smart computer use?

It was for me, at least. Recently at our office, after upgrading one of our developers to Dreamweaver CS4, I noticed that a lot site code now had mysterious double spacing. What the heck?

This was mainly an annoyance, as it didn’t rewrite code other than just double spacing every single damn line of code.

I noticed that it was happening to all the sites that the new guy (with Dreamweaver CS4) was working on.

Why was Dreamweaver mysteriously double spacing all his code?

It turns out that Dreamweaver CS4 (and probably other versions) by default downloads all php/html/css/asp/etc. files in ASCII mode. For some reason, when doing this, Dreamweaver double spaces all the code. Why? I have no idea, it sucks and is annoying and stupid.

The problem can be resolved by changing Dreamweavers configuration to download those types of code files as Binary when using FTP.

How to change FTP transfer to binary

There is no “easy” way to do this in Dreamweaver, which I found to be odd. Every other FTP app I’ve ever used has the option to choose transfer type of Binary or ASCII up front during transfers or in the FTP account setup/management screens. Not Dreamweaver. You need to edit a text file to change the FTP transfer type to binary for certain file types.

To find the file, go into the folder where Dreamweaver was installed and search for this file:

• FTPExtensionMap.txt

The file was in the “Adobe Dreamweaver CS4\configuration\” folder on my computer.

In that file you will find a simple list of file types and FTP transfer types. Just change the files that are being double spaced to “Binary” as the transfer type, save the file, and you should be good to go. Problem solved!

I should mention that problems like this are why I now use Ultraedit.

There are tons of PC vs Mac debates out there. Here’s a story about how one person choose a PC over a Mac, and some very detailed criteria and reasoning in why the decision was made.

News Commentary. Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” commercials have generated lots of Mac vs. Windows PC debate. Surely there can’t be enough, so I’d like to generate even more. Quite unexpectedly, I’m a PC.

Sounds like a tired arguement that is frequently laced by silly argumentative rivalry, not too different from a classic Ford vs Chevy debate, eh? Well, here’s a little more to help ease your doubts on the seriousness of this person’s arguement.

Before writing one more word, I want to preface about operating systems. I’m not a religious computer user, meaning Mac OS and Windows are just tools to me. I don’t religiously defend either platform. I’m neither Mac fanatic or Windows fanboy. I always use both operating systems, but still must choose one over the other as primary. I’ve flopped between platforms for more than a decade.

Read the rest here.

Me? I’m a PC user, but mainly because I like to tinker with hardware configurations. I’m not a staunch defender of either platform though, so good luck trying to get me all riled up on either side of the subject.

It’s probably not too much of a tip, as proofreading is a pretty standard practice by many computer users out there. There are a good few who could benefit from a little attention to proofing though.

What should you be proofreading?

1. Emails
2. Documents
3. Blog posts
4. Forum posts
5. Twitter posts
6. Web site content
7. …And pretty much any other form of digital correspondence that goes with using computers

A simple one-time reading of the text you just wrote may reveal all kinds of problems with spelling, grammar and flow. It doesn’t take much. If you just typed something that is more than a friend-to-friend email or an instant message conversation, read it at least once to proof it.

Proofread at least once

This simple step of proofreading your content just ONCE can help you to appear a lot more smart to friends and colleagues.

I don’t know how many people that I know that I can say are very smart people, but they don’t proofread their correspondence. They’ll only proofread if they know they have just written something that is many pages in length and is going to be pushed into the front of the public eye.

I don’t think that is enough. These same people could really benefit from appearing to be a more mentally sharp individual if they would just do a quick proofread of emails that they send out and other short documents and writings that they take part in. It doesn’t take much effort to really boost your written text “impression” on somebody.

