Summer is starting to wane. I have 3 honey bee hives this year. All 3 I started this year.

One is doing great. It has 3 mediums full of bees.

One is doing not so great with 2 mediums full of bees and starting on a third but with a pile of dead bees in front of the hive.

And the last is doing terrible. 1 medium mostly full of bees with little progress being made.

I'm not sure what the deal is with the last two hives here.  I think one was exposed to some pesticides but I have no idea what the problem is with the failing hive.

Barring a miracle, I'm going to lose at least one if not two of the hives.

I admit it. I'm an iconphile. Back in the Windows 3.0 days, I used to go and change all my Windows icons by hand. I thought this was pretty impressive. Admittedly, it didn't help me pick up women for some reason.

Since then, icons have come a very long way. A VERY long way. With Windows Vista, the end-user icon experience out of the box is beautiful. But from an icon creator's point of view, the lack of backward compatibility and effort to support has gone up tremendously. As a result, we've seen a lot fewer custom icons made for Windows Vista than one might have expected.

Microsoft made three decisions with Windows Vista that will forever affect the way we look at icon making on Windows.

Microsoft Decision #1: 256x256 icons
First, Microsoft created a new icon size -- 256x256. For users, that's great. Having icons that are 256 pixels by 256 pixels means you will have beautiful icons that are incredibly detailed. But from an artist's point of view, it means that each and every icon is basically a work of art.

Years ago, I used to make icons. At 32x32 for the "big" icons and 16x16 for the "small", even someone with only moderate art skills could make pretty decent looking icons. Today, not only does such high resolution icons mean that only talented artists can make them, it takes talented artists with a lot of time to dedicate to them.

A full set of icons for Windows Vista is around 120 icons. You can get away with as "few" as 40 icons for most casual users but someone who wants a complete desktop makeover needs well over 100 icons. that's a serious amount of time and effort.

In the Pirate Suite, over 120 icons were made all supporting 256x256 pixel icons.  The effort involved in going from 128x128 was more than double because now you have to create some serious artwork.  How do you think this will affect hobbyist icon packages going forward?

Microsoft Decision #2: No Desktop Scaling
The second decision Microsoft made that has affected icon creation is the decision to have programs displayed with either a down-scaled 256x256 icon or an un-scaled 48x48 icon. This decision is baffling for many reasons.

Check out this screenshot. See how the Windows Vista icons are noticeably bigger than the third-party icons? That's because the third-party icons don't supply a 256x256 icon. But here's the kicker -- the "large" icons are only displayed at 96x96 and will use the 48x48 icon size even if a 128x128 icon is available.

For instance, see the Galactic Civilizations II icon? You can see how it's smaller than the new Vista icons. This inconsistency is visually maddening to me. But what is even worse is that the GalCiv II icon has a 128x128 alpha blended icon in it. They could have used the 128x128 icon! In Windows XP, Microsoft encouraged ISVs to use the "new" 128x128 icon size. Many did. And in Windows Vista, they've been orphaned. They're not used.

Would it have really been difficult for Microsoft to downscale 128x128 icons like they do 256x256 ones? As a result, every single program will need an updated icon and every icon made will need an updated version or face being displayed as a stunted looking icon.

It gets even more obnoxious: Even though the icons on your screen are displayed at 96x96 pixels when you choose "large icons" on Windows Vista, it will not use the 96x96 icon that is in there. See here for what I mean.

To sum this up: Windows Vista will display either a down-sized 256x256 icon if you have large icons or it will simply display a 48x48 icon (or 32x32) inside of a box. It will do this even if the icon in question has an exact match for the display size.

Microsoft Decision #3: "Live Folders"
One of the coolest visual parts of Windows Vista in my opinion are the Live Folder Previews. When I look at a selection of folders, I can see some of the files that are inside. It looks really cool.

But on the other hand, it also makes changing folder icons impossible without third-party software if you want to keep the live previews and still change the folder.

Since the Windows 3.0 days, I've liked changing my folder icons. Sometimes I did it for purely cosmetic reasons, other times I did it because I wanted a particular folder to stand out. But on Vista, you lose those live previews.

On Windows Vista, you can change folder icons as follows by right clicking on folder, choose customize and press the change icon button. See here for what I mean.

Now, if you can find a stand-alone icon (because Windows Vista breaks Windows XP .ICL files) you will lose the customization and have an icon that is probably smaller than your other icons.

The Impact
There's no denying that aesthetically, Windows Vista is light-years ahead of Windows XP in the icon department. The icons that come with it are beautiful. And by forcing developers and others to make 256x256 sized icon or have their icons displayed in second class citizen mode will likely result in a much more visually impressive Windows experience for end-users -- eventually.

