mizzou

Scribus isn\’t a bad open-source DTP program

Dave Farquhar Linux , , ,

A Slashdot mention of a MadPenguin review of Scribus brought up a very insightful lament: No reviews of Scribus appear online from someone very familiar with the competition, namely Adobe PageMaker and InDesign, and QuarkXPress.

As a University of Missouri journalism graduate, I’m going to tell you what I think of Scribus and simultaneously try to amuse you.Let me first get something out of the way: Microsoft Publisher is a toy. And I mean “toy” in the most condescending manner possible. I’m not talking a charming vintage toy that brings good feelings of quality and nostalgia. No sir, I’m bringing to mind cheap, mass-produced junk from a factory that makes its workers pay to work there, sold in vending machines in seedy-looking stores in seedy neighborhoods.

And I’m not talking the nice vending machines that take two quarters either.

I’ve been forced to do production work in Microsoft Publisher. I wish they’d just gone all the way and handed me a copy of Print Shop and told me to use that. At least Print Shop doesn’t have any delusions of grandeur.

I didn’t go to the best journalism school in the country and endure classes taught by professors with nicknames like “The Nazi”–I took a class from the instructor who inspired Brad Pitt to drop out of journalism school and run away to Hollywood when he was a mere three hours from a journalism degree, and I endured her class and I passed it, but I do have to say I don’t blame him–I’m sure I lost your train of thought there, but I didn’t endure all of that to have my hand held by a misguided wizard that looks like a #^%@$ paperclip.

There. I feel a lot better now.

Wait. Let me say one more thing. Microsoft Publisher isn’t the competition for this program, nor should it be.

The proper introduction to desktop publishing is Adobe PageMaker. It’s the easiest to learn of the “serious” DTP tools, and while it’s not well suited to particularly complex designs, and quite possibly the buggiest piece of software not manufactured by Microsoft that I’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with, it does the best job of teaching people how to throw a bunch of text into columns onto a piece of paper without overwhelming them with too many tools.

But QuarkXPress is king. At Mizzou, once we’d learned QuarkXPress, we j-students were known to ditch word processors entirely and just use XPress for everything because of its enormous text-handling capabilities. And in spite of its features, it’s a much leaner, meaner program than any word processor on the market, taking up less memory, loading faster, and generally doing everything else faster. I even used it to write term papers for my history classes. I hate Quark the company, but I’ll tell you how I feel about its product.

Rolls-Royce tries to be the QuarkXPress of cars.

(I couldn’t tell you if Rolls-Royce ever succeeded or not, having never ridden in one of its cars.)

OK, so what about Scribus?

Well, you already know my bias. From an ease of use standpoint, I found it somewhere between PageMaker and QuarkXPress. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Ease of use has never been the goal of this type of software. Frankly I don’t know how you make a program of this type any easier to use without dumbing it down to Publisher’s level, and by the time you do that, you might as well just go all the way and create a Print Shop clone. That way you’ve actually created something useful.

Concentrating too much on making DTP software easy to use is like trying to make a chainsaw that’s incapable of injuring the operator. The end result isn’t going to be very useful.

But I’ve digressed again.

Feature-wise, I’ve found it to be at least the equal of PageMaker. Whether it lacks some of the features of QuarkXPress or I wasn’t able to quickly find them, I’m not sure. So while I wasn’t able to quickly figure out how to make it bend and distort text, it took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to do the really important things like scaling text and changing tracking and leading.

I wasn’t able to work as quickly in Scribus as I could in QXP, but that’s not a fair comparison. For a semester I spent more time in QXP than I spent in Word, if that tells you anything.

I also spent more time in QXP than I spent in Civilization and Railroad Tycoon combined. (Not by choice though. Yes I’m crazy, but not that crazy.)

I guess I should come to a conclusion here.

I’m really glad to see Scribus. I think it’s pretty good stuff. I think it’s really incredibly good stuff for the price. You see, QuarkXPress is priced like a Rolls-Royce. Scribus is free.

Better than Publisher? Of course. Then again, so is a trip to the dentist.

Better than PageMaker? I’m inclined to say yes. Better enough that if both programs cost the same amount of money, I’d buy Scribus.

