Chain Smoking Blue Monkey

The Criminal Price Of EndNote

csbmonkey — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:01:08 +0000

The Monkey works somewhere that EndNote is the go-to app for bibliographic data collection. I understand the need for EndNote, but EndNote still is a rather crappy application.

At its most basic, EndNote is nothing more than a specialized database app that is largely built around a plug-in for word processors (primarily Microsoft Word). The really amusing thing to me is that the way the plug-in works and sees items denoted as entries is very, very old school. You generally note entries that you want to be bibliographic in natures though some series of special character entries around a name of an author. Then the plug-in just scours your document for those special characters and looks for the name of the author in the EndNote “library” (i.e. the database) and then proceeds to format the entries with a pre-existing template for a particular Journal.

Here is what EndNote really is all about: templates for journals.

That’s it. The reality of EndNote has little to nothing to do with with actually collecting the bibliographic entries and keeping them stored. That’s a pretty standard database. You could probably built your own by point and clicking your way through FileMaker. The true purpose of EndNote is that it is nothing more than a Microsoft Word plug-in with a collected set of formatting templates for the thousands of academic journals out there. The plug-in simply looks at the template and says “Format the entries this way, please.” and then pulls the specific data from the database that is required by that journal.

EndNote is really the only thing out there, too. There are a few other apps, but EndNote really has this market wrapped up. They price their application accordingly. $200 is the general per user cost for EndNote, and they update on a yearly basis, driving that psychological button of panic in academic circles of “That’s new! I need it! It will give me an advantage over my academic competition! If it’s new it must be better! Everyone else will be using it! BUY IT! NOW! NOW! NOW!” EndNote also uses that as an opportunity to charge for basic maintenance fixes that they simply abandon in the previous versions. In other words, they know there’s a problem in EndNote version X, but they’ll wait until version X1 to fix it and they won’t provide fixes to version X for free at all, because, well, hey, it’s going to be FIXED in the next version, right? And everyone is going to BUY the next version anyway, right?

EndNote. I am not a fan.

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PowWeb Kind Of Sucking These Days

csbmonkey — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:51:12 +0000

I have been using PowWeb as my hosting service for a while now. I have installed Word Press as a blogging platform for this blog and one other, and I have to say that PowWeb combined with WordPress does not impress. Slow, slow and also, slow.

When I go to other sections of my site, though, I don’t get this. Frankly, I am wondering if this all has to do with PowWeb and Word Press specifically. Word Press is ok, but I admit, it ain’t all that and a drink of water too.

Frankly, could be my browser. I have to suss out what it is, but overall, no matter where I am, I find access to my blogs painfully slow.

Epson: Now On My List Of “NEVER BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM”

csbmonkey — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:04:56 +0000

Oh Epson, you scalawags. First you build your industry on some of the stupidest printer design decisions in the industry (print heads only replaceable by printer technicians in a repair shop) and now it seems that you have broke my heart with your shitty scanners as well.

Goodby Epson Perfection 1670. You piece of shit. You scanned fine and then you just… didn’t. At all. I have tried you on other computers and it turns out that, in fact, it IS the scanner and not software.

My old SCSI HP scanner was a stalwart that lasted years. HP gets the nod from now on from me with scanners.

Why Epson? Why do you make products that suck oh so badly?

Google Shared Stuff’s Mysterious Disappearance

csbmonkey — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:26:18 +0000

I hope it is simple and upgrade, but it is hard to tell what is going on. I had come to rely on that for a variety of things and *poof* it just disappeared. I am crossing my fingers that it is just an upgrade. But in that Google usually comments on upgrades in their blogs, I do not have good feelings about this.