But during the transition, it means we'll be seeing an awful lot of stunted looking icons on our desktops that, to me, seems completely unnecessary. Ignoring 128x128 icons entirely seems to be a big missed opportunity. The difficulty for users to create and use customized icons on Windows Vista has meant a slow-down in the number of customize Windows icons.

Hardly the end of the world but for those of us who like pretty, consistent icons, it's a bummer at how it was implemented. What's your take? Icons schmicons or do you too like changing your icons around?

Originally posted at Neowin.net

In the Eastern part of the United States bald-faced hornets are pretty common. They make large, spherical nests in trees and elsewhere. The are black with white faces and are quite scary looking.

But before you go to try to wipe them out, consider this - they are generally pretty docile, don't harass people, and have cool looking nests.  Not enough? Okay, they eat pests, most notably, they eat yellow jackets. A lot of them.

Yellow jackets are one of the most annoying bugs out there.  They're the wasp that looks like a bee and is always getting into your food if you're out on the patio. Yellow jackets will crawl into an open soda can (if you've ever been stung by a bug while drinking soda, it was a yellow jacket).

So having some bald-faced hornets around can really make a big difference.

This summer, we found a growing nest in our main tree in the backyward. It was tempting to exterminate it but we decided to hold off.  Our mercy was rewarded with the first summer since we've lived here of no yellow jackets. I can sit out on my patio with food and drink and read without having a bunch of yellow jackets buzzing around me.

So next time you see a bald-faced hornet, don't be too quick to try to swat it, they're beneficial insects.

With Summer starting to draw to a close we're starting to put together our Fall release schedule.  Here's a head's up on what is in the pipeline:

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar v1.7.  This update is going into beta shortly after labor day (early September) with a final release probably early October depending on player feedback. 

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor. This is our second expansion pack and will require either Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar or Galactic Civilizations II: Gold Edition since the story takes place after the events in Dark Avatar and builds on some of the features in Dark Avatar.  This is scheduled to come out this November.

Galactic Civilizations II: v2.0.  This will be a free update for all users of Galactic Civilizations II.  For users of Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor a host of new features will show up in here based on player feedback. It will likely have a lot of new AI work based on new strategies we've seen people come up with that the AI can learn from.  Target date: Undetermined.

Remember all that data showing how 1998 was the hottest year on record.  NASA, which was a major source for this data, quietly updated their stats due to a measuring bug.  No press release about it (for obvious reasons) and they haven't bothered to correct most of the graphs on the NASA site.

But here is the latest from NASA's site on average temperatures:

Yea, the great depression when everyone was driving in those big old SUVs.  Meanwhile, temperatures during the boom of World War II until 1976 dropped.

Can anyone find any remote correlation between human activity and temperature?

I wonder how long this data will take to get out there more and how long it will take people to deal with the corrected data.  No doubt, Dick Cheney is behind the new data.

source: NASAs site.

Incidentally, NASA hasn't yet updated the global ones -- there's not a lot of point.  Until very VERY recently, temperature recording outside the US and Britain and Germany was a bit of a joke.

I have never smoked a cigarette. I never had any alochol until after I was 21. And I've never tried any illegal drugs.  But amazingly, as I get older, the number of pills that I seem to take grows.  When I was a teenager, I might take a vitamin.

But now that I'm 36, the list of things that I either do take or can take or should take is considerable. I can't even imagine what'll be like by the time I'm 60.

In the beginning, there was the Multi-vitamin. And it was good.

But then I hit 34 and for the first time, I didn't quite have the energy I remembered having. I wasn't sick. I simply didn't have the same...ummph as I had before.  I realized that, my God, I wasn't necessarily going to live forever. That all those old people talking about how they were tired or whatever might happen to me. 

So I started to research. And I discovered Juvenon.  Juvenon is the result of an experiment done in the lab some years ago that you may have heard about.  Giving a particular substance to lab animals they discovered that they could increase their lifespan substantially and greatly increase their "peek health" by a great amount as well.

The results of Juvenon have been quite positive. It takes awhile to get used to it. At first, I felt a lot of extra energy but after awhile I simply just felt a little bit better. It's akin to the feeling one gets if they're physically fit -- without having to do anything. (ideally excercise and Juvenon).

And so it was good.

Then I noticed in pictures that as I get older, my hairline is changing. Not balding or thinning just rising which is, sadly, typical.  I considered taking a pill for that. That would have been Propecia or something like it. But in the end, I just didn't care enough. I would probably care more if I were going bald (don't get me wrong, I'm vain, I just have a limit as to how much effort I'll do about it).

I'm also pretty obsessive compulsive. Mostly obessive.  I channeled this obsession into work which has been a very productive use of my obsessive nature.  Everything I've ever gotten interested in I ended up getting so into that it eventually became a for-profit thing.  That is, if you do something almost literaly 24-hours a day year after year, you'll probably be pretty darn good at it.  And my obsessions were on improving the experience of using computers and computer games.  I also got into blogging and for awhile, podcasting. 

