light and only one person came across as having a well informed overall understanding of the issue (Kate Crawford, Media Research Centre, UNSW). So I feel compelled to give a bit of a commentary.

STEPHEN PEACH, AUST. RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOC: OK, well we have, as I was saying before, we have a billion songs a year illegally downloaded. The research that we've done suggests that about somewhere 1 in 5, 1 in 4 of those would have been bought, but for the fact that they could be obtained illegally. We're talking about there conservatively 200 million tracks maybe - in wholesale terms that's $200 million, about half the size of the industry at the moment.

This is kinda difficult to digest. The P2P guests certainly gave weight to Stephen Peach's claims, as they stated they had 2000 to 3000 illegally acquired songs on their iPod. But free music is a no risk purchase. How many of those tracks would they say they listen to enough to purchase it? 1 in 4? I don't think so. And these P2P users were a sample of high-school kids living at home with their parents.

Another claim was that 60% of traffic on the Internet is music and video downloads. Good grief piracy is out of control! Run to the hills!!! But really, 60% is rather small if the other 40% is web pages. A single MP3 is ~~200~~ [err... I don't know how I got the number 200] 50 times larger than the total download of a single web page. And an hour long video is 100 times larger than an MP3 (or ~~20,000~~ 5,000 times larger than a web page). 60% of downloads traffic does not mean 60% of user activity is illegal. Nope, the amount of illegal activity (measured on a per request basis) would likely be a fraction ~~of percent~~ of what they suggest, based on these ~~numbers~~ assumptions.

But ARIA has proposed a plan to the ISP's to reduce illegal music downloading. And of course it involves punishing the consumer, taking away their Internet access if they fail to heed three warnings. I was really disappointed with Peter Coroneos (Internet Industry Association) response to this. He was un-accepting of the idea (and rightly so) but failed to address why. An entity such as ARIA needs to be kept as far away from controlling internet access as possible. Give them and inch and they'll cripple the system for their own gains. Not only will they cripple it, but every other business who feels they are being hurt by the Internet will demand the same privileges. China's politically censored Internet will become the envy of Australians.

Some of the artists (Phrase and Mahalia Barnes) suggested that ISP's were profiting at their expense. Peter Coroneos seemed to squirm guiltily in his chair at this accusation, but really, ISP's seem fiercely competitive with their prices to attract customers. It's hard to believe that illegal use of the services is increasing their profit margins. Even without piracy most homes will still need Internet access.

The artists went so far as to suggest ISP's should be paying royalties just like TV and Radio. Again, this shows a real lack of understanding on the Artists behalf. Will software and game developers be able to demand royalties as well? Their stuff is being stolen also. And if users aren't stealing music then why should they pay ARIA royalties to look up porn?

Artists came off even less knowledgeable:

JOHN BUTLER, MUSICIAN: We sell about 40% less albums as we did three or four years ago because of downloading. So this album is done better than SOS, 'Sunrise Over Sea', as far as everything's concerned, but it's almost sold less because of all the downloading. So it is different, it's a different time.

REPORTER: So you reckon that 40%, you can attribute to people just downloading it?

JOHN BUTLER: Yeah, or just not liking me anymore.

That's right, John. Maybe it's not piracy. The very idea that two different albums should sell the exact same number just because your name is on both is stupid. If you used to get high for a living the signs are still showing.

Overall the Artists clearly didn't want to upset their fans (even those who stole their music), but they seem to lack any true understanding of the situation. Worse is that their lack of understanding seem to influence their opinion. They have no idea if they would be more successful or not if there was no P2P. ARIA throw out numbers like 60% and 1 billion and they now have a reason for the lack of success.

I thought it was interesting that ARIA has a typical record industry attitude. In terms of ideas on how to use the internet for their benefit Stephen Peach had nothing, zip, zilch. Cutting off offenders Internet was the only fix to preserve their industry. I wish the host, Jenny Brockie, asked what the Artists thought of this and the lack of any other strategy to support their artists.

