I’m quite excited about this new release – this is, quite frankly, a really big release for Firefox that includes a lot of really cool, neat things, including (but not limited to):

• Support for the HTML5 <video> and <audio> tags (including native support for Ogg Theora encoded video and Vorbis encoded audio) – this means Firefox 3.5 can display video and audio natively in the browser, without the need for plugins like Flash or Quicktime. (Sweet!)
• Private browsing mode
• Much improved JavaScript performance thanks to a new JavaScript engine (which means websites that use JavaScript a lot – like GMail and other “web apps” – will run faster!)
• Location-aware browsing (handy for searching for things “nearby”)
• Faster rendering of web pages (always nice)
• Web worker threads (use that fancy dual-core CPU to make your browsing experience faster than ever!)
• A whole bunch of new support for web technologies like downloadable fonts, CSS media queries, and a whole bunch more

If you want to see everything that’s new, just check out the Firefox 3.5 Release Notes.

If you haven’t started using Firefox yet, now’s a great time to switch! Firefox is fast, safe, easy-to-use, and totally customizable – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as there’s a whole bunch of other reasons to switch.

So what are you waiting for? Get Firefox 3.5 right now and be part of the future of the web!

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To answer that question, it’s important to make a distinction between the physical world of bridges, skyscrapers, planes, and such, and the “thought-stuff” world of software.

While software is, to use the words of Frederick Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month, made purely of insubstantial “thought-stuff,” it is, ultimately, made by man – and as man is fallible, so to are the things that he creates. (After all, some bridges fall down, some skyscrapers collapse/leak/shake in the wind, and some planes crash.)

There’s also the “layer” aspect to keep in mind – software may be “thought-stuff,” but it doesn’t exist purely in a vacuum. It relies upon the perfect function of millions (or billions) of tiny, often microscopic physical components, which have been engineered with great specificity and tight tolerances. A few cosmic rays (or a clumsy user pulling out a cord) can screw up the perfect balance of all these components in unimaginable ways – sort of like pulling out the main support for a bridge, or blowing out the tire of a car. (Or, perhaps like having a few large birds fly into the engine of a plane!) When these sorts of things happen, the system – be it bridge, plane, car, or computer – fails, often spectacularly.

So, it’s less accurate to think of a computer system (hardware and software together) as being like a bridge, and more accurate to think of it as being like a giant clockwork mechanism – a huge Rube Goldberg-type device – with hundreds of finely inter-meshing gears and sprockets. If just one gear pops out of place, or one sprocket cracks a tooth, the system stops working properly – perhaps just a little bit, or perhaps so much so that more gears are forced out of place, and more sprockets are broken, until the entire thing collapses in a pile of ruin.

To carry the bridge metaphor in the other direction (as it were), it might be more accurate to think of a computer system as being like a bridge that not only functions like a bridge (gets people from one side to the other), but also functions as a musical instrument capable of producing both classical, jazz, and electronic/techno music; predicts the weather; washes your clothes; generates electrical power; can be quickly reconfigured into a skyscraper home for people or a hospital, as needed; can float up and down the river to a new crossing (dynamically expanding or shortening its length as it goes, of course); and can also fly, carrying everyone on it to a new river, with new road signs that instantly match the new language and traffic patterns of the new location. It also has to do all this while not disturbing the environment around it, while simultaneously accepting any impact its environment puts on it, even if such impact might cause it to function in a manner contrary to the one for which it was designed.

If you were to try to build a physical bridge to do all of these things, it would probably break in much the same ways that software does.

To use a different analogy, consider the difference between a typewriter (a machine designed to do just one thing – type words) and a computer. No one would argue that the computer is a more reliable typing instrument – after all, the typewriter is fairly simple, and because it is designed to do just one thing, it can do it well. Also, when the typewriter fails, the cause is generally immediately apparent (e.g., out of ink ribbon) and can easily be understood – and fixed – by the user.

On the other hand, the computer – while on the surface just the same as the typewriter (keyboard on which you type words), is infinitely more flexible. There is almost an infinite number of other things that the computer could do in addition to typing – it could play music, calculate your taxes, c0ntrol millions of tiny light-producing elements to display an interactive 3D environment – or a photo of your dog, talk to you using a synthesized voice, control complex machining equipment, participate in a global network, and almost anything else you could imagine.

When you consider that, it’s no wonder that computers have so many ways in which they can break. It’s exactly because they are so flexible that they are so fragile at times – their flexibility is their greatest strength, and at the same time, their greatest weakness. Because they are so generalized, getting them to do any one specific thing involves a lot of re-building of concepts (we call them “metaphors” in the world of software) just to get any useful work done, never mind actually taking care of the main task at hand.