Ten Computing Habits You Need To Get Rid Of

csbmonkey — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:58:36 +0000

Moving windows down with the mouse to get them out of the way so you can see other things. There is a much better way to do that on any computer you are using. Alt-Tab for one. Yes, it may be the case than then you cannot “see” the two things together, but that might mean you should be arranging things differently anyway. Perhaps side by side is better for you. In that case, perhaps you need a big monitor. However, I see what you are doing there. I see that you are moving the window down as far as you possibly can move it. And that means you could be using key commands to cycle through open windows. On a Windows computer it is incredibly simple: Alt-Tab. That’s all. That will scroll through all open windows for you. If you install the App Switcher Power Toy you even get little snapshots of the open documents to scroll through. On a Mac, Command-Tab will do the trick, and if you are on a Mac you have a bevy of options in the form of Expose. It’s 2008 people. Moving windows down to the bottom of the screen with the mouse is about as far back as you can dig into habits before you start having to remember DOS commands (which would actually be better than moving windows around with a mouse). Mac users often have the option to scroll through any open program’s open documents via key commands. Command-~ works for Firefox, Safari, Entourage, and a number of other applications.
Using “Unread” or simply opening 75-100 emails at one time and using that as your “to do” reminders. Would you like to know why this does not work? How about when you get to well over 3,000 unread email messages? So, you will really being sitting down at some point in the near future and going through those 3,000 messages and addressing each one? Yeah, sure you will. Find a better way. Do I know one? I know what I do (use flagging and categories in Outlook and Entourage and search terms and labels in Gmail), but it may not necessarily work for you. I can tell you this much, however, what you are doing now clearly does not work. You are never going read those. Mark them read and move on. Find a new way to remind yourself of things. If you are 3,000 unread messages behind your system has failed. Your system does not work. It does not matter how long you have used that systems or how ingrained it is or how much of a habit it is. It is a bad habit that is not serving you well. The other habit also is not serving you well. Opening a large number of emails and just leaving them open as a “reminder” does not work once you pass a certain threshold. In fact, that holds true for BOTH of these habits. Once you have gone beyond seven to ten unread items or open emails to serve as a “reminder” to you, then your system has failed you. If you want that systems to work, then create a limit of how many things you will keep unread or how many emails you will keep open as a reminder. Stick to it. Maximum: ten unread items / ten open emails to serve as a “reminder”. Beyond that you simply are doing nothing more than an electronic version of piling paper on your desk.
Relying on email attachments. There are so many better ways to work. Email attachments are not only messy, but they really are a burden to email systems and to simplification processes. One of the most misunderstood processes of email email attachments are the fact that for you to read them and edit them the thing you are looking at has to be downloaded from your email account to your computer. If your email is on your computer, then it still has to be decoded by the email application and then moved into some other location to open. Attachments (except for a few things like images) are handed off to the operating system to handle. Are you emailing anything remotely private or sensitive in those attachments? Do you know the location of that directory where those attachments are being downloaded? Probably not. Changing that location on a Windows computer is no easy task, either. Mac users are not immune to this either in that it works the same way by pushing that file to a local directory that you most likely do not know the location of to begin with and might have a difficult time changing later. Yes, it is true that in some instances email attachments are a necessary evil. That is how you should think of them, too: necessary evil. What should you do? If you work somewhere with network drives, then you should save your data there and send links to it in email. Period. If you don’t work somewhere like that, then frankly I believe you should start using Google Docs to create shared documents. Microsoft Office is not the only application out there, and unless you have a damn good reason to be using it then you probably do not need it. I have been watching you use that, too, and I know you are mostly generating documents that are very basic.
Not saving your work. Yes, it is 2008 and you would expect your application that does whatever it is your entire life revolves around at the moment would save automatically for you. You would be wrong. Most applications do not auto-save things for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that you may not want to save that change you made. However, do not assume that Microsoft products like Word and Excel automatically save anything. If you have been working for five hours on that document and the power goes out, you might be able to get something back via the recovery too, but if you didn’t Ctrl-S every time you stopped typing then you lost your work. Let me repeat that for you: IF YOU DID NOT SAVE YOUR FIVE HOURS OF WORK IN MICROSOFT WORD AT SOME POINT DURING THAT FIVE HOURS AND THE COMPUTER CRASHES THEN YOU LOSE IT ALL. If you can develop a simple habit of hitting Ctrl-S (Command-S for you Mac users) you will save not only your work but a hell of a lot of grief for both you and me. What Word DOES save is and Aut0Recover document every X number of minutes that you set it to save (10 minutes is the default). So, it is 2008 and it is time for you to start learning to save your work. Buck up kiddo and take a little responsibility for yourself. It is a damn simple thing to do and ask yourself what is worse: Losing hours of work on a regular basis or learning to hit Ctrl-S whenever I stop typing an idea or thought? (This works in Google Docs, too, btw.)
