Category Informational

Formatting Woes, Browsers ‘perspective’ and LiveWriter

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Christopher Kusek, Informational, Microsoft

I fought off LiveWriter for quite some time.  I did.  But then I said "Well, if I can do proper aspect ratio and movability of images" then I’m sold.

And I am/was sold.  Except it’s not exactly what it says on the tin.   Because it depends upon the browser.

I just published this wonderful article on the amazing and legendary Molly Marlette, and then came "Browser testing"  End result looks like this:

This is how it SHOULD look:

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This is also how it happened to render inside of IE (Imagine that: No problem here)

Well, FireFox had different ideas, and looks like this:

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Worse still, in my active testing process, Google Chrome comes out looking like this:

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When I would write up my stuff manually (hacking the HTML as I went) I didn’t run into these alignment and formatting issues! I call it Browser Shock!

If you were to ask the question "Which Browser is right? They’re all reading the same data" I agree.  Except IE is correct, because is the WYSIWYG how I created it, so I would hope the other browsers would respect that and not be so absolutely different :)

So, if you happen to read across browsers and notice that sometimes my posts look abysmal – I blame the browser (And I do try to clean it up to look good across them, but as you can… it’s not exactly the most "winning" battle)

Musical innovation: Molly Marlette

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Christopher Kusek, General, Health, Informational, Music

I go on a lot about latest, known and unknown technological innovations and other things we should know, or revisit again.   But it’s not too often I touch on this subject here – Music!

For those of you who know me, I’ve always been in-tune with music, so much that my music collection and lyrical capacity perhaps far exceeds most peoples musical collections throughout their entire life.  (I once went through a period of listening to music at 1.4x and 2.0x the speed in order to listen to more music faster….)   And I won’t even go into knowing the lyrics to every song I’ve ever heard and my 255 song TMBG Playlist…

Anyone with an appreciation for sheer and pure talent – should take the opportunity to check out this artist.    Recently interviewed by LA CityZine, she’ll surprise and delight you in one fell-swoop leaving you wondering how a talent so young is able to innovate and deliver on such a level.

Her adoption and use of instruments, riffs and tonal ambiguity is packaged like a veteran of musical delivery.

A true lyricist, miles beyond the trite, predictable rhymes of the average singer/songwriter. Instead of forcing her lyrics upon us, her delicate delivery quietly calls the listener to lean in closer. – The Allumette – EP

Molly Marlette doesn’t reinvent the diary-turned-lyrics wheel on her debut EP The Allumette; her wheel is just more interesting. From the first few bars of the opening track, “Sleep Must Heal the Heart,” it’s clear that this isn’t going to be another girl and her piano therapy session. Marlette, 20, is a true lyricist, miles beyond the trite, predictable rhymes of the average singer/songwriter. Instead of forcing her lyrics upon us, her delicate delivery quietly calls the listener to lean in closer. -The Deli LA

I definitely encourage you to check out her siren’s song which will woo you over as she has smitten so many.    From the moment I heard of her, I was hooked – You will be too. :)

Official Website

The Allumette – EP – $10.00 CD or MP3

Thanks for supporting an excellent Artist! You must sleep well, sleeping must heal the heart

Sitting on 20’s! (Google goes Chrome!)

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Christopher Kusek, General, Informational

Welcome to the new Google Chrome!

If you read the rags, the blogs and all the references about chrome you’ll find it the godsend (beta) which you can expect it to be!

It’s not immune or invulnerable however.  There are a number of things which could certainly be improved, but on the surface it’s looking pretty good!

Pros:

It renders fast, I can ctrl-click and open up all of my other windows I often load from my blog (such as the NetApp blogs) without it even blinking or causing any lag to the browser like I would normally experience with Firefox.

I connected to an SVG capable site and it immediately said "Adobe Install – OK?" and seconds later, my SVG content was working and operational.   It wasn’t working at 100% of how I would expect it to operate (hovering would not result in showing data, it wasn’t interactive) but I will commend it for actually WORKING!

In my recent post about suffering from click and stare, I mentioned that it’d be nice if the application would take my behaviors into account and store those as active preferences.   This has that very feature with "Most Visited" sites being there on the forefront of the applications front page – Hat’s off!

Show my Password feature!   Close the door to obfuscation! It’s right there, "you want to see your password for this site? I will show you!" that is so much nicer than having to download Cain and Abel and have it extract it out! (Winning feature!)

Works with Oracle! I haven’t tested out SAP yet, but hey at least my Oracle works!

I’m sure there is much more to say in the Pro category, but my battery is going to die soon, so I’ll opt to cover the con’s :)

Whoa, hey – wait! It works with Sharepoint, whereas FireFox doesn’t?!?

