Dan Benjamin of “Hivelogic”:http://www.hivelogic.com recently wrote about “his software setup”:http://hivelogic.com/articles/2006/04/17/setup_part_ii. Even though he uses a Mac and none of the software he mentioned would be of any use to me, I was intrigued by the idea and inspired to write a similar post of my own. Actually, I’ve been working on this post for a while but I’ve decided to break it down into pieces so it looks like I actually do something around here. 🙂

Before I start to talk about individual programs, I’d like to say a little about my computer. For the past couple of months I’ve been using a company-issued “HP Compaq tc4200 Tablet PC”:http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-304452-306995-304455-306995-457948.html. I was a bit skeptical at first about the whole tablet thing, but I must say it adds another layer of freedom to personal computing. I always have the option to flip the lid up and use it like a normal laptop, but it’s quite useful being able to take notes and refer to my documents or the web while I’m up walking around.

For the record, I’m a wanna-be Ubuntu user. I hope to have my system dual-booting sometime soon, but have tried several times unsuccessfully. I’ve been having a heck of a time figuring out how to partition the drive. Most partitioning software boots from a CD, but since my tablet doesn’t have a CD-ROM, it makes things difficult. I’ve tried both an external CD-ROM and one that’s built into my HP advanced docking station, but many of the Linux live CDs I’ve tried (Knoppix, Kanotix, etc.) won’t boot. I was finally able to get an Ubuntu live CD to boot, but the built-in partitioning software, GParted, which is supposed to have support for NTFS, refuses to touch my drive even after several defrags. I think I’m going to have to purchase or borrow a copy of Partition Magic.

Anyway, one thing that makes the tablet great is the ability to write directly on the screen. The built-in system for writing is called the Tablet Input Panel, and there are two ways to use it. The first is to tap a button that permanently resides on the start bar. The button brings up the TIP across the bottom of the screen. My tablet also has a dedicated hardware button that brings up the TIP, so one of the first things I did was research a way to keep that pesky button from taking up my task bar real-estate. Having the TIP at the bottom of the screen is a little silly, in my opinion, because there’s no place to rest your hand to write. Try writing something near the bottom of a clipboard to see what I mean.

The other way to use the TIP is with a little button that pops up whenever you’ve just tapped a place where text can be entered. At first thought, a button that appears out of nowhere may sound annoying, but if you don’t need to use it the button dissappears after a few seconds. If you tap the button, the TIP pops up just below where you’re entering the text. This is called the Floating TIP, and this is the TIP I prefer to use. One problem with the Floating TIP, however, is that some applications don’t support it. If a program doesn’t use the standard textarea/text box widgets, the Floating TIP will simply not recognize them as places where text can be entered, and the little floating button just won’t appear. In that case, you either forced to use the normal TIP or flip the screen back around so you can use the keyboard.

Unfortunately, [Mozilla Firefox], uses XUL for all of its widgets, and isn’t natively supported by the Floating TIP. However, there’s a great Firefox extension, GeckoTIP, that provides full Floating TIP support in Firefox.

Stay tuned for the rest of this series on my software setup. I’ll definitely mention more of my favorite Firefox extensions and may even include some selections from my Palm OS software collection.

I wasn’t expecting a package in the mail today, but I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a heavy one in my mailbox. I was even more pleasantly surprised to find that it is a copy of the Holy Quran. You see, way back in October I requested a Quran from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, otherwise known as CAIR. I seem to remember receiving some sort of notice back then that my shipment would be delayed, but until today I had completely forgotten I ordered it.

It is a beautiful copy of the Quran: hard bound, nearly three inches thick, and printed on heavy glossed paper like a college textbook. Each page is divided into two columns. The English translation is on the left with the original Arabic and a transliteration of the Arabic on the right. The bottom third of each page is filled with notes about the text.

The foundation gives these copies of the Quran away for free, apparently to foster understanding and appreciation of Islam among Americans. The letter enclosed with the book states (bold text has been copied exactly as it appears in the letter):

Thank you for requesting your copy of the Holy Quran, Islam’s revealed text. This is an important step toward understanding and coming to appreciate the universal teachings of Islam.

I hope you will take the earliest opportunity to read its verses and reflect on their meaning, thus doing your part to promote mutual understanding and tolerance of religious diversity in America. . . .

I hope you find your Quran both educational and spiritually uplifting. Congratulations on doing your part to encourage greater interfaith understanding and mutual respect at this crucial time in our nation’s history.

