eMusic Premium Plan Change - 45% fewer downloads… same price
I don’t even know what to say to express the level of disappointment I have regarding this. I logged in to eMusic today and discovered that my Premium Music Plan is going from 90 downloads a month to 50. Ouch. Looks like I’m going to have to start buying used cds again. Following is the correspondence I sent them.
Changing my plan to 1/2 the downloads for the same price? Not very recession friendly and pretty sorry. Especially for a customer who has been with you for years. If I wanted music from the Boss, Alicia Keys, and the Dixie Chicks I wouldn’t be shopping at emusic. Cancel my account and the level of respect I used to have for your site.
I have used eMusic for about 5 years or so and have learned of so many great bands from the site. What a pity.
Hide .lck files (and others) in Aptana on the Mac
I’m test driving the Aptana Studio plugin for eclipse. It looks very slick. Just a quick “how to” note for hiding files (like Dreamweaver .lck files, hidden system files, etc) in the project window.
- Click the Project Window Tab
- Hit FN+CMD+F10
- Select “Filters…” in the dialog that opens
- Check the boxes beside all the types you want to hide
- Click ‘Ok’
Pretty simple. So why did it take me an hour to figure it out 
ColdFusion Dying… Again
So I took some database training with Global Knowledge last week. My office paid for the training. Apparently that “back end” training may be all for naught though since my front end programming language is on life support.
Today’s Global Knowledge newsletter letter informed me (in very cheeky fashion) that ColdFusion is # 5 on their “Dying Technology” list:
“If any of these skills are your main expertise, perhaps it’s time to retrain.”
Here’s the whole article: http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/generic.asp?pageid=2347&country=United+States
The notion of ColdFusion being dead has been debated into the ground so I’m not going to belabor it.
IMHO, ColdFusion is the best thing that ever happened to me from an IT standpoint. If you want to get things done quickly, easily and reliably use it. If you are thinking of ColdFusion along with COBOL, Netware, Flannel Shirts and “Grunge” Bands From Seattle, and you might want step outside your house more. It’s not the mid 90’s anymore.
I’m w3schools JavaScript certified
I’ve been trying to brush up on my JavaScript lately. I took a good first step by passing the w3schools JavaScript certification. Click the image below to check out the certificate.
I have a ways to go, but this is a start. Next up… jQuery proficiency.
Via Con Dios, Geocities
Yahoo has officially pulled the plug on Geocities.
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/05/03/rip-geocities/
I learned HTML making my Geocities site. I would love to see that brilliant collection of animated gifs and snazzy javascripts, but alas, I cannot find it anywhere in my archives. Even though the site I had there was terrible, I did learn some of the very basics constructing it.
Although I had long forgotten Geocities I definitely felt a little nostalgic when I learned of its demise. Via Con Dios, Geocities.
Anyone else a little misty eyed?
imafan of imakey
I use a USB drive almost every single day. I have a problem keeping up with USB drives and caps so this can be problematic. Enter Lacie’s imakey USB drive. I never would have thought I’d be dorky enough to carry a USB on my key ring, but this looks so much like a key I’ll risk it.
Just got it in the mail today. It’s sweet.
Adobe CS4 Download File Too Large For USB Sandisk Cruzer
Part I
I finally took the plunge and bought the upgrade to CS4 yesterday from Adobe. Downloading the gi-normous 4.8 GB file was like watching my cat try to eat a chijuajua. Painful. I guess I could have downloaded all the trials and entered the license code, but it just feels more “official” to download the single file. At $599 I need “official”. Update: I moved my downloading operation to my work computer since it was dying at home. Once I finally got the file downloaded though I encountered a second problem.
Part II
I have a Sandisk Cruzer (8 GB). However, after trying to put the 4.8 GB file on it 10 times and getting “The disk in the destination drive is full, please insert a new disk to continue” each time I finally did some googling and realized that the problem was that by default the Cruzer is formated to FAT32 and the maximum file size for FAT32 is 4GB. Here is how to reformat to NTFS.
Change background color of fckeditor / ColdFusion rich textarea
Preface: I work on a project for my office that is hosted by a third party. Therefore, I do not have access to all the inner workings of ColdFusion. Specifically I do not have access to the fck_editorarea.css file.
For a new form in the project I need to add a rich textarea. The rich textarea will sit atop a div with a background color so I need to change the textarea’s background color to white. If I can’t access fck_editorarea.css to change the style what can I do? I can change it via the DOM with JavaScript. For kicks I also added a border. Place the following script just before the </html> tag.
<script type="text/javascript">
fckItem=document.getElementById('NEWSBODY___Frame');
// change bgcolor
fckItem.style.backgroundColor="#FFFFFF";
// add a border
fckItem.style.border="1px solid #0A0A4F";
</script>
Easy enough.
Dual Monitor Heaven USB2VGA
I have finally joined the world of dual monitors. Finances and standards at my office have thwarted my quest for two years to have a dual monitor setup. My propensity to multi-task and staring at a fairly small (by developer’s standards) monitor for many hours a day has made this a painful defeat.
But at last… victory.
Meet the USB2VGA from startech.com (purchased via Dell). This little guy finally allowed me to win the battle of not having to “open the box” to install any hardware. It works quite well, is cost effective, and best of all… easy to configure. If you can plug a device into a usb port then you have skills to set it up.
Can a dropdown box be imperialistic?
I recently received a request from a management member to put “United States of America” at the top of the countries dropdown list for our user registration process. While this may seem an innocuous change to that person we do have a lot (maybe 1/3) of users not born in the U.S. I know it used to be popular to put the good ole U S of A atop of dropdown lists for its vast superiority “convenience” but it seems somewhat “politically incorrect” or “imperialistic” to me. Any thoughts?