If you're like me and like being able to open a picture without having everything disappear because the bundled "photo app" hijacks the desktop space, you'll want to do the following.
Option 1:
Uninstall the Photo "app" (it's a program, call it what it is people. Unless app is short for crap, which most of them are....) from the start screen. Just right click the tile, move your mouse to the bottom bar and hit uninstall. That will get rid of it for ever (I hope) and image viewer will take over.
Option 2:
Right click on any image file and choose "open with..." Tick the box that makes it the default then choose image viewer.
At first I was worried that image viewer wasn't bundled anymore, but they wouldn't be that dumb, right? After all, it's not like they removed support for .gif files or anything, no siree...
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Musings of a tech dinosaur
These days, it seems like I've already become obsolete. All the tech I use is at least three or four years out of date and multiple generations old. What's more, I have no desire to move where modern technology is headed. The current and potentially permanent rise of slates was far predated by microsoft's tablet initiative, which, to me, was and still is superior to any android, apple, or windows 8R platform. Full speed hardware with OEM hardware and software tweaks for low power and TDP outshine gimped tablets. I don't want 2 different infrastructures and UIs and systems to get used to. In the past, one might have said i should go apple. But even iOS doesn't mimic OSX in interface and usage.
What happened to the start menu? I will concede that old windows mobile devices were hampered by their contemporary technological failings. Large resistive touchscreens were hard to make in high quality, capacitive screens were usually restricted to POS and terminals, battery technology was poor(er) and as a whole, the stylus was a must on a 1.5" touchscreen. But honestly. If you took iOS and scaled it to a 1.5" screen, I'm sure you'd be complaining about how hard it was to use too. Capacitive touch has no accuracy, you have to use your entire fingerpad. A good resistive screen is both responsive and inherently more accurate than a respective capacitive screen. However I digress. What I am saying is that the dumbed down "finger friendly" interfaces were a result of the inadequacy of capacitive touch, relegating information density to the pits of hell. And if you put winmo 6 and up into a 1.2GHz dual core system, I'm sure it would be quite peppy. If you took the latest android build and slapped it on old winmo 200MHz hardware, the cause of a lot of winmo hate, I doubt you could even get out of the lock screen.
The start menu in windows mobile is what keeps me coming back, despite the Windows CE's obvious flaws and shortcomings. Consistency in behavior and design is just as important as the actual interface.
And as far as I'm concerned, current trends in UI development are disturbing. What happened to colors and borders? Sure, they may look garish and ugly, sure a monochrome button and UI element scheme looks pretty against a blank desktop, but then it becomes fine art rather than a tool. In my experience, color and well defined buttons and borders increase efficiency and recognition speed. Even as I type this, I look at the blogger wysiwyg interface and see... tons of white with closely spaced, poorly defined, and most importantly, a pitifully small color pallet. White, very light grey, and a splash of orange on buttons I only need to use once. Items in a vertical column should be divided with explicit horizontal dividers that stand out from the background. A one or two pixel bar with a low contrast color does not a divider make. Yes, when you mouse over the button, it is highlighted by a very low contrast orange hue, but it's barely visible if the mouse is left over the button and more importantly, I'm not a blind old man. I don't need to hover my mouse over every letter I see. I use my eyes first and the mouse follows when I begin to recognize the button I want.
I was just looking at Onenote 2013's new interface and it's the same issue. The notebooks are separated by... white space which happens to also be the color of the background for evey single UI element in the program. In ON2007, the notebooks, tabs, taskbars, etc. are all in their own boxes, where you can find them and where they don't run into the workflow. Can you imagine typing text next to the list of notebooks? Where does the label end and the document begin?
Windows 98/95 UI styling may be ugly as sin, and the color choices were crimes in and of themselves, but they worked and you didn't have to worry about loosing the command line in your word document. If they start making everything white with no borders and distinguishing elements, I'm going to get lost trying to navigate my folders. Oh, but wait. That's the whole point of libraries and file managers isn't it? With things like winamp, foobar, WMC, windows libraries, tablet file systems, and the myriad of other hands-off file systems, you let the program decide where things should go. Well sorry if I want to have control over where things are kept. Nothing beats a well designed hierarchical file system that doesn't rely on a third party to find you things. Metatags get corrupted, programs stop working, but the basic, NTFS or ZFS files organization remains. I've always hated windows libraries. Sure, it makes finding things easier, but that assumes I only consume. If I want to chose where a file is saved, I have to leave the library system and hunt down the folder I want anyway or the library might steal it away and hide it somewhere I'll never find it without another third party search program like "everything" and then we are right back where we started.