Will I use Scribus again? You bet.

I can’t wait to see what they come up with for version 2.0.

How to get rich–the Biblical way

Dave Farquhar Christianity, Saving money , , , , , , , , ,

Money is a controversial topic in Christian circles. On the one hand you’ve got people who say money is the root of all evil. The other extreme says if you do the right things, God will reward you with health and wealth and who knows what else.(This was the topic of my Bible study last night, in case you’re wondering. And I’m short of material, so I’m recycling. I’m also mixing in some insights people shared.)

For the record, 1 Timothy 6:10 says money is a root–not the root–of all kinds of evil. That’s somewhat less of a strong statement than saying it’s the root of all evil. So, money causes problems, yes, but it’s not the cause of every problem in this world.

To see some other causes and symptoms of evil, see 2 Timothy 3:2.

Isaiah 55:2 asks why we spend our money on what is not bread (when the Bible says “bread,” it’s frequently referring to the necessities of life such as basic food, clothing, and shelter) and on things that don’t satisfy. The main reason we do it is because we’re surrounded by messages that say this product or that product will change our lives. And while some products have changed lives, let’s think about it for a minute: Those kinds of things tend to come along once a generation, if that. I’m talking about things like the airplane, the automobile, and before those things, the railroad. Computers belong in that category. But the soda we drink is not going to change our lives, at least not for the better. Drink soda instead of water and it could make your life worse–regardless of what that 7up commercial with the bear says.

The American Dream is to give the next generation things the previous generation doesn’t have. Some have said that dream is dead, because we’ve become so affluent that we can’t think of what the next generation can possibly get that we didn’t have.

But it’s not working. Our kids have entertainment centers in their room that give a more life-like experience than the movie theaters of 20 years ago. They’ve got videogame machines that play better games than you could find in an arcade a couple of years ago. They have everything imaginable, and yet they’re all on ritalin and prozac. Meanwhile, their parents are both working, to pay for those two luxury SUVs and the next big home improvement project and all the toys and all the drugs that are necessary to keep themselves and their kids afloat in the miserable life they’ve built together.

My dad wasn’t always there for me. It seemed like most of the time he wasn’t. But it’s safe to say that when we ate dinner together 5 or 6 times a week, it was unusual. Most weeks we ate dinner together 7 times a week.

My American Dream is for my kids to have two full-time parents. Screw the luxury SUVs and the $300,000 house in the suburbs. My Honda Civic has more ameneties than I need. I’ll drive it for 15 years so I can have more money when things that matter crop up.

I told you how the Bible says to get rich. And maybe you’d argue I haven’t answered that question yet. I think Isaiah 55:2 can lead one to wealth that’s very enviable, but, yes, the Bible also tells how to gain material wealth. Check Proverbs 13:11. It’s especially relevant in the era of dotcom billionaires.

You’ve seen stories of wealty people who nickeled and dimed themselves to the poorhouse. What Proverbs 13:11 says is that you can nickel and dime your way to prosperity as well.

What the Bible doesn’t say is how, so I’ll share the concept of opportunity cost, which is one of two things I remember from Macroeconomics. I don’t know how many other people in my class picked this up from the dear departed Dr. Walter Johnson at Mizzou, so I’ll do my best to make my examples clear.

Opportunity cost says a 13-inch TV does not cost $99. That’s the amount written on the sticker, but that’s not the price. The price is about 30 lunches at my company cafeteria.

The monthtly cost of driving a new car every three years is about half my mortgage payment. But my mortgage will be paid off in 28 or 29 years and my house will be worth more then than it is now. In the year 2031, I will have absolutely nothing to show for the car I’m driving today. Those people who buy a $2,000 used Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla every few years and drive it until it dies have more money than you think they do.

Assuming you work about 240 days a year, two cans of soda every workday from the soda machine at my employer will cost you $240. But not really. What happens if you invest that money in what’s called an index mutual fund, which follows one of the major indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average? Historically, you’ll gain about 10% per year on your investment, which means you’ll double your money every 7 years investing that way. (That’s taking into account times of bad economy, like today, or worse.) Anyway, I just grabbed my calculator. If you take that $240 and dump it into an index fund, in 35 years you can reasonably expect it to be worth $7,680.

