Jun 05 2007

Cat with lime is off the menu

With the recent introduction of the Ramblings category, I decided to take a look at some of the icons for the other categories. I decided that most of the icons were still neat and that I still liked them. However, the icon for the Scholarly / Serious category used to be a cat with a lime on his head. Coincidentally, that cat’s name was Aristotle. While he served the Z-Issue well in his years here, it was alas, his time to retire. Just so he will forever be remembered, here is the larger image from which his icon was cropped:

Aristotle the Cat

Bye bye Aristotle!

|:| Zach |:|

P.S. To see the new image, I guess you will just have to view an older entry in the Scholarly / Serious category, or anxiously await the next entry therein. 😉

Jun 05 2007

Another bird in my life

Today I was perusing the interweb looking for a software suite that would meet my needs. With my business really picking up, it is getting difficult for me to remember all the appointments that I have scheduled. Not to mention, I also have to remember when I’ve made plans with friends, other appointments (for the car, et cetera), and just general life events. So, I was looking for a calendar program that would be suitable for the large amount of events that I will need to program into it, and one that would allow me to organize the display daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly.

I thought I had finally found the right program, but alas, it was incredibly expensive. $199.99 USD is awfully steep for a simple calendar program. Right about that time, I found the wonderful Mozilla Sunbird. I currently use Firefox–which used to be called Firebird in its earlier versions–and Thunderbird by Mozilla. All of the Mozilla products have worked out very nicely for me on both my Linux and Windows machines. So, I thought I would give Sunbird a go, and boy am I glad that I did. I really does everything that I need it to, and to make things better, it is visually appealing.

So, if you are in need of a good calendar program to manage your busy schedule, I highly recommend Sunbird. Here’s a link to the Mozilla subsite for it:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

Also, if you already use Thunderbird and would rather just have a more basic calendar built into it, you can try the Mozilla Lightning plugin for Thunderbird, which can also be found on that same subsite. I haven’t messed around with that one yet, but I will probably try it a little later on. It does seem like it has some nice features that are well mated with Thunderbird’s handling of email.

|:| Zach |:|

Jun 03 2007

New and improved FLV player

Hello all,

I have found and uploaded a much better player for you to use to view your saved copies of any videos taken from the Z-Issue website (or any other saved .flv file, for that matter). This player, named FLV-Player S, was created and deployed by Ivan (123123@gmail.com) in the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. You can see his original website for the player at this address:

http://sweb.cityu.edu.hk/50689882/flv.html

However, I have uploaded a copy to the Z-Issue server to make it easier for you to download and use. If you would like to download it and use it on your own computer–which I highly recommend doing instead of using the Riva Player that was previously listed here–simply click the “FLV Player” link under “Tools” in the right-side bar of the site. You will be prompted by your web browser to run or save the file. Save it to your desktop. Then, to play any video, you simply have to double-click on “player.exe,” go to “browse and load,” and select the video you would like to open.

Unlike the Riva Player, this one allows you to resize the videos, go full screen, and even set AB repeat! I hope you enjoy the new FLV player, and thanks again to Ivan for creating this wonderful piece of freeware. 🙂

|:| Zach |:|