wxForty-Two

Several months ago Microsoft had an ad campaign where they would have an average Joe or Jane talk about some cool wizbang feature of Windows 7 and how it was all their idea.  It was one of Microsoft's better ad campaigns, and was actually understandable by the average person without requiring the viewer to know industry inside jokes, or to understand Jerry Seinfeld, to be able to "get" the gist of the commercial.  It also employed some cute gimmicks, such as when the person was remembering back to how they thought up the wonderful new idea the directors used a different actor who was younger, thinner, cuter, handsomer, and had way better hair than the real person.

A few weeks ago I realized that I had the same experience with Mac OS X Lion.  Way back in 2007 I wrote a post in this blog about some of the things that annoyed me about OSX.  Two of them were finally fixed in Lion, and it only took 4 years!  Here is the first one.

Can only resize from 1 corner

It bugs me that I can only resize windows from the lower right corner. I often find myself wishing that I could resize from any edge or corner as I've been doing for nearly 20 years on every Windows, OS/2 and X-Windows system I've ever used.

We can now grab any corner or side of most windows and resize the window by dragging the mouse cursor.  Yay!  For you non-Mac users out there, until you're not able to do that you may not actually realize how much you do it.  For example, if you have a window that you would like to make wider and have it grow to the left, then on Macs running an earlier version of the OS you would first have to move the window to the left, and then you would have to move the mouse cursor down to the bottom right corner and drag to the right.  That's lots more effort than it should require, and now, thanks to me, you don't have to go through all of that! <wink!>

Can't change mouse cursor

You'd think that with how important the visual appeal of the OS seems to be with Apple that they would not have let something this ugly slide through their QA department for so long. Since I usually have multiple computers with multiple screens active at once, I like to increase the size of the mouse cursor a bit, or replace it with alternate cursors that are more easily visible. I've tried options for things like giving the cursor a comet trail of fading arrows behind it, or what not, and I hate them all after a few minutes. For me, just increasing the size and/or using a colored arrow that is easily visible does the job and doesn't get in the way of my work. However on Mac OS X you can't use custom cursors and all you can do is scale the image up in the Universal Access section of System Preferences. And being Apple you might assume that it would be a nice scaled up anti-aliased rendering of a vector image, but NO! They simply take the original 16x16 pixel image and stretch it to fit the new 64x64 or whatever size. Anyone who has used a photo editing application more than a few times knows you can't take a small image and enlarge it very much without it looking like crap! It embarrasses me too much to run a Mac with a cursor stretched up to a monstrosity like that, so I suffer with the itty-bitty one that occasionally gets lost among the dozens of windows on my desktops.

Next up is the lack of ability to have a nice looking mouse cursor that is larger than normal.  At least that's the way it was prior to Lion.  Now when you change the cursor size it scales up very nicely, probably because they are using some scalable image format now instead of a small 16x16 bitmap image.  Unfortunately if an application uses some non-standard cursor images they are still poorly scaled up into a jagged edged ugly blob.  Also unfortunately I haven't been able to find a screenshot program yet that will capture the new enlarged cursor so I can show you the difference.  They all end up with the small default cursor in the screenshot instead.  Weird.  Anyway, I'm no longer embarrassed to have a larger than normal cursor on my Macs because they are no longer so dang ugly.  Thanks to me you can also have a purdee big cursor too! <wink!>

Now the only question remaining is who should Apple get to play the younger/fitter/handsomer version of me while filming the flashback parts of my "OS X Lion Was My Idea" commercial, what do you think?

Do you know where your towel is?

Tribute to a Dog

The best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us, may be the first tothrow the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads.

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings, and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.

George Graham Vest, 1870

A number of people have asked me about it and so I finally decided that it is high time that I give the whole twitter thing a try.  Of course I've gotten into it late enough that my usual user name, RobinD is already taken, although that page returns an error.  (I suspect that somebody got their account suspended...)  Strangely enough somebody has already registered the wxPython name, although they haven't tweeted anything since last July...  Anyway, if you'd like to follow me or send me messages on twitter I am known there as RobinD42. Bear with me while I take my first steps in this new environment...

Yeah, I know what you're thinking... That headline sounds like something you might read while standing in the checkout line at the supermarket next to photos of aliens from the future rescuing some baby porkers from the path of a Vogon engineered tornado headed for the next trailer park on their list of sites to demolish to make room for a new highway. Well if that's what you're thinking (come on, admit it, you know you were) then you're wrong. Keep reading for some info about another kind of Time Machine, and another kind of Bacon.

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