The real cost of a can of soda is sixteen dollars. Unless you’re not going to live 35 more years. But unless you’re going to die tomorrow, the real price is considerably more than 50 cents.

There are a total of 118 verses in the NIV translation that use the word “money,” and considerably more talk about the concept without using the word. Of those, Matthew 6:24-34 is poignant, as is Ecclesiastes 5:10-20. What I take from them is this: If you build your empire 50 cents at a time, you’ll never be as wealthy as Bill Gates. But you’ll have more than you need, and you’ll be happier than Bill Gates, and you’ll sleep a lot better.

And if your name is Jackie Harrington, I suggest you start selling autographed 8×10 glossy photos of yourself. Sign them, “Bill Gates just stiffed me for 6 bucks! Jackie Harrington.” Sell then for $10 apiece to people like me. Then put the money in an index fund. Then in 35 years, when you’re a millionaire, write a thank-you letter to Bill Gates.

It’s time for a more holistic approach to depression

Dave Farquhar Health , , , , , , ,

Standard disclaimer: I’m not a doctor or a psychologist. I’m a systems administrator by trade and a journalist by training. I write this as a survivor of depression, not as an expert on its treatment. Combined with the experiences of others, I think it’s worth listening to. But it’s no substitute for seeing a specialist.
Earlier this week, after I mentioned my experiences with depression in passing, my mom e-mailed me and asked me a few questions. Thought-provoking questions. Then Dan pointed me to another person’s experience with depression.

It’s been my experience that some people just seem to have a natural tendency towards depression. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Some people are moodier than others, and that moodiness can be exceedingly difficult to be around sometimes, but there’s also a gigantic upside to it. Think of the most creative people you know. I’ll bet most of them are also pretty moody. That’s one factor.

While a student at Mizzou in late 1994 or early 1995, I had a conversation with a girl about depression. I knew she’d struggled with it, and I was curious. We had a long talk one day about it. Initially, in the back of my mind, I thought I’d interview a couple of other people who’d battled it, then interview an expert or three, and write a story about it. It was during that first talk that I learned that depression was sometimes caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. (Interestingly, I don’t remember my lone college psychology class–that’s science of behavior to Dr. Dave McDonald and his students–talking much about depression. Or maybe we did and I just forgot it.)

Over the years I met a lot of people who were put on Prozac or Paxil or any number of other drugs intended to treat a chemical imbalance in the brain. In most cases they didn’t get the dosage right initially. In those cases the adjustment was difficult. In one case, a good friend of mine had been on it in the past and it helped, then he started to feel himself relapse. He called me one day and told me he was going back on treatment. A few months later, I started to hear stories. Stories that were very out of character. My friend, a gentle giant type if there ever was one, was supposedly very detached from reality and sometimes even dangerously violent. His dosage was wrong and it was destroying him. One night he called me, distraught. He was on the brink of losing everything, and it didn’t seem like anyone understood.

I was mad that the stories of his behavior had become public knowledge. I was also a little irritated with him that when his family and friends suggested there was a problem, that he didn’t go back to see his doctor until it reached crisis stage. But I was livid about how the people around him handled the situation. When there’s a problem with your Paxil dosage, it’s a matter between you and your doctor, and you have to be patient about it and so do the people around you. There is no way to measure brain chemistry and figure out exactly the amount of Paxil you need to get the dosage right. (This was news to him and to his family, and when one of his friends, who happens to hold a PhD in psychology, got involved but didn’t mention this, I was more than livid when I found out about it. If I’d known how to call him on the carpet about it, I would have.)

I haven’t been very good about getting to my point here. There’s a lot of guesswork when you get drugs involved. They don’t necessarily kick in right away. Sometimes they kick in too hard. Sometimes they have undesirable side effects. I mentioned the possible psychotic side effects, but they can also increase your sex drive to an uncontrollable level, and they can lead to very excessive weight gain. Those television commercials showing people playing outside on a sunny spring day while extoling the virtues of those drugs don’t mention anything about their dark side. Since brain chemistry isn’t measurable, you’re playing a guesswork game. Hopefully it’s an educated game of guesswork, but unless you manage to get a referral to a psychiatrist, it may not be.