I'll leave you with a quote from Kate Crawford:

There's definitely - there's definitely a future for the music industry but it's a radically different terrain and unfortunately there's two ways that the industry can respond to this terrain. It can either go down the 'let's have a war' and find ways to punitively attack consumers, or 'let's find collaborative new ways to embrace these new technologies'. Now unfortunately what we've seen over the 8-10 years is a war, essentially, prosecuted against their best customers - their fan base - and in actual fact what we see is that there are so many different ways they could have embraced these technologies to have really straight-forward, easy-to-use, very cheap download services, but the industry has really resisted those sorts of options and instead gone for very expensive litigation and also things like Digital Rights Management which has introduced things like malware and spyware onto people's computers. So unfortunately I think the industry has been behind the eight-ball but it's got a long way to go to really catch up with where everybody in this room is already sitting.

Why does a LCD monitor with DVI input require sharpening?

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 8:36:55 EST

I purchased a new 22" Samsung 226BW monitor based on a strong recommendation by PC Authority. The other day I noticed a bit of discolouration around fringes of a drawing I was working on. The effect disappeared and I'm not sure what the cause was - it possibly wasn't an issue with the monitor - but before before it corrected itself I dug though the monitor settings and found a "Sharpening" option.

By default the setting is at 60%. Increasing the value creates ghastly halos around objects as you would expect. Setting the sharpening to 0 turns the picture into a blur so strong you can no longer read text.

As someone who is quite anal about picture quality, the existence of the sharpening setting on my monitor is bugging me to no end. Why does a digital image, transmitted over digital cabling to a digital monitor need a sharpening setting that will only serve to deteriorate what would otherwise be a pixel-perfect image? More so, when would you ever want to blur your video image!? This setting makes me think there is something wrong with the monitor for it to need it.

CSS Positioning Explained

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 8:07:12 EST

I'm embarrased to say that despite messing around with web design for years, I've never fully understood CSS positioning - specifically the use of absolute positioning and the idea of a containing block.

You see, when an absolute positioned block is given a percentage width, it's width is calculated based on the width of the containing block. This gets confusing when you realise the containing block is not the same as the parent block. Versions of Internet Explorer prior to 7, and even Opera prior to version 9, calculated the width of an absolute positioned object based on the width of the parent block instead of the containing block.

So what is a containing block? Very quickly, it's the first ancestor block (i.e. parent, grand-parent, etc.) whose position is set to relative. If no ancestor blocks have a relative position then the width is proportional to the width of the browser window.

To get an intimate understanding of CSS positioning and absolute position, in terms that are easy to understand, refer to Web Design 101: Positioning.

Vista Ultimate Dreamscene not suitable for ultimate PC's

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 7:42:15 EST

I recently bought a new PC, with some reasonable specs, and a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit OEM to compliment it (for reference, when buying Vista OEM, you are licensed for either 64-bit or 32-bit - you are not licensed for either as you are with retail versions of Vista).

I won't lie, in addition to support for more RAM, my main interest in Vista was an OS that had fresh new feeling with lots of eye-candy. And with that in mind I promptly downloaded the Vista Ultimate exclusive, Dreamscene - which, for those who don't know, allows you to use high-resolution videos as a wallpaper.

Now first off, this feature really isn't that sweet. It looks nice, but it's hardly a programming marvel worthy of exclusive availability to Vista Ultimate users only. It's really not worth a pinch of crap so I don't see why Microsoft can give it to all Vista users. Windows users can already get the effect now with the free, and highly recommended, VLC media player.

But that's not why I'm posting this blog. I'm posting this blog because my PC is too good, too powerful, too ULTIMATE, for this Vista Ultimate only feature. You see, I have two video cards in my PC so I can run three monitors. When I attempt to run Dreamscene, Windows get on its hands and knees in front of me and chants, "I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy"--the application won't work on a PC with more than one video card.

Ultimate version of Windows, my arse. An Ultimate operating system would have descent support for multiple monitors. I was running dual monitors on Windows 95 and from a users perspective nothing has changed between now and then. You still need to use something like UltraMon to really enjoy a multiple monitor set-up.

For reference there is nothing that I know of that can make Dreamscene work with multiple video cards.

The Windows Vista shell still sucks

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 7:07:54 EST

MS really have struggled to improve their shell in any significant and useful way over the past generations.

Granted the new start menu is a good effort but still feels clumsy to use. The new search box in the start menu means I never search through folders looking for shortcuts. But if you have Vista installed on a slower PC or your using a prior version of Windows then install Launchy, it's faster and nicer.

