Month: March 2013

  • Crossover Day

    Crossover Day has come and gone. They haven’t yet updated the tally about which bills have done what (last update is as of Tuesday right now. It’s a fun spreadsheet. Go have a look) but the AJC has a nice list of what bills were discussed on crossover day and their outcomes.

    Once they’ve updated their tally (hopefully today or this weekend) I’ll be having a closer look at what’s alive, what’s dead, and what I think Georgians should care about.

  • Facebook is Eating your Soul (and by extension, mine)

    Over a year ago, I kicked Facebook mostly out of my life. My reasoning was/is primarily that Facebook is a soulless evil entity that doesn’t give a shit about you, the user. ((Remember! You’re not Facebook’s customer; you’re it’s product.)) My lesser points were/are that Facebook is training people to like when a software product makes life difficult and also that too much “pull” marketing was being used.

    Alas, that last point is becoming more prevalent in my life.  Several social groups I’m a part of liaise exclusively through Facebook and that leaves me in a quandary: Do I stick with my one-person boycott (and keep having to ask, “Jenn, what’s going on?”) or do I let Facebook eat my soul?

    You probably understand that I wouldn’t be writing this if I weren’t going somewhere with it, therefore I’m announcing that my Facebook sabbatical is over. I’m back, however I will be contributing to the community as little as possible because Facebook hates you and hates me and just wants your data, not for you or me to have a useful experience.

    If this seems holier than thou, that’s because it is! I would love to be known as the person who killed Facebook. Not a very useful wish, granted, but guaranteed to get me a Wikipedia page. I won’t hate you because you use Facebook, after all I am, too. But I will still actively try to convince you and others that it’s a horrible website run by people who don’t care.

  • IDimager is Dead! Long Live Photo Supreme?

    Many moons ago, I posted about my struggles with choosing an image database management program. In the end, I decided to stick with IDimager (version 4, I think) over Adobe Lightroom.

    IDimager continued to have some of the same issues with lagginess and performance, but I was willing to put up with it—and have—since then. It seems, though, that we’ve come to a crossroads now that I’ve discovered that there are no more upgrades to IDimager; they’ve replaced the product with Photo Supreme.

    This in itself doesn’t necessarily turn me off immediately ((The biggest concern is no support for new cameras, but that’s at least a little bit of time away for me.)), but I’m finding it difficult to determine if this replacement product is operating satisfactorily for the people who’ve made the jump. I infer that a lack of negative screaming indicates no horrific problems, but there aren’t too many posts which deal with the nitty gritty. In fact, there aren’t any that I can find. Most of the ones that are out there are from back in September, 2012, right after Photo Supreme went live (conversely when IDimager went dead). There’s lots of calls for additional features in Photo Supreme that used to be in IDimager, including version recognition of images and a file management tool ((That last one is important to me.)).

    I’d welcome the use of a program that’s much faster, but not at the expense of some of the features I need.

    I’ve put out a few inquiries to people and I’ll blog about it if I make the switch.

  • Georgia Legislative Crossover Day

    Today is Day 30 of the 40 day Georgia Legislative calendar. It is also known as “crossover day”. Any bill that wants for eventual consideration as law must pass one chamber (either the House or the Senate) by midnight to be moved along. Otherwise, it’s a dead bill and won’t be looked at until next year (if then).

    In the last few years, I’ve gleefully followed some of the legislation that was put forth in the House and the Senate. This year, I haven’t been doing that very much, and haven’t blogged about it at all due to other time pressures. I’ve made the decision this year that the time to talk about the important bills is after tonight for two reasons:

    1. Any bill that’s made it through both the House and Senate before now was going to pass no matter what. Controversial bills don’t do this.

    2. Anything that hasn’t made it through crossover day isn’t worthy of my time this year. I’m not a paid political observer and other things have been on my mind.

    So, tomorrow begins the real fun in the legislature. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t any explosive bills on the docket similar to the immigration legislation two years ago or the T-SPLOST transportation tax. There are a few ones of interest though. I’ll be blogging about the ones I think are important or interesting over the next few days.

    PS. Just because a bill isn’t passed by crossover day doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gone for good. The rule stipulates that amendments can be added to legislation that is dealing with the same Georgia Code section. So if there’s a bill that’s made it through crossover that deals with Section 40 (motor vehicles), and my bill about requiring taxes on SUV magnet ribbons didn’t make it, I can try and slap that language onto the aforementioned bill that did. I couldn’t amend a bill that dealt with Section 17 (Criminal Procedure) because it’s not a relevant code section.