The late, controversial Dr. Atkins took a different approach to treating chemical imbalances. Where do your brain chemicals come from? Your body makes them. What does your body make them from? The nutrients you take in. What happens when your body doesn’t take in the nutrients it needs to make the necessary brain chemicals? Chemical imbalances that lead to depression. What happens when you change your diet and/or start taking supplements that provide those chemicals?

Atkins said, “no more depression,” then moved on to his next topic.

I think there’s something to that. When carpal tunnel syndrome threatened to destroy both of my careers, one of my readers pointed me to Atkins’ vitamin book. I started taking, among other things, Flax Seed Oil or Fish Oil (buy whichever is on sale; chemically, they offer the same benefit) and Vitamin B6 and B complex. I was surprised at the effect they had on my mood. But that combination promotes a generally healthy nervous system. Vitamin B1, Atkins said, is especially effective in treating depression. The B vitamins work best in the presence of each other, so a trip to the local discount store for a bottle of Vitamin B1 and B complex could make a world of difference.

Battling depression via nutrition is imprecise, but the nice thing about that is that you’re not messing directly with brain chemistry. You’re providing your body with the raw materials to make what it needs. Your body knows how to dispose of excess B1. What’s it supposed to do with excess Paxil?

The best thing you can do for your mental health may very well be to visit a nutritionist. Get a copy of
Dr. Atkins’ Vita-Nutrient Solution, make yourself a shopping list, get a nutritionist’s opinion, then buy. And avoid processed, commercial food if at all possible. I know my moods are much more consistent when I buy fresh fruits and vegetables and actually cook than when I eat tons of fast food or buy heat-up instant meals from the grocery store. Highly processed foods lose most of their nutritional value. They hurt your mood, they hurt your waistline, they hurt your energy level, they rot your teeth, and who knows what else. And when you’re not happy about how you look and you don’t have a lot of energy, and your teeth are falling apart, none of that helps your mood. Nice vicious cycle, eh?

You hear a lot more now about depression than you did in the 1970s and early 1980s. But there were a fraction of the number of fast-food restaurants and grocery stores were much smaller because they were catering to people who cook, whereas today grocery stores seem to cater to people who heat stuff up because everybody’s too busy to cook. I’m thoroughly convinced that these factors are related.

And cooking isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. I can stir up some mean dishes in about half an hour. Trust me, if I can learn how to cook, anyone can. I’m impatient and clumsy and accident-prone. But I’ve still learned how to cook well enough to impress a girl. Not counting my mother and sister, but I’ve impressed them too.

Remember that most doctors have no special training in nutrition. A lot of people are distressed to hear that and think it’s a conspiracy. It’s not. Medicine and nutrition are related, but they’re too complex for most people to be good at both. Asking your regular doctor to be a nutritionist is like asking him or her to be proficient at surgery. He or she is certainly capable of understanding it, but there are so many things a doctor would like to understand, and there are only 24 hours in a day to learn it all.

I believe that counselling and self-help are overrated, but both helped me to a limited degree. I found
I Ain’t Much Baby, But I’m All I’ve Got by self-help pioneer Jess Lair to be helpful. It’s sadly out of print but widely available used. The biggest gem out of Lair’s book is a question: Do you have five friends? Lair said that if you have more than that, your friendships aren’t very deep. If you have fewer than that, you’re putting too much burden on them. With an inner circle of five or so, the burden seems to be about right.

But when that’s not enough, counselling helps. The problem with counselling is that sometimes people rely too much on it, or solely on it. Often people have issues they need help resolving. Sometimes that means just listening and offering a few suggestions and sometimes it means re-enacting traumatic experiences in order to finish up some unfinished business. It’s work. But it can be helpful, if you’re willing to do the work. But depression is a complex, multifaceted problem, so a one-pronged attack won’t be very effective. Remember the basic difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist: Psychologists can’t prescribe medicine, and psychiatrists don’t do a whole lot of counseling. Both are aware of the work of the other, and an honest practitioner of either profession ought to know the limits and know when you need the other. But you may have to ask when it’s time to see the other. Human beings tend to get overconfident in the abilities of the tools they have.

