Chris Sims

I think everyone knows about the problem with the iPhone's headphone jack. With it being countersunk in so deep, most headphones other than the horrid ones the phone comes with won't fit. I lready had some pretty great headphones of various types. I just knew at least one of them would fit. I was quite irritated to discover that none of them would, even ones specifically designed for portable players. That almost kept me from buying the phone since I take headphone listening a bit too seriously.

Fortunately Shure, the makers of my favorite in ear monitors (earphones), came out with a great adapter. My earphones are a bit too good for the iPhone since like all iPods the sound is rather bleh, but it's not my primary mobile music source so I am trying to let it go.

One additional issue I ran into with the Shure earphones and adapter is having to (or think I had to) take the plug out of the adapter to use them with anything else like a PSP or a portable amplifier. It has taken me all these months to finally get a look at the adapter;s plug and compare it to a headphone's 3.5mm plug. They are the same legnth! iPhone compatible headsets just have an extra section on the plug for voice chat. The adapter's plug fits in any other device that has a jack for a 3.5mm plug. While waiting in line (a long, long line) at the store tonight buying Christmas gifts I tried the adapter with one of my PSPs. It worked fine.

I'm so happy. . "sniff".

I have to admit that the text we are using for JQuery feels a little. . dry. At least it does after the Head First HTML text. I searched Safari Bookshelf and only found five or six books that mentioned it. Most of them dealt more with AJAX. What to do? Ask the Google. Google knows all, including the existence of the JQuery site.

As I mentioned in a previous post I wrote about a question on how to get people to hover their mouse pointer over parts of a page to trigger a script to run. I have no idea why it was a question at all.

Links seem to be pretty obvious as a way to attract a mouse pointer. All you need to do is make whatever you want people to point at, look like a link or clickable image. That would be relatively easy with JQuery. You could even use it as an actual link if the user has javascript turned off in their browser.

As with just about everything these days, I have gotten behind on the podcasts I follow. While watching a Digg Nation video podcast from last month I saw a mention of a story about what can happen to a career when we mess around with drugs. The guy that used to be the popular (?) spokesperson for Dell is now a waiter. How horrid. I think we all could tell he had something going on. I don't know why Dell even wanted him. He probably would be struggling even if he hadn't gotten busted for buying pot, but I wonder if he decided to give up the habit now.

Hmmm. I wonder what ever happened to Ellen Feiss, the stoned girl that Apple put in an add for their Switch campaign. I wonder why she wasn't used on TV. I also wonder what she is doing these days.

I have run into repeated errors while posting to the blog this week. I noticed that others have had issues lately as well. There is a relatively simple way around the issue though.

If you click save and an error comes up, don't panic. Go back, either by the "Go Back" button on the error page or your browser's back button. Then, instead of trying to post again just click the publish button at the top of the page. When the pop up window opens click the publish button in it and wait for it to finish and click close. Check your blog and you should see the post appeared successfully.

I always publish after each and every save of a blog entry. Even if I get an error, I know the post will be up.

Everytime my mother calls me to report a problem with her computer and Windows Vista I think that I probably should have put Ubuntu on it instead of leaving Vista on there. I put Ubuntu on both of the laptops I use at work and it is phenomenal. They run Ubuntu faster than Windows or other versions of Linux like Suse. Stene Hamilton's post about Ubuntu is right on. A buisiness or school can save a good sized fortune in buying computers with no OS and installing Ubuntu Linux on them.

Microsoft would love for everyone to believe that the cost of running Linux is higher than Windows because of the cost of support. I don't know where they come up with their numbers. It costs a lot more to become certified in Windows than Linux. A person would spend a lot of money getting ready for a Microsoft exam. Getting ready for a Linux exam would require the same free and open software the buisinesses would use.

I completely agree with Kyle Spears' post about building your own computer. Falcon Northwest, Alienware, and now even Dell build great rigs if you are willing to pay for them. Just as Kyle says you can build a machine that is just as good, or even better for a lot less money. Newegg is where I got all of the parts for the computer I built this September. You can aslo get some good prices on parts from Tiger Direct and Amazon.

If you don't know what to put where in a rig of your own, take a look at Tom's Hardware Guide. I would like it if they could post more articles, more often. But, as it is, they do a spectacular job of keeping their readers up on hardware. And of course, the best place to learn about how to build a computer is from books. We're all in college to get that fancy book learning. Go to your local book store to get some more info on what to do.

I just saw James' post about HDTV. I got my first one a while ago, and upgraded two years ago. I feel like I could use a newer model since Sony didn't think we needed 1080p input on any conncection at the time. The TV does do a good job of upconverting 1080i so I'm trying to let my irritation go.

The world could probably use more HDTV content now, but with both Blu-ray and HD-DVD players out, I can make do with movies and TV shows on disc. I put together some wish list items for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies. Gifts cut way back on the cost of fleshing out my collection.

The usual problem I have with web page content is still with me. What to put where and why is the most important part of page dreation if you ask me. One think I've come across lately is the hover issue. Not a hover delay issue or anything, though that could be because I haven't gotten that far.

If I put parts of the page with a hover or some other change, what is the best way to het users to give it a whirl. I thought about putting some hover code in a navbar, but the layout of the nav bar needs to relay to users that what they are looking for might be available that way. I don't want to put too much extraneous data on the page.

I'll cross the "What if JavaScript isn't enabled" bridge when I come to it.

The other day while playing around in the application installer on my iPhone I noticed an RSS reader app. MobileRSS seemed like it would be pretty nice. After I installed it I found other good geatures like the ability to choose a font size. It would be good on bad eye days when to read up on the feeds I follow. I was sad to discover that the font size you set only affects the titles of the feeds and not the actual feeds themselves. The reader for Google on the iPhone can't change the font size either (yet) but at least the default size is easy to read anyway. MobileRSS was a bit of a dissapointment.