Firefox Settings and Windows Start Up

I like Slimbrowser. I have used it for years , mostly for a tabbed Internet Explorer. I recently got a new computer and decided to try FireFox as my primary browser.

I wanted it to behave more like Slimbrowser. I found the following FireFox add-ins,
Tabbrowser Preferences
LastTab
Duplicate
Faster Fox
Restart FireFox

My wife still uses Internet Explorer as the primary browser. There are enough sites out there that still do not work well with FireFox that I still want it too. I wanted to be able to open GMail with FF. I created a shortcut on my desktop with this target ("C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" http://mail.google.com/mail/)

I also was looking to reduce the number of programs running as well as quicken the Windows XP Home Edition login. I found MSConfig.exe. Just run from Start/Run and adjust it. My wife used Windows Live Messenger. I found in MsConfig where to disable its start up. I then could add a short cut to it in the StartUp folder of my wife's login. That way it starts up for her but not for me and the kids login.

What does "non-commercial use" mean?

Google Maps Terms of Use, "For individual users, Google Maps, including local search results, maps, and photographic imagery, is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. For business users, Google Maps is made available for your internal use only and may not be commercially redistributed, except that map data may be accessed and displayed by using the Google Maps API pursuant to the API terms and conditions" (paragraph 1)

Google Maps API Terms of Use, "The Service may be used only for services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge" (section 1.4)

The most confusing part comes when I look at the Google Terms of Service. "The Google Services are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services to sell a product or service".

What does "non-commercial use" mean? The most concise definition I can find is "Non-commercial means that you are not getting compensated in any form for the products and/or services you develop..." (Intel® Software Development Products).

Is this the definition of non-commercial? "Non-commercial means that you are not getting compensated in any form for the products and/or services you develop. You cannot use the service to assist you to develop products and/or services that you are compensated for". This definition would mean I cannot use Google to search for programming references.

Perhaps non-commercial means, "you many not use this service to sell a product or service". By this definition employees of the company I work for cannot use Google Maps to sell our products or services. On the other hand, I can use Google Search to find programming references and tutorials.

How to Setup nUnitAsp for Unit Testing

After months I finally set up my first working unit test using nUnitAsp. It is great because it has classes that mimic the ASP.net web controls.

I ran into a bug that was hard to reproduce. After a day or so of exploratory testing I reproduced it. I did not want to lose this knowledge to I decided to try to implement a testing suite to document it with a test. (See “Code the Unit Test First”)

After looking into and trying to implement several blends of unit testing frameworks, I chose, nUnitAsp which extends nUnit so that you can easily test web controls. I also installed TestDriven.net so I could more readily run tests from VS 2003.

This article was the guide that produced results for me, “Advanced Techniques with NUnitAsp” by Tim Stall. I only followed the simple example and then adapted it to reproducing my bug.

I downloaded nUnitAsp version 1.5.1. I ran the nUnit 2.2.0 installer included with it at \NUnitAsp-1.5.1\bin. I installed TestDriven.net-2.0.1605_Personal.

Now that I have coding the unit test first, I can fix the bug.

The good, fast and cheap triangle

The good, fast and cheap triangle.

I saw this on Bernie Mac last night. His general contractor to add on a spare room showed him this triangle. It rings true. There are some that think you can have all three.

Pictometry in Virtual Earth

I found out from All Points Blog that http://local.live.com went live today (was virtual earth).

I like the new features. You can link to a bird's eye view of some locations, like the statue of liberty. I also like zooming in by drawing a box.

I would like them to get the tiles to load more consistently, and improve their geocoder results.

Idiomatic Pop up Dictionary

Update 2008-05-14. This web site no longer has this functionality that I can tell. The principle still continues. I updated the idiomatic URL. For my future reference the name of the article is "The Myth of Metaphor" by Alan Cooper June 1995 Originally Published in Visual Basic Programmer's Journal. The PDF is in my Gmail account.

Look at http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic138.htm now highlight a medical term you don’t know. It will pop up a window and look the word up for you. You may need to turn off your pop up blocker. It must use JavaScript to do this. It reminds me of the Wikipedia feature of trillion. It will put a dotted line underneath a word. When you mouse over it, it open a tool tip like window and go an look it up in Wikipedia.

This is a great example of idiomatic design. My wife just happened to come across it. She was highlighting a word (I guess to look it up) and the pop up did it for her. She will never forget this feature and no one had to teach it to her. It was so useful that she shared it with me and now I will never forget it.

Stay Extreme

I have been feeling burnt out. I just went on a long weekend vacation to Disneyland with my four oldest kids. I am staying up late and started looking at blogs of those that share my interests. I found innovation fatigue and posted a comment. I found that Jon Conradt is also interested in agile development. He mentioned Scrum. I am not sure what it has in addition to XP.

I am going to initiate a 15 minute meeting every day this week. I am determined to use my wings.