Finally, there’s a spiritual aspect. Virtually everything I’ve ever read says you should believe in something. If you’ve ever had any exposure to Christianity, read the books of Luke and John (they’re not terribly long–read a chapter a day and you’ll be through both of them in two months) in a modern, readable translation. You can read them for free at bible.crosswalk.com. For readability, I recommend the New Living Translation. It plays really fast and loose with the translation sometimes, but the point isn’t to make you a Bible scholar–it’s to present the words of Jesus in understandable fashion. Or you can read an out-of-print modern blending of the four Gospels by Charles Templeton titled simply Jesus, online, for free.

Last night I told someone it’s healthier to be an atheist than it is to be in a cult, but it’s healthier to believe in something than nothing. I’m a Christian and make no bones about it. If you’re a not a Christian and you believe something else and you’re struggling with depression, then my advice to you if you’re not really practicing is to get serious. And if you find it’s not helping you, try Christianity.

No single thing will conquer depression for you. But the combination of diet and nutrition, counseling, and spirituality can be potent. Pills are a brute-force approach, and after watching my friend’s bad experience, frankly I believe they ought to be the thing you go to when the other things don’t work, not the thing you go to before trying the others. I know they work because I’ve seen them work, but if anything, the other things can make them more effective, and if you can get by without pumping man-made chemicals into your system, that’s a very good thing, and I don’t think anyone will disagree with that.

Roll your own news aggregator in PHP

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , ,

M.Kelley: I’m also wondering how hard would it be to pull a PHP/MySQL (or .Net like BH uses) tool to scrape the syndicated feeds off of websites and put together a dynamic, constantly updated website.
It’s almost trivial. So simple that I hesitate to even call it “programming.” And there’s no need for MySQL at all–it can be done with a tiny bit of PHP. Since it’s so simple, and potentially so useful, it’s a great first project in PHP.

It’s also terribly addictive–I quickly found myself assembling my favorite news sources and creating my own online newspaper. To a former newspaper editor (hey, they were student papers, but one of them was at Mizzou, and in my book, if you can be sued for libel and anyone will care, it counts), it’s great fun.

All you need is a little web space and a writable directory. If you administer your own Linux webserver, you’re golden. If you have a shell account on a Unix system somewhere, you’re golden.

First, grab ShowRDF.php by Ian Monroe, a simple GPL-licensed PHP script that does all the work of grabbing and decoding an RDF or RSS file. There are tons of tutorials online that tell you how to code your own solution to do this, but I like this one because you can pass options to it to limit the number of entries, and the length of time to cache the feed. Many RDF decoders fetch the file every time you call them, and some feeds impose a once-an-hour limit and yell at you (or just flat ban you) if you go over. Using existing code is a good way to get started; you can write your own decoder that works the way you want at some later date.

ShowRDF includes a PHP function called InsertRDF that uses the following syntax:
InsertRDF("feed URL", "name of file to cache to", TRUE, number of entries to show, number of seconds to cache feed);

Given that, here’s a simple PHP page that grabs my newsfeed:


<html><body>

<?php include("showrdf.php"); ?>

<?php

// Gimme 5 entries and update once an hour (3600 seconds)

InsertRDF("https://dfarq.homeip.net/b2rss.xml", "~/farquhar.cache", TRUE, 5, 3600);

?>

</body></html>

And that’s literally all there is to it. That’ll give you a very simple HTML page with a bulleted list of my five most recent entries. Unfortunately it gives you the entries in their entirety, but that’s b2’s fault, and my fault for not modifying it. I’ll be doing that soon.

You can see the script in action by copying and pasting it into your Web server. It’s not very impressive, but it also wasn’t any effort either.

You can pretty it up by making yourself a nice table, or you can grab a nice CSS layout from glish.com.

I can actually code tables without stealing even more code, so here’s an example of a fluid three-column layout using tables that’ll make a CSS advocate’s skin crawl. But this’ll get you started, even if that’s the only useful purpose it serves.