From the outside, turning a weakness like obsessive behavior into making lots of money is probably a good thing.  But the dark side is that that's all you do. All day. Every day. 365 days per year.  I would focus purely on a handful of things. 

The number of "normal" things that adults of my age have done that I haven't would stagger people if I listed them all.  Let me give you an example -- I've never used a saw. I have only used a hammer a couple of times (and that was for hanging pictures).  Usually the things that I have not done in my adult life don't occur to me until I'm talking to normal people who casually bring it up (like watching a football game or going to a sporting event or drinking beer).  It's not that I never chose to do these things, it's that these things never occurred to me. I was simply too busy focusing on the very finite number of things I was interested in.

In other words, I either had obessions or I didn't do them at all. No in-between. 

When I decided to get into beekeeping this Spring on the suggestion that I "branch out" the obsessive nature quickly took over.  I quickly had 3 bee hives, a thousand dollars in equipment and plans to acquire another half dozen hives for next season, a honey extractor, custom labels, evaluation in distribution of honey and a dozen bee books that I've thoroughly read.  And I don't like honey.

That's when my wife decided she needed to intervene. With 3 children now, it would probably be good to expand my horizons. 

And that's when I learned about SSRIs. You need a prescription for this. It was a first for me to have a pill that I would have to take every day.  These are quite interesting because they affect your mood. And they really do affect moods. I'm definitely more upbeat and a lot less focused.  My obsessive behavior is curbed (though not eliminated). And my stress is way down. 

On the other hand, the affect of the SSRIs have made me interested in things I didn't used to be interested in.  For instance, 3 years ago, I begrudgingly bought an expensive car after the accountants suggested that a leased car would be a good write off "learn to like nice cars" they said.  My friend suggested a Jag and so I got one that day.  I didn't care about cars. They took me from point A to point B.

By contrast, 3 weeks after starting on an SSRI I ordered a Porsche 911 Turbo.  So there's definitely an effect there.  I'm also starting to get a lot more interested in vacations and even - gasp - making things that might involve a saw and a hammer.

Another thing that I've been learning about are things that reduce the need for sleep.  My favorite discovery has been Modafinil.  But it's designed for Narcalepsy and like the SSRIs, requires a prescription.

As I've researched these things, I've become increasingly annoyed that we need prescriptions for so many things.  Modafinil, for instance, is safer than Caffeine. It has no known serious side effects. It is not addictive. And yet I have to have a prescription. This is something I should be able to buy at the store (I can buy caffeine pills which are horrible for you but not Modafinil). 

And it was good until...

I got my blood results back from the blood test to get a prescription for SSRIs. My cholesterol is terrible. Like 1%tile terrible.  My HDL (good cholesterol) is 19.  My total cholesterol is 260.  Terrible. 

At the time, I was at my ideal weight (or close to it) - 5'11" and 172lbs.  That's a BMI of 24.  I eat reasonably healthy too.  I would have McDonalds about once a week though but that was just literally a burger and fries.  I do drink a lot of Coca Cola but that wouldn't affect that.

So then I discovered fish pills and flaxseed oil pills and Niacin which can help with cholesterol. And I started excercising a lot (I'm now 162 -- BMI of about 22).  I've greatly reduced eggs, red meat, and cheese from my diet.

But the morning now consists of the multi-vitamin, the SSRI, 2 Juvenon, 1 fish oil pill (I take the flaxseed at night and holding off on Niacin until Winter excercise because of the "flush" feeling).  That's a lot of pills -- 5 pills now in the morning. And if I had my way, I'd take a Monafil on Monday mornings to boost my start of the week energy.

And I also read that it's not a bad idea to take some Asprin before bed but I'm not sure I want to do that. 

Some people refer to their bodies as temples. My body seems more like a beaker these days!

Windows Vista has kind of gotten a bum rap. Some of the rap is deserved -- Microsoft shipped it too early. But for the most part, the rap is carried on by vocal techies who just like to poop on things because they think criticizing things makes them appear more knowledgeable.

Talking to a techie about the quality of mainstream software is a lot like talking to a film school graduate about the quality of mainstream movies. Sure, you might have liked Pirates of the Caribbean but talk to a film snob and it's the 7th sign of the Apocalypse. So how good is Windows Vista? The answer is, pretty good. Far better than Windows XP. But I can think of 5 big mistakes Microsoft made that has taken a window out of its sails.

Let me outline those 5 mistakes Microsoft made with the Windows Vista launch and talk about how Microsoft might be able to keep Windows Vista from being a sequel to Windows ME.