In the end, software breaks because it (and the computers on which it runs) are general purpose machines which we ask to do an enormous number of things (some often contrary to one another!), and even though we might only be asking it to do something simple at the surface (e.g., type a few words onto the screen), in reality there are innumerable hidden complexities involved in getting a general-purpose machine to do something so specific (and, we would hope, do it well) that it’s only natural that there will be errors – both human induced and artifacts of the system itself.

In other words, softare breaks because computers are fantastically flexible general purpose machines that, by their very nature, require complexity in order to do anything specific – and no layers of abstraction, big-M Methodologies, frameworks, or whatever else we come up with – are going to change that simple and immutable fact.

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Incidentally, this one rotated onto my desktop this morning, which is what inspired me to do today’s post. It’s really quite a striking picture, don’t you think?

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This time, I moved my Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos (which constitute the bulk of my user profile) into a separate folder on my 2nd hard drive for safe keeping, and then used a 2nd user account to delete the directory junction that linked my user profile to my 2nd hard drive. Then, I moved my (now much smaller) user profile back on to the boot drive (C:), and began the upgrade process again.

The last time I tried this, I thought that the reason the upgrade failed was because of my use of a directory junction to put my user profile onto my 2nd hard drive. So this time, I thought I’d have better luck, since the link was gone and everything was back where Windows probably expected it to be.

Unfortunately, the result of this second attempt was the same as my first attempt: FAILURE. The only difference is that this time the upgrade didn’t take as long (probably because my user profile was so much smaller). However, it still failed in exactly the same way – it got all the way to the very last step of the installation, and then quit, saying:

“The upgrade was not successful. Your previous version of Windows is being restored.”

It then spent some time rolling back the upgrade, leaving me back where I started. When my desktop came back up, I was greeted by this message:

“This version of Windows could not be installed. Your previous version of Windows has been restored, and you can continue to use it.”

No clue as to the reason for the failed upgrade – that’s my next task.

I don’t want to admit defeat (i.e., do a clean install) – an upgrade from Vista Ultimate 32-bit to Windows 7 RC 32-bit should work just fine. I guess I’m going to have to spend some time spelunking through arcane log files to see if I can find out the root cause of the failed upgrade – wish me luck!!

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Recently though, I’ve been thinking about signatures, and whether or not they were still useful in the context of email – specifically in the context of business emails. I mean, really, when was the last time you actually found someone’s email signature useful?

I’m talking, of course, about those huge, obnoxious, totally unnecessary email signatures that seem to be the norm nowadays. The ones that contain pictures, six different phone numbers, an email address (often a different one than the one in the email itself!), a picture, a long title & company name, colors, pictures, flashing lights… okay, maybe that last one was made up.

I’m much more old-school in my opinion of what a signature should be, mostly in the fact that I don’t think an email signature should have any formatting at all – it should be plain text only. I also think that shorter is better. I think 3-4 lines is about the max you’d want – any longer than that and your signature starts being significantly larger than most of the emails you’re sending!

Really, all your email signature should be is:

• Your name
• Your company name
• Your phone number

Why is that? Because:

• I already have your email address (or else how would I be seeing your email??)
• I already have your web address, by virtue of your email address (we’re talking about “business” signatures here, so I’ll assume you’re not using Gmail or Hotmail or something like that, and that your email address’s domain name is the same as your web site’s domain name)
• If you’ve got other methods of contact (IM, Twitter, blog, whatever), then you can just tell me those in the body of your email. There’s no need to repeat them to every single person you send email to.
• Any flashy graphics or pictures just distracts from your message, and in all likelihood will not look right for at least some people (so why take the chance?)

While some people think of their email signature as being like their business card, I think that comparison is a little off for one major reason: people don’t have to look at your business card every single time you talk to them. On the other hand, they do have to look at your email signature every time you send them an email. So it’s important not to overdo it. After all, “less is more,” and simple is always tasteful.

The alternative – for those that feel that they absolutely must give out all of their contact information at once – is to have a signature you use when you first email someone, and then a smaller signature (or none at all!) for follow-up emails after the fact. The problem with this is that you’ll forget, and eventually you’ll just fall back to sending the big signature to everyone.

I think of an email signature as being like “fine print” – the less of it there is, the better. And conversely, the more of it there is, the more… formal, harsh, corporate, and impersonal your email will sound.

There’s another aspect of email signatures as well – the closing line.

Some people include a closing line in the signature block that their email client auto-attaches to every email – which I find annoying, since every single email from them has the same “yours truly” or whatever attached to it and it sounds like I’m talking to a robot.

People who add closing lines like “yours truly” or “sincerely” tend to come from the world before email – that is, the world of physical letters & correspondence. Email is not a direct replacement for old-fashioned mail (for better or worse), and I think it’s inappropriate to try to “force” things that were meant for a different medium onto email.