    PPS. A private comment queried whether the taxation of SUV magnet ribbons would fall under Section 40, or Section 48 (Revenue and Taxation). That would depend entirely on how I worded the bill. If both Section 40 and Section 48 were represented in the post-crossover days, I could amend either, but if my bill were crafted for Section 40, it would have to be re-written for Section 48 and that might be difficult to do in the time allotted.

  • Battle Nations: Why it’s Fun and Why I’m not Playing Anymore

    IMG_1687

    Battle Nations is a game you can download for your handheld mobile personal computer. ((Mine is an iPhone.))  You build up a military base set on the fringe of a militaristic empire and blow things up. You spend resources and time to expand your base from a couple of huts to an industrial powerhouse capable of building the largest tanks. While doing so, you’re off on missions, gaining money and experience points as well as broken equipment that must be repaired and shot-up soldiers who must be healed. If you’re at all familiar with the time and/or pay model of downloadable mobile games, you’ll understand the basic game play.

    I’ve enjoyed this game in the time I’ve been playing it. I will even confess that I spent actual money to buy some of the special units that you can only get by spending “nanos”. ((This is how these games make money.)) I would recommend this game to anyone interested in a smartphone game. However, I’m not playing anymore. Why?

    It’s because the model that the game uses doesn’t fit the model by which I like to play games. There is a significant social media aspect to this game, if you choose to use it. You can invade and occupy the bases of people you’ve “friended” in the game and by doing so, steal resources. This is important because some of the resources that you need to build powerful units are few and far between. Let’s have a for-instance: Gears.

    You need Gears to build all sorts of big things that blow other things up. As you advance through the levels, you need big things on your side or else you’ll never win battles. This is by the design of the game. As you level up, your opponents do, too. You also cannot defeat quality with quantity; that’s not in the game play. You have to have powerful units. Gears are needed to have powerful units. Gears can only be acquired (as far as I can tell) by engaging in PvP battles and/or occupying other players territories. Herein lies the rub

    I have no interest in engaging other players through this game. Zero. Zilch. I want to pull out my phone, blow some stuff up, then put it away. I’m perfectly happy to do the gold-mining necessary to pursue the missions and construct the buildings and heal the units, but I don’t want to have to friend people in order to generate the resources that I need to continue. This is my game style; this is how I roll, and unfortunately, I’ve rolled as far as I can in Battle Nations without either spending more money or doing the social thing. I just want to blow stuff up.

    IMG_1689

    I’m not deleting my account or anything like that. I have hopes that the organization that makes Battle Nations will provide a method for people like me to do what we want to do, which in this particular instance is to have an organic method of producing those scarce resources such as Gears.

    I imagine that the business model behind this game is heavily weighted toward the social media side of things, but I feel that I am not the only person who isn’t interested in that. Social media is not the be-all, end-all; sometimes you just want to explode things. Battle Nations, hear my plea!

    Still, if you’re looking for a fun game with excellent in-game story arc and missions, you can’t go wrong with Battle Nations.

  • Most Important Things to get right about Microsoft Word

    The following are what I consider to be the most critical things to get right when you’re using Microsoft Word when you’re planning to make real documents.

    “Real documents” means “more than writing up a shopping list” or “beyond a one-page letter to mom.” However, note that despite the ease of just opening up a default blank Word document and whacking something out, I still use the items below for nearly every document I produce, small as well as large. For complex documents requiring numbering, tables of contents, etc., the points here are a must.

    Don’t stress about formatting

    You’re producing a document so content comes first. If in doubt, worry about the content now, deal with the formatting later. This includes lists and block quotes and all other items. Come back later for formatting; get the content in the document now.

    Styles are key

    If you don’t understand how styles work, you don’t understand how MS Word works either. This is not a bad thing if you keep it in your head that you don’t understand how the program thinks. You’re less likely to get into trouble because “Word isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.” Trust me, word is doing precisely what it’s supposed to do.

    If you’re working in a large and complicated document with multiple sections and different bells and whistles, you must understand how Word processes sections and other containers into pages. If you don’t, all hell will break loose as you try to manually fix formatting and you’ll spend untold hours trying to do the manual fixing.

    I cannot stress enough how important it is that at least one person in your team, or who is available to you, understands how styles work, and how to set up a document to properly use them. Listen to this person.