Saving everything on your desktop. This is akin to Number 2 above. Once you have passed a certain threshold then the desktop’s useful space is cluttered to the point of usability. The point of saving things to the desktop is so that you can quickly see where it is to open it, but if you have 400 documents on the desktop then not only have you passed the point of usability and purpose but you have created nothing more than, once again, a virtual version of stacks of paper on the desktop. Indeed, that is fine if you just ignore the desktop entirely and use it as an all purpose catch-all. However, if you truly believe that you can find things there when you visually not distinguish text because there is so much clutter, then you should simply dump all of those things in “My Documents” or “Documents” (on the Mac) and find yourself a good indexed search tool. I use Google Desktop for my Windows computer and the Macintosh has built in Spotlight to provide this search (although you can also get Google Desktop for Mac, and it works pretty well in conjunction with Spotlight).
Opening a document to do a Save As… to another location. Yep, some of you are still doing this. You have all sorts of other options, the main one being to click on a document’s icon and hold the mouse button down and drag the document to another window that is the other location. Drag and drop. Introduced in 1984 on the Macintosh computer. It has been working well ever since. You may ask yourself why this is a habit you need to get rid of in the first place. If it works don’t break it, right? True enough, but you are adding layers of complexity to a simple operation that do not need to be there. This is a data move, not a data review or a data change. You are only moving something from one place to the other. If you need to review it first, by all mean, open it and Save As… all you want. On Windows you can also Right-Click (oh, we will get to that next) and select “Send To…” and if you are using a flash drive (a.k.a. keychain drive, thumbdrive, etc.) you can actually send a document straight to that drive without even opening a window to show the contents of the drive. On the Mac you are left to the tried and true drag-and-drop to achieve file copying.
Not knowing what a right-click (Windows) or control-click (Macs without a two button mouse) is. Mice have been around on Windows computers since Windows hit the market, and on Windows computers mice have been right-click enabled since the beginning of Windows time. What does right-click do? WHAT DOESN’T IT DO, SIFL?! Seriously, the right-click has enormous untapped functionality. In some cases it is is not added functionality but necessary functionality. On the Macintosh, though, right-clicking is a bit of a new development. The old Macintosh OS previous to Mac OS X did enabled the ability to right-click via control-click (holding down the control button on the keyboard and then clicking the mouse button), but out of the box Mac OS X enabled two button mice to right-click to get these functions. That was amusing (as it is now) since the mice that come with Macintosh computers are one button mice. Throw that mouse out and get a two button mouse and learn to right-click on your Mac as well. Mac laptop users you are out of luck unless you use a mouse. The functionality is still there with control-click. The Mac laptop has a big, fat single button still, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future since Steve Jobs hates two button mice and trackpads. I suspect you can remap the atrocious tap-click on the trackpad to be your control-click.
Know when to double-click and when to single-click. Double-click on icons on the desktop to launch applications and double-click on a word in just about any application to select that word. Have you ever wondered why your web browsing seems to have a mind of its own? If you double-click on links in web pages or emails, that is why. You are technically asking the computer to open that link two times. Hyperlinks in emails, web pages, and within hypertext enabled documents are to be clicked only one time. That is the case largely due to that being the ethos of the genesis of web browsing: the ability to make text lead to another thing instantly in the shortest possible manner. One click and you are off to the link. Of course, right-click can be used as well if you use a web browser that opens things in tabs you can right-click on a link and tell the browser “Open in new tab” or “Open in new Window” if you like clutter (which you do - again, I have been watching you).
Do not set your new computer to a resolution that is does not like. In your case, this means do not set your 24″ wide screen monitor to 1024×768 resolution. I do not care that you have bad eyes. There are better ways to deal with that than displaying things in such a way that they do not take advantage of what you paid good money to be able to take advantage of. A big monitor isn’t so you see things BIGGER, HUGER, CHUNKIER. It is so that you have more real estate to work with. If your eyes are bad then work with someone to set your computer up either with larger display fonts for your documents or to use Assistive Technologies. You may think you want things to be BIG ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE, but if you set things up the first time with large display fonts and proper Assistive Technologies you will begin to realize what you have been losing in time, effort, productivity and overall ease of use by clinging to a habit instead of moving forward to a new idea that gives you not the same results but a better result.
Your actual computer is not a hearty, unbreakable device. Do not block airflow to your computer. Do not put electronic devices like pencil sharpeners or space heaters on top of or near your computer. Do not stack papers up in front of or behind your computer and block airflow. Do not clean the keyboard with liquid if the keyboard is plugged in (otherwise, yes, wash it in the dishwasher with no heat dry and let it dry for 24 hours - no, I am not kidding, it works great). Check your computer for dust and cleanliness twice a year and blow the dust out or vacuum it out. Do not dump small particulate matter on the keyboard or in the computer or into a bag containing your laptop. Do not put drinks on your laptop. Do not set up your computer in such a way that you can entangle your feet in the cables and physically jerk them out of the ports on the computer. Do not keep your computer in the same room (or possibly household) as dogs, cats, birds or any other animal that generates hair or dust. Do not use Windex or any vinegar or ammonia based product to clear your monitor. What should you do?