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Cons:

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Memory:

Chrome is taking a fair amount of memory, but I’m using it like the person who uses and abuses applications so that isn’t too terrible.

 

 

 

Tab Management:

If you happen to exceed roughly 25 tabs, it gets a bit unmanageable as you try to click and move between them.

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This accounts for roughly 25 tabs.. not a bad deal I can still "work with it"

But once you get beyond that point… it gets hard to work with.

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Moving between them is awkward and difficult.  It seems to lack the firefox or IE feature of clicking a single tab and using the arrow keys to move between them.   However I must add that closing them continuously does work fairly smoothly (so props on that!)

Search Applications:

It lacks a separating "Search" window which benefits those of who have internal applications written to search a separate database or dataset, or access other internalized systems.

I’m sure this feature itself will clean up or similar integration will happen, but I don’t see it yet.

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…Lively doesn’t work!

Post-Mortem:

I’ll continue to give this app a try, the full gamut – hack it, crash it, burn it to death :)

I do like the fact that it does work with Oracle ;)

What is in a beta? (Post Mortem: Beta Exams)

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Baltimization, Certification, Christopher Kusek, Informational, Microsoft, NetApp

beta2 

A literal day does not go by where someone asks me what a "Beta" exam is, who takes them, and why?

 

 

Are you "Beta" material?  That’s a great question which hopefully by the end of this you’ll be able to come to terms with who you might be.

 

 

 

Q: Who are Beta Exams for?

A: Beta Exams are for people who meet any of the following criteria:

  • Tend to be an early adopter of technology and software
  • Are interested in advancing your career, whether on your own budget or someone else’s
  • Self-Starter, Self-studier who will go out and absorb information about a new tech/exam
  • A veteran of an application, looking to prove your "skillz"
  • A novice of an application, looking to improve your "skillz" :)
  • Someone with a competitive spirit, flare, or otherwise
  • People who like to comment on material before it goes live, to improve the final product

You do not need to meet any single one of the above criteria to qualify as a beta tester, but chances are you meet one or more.

Q: What is a Beta Exam?

A: Beta exams are usually performing the following functions:

  • Validating the test questions which were written by a team of specialists to confirm how realistic they may be, before taking an exam live
  • Qualifying "experimental" test questions which may or may not even be real.  In order to see how people react and comment on those questions
  • Beta exams are often a subset or an entire pool of questions which will be utilized in the finished product.  Depending you may see a small number (70) or larger (100+) questions to answer and respectively comment
  • Constructive Comments and feedback – Your comments will be read, so if you don’t like a question say so and that question could be removed or updated respectively

Q: Why take a Beta Exam?

A: The reasons to take a Beta Exam are many-fold, but here some reasons I take them:

  • They’re free! It gives me the opportunity (Stress Free) to take a test, (Pass/Fail) and it won’t cost me any $$ other than my time investment.    This way I can validate my worldly skills at this simple cost
  • Comments and Feedback! I do like to provide constructive feedback as I personally take an interest in ensuring we’re obtaining the highest quality release of Exams, Product, etc.   Having been involved in alphas and betas since the beginning of time – seeing it first and making sure by the time everyone else sees it, they see it for the good and not the bad we were all fortunate to clean up :)
  • I’m an early adopter.   Hell, I’m an innovator, but it’s not too often that I actually *write* the exams or questions, so I tend to go for ‘adopter’ as much as possible
  • I gotz skillz! Yea, in the Microsoft.. and Networking.. and Storage… and Unix.. and Programming.. and pretty much every space, I’ve either worked with it, or can infer within a few seconds years of experience out of it.   So based upon that sole reason and criteria I like to see these things and expand my own personal knowledge base
    • If after taking an exam I feel it is not for me, I take the benefit of my experience, share the wealth of knowledge and continue on my way (Post Mortems)
  • Did I mention because it’s FREE? Seriously! Anyone who is looking to start their career, advance their career, or simply stabilize where they are.   You can’t go wrong with Free in this economy, or any economy.   Not to mention you’re helping a good cause of validating the material!

So, anyone who happens to work in the world of technology who doesn’t want to sit still at a stalemate – Get out there and take beta exams!   Take your free-self, get your cert on, and even learn something in the process!

Retiring Exams, Get your Trika for 40% off!

by Christopher Kusek (PKGuild) Certification, Christopher Kusek, Informational, Microsoft, SQL, Trika!

You heard it here! A number of exams which are retiring (March 31, 2009) are being offered at a 40% reduction! by my math that looks to be $50.00 off!

All the details can be found here –

Price reduction on retiring exams (and VS/SQL upgrade exams)

But for those who don’t want to click and link off, I’ll copy the best bits!

Here are the exams with reduced price:

So, check it out especially if your certification happens to align with skill-set.

And if not – give a shout out to Trika over at her blog!