The sidebar may tickle the fancy of some, but I quickly lost interest in it and ended up turning it off. Most novice PC users don't even know what to do with it.

Other than that, I think the Windows Vista shell is functionally boring.

Flip 3D is prettier than MacOS's Expose, but it's not useful and as a result I only use Flip 3D to show off Vistas live previews and fancy rendering capabilities to my peers.

The thumbnail-ing with Alt+tab is rather useless as it's currently implemented. The thumbnails are too small to easily identify each running application. TaskSwitcherXP is far superior. TaskSwitchXP takes advantage of the fact that for the most part, it's still easier to identify an application by it's icon. Having multiple of the same icon is when a preview is most useful, and the preview provided by TaskSwitchXP is large enough to tell the difference between two running copies of PuTTY.

Vista's ability to display windows thumbnails as a tooltip on the task bar is also not that great when you can get this same functionality with VisualTaskTips for XP. VisualTaskTips produce thumbnails that are again larger and therefore more useful. And whilst Vista displays live previews of you application, who cares - live previews doesn't make it more useful.

So what else could have Microsoft done with Vista? Well the idea that applications should be displayed on the taskbar in the order they were opened just doesn't make sense. This is something that should have been changed back when Windows 98 was released. Why can't we move them around into a more logical order? Microsoft couldn't think of this, but fortunately someone else did and created Taskbar Shuffle.

The changes to the way Explorer displays folder paths is very nice but will probably confuse novice users. Surely they could have included split views by now so we can more easily copy files between two locations - File Manager from Windows 3 days allowed this and it still hasn't returned.

Multiple-monitor support is pathetic in Vista. We still can't set different wallpapers for different monitors, or have it span multiple monitors. We can't make a single window maximise across more than one monitor. We can't make the Start bar expand across more than one monitor. We can't do anything we couldn't already do in Windows 95.

It seems to me there is more they could yet still do - ideas that have yet to be implemented by other developers. One I would like to see is the ability to dim inactive windows. There is very little visual difference between an active and inactive window which makes it easy to start typing in the wrong one. This is also true for XP. The ability to dim an inactive windows would ensure it is extremely clear which is the active window. There are some programs out there that attempt to do this, but none work well.

I think Vistas shell is uninspired and unnecessarily restrictive. We shouldn't have to rely on other software to get some basic and useful functions for the Windows shell anymore.

A call to Samsung digital TV owners in Brisbane

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 7:58:57 EST

If you live in Brisbane and own a Samsung TV with a built in digital tuner, can you get SBS digital?

I own two Samsung TV's (one 40" and one 32") both with built-in HD digital tuners. Since moving to Brisbane I've found that neither is able to tune in SBS. This isn't a reception issue since I currently have the TV's in two separate houses in two different suburbs. One house has three other digital tuners in it that all get SBS. Both TV's get all other stations. I can also confirm that where I previously lived in Central Queensland I got SBS on these TV's with no difficulty.

I contacted Samsung about the issue where, after being on hold for 30 minutes, they blew me off, telling me it's not an issue with the TV before I even got to explain the situation in full. He couldn't explain why two of Samsung's TV's could get all stations but SBS, yet was quite forceful that it wasn't Samsung's fault.

I also rang a Samsung service centre who had never heard of the issue but willing to entertain that it could definitely be an issue with the TV. I also spoke to someone at SBS who was very polite but suggested if there was a compatibility issue between the SBS signal and Samsung TV's he would be flooded with calls. SBS is going to call me in a week after I get a service guy to look at the TV's since I have no other option.

The guy from SBS believes if an issue existed between the signal and Samsung TV's then he would be flooded with calls. He might be right, but I think that most people won't care if they don't get SBS; only a fraction of the popular will own a widescreen Samsung with built in digital tuner; only a fraction of Australians live in Brisbane; and therefore, potentially, neither SBS nor Samsung would hear any complaints.

I've seen firmware updates for PVR's that could not get a particular station in certain regions, so I don't see why Samsung tuners are invulnerable to the same sort of issue. So I would really like to here from anyone who can confirm if they can or cannot get SBS on their Samsung Digital TV tuner in Brisbane.