    Manual Formatting is Terrible

    This is actually a subset to the “Styles are Key” point but it bears repeating. If you’re ever tempted to use any of the buttons that I’ve circled in red in the image below, you’re doing it wrong; use styles. If you disagree with me, you’re wrong. If you disagree with me and know when there is an exception to this rule, then congratulations, but if you can’t name the exceptions, then you’re wrong and should go back to never ever using the manual formatting bar. You can’t go wrong by never ever ever touching the Bold or Italics or Typeface buttons. I compile 40 page reports without ever touching them.

    MS Word Formatting

    There are some exceptions to this rule, but you can’t use them correctly until you know how to use styles. Use styles!

    Ctrl-S for Save; Ctrl-Z for Undo

    Save early, save often. It’s trite, but too many people don’t do it. Likewise it’s easy to undo things if you’re messing with styles and weird things happen. Learn to use your left hand to operate these two key commands. While there are mouse buttons up there on the menu bar for these functions, Microsoft will probably move them for the next release. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever pushed the “undo” mouse button on Word. I always use ctrl-z.

    Word Sucks at Desktop Publishing

    What does that mean? Word isn’t within its core competency when you’re trying to produce a flyer or a brochure or a newspaper. Anything that comes under the heading of “layout publishing” isn’t something MS Word is very good at. You can do it, certainly, but don’t expect smooth and easy operation. Know that and you’ll be fine. I use Word all the time for this sort of thing, but I’m also not trying to make really snazzy brochures.

    Never use Line or Page Breaks

    If you find yourself using line breaks to space things properly or page breaks to avoid hanging sentences or misplaced headings, you’re doing it wrong. Refer to my point above about styles and manual formatting. If you disagree with me, you’re wrong again. Sorry.

    There are also exceptions to this rule, but they are so few and far between that they don’t bear discussing in this post.

    Occam’s Razor is Best for Documents, Too

    With all things being equal, the simpler-formatted document is better. If you’re reading this for personal education, then you can’t go wrong with this; I’m assuming that you are not a trained document design specialist. Find something that is clean and easy, and stick with it.

    Know How to turn off Autocorrect

    Microsoft has made it easy for you to type and ensure that you put on the page what you meant to put there. Frequently, this makes it harder when Word replaces something you meant to type with something you didn’t. Many people love this feature, and many hate it. I hate it for several reasons, one of which is that in the default setting it will automatically make lists for you. This seems like a good thing, except that when you end up with an automatically generated list that’s numbered, and then one that has bullets, if you try to be a correct MS Word user and modify the style that is automatically assigned, you’ve now got trouble. It’s much better to have a bulleted list style and a numbered list style and assign those styles separately to the different lists. This is good practice.

    You may disagree with me on autocorrect for your own convenience sake. If only so that you have the option, know how to turn off the autocorrect. It’s different in the various versions of Word. Here are the instructions for 2007 and 2003.

    Have an Expert

    This is less about how to use Word correctly and more about having at least one person around of whom you can ask questions when Word does something that seems crazy. Through horrible experience, I’ve become that person and when someone doesn’t know why a thing isn’t working, I usually can figure it out quickly, if not instantly. If you don’t have a live person around, remember that Google is your friend and I can’t recommend Word MVPs enough and all the discussions inside it.

    Realize that Training is Needed

    MS Word is a powerful tool chock full of features that can help you both efficiently deliver an attractive document and efficiently revise that selfsame document. MS Word is also chock full of features that seem designed to make the document a glorious mess as they start piling on top of each other, inserted by inexperienced authors and document “designers.” To do anything with MS Word beyond opening it, typing, and saving requires training. If you’re working on your own, read this list, go to Word MVPs and just practice with dummy documents. If you’re a manager, make time to train your staff. This will pay off when it’s Friday at 4:30 and a document must ship by 5:00. You will have confidence that when you hit print, a well formatted document will come out with minimal need for fixing.

    The End (For Now)

    This list is not all-encompassing and obviously glosses over the basics of operating the MS Word program. If there’s any one thing to take away it’s that if you know how to use styles, your life with Word will become exponentially easier. Some of my friends are devout anti-Word and that’s something I can respect, but you may work in an industry (like me) where using an alternative to Word isn’t an option. Everyone uses it, and there are efficiencies when you can ask someone to send you their Word file rather than a PDF or an email. For better or for worse, Word is here for the duration and the more you know about it, the fewer problems you’ll find yourself in.