In closing, long live the start menu and window borders!
What happened to the start menu? I will concede that old windows mobile devices were hampered by their contemporary technological failings. Large resistive touchscreens were hard to make in high quality, capacitive screens were usually restricted to POS and terminals, battery technology was poor(er) and as a whole, the stylus was a must on a 1.5" touchscreen. But honestly. If you took iOS and scaled it to a 1.5" screen, I'm sure you'd be complaining about how hard it was to use too. Capacitive touch has no accuracy, you have to use your entire fingerpad. A good resistive screen is both responsive and inherently more accurate than a respective capacitive screen. However I digress. What I am saying is that the dumbed down "finger friendly" interfaces were a result of the inadequacy of capacitive touch, relegating information density to the pits of hell. And if you put winmo 6 and up into a 1.2GHz dual core system, I'm sure it would be quite peppy. If you took the latest android build and slapped it on old winmo 200MHz hardware, the cause of a lot of winmo hate, I doubt you could even get out of the lock screen.
The start menu in windows mobile is what keeps me coming back, despite the Windows CE's obvious flaws and shortcomings. Consistency in behavior and design is just as important as the actual interface.
And as far as I'm concerned, current trends in UI development are disturbing. What happened to colors and borders? Sure, they may look garish and ugly, sure a monochrome button and UI element scheme looks pretty against a blank desktop, but then it becomes fine art rather than a tool. In my experience, color and well defined buttons and borders increase efficiency and recognition speed. Even as I type this, I look at the blogger wysiwyg interface and see... tons of white with closely spaced, poorly defined, and most importantly, a pitifully small color pallet. White, very light grey, and a splash of orange on buttons I only need to use once. Items in a vertical column should be divided with explicit horizontal dividers that stand out from the background. A one or two pixel bar with a low contrast color does not a divider make. Yes, when you mouse over the button, it is highlighted by a very low contrast orange hue, but it's barely visible if the mouse is left over the button and more importantly, I'm not a blind old man. I don't need to hover my mouse over every letter I see. I use my eyes first and the mouse follows when I begin to recognize the button I want.
I was just looking at Onenote 2013's new interface and it's the same issue. The notebooks are separated by... white space which happens to also be the color of the background for evey single UI element in the program. In ON2007, the notebooks, tabs, taskbars, etc. are all in their own boxes, where you can find them and where they don't run into the workflow. Can you imagine typing text next to the list of notebooks? Where does the label end and the document begin?
Windows 98/95 UI styling may be ugly as sin, and the color choices were crimes in and of themselves, but they worked and you didn't have to worry about loosing the command line in your word document. If they start making everything white with no borders and distinguishing elements, I'm going to get lost trying to navigate my folders. Oh, but wait. That's the whole point of libraries and file managers isn't it? With things like winamp, foobar, WMC, windows libraries, tablet file systems, and the myriad of other hands-off file systems, you let the program decide where things should go. Well sorry if I want to have control over where things are kept. Nothing beats a well designed hierarchical file system that doesn't rely on a third party to find you things. Metatags get corrupted, programs stop working, but the basic, NTFS or ZFS files organization remains. I've always hated windows libraries. Sure, it makes finding things easier, but that assumes I only consume. If I want to chose where a file is saved, I have to leave the library system and hunt down the folder I want anyway or the library might steal it away and hide it somewhere I'll never find it without another third party search program like "everything" and then we are right back where we started.
In closing, long live the start menu and window borders!
Monday, May 14, 2012
Rack and Baskets
So it's been a while but here is a small update. About a month and a half ago, I added a rear rack and a folding wire basket to the folding bike. I immediately noticed that the bike drove like a pig once I added it, but didn't think too much of it. A few days ago, I took off the rack and I was shocked. What was a twitchy big rig suddenly turned into a fighter jet. I'm not exaggerating, acceleration, control in and out of turns, heavy leans, all felt like I had complete control. I could finally get the bike to do exactly what I wanted it to, it was like riding an entirely different bike. I'm not too happy about losing the cargo/carrying capacity but I think I'm willing to make the sacrifice for the sheer fun I had once I got rid of the dead weight.
So anyway, don't bother with a rack on the downtube nova, it kills the fun of the ride. You lose out on the steering control you get with the smaller wheelbase and 20" tires.