Although I do sometimes like to close my emails with outrageously formal and archaic closing lines, just for fun – I have been known to use “I have the honor to remain / Most Sincerely Yours.” But that’s for special occasions, not for everyday use.

Other people will close emails with less formal, more casual phrases, such as “ciao” or “cheers,” perhaps hoping to lend a little “international” flavor to their message. My opinion on these sorts of closing phrases is mixed – they tend to be hit or miss, depending on the context.

For myself, as I’ve said, I’m quite old-school, so my emails end quite simply. If I want to use my name (rare), I’ll simply write:

-Keith

Often with no closing line at all. As for my signature, that is just my name, company, and phone number. (My personal signature is equally short – just the tagline of my blog, my blog’s address, and a URL to my PGP public key).

In the end, people who try to make their email signature be more than it really is are just deluding themselves and annoying others.

For more on the do’s and don’ts of email signatures, check out these two articles:

• What does your E-Mail Signature Say About You?
• Email Signature Etiquette – Too Much Flair?

UPDATE: It’s worth noting that there are certain sub-industries where you can’t get around the need for an obnoxious email signature – where they may be mandated by law (or almost mandated by law). Take, for example, lawyers in the U.S. They have some of the longest signatures you’ll ever see – full of disclaimers, legal references, and so forth. Ernie the Attorney has a two great posts on these uber-long email signatures over at his blog which is well worth reading – even if you’re not an attorney (but are in an industry that has mandated email signature laws).

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This wallpaper of “Admiral Suzumiya” sort of creeps me out when it comes up in my random wallpaper rotation… it must be something about her expression, or the way she’s looking out at you.

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Some of these posts suggest using the “Microsoft-approved” method of right-clicking certain folders in your user profile directory (“My Documents” if you’re using XP, and “Documents,” “Music,” “Videos,” and “Pictures” if you’re using Vista or Windows 7) and selecting “Properties” and using the options there to change the default location of those folders (some posts suggest editing the registry directly rather than using the UI).

Above: the “Microsoft-Approved” way to change special folder locations.

Other posts suggest using an unattended install of Windows, which can allow you to set the user profile directory that Windows will use to something other than the default.

I’ve found these methods to be less then optimal, for several reasons:

• The “Microsoft-approved” method will certainly move your folders, but some programs just blindly assume where your user profile is and will write to the original default directory, ignoring the fact that you’ve changed it.
• You can’t move your whole profile with this method – only certain folders within it. (For example, you can’t move your “Application Data” or “AppData” folders using this method.)
• The unattended install method of course means re-installing Windows (and is not for the technically faint-of-heart).

I have talked about my method for moving my user profile before, but I think it bears repeating.

My user profile was getting very large – as in, really, really large. I was running out of space on my C: drive, and I had a 2nd hard drive onto which I could move things, but I didn’t want to move things piecemeal – I wanted the whole kit & kaboodle. I didn’t just want my documents, videos, music, and pictures moved – I also wanted my ISO images, virtual machine hard drives, and email archives moved – a lot of which lived in my “AppData” folder. I wanted to give my user profile room to “grow” – and I also wanted the performance benefit of having my user profile on a different physical hard drive from my OS drive.

The picture below shows what I ended up doing – I created an NTFS junction point for my user profile, and moved it onto a 2nd hard drive. The result: my OS drive, C:, is just my OS (and programs). The 2nd hard drive (labeled K:) is entirely my user profile. Obviously, it’s grown a bit since I moved it!

So what do you do if you’re in a similar situation and want to move your entire user profile to a different drive (or just a different location on the same disk)?

Enter NTFS directory junction points.

If you’ve ever used UNIX or Linux, you may be familiar with the concept – however, if you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s fairly simple to imagine (I’ve talked about it before as well). Basically, think of a junction as a file-system-level shortcut. Whereas “normal” Windows shortcuts only work in Windows (and are actually little files that redirect you when you click on them), a junction operates at a much “lower” level in the file system, silently redirecting access requests. (This Wikipedia article does a better job explaining what they are than I could ever do, if you’re curious.)

And that’s the key fact here – because support for a junction is built right into the NTFS file system itself, it’s basically invisible to any higher programs. (Programs can detect a junction of course, if they specifically ask – but few programs do.) So you can redirect any folder into another folder on your computer (including on a different physical hard drive). Which, coincidentally, is just what we’re after!

Before we begin though, it’s worth mentioning that this process involves moving your user profile files around – which can be risky if the move gets interrupted or something terrible goes wrong (power outage while you’re doing it, etc.). So take the time to do a complete backup of your data before trying this – but you knew that already, didn’t you?