<html><body>

<?php include("showrdf.php"); ?>

<table width="99%" border="0" cellpadding="6">

<tr>

<td colspan="3" align="left">
<h1>My personal newspaper</h1>
</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td width="25%">

<!--- This is the leftmost column's contents -->

<!--- Hey, how about a navigation bar? -->

<?php include("navigationbar.html"); ?>

</td>

<!--- Middle column -->

<td width="50%">

<p><h1>Dave Farquhar</h1></p>

<?php

// Gimme 5 entries and update once an hour (3600 seconds)

InsertRDF("https://dfarq.homeip.net/b2rss.xml", "~/farquhar.cache", TRUE, 5, 3600);

?>

</td>

<!--- Right sidebar column -->

<td width="25%">

<p><h2>Freshmeat</h2></p>

<?php

InsertRDF("http://www.freshmeat.net/backend/fm-releases-software.rdf", "~/fm.cache", TRUE, 10, 3600);

?>

<p><h2>Slashdot</h2></p>

<?php

InsertRDF("http://slashdot.org/developers.rdf", "~/slash.cache", TRUE, 10, 3600);

?>

</td>

</tr>

</table>

</body></html>

Pretty it up to suit your tastes by adding color elements to the <td> tags and using font tags. Better yet, use the knowledge you just gained to sprinkle PHP statements into a pleasing CSS layout you find somewhere.

Finding newsfeeds is easy. You can find everything you ever wanted and then some at Newsisfree.com.

Using something like this, you can create multiple pages, just like a newspaper, and put links to each of your files in a file called navigationbar.html. Every time you create a new page containing a set of feeds, link to it in navigationbar.html, and all of your other pages will reflect the change. This shows another nice, novel use of PHP’s niceties–managing things like navigation bars is one of the worst things about static HTML pages. PHP makes it very convenient.

I’m not ready to come back yet, but here’s someone who is

Dave Farquhar General ,

Give me another day or two to get over my shellshock. Aleve makes me feel like I just drank three pints of Guinness. I’m sure my boss will be thrilled to hear that.
In the meantime, if you want something to read, go check out this. Debby is a member of my church. I can’t remember right now if we met two or three years ago. She’s fighting the battle of her life right now, so when a mutual friend came to me and asked me to set up a Web site for her, I jumped at the opportunity.

And before the Kaycee Nicole references come up, let me say this: I know Debby. She lives less than five miles from me. Her younger daughter, Wendy, works the same place I buy my groceries. Her older daughter, Heather, went to Mizzou with me, though I don’t know if our paths ever crossed. Her teacher’s assistant is in my Bible study group. I’ve worked on her computer a few times. I still remember how Wendy laughed when Debby came in, saw their computer open, looked at the dust inside it in horror, left the room, and came back with a dustrag. I’ve played with her dog, I’ve ridden in her car, I’ve seen the classroom where she teaches. Just as certain as I’m a real, living, breathing human being, so is Debby.

Walter Johnson, Mizzou economics professor

Dave Farquhar Health, Human Interest, Personal , ,

One of my professors at the University of Missouri, whom I fully expected to outlive me, as well as all of my classmates, died in 2002. His name was Walter Johnson. He was the most unforgettable professor of my career.
Read more

The immoral, despicable “journalism” at the Church of the Nativity

Dave Farquhar Writing , , , , , ,

Charlie asked what I, as a trained and sometimes-practicing journalist, think of Caroyln Cole’s work at the Church of the Nativity.
Well, the story linked here hits on precisely why I’m not a full-time journalist slogging words for some magazine full-time and climbing the ladder towards editorship. What usually passes for journalism today can at best be considered advocacy; in the case of what Cole sometimes practices, it’s better described as fraud.
Read more

Speeding up the Computer

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

MAILBAG:
From: “Andre Vospette”
Subject: What can I do in my Windows folder to speed up my computer

Dear Dave: I’ve read your column ever since you published your book. I’m visiting my father-in-law in Wyoming, and his Presario 400 mhz is acting like a 486 –and not a fast one, either. I’ve done everything I feel confident doing, but the big step I want to take is rearranging the applet/applications in the Windows directory. I left my copy of your book at home, so I can’t remember which programs I can move to a c:windowsbackup folder. Can you help me out here? If I pull this off I’ll reach rockstar status in my in-laws’ eyes.

