User Blogs

sIFR is a tool that replaces text elements in a webpage with some styled flash text. While there are some failings in the tool (currently version 2.0.2, with version 3 now in alpha testing) it is in general the only highly-supported way to use nonstandard fonts in webpages.

I have taken the time and effort to finally make sIFR work on this site; I tried it out a long time ago but ended up being confused. Actually, I'm still confused; when you replace elements, sometimes elements you have no interest in seem to be replaced, even though the generated source (not the original page source, but what's actually rendered) doesn't show any way that the styles should match those elements. I was forced to use more restrictive CSS in the sIFR style sheet than I liked, but it's working out okay so far.

Stu Nicholls is my hero today; he created a simple, working CSS fluid drop shadow. I literally tried six other drop shadows before I found his, which worked without additional freaking out in my drupal theme.

I was reading through a story on Slashdot that made reference to an old system.ini entry for Windows 9x that tells Windows to do its level best not to use the paging file, AKA swap space. This has no relevance to Windows NT; however, there are some similar registry settings that do work in NT.

One reference I located doing subsequent searches is Martin Krohn's Windows XP Tweaking Guide. This has numerous handy tweaks; I will boil the ones I intend to actually use down here, as this (or a subsequent blog post) will be a kind of worksheet explaining what I did and what did and didn't work.

I'm sure that the majority of us have read reviews of how the "protection" features in Windows Vista are, at least in beta, more arduous than actually being infected by malicious software, asking you for confirmation for practically everything, to the point where it brings to mind the old joke "Windows has detected a mouse movement, and must reboot." Well, I'm here to tell you that Vista isn't the only operating system trying to protect me from myself, nor is it the most overzealous protector in general - that award goes to Windows XP.