Loading Acrobat Reader Faster

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

OS X users are fortunate enough to have Preview for browsing PDFs, but Windows users still have to rely on Acrobat Reader. And, by many accounts, the latest version of Acrobat Reader wasn’t much improvement on the last one. In particular, it tends to load much more slowly.

In an effort to reverse that trend, Darrell Norton figured out that much of the slow-down is due to all the plug-ins that Acrobat Reader loads at startup. And he discovered that by moving a few files around, Acrobat Reader loads faster since it only load the plug-ins when it needs them:

  1. Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader (replace C if you installed on another drive, like D or E).
  2. Move all files [and subdirectories] from the “plug_ins” folder to the “Optional” folder.
  3. You’re done.

You can always leave a few plugins in the “plug_ins” folder if you still want them to load at startup (maybe you use search often, for instance). In any case, I tried this on my box and Acrobat Reader does seem to load a little more quickly. And I’m guessing that speedups may be even more noticable on other systems — with 768 MB RAM in this box, just about all my apps are cached after I load them the first time.

Flash — Click to View

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I’ve never been much a fan of Flash. These days in particular, it seems to be mostly used for ads on the web. But, there are occasional uses for it (mushroom mushroom comes to mind).

Now you can have your Flash and eat it too. As a spin-off from bug 94035 (“Allow blocking of any media type”), Jesse Ruderman wrote some code to cover Flash elements with a “Click to Play” box. And, from there Ted Mielczarek packaged that into a handy XPI browser extension for Mozilla & Firefox.

Once installed, each Flash element in a page will be covered with an unobtrusive gray box labeled “Click to Play”. If you want to view that Flash, just click the box. I’ve found that this browser extension makes Flash much more palatable since I only view the Flash elements that I want to see. And, because it installs to your profile directory, you don't have to reinstall it each time you upgrade Mozilla.

Warwalking in Dallas

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

As the weather gets nicer in the coming weeks, I’ve been thinking that it could be rather nice to work outside some days, just sitting under a shady tree enjoying the spring breeze. I already have the PowerBook but it would be even better if I had WiFi outside…

So, on Friday afternoon, I decided to go warwalking. You may have already heard of wardriving — driving around with a laptop looking for WiFi access points — but I needed more granularity than that. So, I made sure my battery was charged and I loaded MacStumbler onto my laptop (MacStumbler is an app which continuously scans for access points).

I had to carry my PowerBook open as it would just go to sleep if I closed it, but I found a comfortable position where I could support it with my left forearm as I rested it against my chest. From there, I just started walking around my apartment complex.

I didn’t really want much road noise as part of my hypothetical spring afternoon, so that actually made my search a bit easier. Heading away from the major roads, I walked towards the trees & paths near the Village clubhouse. I had a good feeling about this area since it was wooded enough to be quiet and peaceful yet there were apartment buildings not far away (hopefully with WiFi emanating from them).

Sure enough, I found a few good spots there. As I don’t yet have a GPS receiver for my PowerBook (still looking for recommendations, if you have any), I just had to record each hotspot’s info the old-fashioned way — with TextEdit. I made notes to myself primarily on how to find each spot (in some ways, like a squirrel trying to remember where he buried his nuts).

I also ensured that each spot had a shady tree nearby :). Then, just to be sure tree was still in range of the signal, I sat down under each tree and tested the signal there (usually by browsing a couple pages from Slashdot). Of course, as long as I had signal-bars, the test-pages would usually load fine. Occasionally, however, I couldn’t connect through some of them :-/.

I also didn’t want to have to walk that far to my WiFi Tree(tm), so I limited my search to about a 15-minute radius from my apartment. I ended up with about half a dozen prospective hotspots and I narrowed it down to two likely candidates. One in particular is a hotspot that’s reachable from one of the benches overlooking the small lake in that area. I figure that a bench would be comfortable and I could also bring along a flat object (like a book) for use as a mousepad next to me.

So, the next time a sunny day comes along, I’m ready. I'm guessing that my one-page list of findings wouldn’t be useful to many people but if you live in The Village, I’d be happy to pass them along.

XHTML Jokes

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I found these XHTML Jokes at Photo Matt though they’re originally from HTML Dog. I’m guessing that only standards-aware web developers will get these, but I found some of them rather amusing:

Q: Why did the XHTML actress turn down an Oscar?
A: Because she refused to be involved in the presentation.

Q: Why was the font tag an orphan?
A: Because it didn’t have a font-family.

Q: Why do CSS designers have too many children?
A: Because they employ lots of child selectors.

Q: Why was IE5’s 3-metre wide cell in the insane asylum smaller than IE6’s 3-metre wide cell?
A: Because the width of the cell included the padding…

Q: Why was the XHTML bird an invalid?
A: Because it wasn’t nested properly.

I think the XHTML/Oscar one may be my favorite, though I liked the IE/cell-width one as well. And considering geeks’ general penchant for tech humor, I’m almost surprised that these jokes have only come about now. In any case, they brightened my day a bit :).

Recipe: Blueberry Muffins with Crumb Topping

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

I made blueberry muffins yesterday and they turned out fairly well so I thought I’d post the recipe here. I had decided on blueberry muffins a few days beforehand, but I didn’t have a recipe in mind at the time. So, I next checked AllRecipes.com — a handy recipe website with ratings and reviews for each recipe.

I found my way to their recipes for muffins & scones and, from there, to their section on blueberry muffins. They had about twenty blueberry muffin recipes, but the To Die For Blueberry Muffins caught my eye as it had a rating of 5/5 stars and it was also selected for one of the Allrecipes cookbooks.

Here’s the recipe:

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients — Muffin Base:

  • 1½ cups all-purpose flour
  • ¾ cup white sugar
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ⅓ cup vegetable oil
  • 1 egg
  • ⅓ cup milk
  • 1 cup fresh blueberries

Ingredients — Crumb Topping:

  • ½ cup white sugar
  • ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
  • ¼ cup butter, cubed [half a stick]
  • 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
  2. Combine 1½ cups flour, ¾ cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.
  3. To Make Crumb Topping: Mix together ½ cup sugar, ⅓ cup flour, ¼ cup butter, and 1½ teaspoons cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.
  4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

The muffins turned out well — light and fluffy on the inside with a crunchy-sweet topping. Sliced in half and with a touch of butter, they’re rather delectable. And, other than the blueberries, most of the ingredients are items you probably already have in your pantry.

I wasn’t sure how they’d turn out with Splenda, so I just made them with regular sugar this time. But, I would imagine that Splenda would work fine (though the crumb topping may not have that characteristic sugar crystal crunch without the sugar).

As written, the recipe works out to 1.5 Tbsp sugar in each muffin along with an additional 1 Tbsp sugar for each muffin’s crumb topping (for a total of 2.5 Tbsp sugar). At 16g carbs per Tbsp, that’s 40g carbs per muffin that could be cut out (or at least 24g if you kept the sugar in the crumb topping).