Sincerely,

Andre Vospette BJ 91, University of Missouri (photojournalism sequence)
~~~~~

Hi Andre,

What you can move depends a bit. Certainly move *.txt, *.bak, *.old, *.grp, *.—, *.log, *.001, *.002, –that kind of stuff into a backups folder. I also move all the BMP and WAV files elsewhere. There are some programs you can move into C:WindowsCommand, like ping, telnet, tracert, welcome, ftp, route, arp… Don’t get too aggressive there; I’ve heard of rare occasions where moving all the files I listed can cause problems. Clearing that dead wood out should make a huge difference. Be sure to defrag later.

I hope that helps. And thanks for writing, it’s always good to hear from another Mizzou grad, especially a journalism grad.

~~~~~~~~~~

04/01/2001

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

Mailbag:

HD; Impressions; Apple RAM; DOS Utility

I spent some time Friday at my alma mater, giving a presentation at their second annual Technology Fair. I talked about the publishing industry, and how technology gives me something to write about, and allows me to write about it comfortably. Without e-mail, I never could write for Computer Shopper UK.

A lot of my fomer teachers are retired now, or nearing retirement. My journalism instructor is giving up that class next year so someone younger can come in–she retires in three years. My CS instructor is retiring in two or three years. My geology instructor told me about changes to the science program–they’re a lot more serious about teaching science now than they were in my day. Had it been that way when I was there, I’d have complained a lot, but they probably would have made an engineer out of me. Scary thought.

My former lit/writing/speech instructor asked how my books were doing and what I was up to. I told him I was learning the Queen’s English. He laughed and said it was about time. I complained about how the British use plurals and commas and acronyms, and he alternated between grinning, nodding, and rolling his eyes. At least I’m not the only one who thinks it’s strange–and it’s really good to know that the one who used to spill barrels of red ink on my papers struggles sometimes with the British way of writing things. He told me to let him know when I write something other than a computer book–he said even a Dummies book is probably too much. I told him the atrocious royalty rates a Dummies book pays. He couldn’t believe it. Andy Rathbone and Dan Gookin made money off their Dummies books, certainly. But at 25 cents a copy, most authors won’t make much.

The vice-principal came up, admired my published work, and said, “That’s so cool! I can point at this and say, ‘I know that guy! I used to yell at him!'”

That he certainly did. I did learn one really useful thing from him though. I was a sophomore, about to get fired from my first job (I thought). He saw I was down and asked me one day what was going on. I told him. “You know what you can learn from this?” he asked. I shook my head. “Imagine, if you’re a single mother of three with no education and no marketable skills, so all you can do are these Mickey Mouse jobs. You’re completely and totally at the mercy of those people. Doesn’t that make you want to stay in school and get out of there?” I don’t know if that tactic would work with anyone else, but it worked on me.

Going back made me feel old though too. One guy came up to me. “You know my brother.” He said his name. Uh, yeah, his brother and I were best friends. The last time I saw this guy, he was probably in the fifth grade, if that. Now he’s getting ready to go off to Mizzou and major in business. Remarkable. I thought I spotted another former classmate’s kid sister, but she didn’t say anything to me.

Afterward, one of the students showed me a Web application he’s putting together in PHP. It’s nowhere near finished, but when it’s done, it’ll be better than the commercial app the shcool is using now. I felt a long way from hacking out programs on my C-128, which was what I was doing when I was his age.

I’m jealous. In some regards, George W. Bush has the world’s coolest job.

Uh oh. I know they had this idea before I printed it, but the day after I suggested someone needed to copycat Apple’s cube design and put a VIA C3 chip in it, I read this.

Another source. Regular readers of the irreverenet British IT publication The Register will undoubtedly recognize the name Mike Magee. Well, The Great Magee has had some health problems of late, and then along the way it seems he’s split with the Register and gone off on his own, and at least one of his former staffmates seem to have followed him. You can find his stuff at http://theinquirer.net .

