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
 

The iPhone has been out awhile and now that the initial hyping has subsided and the glowing reviews have faded a bit, how good is the iPhone really? I mean, for real people?

Stardock's Island Dog takes an indepth 2 part look at the iphone.

• The iPhone Review (part 1)
• The iPhone Review (part 2)

Do you have an iPhone? Tell us what you think of it.

 Next week Stardock expects to unveil the first major update to DesktopX for the year. 

DesktopX is a powerful yet easy to use desktop building program.  Once installed, users can easily create desktop objects that can be assigned any image allowing them to be any size or shape. In addition, these objects can have multiple states (user-defined or simply mouse over, mouse away, etc.).  Moreover, objects can have scripts attached to them written in either VB Script or JavaScript.

As a result, users can build nearly anything with DesktopX. It is almost certainly the most powerful utility of its kind.  It has been used for everything including creating computer interfaces in movies, user interface screens in computer games, stand-alone programs, and more. 

DesktopX 3.5 includes many small tweaks to the program along with one big new feature: The ability to export content as native Windows sidebar gadgets.

See the link below to get a guided tour of what's in DesktopX 3.5. 

Version 3.5 Info Guide

Introduction

DesktopX is a program that lets users build their own desktops.  It does this by giving users access to desktop objects. These objects can come in all sizes and shapes. They can have scripts attached to them, they can be combined together to form mini applications or turned into an entire desktop.

A new way of looking at the desktop

Let's take a look at a typical desktop. For this example, we'll use Windows Vista but it could just as easily be Windows XP.

Windows Vista's desktop

When DesktopX is first loaded, it provides 4 primary options:

Loading DesktopX brings up its launch menu

This menu lets the user decide whether they want to load an existing creation (widgets, objects, and desktops) or create their own.  For our purposes, we'll go with create.

DesktopX appears in the system tray

From the system tray, users can now create a new object which will appear on the desktop like this:

An object on the desktop

This object can be made into almost anything the user wants.  Let's look at a couple simple examples:

Making an object into a glorified desktop icon:

DesktopX objects can be turned into fancy desktop icons easily. They have the advantage of being sized however the user wants. Just right-click on the object and choose properties:

From there, a dialog comes up in which users can choose what they want the object to appear like. Users can use .PNG image files (or .BMP or even .ICO) to change the image.  By selecting a new image, the user can see this:

The size of the image can be controlled by the summary page.

The object can be resized right from the summary page.

Now I just have it point to whatever program or website I want. In this case, I'll have it open WinCustomize.com.

And Voila I have a really fancy desktop icon.

Making my object into a widget/gadget

Technically speaking, objects are widgets/gadgets.  The difference is one of format.  When you have finished, you can take your creation and save it as an object pack which simply saves the raw data to be imported back into your desktop or you can save it as a widget which turns it into a program (.EXE).  If you have DesktopX PRO, you can also save as a gadget which turns it into a program that can run on any Windows XP, 2000, or Vista machine without requiring DesktopX to be installed. 

What's new in DesktopX 3.5 in this area is that users can also export their works as Windows Sidebar gadgets.  The Pro version will turn them into stand-alone sidebar gadgets.

Let's create a simple widget.  First, we start back with our object.  I'm going to us images and script provided by David A. Roman for this example.

Show/Hide desktop icons widget

This widget, when it's done, will show and hide desktop icons when clicked on.  This means I'll need two images for my object: One to represent the hide desktop icons and one to represent show desktop icons.

DesktopX objects support multiple states -- unlike icons. This gives them incredible flexibility.

This object has two states

For each state, I provide an image.

The next step is to write some VB Script (or JavaScript).

Writing the script

This script is obviously more advanced that what a beginner would create but I wanted to show something that was fairly useful and it's only 67 lines even with spaces and comments.  What it does is react to being clicked on. If the icons are showing, it tells Windows to hide desktop icons. If the icons are already hidden, it tells Windows to show them.

Turning it into a Windows Sidebar Gadget!

When I'm done with my object and have made sure it does as I ask, I can export it as a Windows Sidebar Gadget:

Since I have DesktopX Pro, I can export it as a stand-alone sidebar gadget (otherwise, the user needs to have the DesktopX run-times installed).

And there it is. the .gadget file

There's my new gadget

The advantage of DesktopX for making Sidebar gadgets is that DesktopX has a much larger library of APIs to call on and is a visually oriented development platform for gadget makers.  Something as simple as a show/hide desktop icons toggle isn't very easy to make as a Sidebar gadget. But with DesktopX, it's a snap.

Building a desktop

So far, we've really only scratched the surface of what DesktopX can do.  DesktopX can create widgets & gadgets. But these days, there's a gazillion different gadget/widget creation tools (though DesktopX is probably the most powerful one currently available).

DesktopX doesn't stop at being able to make mini-applications. Users can build an entire desktop and then save it as a .desktop file to distribute out.  It's a lot like making a widget except on a much larger scale.

Building a desktop

As we've seen, objects can be given images of any size or shape. Objects can have multiple states to them. And objects can be grouped together. 

In this example, objects have been grouped together and also given scripts to allow for the creation of new objects:

A replacement desktop created with DesktopX

Since objects can be created by other objects with all their key properties assigned by other objects, users can literally construct their own Windows environment with DesktopX -- in a fraction of the time it would take to write ones own shell.

DesktopX can even give objects "hit detection"

When done, a user can simply export their creation as a .desktop file and anyone who has the DesktopX run-times installed can use it. 

This Play-ground theme will be coming with DesktopX 3.5.

About DesktopX

Developer: Stardock (www.stardock.com)
Price: $24.95 for standard client. $14.95 for run-time client.  Both come with Stardock's Object Desktop suite.

Users who want to get DesktopX Pro can get it for $69.95 and that adds the ability to export stand-alone programs and Sidebar gadgets.

Visit http://www.desktopx.net for more information.

Greetings to the German speaking GalCiv 2 Community!

I-Mod Productions has voluntarily translated the campaign for Dark Avatar! 

If you bought the Gold Edition and you are searching for the Dread Lords translation, I-Mod now offers a German version of the Dread Lords Pack at www.i-mod-productions.com. 

If you recognize any bugs, please contact us at I-Mod, and they'll quickly set up an update! 

Our hope is that we can help improve the experience for all German speaking players! 

Download the translated files here!

Why aren't planets in GalCiv Ii to scale? What about accuracy. Below gives you an idea if things were to scale...

zooming out...

zooming out.

zooming out...

It would be cool to be able to look at a map with things drawn to scale correctly. But i wouldn't want to play the game that way.

The next-generation edition of the world's most popular desktop enhancement utility, WindowBlinds, now has an on-going, regularly updated, preview guide available for viewing.

WindowBlinds is a program that empowers users to completely customize their Windows experience.  WindowBlinds 6 has hundreds of new features including the ability to skin nearly every element of Windows Vista as well as blur-glass effects on Windows XP.

The screenshot shown here is actually Windows XP. Check out the blurring -- and Stardock Diamond on Windows XP is about as fast (or faster) than Aero running on Vista on the same hardware.

Only users with Object Desktop can download and try out the beta presently.

Check out the link below to get a sneak preview of what's happening.