Great Christmas gift ideas

New Scientist - No More Socks

Christmas is coming, and anybody who wishes to get me a present should look at this excellent collection of ideas. I didn't actually get past the children's sections, and frankly didn't see any need.

Santa, if your listening, I would like an Airzooka, and I don't care that the box says 6-years-and-up, the Boy is getting Zoob!

MSDN Help

Frequent users of the MSDN online help (or the offline help for that matter) know just how tedious the presentation is. Click on any link and the whole page does an epilepsy-inducing dance, appears to reload the tree-view, and resynchronizes your position in it. I’m sure it is all very browser-neutral, or something, but it stinks.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. The beta version of the Visual Studio 2005 help looks much more sensible and seems to be much easier on the eye: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/default.aspx. Hopefully this will be extended to include all non-2005 related help topics (especially the HTML pages, which I use frequently).

Custom effects in Movie Maker using XML

I like to edit our home movies, which are shot using a Sony DV camcorder if anyone's interested, and mostly I just want to sequence the result to send to the in-laws (i.e. cut out the swearing and occasional nudity). Windows Movie Maker is more than equal to the task, but I do pine for slightly more control over the effects and transitions that one would get with a more expensive package. Luckily many of the things I want to do are supported using custom XML files, as you can see in this excellent guide: Creating Custom Effects and Transitions in Windows Movie Maker. Does free software get any better than this?

For instance, here is a timelapse of Little Haven beach created using a custom video effect: timelapse.wmv (6MB). I also used the periodic shutter facility on the camcorder that took 6 frames every 30 seconds, then the (custom) x6 speed-up effect was applied to remove 5 of the 6 frames and give a more "traditional" timelapse effect.

I got the tip from the forum on this excellent site: Windows Movie Makers

Merriam-Webster's browser toolbar

As regular readers will know, I struggle with the English language. When a spell checker can’t help me with the difference between “effect” and “affect” I turn to Merriam-Webster online.

I have just noticed that they have taken the logical step of adding a browser toolbar. Apart from an initial turf-war with my beloved Google toolbar things have settled down nicely. I especially like the context sensitive look-up for those tricky long words.

Blocked Outlook attachments

If, like me, you do not need Outlook to be an attachment-Nazi, the following information will be of interest: Opening Attachments Blocked by the Microsoft Outlook E-mail Security Update. I personally liked the simplicity (and transparency) of the single registry entry option, but the GUI based tweakers all look good as well. Incidentally, I agree with Microsoft's decision to block most suspect attachments by default, but I would have liked the option in Outlook's own security settings.