Author Archives: chrismay

Network Associates/McAfee mytilus.dll crashing my computer

Posted on by

I am getting a little sick of this.

Starting with a few days ago I started getting a lot of these errors.  Mostly in IE, but also in VS.Net.

Looking at the details of the error I see it is coming from mytilus.dll, which is a DLL used by VirusScan 8.  I have patch 11, which I guess is up to date.  I will be keeping an eye on it.

Activate Flash, Movies, and other ActiveX controls

Posted on by

Recently Microsoft lost a patent judgement, which resulted in them pushing down an “update” to IE that forces you to click on any embedded object to “activate” it.

Embedded objects can be flash movies, video clips, audio, etc.

This is really bad for sites that use flash.  Things like navigation and rollovers don’t work until you first click on them.

This article talks about the work around, and how you can incorporate this into your ASP.NET projects.

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/IEActiveXActivation.asp

 

5 Rarely used XHTML elements

Posted on by

This article is pretty interesting, as it discusses 5 xhtml elements that most people don’t know about or use.

1) OptGroup

County
  Surrey Kent   Orkney 

Languages
  C# C++ Java   ASP.NET PHP 
 

2) label (click the “Full Name”)

Full Name Gender:  Male Female

 

3) fieldset/legend

CommentsCP is a good place to publish XHTML related articles.
www.google.com can search
Personal InformationFull Name Gender:  Male Female

4) col/colgroup (notice the control over col widths)

1   2
3   4

 

5) Acronym (mouse over xhtml)

CP is a good place to publish XHTML related articles.

 

These are not widely known but very useful.

iDont.com

Posted on by

Almost all of my friends have IPods, but I have held off. 

There are a number of reasons why:

1) ITunes:  It sucks.  I hate it.  My current MP3 player simply allows you to drag and drop the files you want onto your MP3 player.  No syncing, no problems.

2) User interface.  I know a lot of people think the wheel is really cool, but I think it overly involves the user.  Tell me what is wrong with up/down buttons before you redesign the interface to use a wheel.

3) Batteries.  As noted at http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/.  The battery in an IPod can not be removed, and some say they start to fail after 18 months.

Well I came across a site called http://www.idont.com/, which went live today (before today it had some anti-ipod message up there). 

Turns out it is a site for the new SanDisk MP3 player.

The e200 (really catchy name… not) looks pretty cool, and might be worth me looking into more: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/03/sandisk-sansa-e200-series-review.php

 

Secret Machines

Posted on by

This weekend I went to see a band called Secret Machines, or The Secret Machines.  They seem to split the naming thing about 50/50 between using the “The” and not using it.

Anyway, they were playing a show at midnight at the Metro, which was kinda cool.  There was no opening band, so we got in around midnight and they came on around 12:20 or so.  I hate waiting hours for a band to come on stage, so that was as big plus.

It was crowded in there, but not too croweded.  When I saw 311 in the same place it was insane.  They couldn’t have packed more people in there if they wanted to.

Secret Machines played most of the songs I know: they only have 3 CDs.  And, they did this cool thing at the end of the show they setup their guitar in some kind of loop and left it on stage with the strobe lights and fog machines going full blast as they exited the stage.  The loop continued for another 20 seconds or so before snapping off and the lights for the venue came on.  Pretty cool!