Personally, if I didn’t proof anything I wrote, I would think that I’d probably sound like an idiot in a lot of the stuff I write. I just reviewed a blog post I wrote about 4 weeks ago and noticed that I done this: Three sentences in a row started with the words “I guess”. It was also a short post (only 4 sentences with a quote) so the post read poorly.  I got a laugh out of it at least, but it’s partly what inspired this rant. My own non-proofreading reminded me of how much it bugs me when others don’t proofread consistently!

I’m not looking for “perfect” text either. I just don’t want to read something and get the impression that whoever wrote it didn’t even think much beyond what they initially typed out on paper, enough to the point where the writing is filled with misspellings and is hard to understand.

Proofreading affects productivity

Proofreading your text before submitting or sending out to somebody will up your productivity as well. You’ll catch confusing lines of text that others may not understand easily, and be able to adjust them so that the end user of your text will be able to understand easily what point you are trying to get across. If you’re sending out instructions to somebody on how to do something, and they can’t understand what you are trying to say, that is very unproductive! If they could not understand something because you didn’t take the time to review what you had written and it just came out poorly, that is a small thing that is going to hold up progress on tasks that could have been alleviated by minutes (or less) of quick proofreading.

Most of the errors you will make are probably made unconsciously. Your typing hands can’t keep up with your mind in most cases, so remember that! If you have trouble proofreading try reading out loud to better identify errors. You’d be surprised how much that can help.

Just because the web (and use of computers in general) is full of opportunities to type something out fast and send or submit without thinking or reviewing, you shouldn’t necessarily take advantage of those opportunities in that way…

I would think many people feel the same as me. If you agree or don’t agree I’d like to hear it!

Note: I actually proofread this post before I posted it! I didn’t try too hard. I found a couple sentences which didn’t flow well and fixed them.

In the spirit of this article, here’s some of the errors I found while proofreading it:

• I mispelled “unconscious”  – that one made me laugh since I unconsciously spelled it incorrectly in a paragraph talking about how most spelling errors are unconscious
• I had originally spelled “proofreading” and “proofread” as “proof-reading” and “proof-read”. This appeared to be incorrect once I started digging around for some other article about proofreading. I still am unsure though the exact correct spelling. It seems to be used both ways quite regularly.

Just a quick blurb here, but this is pretty crazy.

As of Monday, YouTube is unavailable in China, an unexplained move apparently made in response to the existence of a video of Chinese soldiers beating Tibetan monks, says the BBC.

Now there’s tons of uproar over media freedom and freedom of expression. Understandable. Who woulda thought a video site would be the root of international issues?

I just like that wording. Well said. Kind of. I want to present more things like that when people inquire me about things.

The quote:

Dell’s rumored smartphone probably does exist after all. That is, if you believe the ambiguously crafted words of the company’s CEO, Michael Dell, who said that yes, Dell is kind of working on the iPhone-killer after all.

That quote (and interesting story) comes from the TG Daily.

Lot’s of hunches floating around that Dell wants to get into smartphones:

It is true that we are exploring smaller screen devices,” Dell said at a speech in Tokyo yesterday — warning that the company has yet to make an announcement. While Dell’s “smaller screen devices” may indicate a tablet PC or a netbook as well, most of us have no doubts that Dell is eyeing the smartphone market. The huge slump in the computer sector, combined with the smartphone market’s unusual resilience to the recession, gives PC makers many incentive to expand their business into the mobile phone market.

So, what’s Dell going to bring to the table in the smartphone world? Maybe not much of anything new afterall, other than more choice, is what I picked out of this little tidbit:

Taiwan-based Commercial Times reported yesterday that world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics, Hon Hai Precision Industry (also known as Foxconn), has already received orders to build Dell’s smartphone. However, it appears the actual manufacturing was probably halted as carriers rejected Dell’s phone, citing the “lack of differentiating features” as reported by Kaufman Bros analyst Shawn Wu.

Even then, if Dell can offer up a slick-working device that proves to be useful and something that people “can’t live without”, I might start to look somewhere other than my Blackberry. But until that day…