Fixing Problem$ The Old Fa$hion Way

csbmonkey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:35:28 +0000

Tech 1: This one guy was trying to open a 50MB PPT presentation and wanted to know why PPT kept closing on him

Tech 2: Hm. Did it have a bunch of movies and crap in it? Probably it did.

Tech 1: The pics were really high [resolution]

Tech 2: And he used PP to resize them?

Tech 1: I believe so.

Tech 1: and he wanted a RAM upgrade. I was like are you serious? That will not fix the problem.

Tech 2: THAT IS HILARIOUS!

Tech 2: “What do I need to spend to make this problem go away?”

The Trees

csbmonkey — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:24:23 +0000

Individual trees. If you walk through the forest then trees are everywhere, and if you walk in a straight line in the forest you eventually will hit a tree dead on and not be able to go any further. If you don’t look around and continue to hit the same tree repeatedly and then die of starvation in the forest then you are stupid. Stop hitting the same tree, please. Step back. Look around. Understand that there are many trees that can get in your way, and yet all you need to do to travel through the forest is to simply walk around each tree.

Protected: Know The Tools Of Your Trade

csbmonkey — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:22:29 +0000

Where is my stuff?

csbmonkey — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:12:48 +0000

Wired’s Bruce Schneier talks about the consquences of the internet being your hard drive.

Mainly he is discussing the idea of relying on third party services for keeping the information you want to keep accessible and the downsides and dangers of relying on other people for what you think is important.

I recently heard someone who had stored many pictures on Flickr without any additional backup had their account hacked into and all of the pictures deleted. This was a paid account, mind you, not a free one. They requested assistance and received, well, nothing. “Sorry, that’s not our problem.” i.e. Flickr has no back up at all. If you get hacked and your stuff deleted you don’t have recourse. Such are the vagaries of cheap and unlimited storage. To Flickr, as well as Google I am sure, the only things backed up are critical systems and the date on those systems. You may be part of the great experiment, but you aren’t critical until there are millions of you and it’s happening all at one time. In this case, it is the opposite of the old saying. One person is a statistic, a million people is a tragedy.

Hiding Data Deep

csbmonkey — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:11:46 +0000

Deep linking used to mean, well, this. I am sure it still does, of course. I like that now it also means literally linking to servers that are down, down, deep into the earth too.