Also, on the topic of updates to the Nova, the first set of rims I ordered were sewups and no good because a tubular 20" tire is near $100 a tire and like hell I'm spending that much. A shame really, 'cause the rims are nice.
I did want a new front wheel to replace the terrible stock wheel so i got the cheapest laced rim on amazon with nuts instead of QR levers. The quality shows. The hub that came with the sew-ups spun great and had little friction. The hub on the amazon wheel is a little better than the stock nova hub, but a step up from crap is still a foot in a pile of manure. The tire I used for the new wheel is a Kojack and it seems much more resistant to glass on the road. There are a lot of broken bottles on my route and it helps my peace of mind. I still check my tires after every ride I see glass on, so far so good.
So anyway, don't bother with a rack on the downtube nova, it kills the fun of the ride. You lose out on the steering control you get with the smaller wheelbase and 20" tires.
Also, on the topic of updates to the Nova, the first set of rims I ordered were sewups and no good because a tubular 20" tire is near $100 a tire and like hell I'm spending that much. A shame really, 'cause the rims are nice.
I did want a new front wheel to replace the terrible stock wheel so i got the cheapest laced rim on amazon with nuts instead of QR levers. The quality shows. The hub that came with the sew-ups spun great and had little friction. The hub on the amazon wheel is a little better than the stock nova hub, but a step up from crap is still a foot in a pile of manure. The tire I used for the new wheel is a Kojack and it seems much more resistant to glass on the road. There are a lot of broken bottles on my route and it helps my peace of mind. I still check my tires after every ride I see glass on, so far so good.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Downtube's tire
I'm still waiting for my new rims, but I wanted to get back on the road, so I patched the front tire yesterday. Turns out I hit a patch of orange glass and a piece went right through the tread and took out the tube. I hope my new Kojak's race-guard is more puncture proof. I'm surprised I didn't loose all my air while still on the bike. The patch was easy and I put a second patch on the tire itself as a makeshift boot.
While I was at it, I added the rack and one of the baskets I ordered. I took a trip to trader joes with the basket and biked back to school. The bike handled like a pig due to the added unbalanced weight. and the steel rack and folding basket is easy to feel when you pick it up. The rack does make carrying it considerably easier, so it's a pretty much of a tradeoff. I'll post more about the rack and how it went on in a later post when I have some new pictures.
While I was at it, I added the rack and one of the baskets I ordered. I took a trip to trader joes with the basket and biked back to school. The bike handled like a pig due to the added unbalanced weight. and the steel rack and folding basket is easy to feel when you pick it up. The rack does make carrying it considerably easier, so it's a pretty much of a tradeoff. I'll post more about the rack and how it went on in a later post when I have some new pictures.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Nova Update
This morning on a quick 1 mile commute, the bike's front tire got a flat. I'm not sure of the cause because I didn't do a repair at the time, but the hole was in the center of the tread so I don't think it was a pinch. The air seemed to be leaking through the tire because I could hear it while riding the last 200m to the front door of my house and saw the water bubbling on the tire's surface.
And that there ends the life of the first tube. Good thing I bought a bunch of spare tubes. When the new front wheel arrives, I'll throw on the kojak I bought and one of the new tubes.
And that there ends the life of the first tube. Good thing I bought a bunch of spare tubes. When the new front wheel arrives, I'll throw on the kojak I bought and one of the new tubes.
Monday, March 12, 2012
DIY Fenders
So here is a little tidbit for all of you watching the Downtube Nova review:
I made myself a rear fender because a set of plastic fenders from my LBS would set me back $44 and that is just silly. So for $6.99 worth of aluminium flat stock and $6.99 for a spool of 14guage steel wire and about 2 hours total time and labor including design and procurement of the materials, I now have a spiffy new rear fender.
They turned out to be very useful because it's been raining all weekend and I biked from my house in the rain today.
I think they turned out pretty nice.
I'm planning on adding an etched design on the fender. Leaves, flames, dots, something pretty.
The little Nova already attracts stares, but I already had someone compliment me on them today. Pimp my ride-understated edition!
I made an instructables:
http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Bike-Fenders/?ALLSTEPS
Anyway, what you really want to see, pictures:
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Quick Update on the Downtube Nova's hinge
A few days ago, I rode about 3/4 of a mile with the hinge unlocked. The Dahon hinge was designed well and didn't open on me during the ride. I didn't even find out till after I got back and was folding it away.
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