#1 The UAC. The User Account Control in Windows Vista is a feature that appears to have been designed by a marketing committee. Some casual computer user decided that the way to make other casual users think that Windows Vista was "secure" was to have more prompts. A lot more prompts. And so, even a power user (i.e. early adopters) logged on as an administrator is going to find themselves being prompted regularly. They can turn it off but that defeats the entire purpose of having better security.

The result: Power users turn it off and casual users learn to ignore the myriad of repetitive dialogs.

Solution: Have the UAC be a lot smarter. A simple "Always give permission to continue for this action" checkbox at the bottom of the dialog would be nice. It's bad enough that changing the IP address on Vista requires 5 clicks to get to (versus 2 in Windows XP) but it adds a 6th click to get past the UAC.

#2 Windows Vista was shipped before drivers were ready. This, combined with item #1 are probably responsible for the majority of the negative vibe Windows Vista has received.

As a practical matter, the first usable beta of Windows Vista wasn't made available until 4 or so months before Windows Vista shipped (or merely 1 month before "gold". This meant that many drivers, video drivers in particular, weren't ready. But for all those people who have a finicky scanner or Air card or other specialty peripheral had to be guinea pigs.

The result: Early adopters were stung with problematic behavior and a lack of drivers which caused frustration that they shared a lot with others.

Solution: This is mostly dealt with now (as of July 26th for nVidia users for instance). But when one considers how much reputation damage this caused Microsoft should really give more care in the future. Release a stable public beta long enough before going gold so that developers can provide adequate support.

#3 The new Start menu. Love the new Start Search. Kudos. Don't love the Start menu navigation which wants to exist in a fixed window. The example screenshot shows Microsoft's own apps being cut off. For those of us who liked to seriously organize our Start menu items into categories and such, this new start menu option is a huge pain.

Solution: Make the All Programs button behavior an option between the classic expanding menu or the new menu container.

#4 Unbelievably bad desktop performance. Another item that really hurt the initial impression of Windows Vista was how horrible basic desktop operations like copying and zipping were. A user would be copying a handful of files and would get this dialog trying to estimate how long the copy should take. Here's your answer: less than a second! At least, that's what it should have taken. Instead, the estimating time dialog would take a few seconds and then the copy would take a second or two. This sort of thing on routine file copying and moving made Windows Vista feel like a pig.

Solution: Service Pack 1 is supposed to address this sort of thing more thoroughly but the good news is that Microsoft did officially release some patches that improves desktop performance significantly.

#5 Upgrade Pricing is a joke. I wonder what color the sky is on planet Microsoft. Because on planet Microsoft, the Xbox 360 is $350 which not only includes the OS (with Media Center), a 20 Gigabyte Hard drive and other goodies, but at the same time Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade lists for $160. Sure, it's not a truly fair comparison (console makers get a piece of revenue from console games) but the point is still valid. One might get the impression that Microsoft has a monopoly in the PC OS market but does not in the console market.

The big problem is that Microsoft's marketing never made the case for what you are actually getting for that $160. I like Windows Vista. I think it's a big improvement over Windows XP. And when I buy a computer, I am glad Windows Vista comes with it. But upgrading my existing computers? The incredibly stingy "Family Discount" (which has expired) wasn't even close to justifying upgrading machines to Vista.

Maybe there is $160 in value buried in Windows Vista Home Premium but Microsoft's marketing didn't make the case. And I can't find it -- especially when you combine it with the above issues. This wasn't a problem with Windows XP. Windows XP was blatantly better than Windows ME/98 and it was noticeably better than Windows 2000 (which only had a tiny share of the market compared to 98/ME). As a result, 7 months later, Windows Vista has less than 10% of the market. By contrast, I remember watching Windows XP's launch and the migration to Windows XP was pretty swift.

Solution: No solution. They aren't likely to lower pricing any time soon. Once Service Pack 1 has been integrated into the OEM versions (the ones that ship with new PCs) you'll see nearly everyone opting for Windows Vista on a new machine while older machines continue with Windows XP.

Conclusions:
I could go on with numerous other items like the terrible icon handling, the fact that development tools weren't ready for prime time, that Microsoft's marketing efforts were seemingly handled by non-technical people (I mean, really, Flip3D is actually one of the first things mentioned on the Windows Vista home page -- how deep are you digging to find compelling features when a fairly useless task switcher is your money shot?), all have contributed to the negative buzz around Windows Vista.

Which is a shame because Windows Vista is really very good. On a scale from 1 to 10, if Windows 98 was a 4, Windows ME a 3, Windows 2000 a 6 and Windows XP a 7 then Windows Vista is easily an 8. It's a worthy and significant upgrade. It deserves a good reputation. Hopefully, Microsoft can get Service Pack 1 out sooner rather than later and address as best they can the issues that many people have brought up.

Original posted on Neowin.net