I’m slightly baffled, though, as to why they would give away such expensive copies when there must be a more economical paperback edition available. I suspect it may have something to do with the great respect Muslims have for their holy text. To them, it just wouldn’t be enough to send a paperback. If the book is to be respected as it should be, it would only suffice to send a copy like this. The letter continues:

Muslims are taught from an early age to treat the Quran with great care and respect. For example, Muslims avoid placing the Quran on the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or in dirty or wet areas, as this is considered inappropriate treatment of a holy text.

Many Muslims hold the Quran by taking it in both hands as one would a valuable piece of art and keep themselves in a state of ritual purity, washing before opening the holy book.

Just as Muslims are expected to treat the religious texts of others with the utmost respect and courtesy, so too do we hope that you will take the information above into consideration when handling the Holy Quran.

I happily recommend that you order your own copy of the Quran from CAIR. They seem to be a fine organization and I’m grateful to them for the beautiful volume that now occupies a prominent place on my bookshelf. It won’t just sit on my shelf, though. I intend to read it, and may blog about what I discover in the coming weeks or months.

[Hat tip to Aaron, who encouraged me to order my copy back in October.]

I took the plunge today and installed “Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2”:http://www.microsoft.com/ie. I tried it on a brand new desktop computer here at work first so I could test what the uninstall process was like. Turns out it’s completely painless. IE7 uninstalls and restores IE6 as if nothing ever changed.

I was also more than a little worried that it would break my “IE Tab”:http://ietab.mozdev.org/ extension in Firefox, but I was pleasantly surprised after installing to find that IE Tab still functions and even uses the IE7 rendering engine. Slick!

The only issue I encountered was that a few of the sites I need for work were failing because they didn’t recognize the IE7 user-agent string. I fixed that by spoofing the IE6 user-agent string using some registry keys. If you find yourself needing to do this, simply download the following registry entry files:

As should be self-explanatory, double-clicking the first file (ie6ua.reg) will edit your registry to spoof the IE6 user-agent string, while double-clicking the second file (ie6ua-undo.reg) will restore the default IE7 user-agent string.

I may write more about IE7 after I’ve used it for a bit. So far I’m not blown away. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a huge improvement over IE6, but nothing about it has really made me get up out of my chair or smack my forehead. It’s just another tabbed browser — no bells and whistles to set it apart from the crowd. But, as I said, give me a few weeks to play with it and maybe I’ll write up a formal review.

I’ve stripped off all my CSS for the day (and maybe a few more days). Why? It’s the first annual CSS Naked Day. Several of my favorite blogs have gone naked as well, including Adactio and Clagnut. There’s also a mention on The Web Standards Project.

The point is to expose the raw HTML of your site to see if it’s actually usable. The point of standards based design is to separate function and content as much as possible from layout and style. If a web designer has done his job right, the site should remain functional with no CSS whatsoever.

So, what do you think? Is the site still usable? I realize it isn’t pretty, but does it function? What could I add or remove so that my markup makes more sense? Remember, adding things to the markup won’t necessarily interfere with my layout because I can use CSS to completely hide elements. For instance, I’m already thinking of adding some kind of header before the four main navigation links (i.e. Blog, Archive, Info, and Contact) to set them apart from the section above them. My layout sets them apart prominently with positioning and visual appearance, but the markup itself doesn’t indicate what they are or that they are important. A header would fix that, and I could hide it using CSS so it doesn’t interfere with my layout.

What else could use a tweak? Let me know in the comments.

I’ve replaced the header images both on this blog and on my [Avocation] blog. I had to finagle a half-transparent box just to make the text readable on both sites, but I don’t think it looks half bad (note that I haven’t looked at it in IE yet). One down side is it breaks when you increase or decrease your text size. I’d love to rip this all down and start over, but I don’t have the time, and I think this small change will keep me satisfied with this layout for a few months more.

The image here is the inner workings of a Burlington Bulldog railroad watch. I went looking for photos of pocket watches ((Why a pocket watch? For the connection, see the Teleological argument for the existence of God.)) and found this one in Kevin Trotman’s Flickr photo stream. It’s licensed under a Creative Commons license and I’ve given Kevin proper attribution in my blog footer, so I am using it with permission. You can find the original photo here. The image on my Avocation blog is a picture I took yesterday from my office window on the eighth floor. It is the wasatch mountains on the East side of the Salt Lake Valley (specifically, Mount Olympus just left of center and Twin Peaks off to the right). You can find the original photo here.