Monitors. I ordered a 19″ NEC FE950 monitor last weekend, the black model, since the place I ordered from was out of stock on the white. I got a good price on it too–$386 before shipping. I remember when a 14″ RGB monitor used to cost about that much. Sure, that was 15 years ago, but hey, I remember it. And that’s before calculating inflation. Very nice price. By way of comparison, my dear departed NEC Multisync II monitor cost about $910 new after adjusting for inflation. How far we’ve progressed.

Well, sorta. Back in those days, you ordered something over the phone, and it showed up about a month later. These days, when you order from someone reputable, stuff shows up in a week or less. And if you need it overnight, you can definitely get it overnight. But not this time. Not from this place. I order on Saturday. They finish processing my order on Thursday and ship it, but they haven’t notified me of the tracking number yet. I didn’t order from my usual sources–this place was considerably cheaper–and I know, you get what you pay for. But these guys had a pretty good ranking on reseller ratings, and a Computer Shopper reader’s choice award and a Better Business Bureau membership to boot. How bad can they be?

Well, by 1986 standards they’re still doing OK. But it’s a darn good thing I wasn’t in a hurry.

And I just realized, I could have used that logic to justify a 15-inch flat panel. Oh well.

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03/28/2001

Dave Farquhar General ,

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Ugh. I caught up on mail, had a long conversation with Steve DeLassus (a longtime friend and tech reviewer for Optimizing Windows), and otherwise didn’t get much done last night.

Resumes 101. The one thing I did do last night was look at two different people’s resumes. I’m not sure when the last time was someone asked me for resume advice. But I do see a resume every once in a while as part of my job. Sometimes my boss will flip a resume my direction and ask what I think. The really scary thing is, spelling everything correctly and using proper punctuation impresses me. I don’t see that very often. I was taught that kind of thing was expected. I guess not anymore.

Fonts 101. I guess the other thing that comes to mind is that if you want to make a resume stand out, don’t run it in Arial or Times New Roman. If you’ve got a reasonably conservative-looking font that isn’t bundled with Windows, that’d be an excellent choice. Bookman and Garamond are classy and easy to read, and they’ve been used for centuries. Book Antiqua, which comes with MS Office, is a good-looking font whose origins I’m not familiar with. One of my former editors got me hooked on News Gothic as a substitute for Arial, but that’s not a terribly common font. Century Gothic and Futura are good-looking sans-serif fonts, and even though they were intended by their designers to be ultra-modern fonts, there are ancient Roman engravings that look very much like Futura.

The general rule is that a font with serifs, like Times, gives you a traditional look while a sans-serif font, like Arial, gives you a more modern look. The problem is that Times and Arial (or Helvetica–Arial is just a Helvetica knock-off), while excellent designs, are so commonly used that they’re cliche. You can make yourself stand out subtly by using a different font. And the older the font, the better. People have been designing fonts for centuries; what worked then will still work now.

Display fonts like Comic Sans (and most people’s computers have plenty of wild fonts that make Comic Sans look conservative) have no place in resumes. They’re best reserved for greeting cards or other informal projects.

Usage of cutting-edge fonts and display fonts is hard to teach. Either you’ve got an eye for their use or you don’t. A good teacher can help you develop your eye a bit, but since design wasn’t my specialty, I can’t really explain proper usage of them other than to say experiment. And read lots of British magazines because they’re generally bolder than most American magazines, surprisingly.

I once had a font called Bloody that was exactly what it sounds like. When I was editing a student paper at Mizzou, one week we were all feeling a bit feisty in the editorial office, so we did a cover story of a blood drive, ran a big magazine-style picture of someone giving blood on the cover, and, taking a swipe at our rival paper, we overlaid the text “If it bleeds, it leads,” in Bloody of course. The main designer and I had a running joke that I wouldn’t let her use that font. So when one of the other editors had the idea, I of course jumped at it and told her. And I also let her think it was my idea.

Needless to say, that cover didn’t end up going in any of our portfolios. But it was fun, and let us get a laugh at our rivals’ expense, which is always a good thing.

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