So, with that said, here are the steps to move your user profile to another location using directory junctions:

1. Prepare your 2nd hard drive (or whatever destination you’ve chosen) and make sure that it has an empty folder to “junction” to.
2. Log out of your user profile and log back in under a different account. If you don’t have a 2nd account, just create one temporarily. Remember to give it full administrator power over your computer or you won’t be able to proceed!
3. Move EVERYTHING out of your old user profile directory to a temporary folder (e.g., C:\Users\UserName-Temp). Don’t just copy the files, you need to move them, because you can only junction empty directories. Your user profile folder is C:\Documents and Settings\UserName if you’re using XP, or C:\Users\UserName if you’re using Vista or Windows 7. If you move the folder someplace on the same disk, you’ll save some time – moving files on the same disk usually involves just updating their file system entries, rather than actually copying and then deleting every single file. Make sure you move hidden and system files, too! Note: if you run into trouble moving the files (for example, Windows tells you that files are still “in use”) you may need to reboot into “Safe Mode” to make sure there are no programs/services that are locking the files you want to move.
4. Open a command prompt (Start > Run > cmd will do the trick) and create the junction with the command: mklink /J C:\Users\UserName D:\DestinationDirectory
   
5. Now that the directory junction is created, you can move your files back into their original folder. When you do, they will actually be copied onto the destination folder – so this part may take some time.
6. Now you can log out of this “temporary” user and back in as your regular user account. (You can delete the temporary account now if you want.)

The beauty of this is that it works, and it works silently. Windows doesn’t notice a thing (well, it does, but it doesn’t say anything about it) – you’ll log on normally, and all your programs will just work. Folder redirection is beautiful like that.

Above: This is what a redirected user profile folder looks like in Windows Vista. Windows “knows” that it is a directory junction (hence the shortcut overlay icon), but it’s not really a “shortcut” in the traditional sense.

Above: after double-clicking on the user’s folder in the previous picture, you’ll see the user’s folders as you’d normally expect. Notice the address bar still shows this as being on the C: drive, even though it’s not. (Click the image for a larger version.)

Above: here’s the same folder, but instead of browsing to it via C:\Users, I went in through the K: drive (my 2nd hard drive). This is where the files really live. (Click the image for a larger version.)

Note that there ARE some caveats with this method:

• If you are using Windows XP, you will run into a bug with NTFS mount points.
• If you ever try to upgrade Windows, you may run into problems because of the redirection.
• If your profile grows to be larger than the free space on your primary OS drive (usually C:), then you may have problems if you ever delete your user account and choose to “save the files” rather than delete them (something I ran into by accident myself).

You may also be tempted to use this method to redirect other folders on your computer – but remember that you can only make a junction on an empty folder, and certain folders under Windows cannot be renamed or emptied!

Nevertheless, even with these warnings and caveats, using directory junctions is a highly effective method for moving your user profile out from the “default” location and into some other location of your own choosing. Hopefully, one day it will be possible in Windows to move your entire user profile to a different location without resorting to tricks like this, but for now, this is probably your best bet.

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However, you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

While it’s true that I am a major computer geek, and I would love to have (say) a nice little netbook for looking up information, sending email, writing blog posts, etc., the fact of the matter is that it’s because I’m a computer geek that I’m not a slave to technology.

Because I’m confident about it, I don’t allow it to control me – I control it.

For example, I know many people with mobile email who are, quite frankly, addicted to it (think: crackberry). They’re always checking email – all the time – no matter where they are. Even if I had a mobile email device (which I don’t), I wouldn’t be checking email all the time. As it is, I don’t check email often, even when I’m at my computer. I’m confident enough with the technology to know that I don’t need to answer every single email at the moment it comes in – that I don’t need to be “on-line” all the time. I control the technology – I use it when I want to, not the other way around.

Another example is when the power goes out – for people who are slaves to technology, to computers, the Internet, email, Twitter, social networking, what have you, the power going out is like having their “fix” cut off – they don’t know what to do. Without email, chat, or whatever, they’re lost. They’re so badly enslaved that they don’t know what to do when they are “freed” from it, for whatever reason.

As for me, even though I spend my entire day at the computer (and often much of the evening, too), writing code, answering emails, being online, writing blog posts like this one and so on – when the power goes out, I just shrug, grab a book from my bookshelf, and go read. Or, if it’s dark, I’ll go for a drive, or a walk, or just plain go to bed.

I control the technology around me – it doesn’t control me.

For many people today, the opposite is true. It’s worth it to sit and really take a look at yourself and see whether you are one of those people – whether you’re a slave to technology. Even in today’s connected world, it’s important to be able to just leave it all behind sometimes, to just “let go.” It’s the difference between being controlled and being in control.

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So, I double-checked my Mozy backups to make sure they were current & up-to-date, did some last minute downloads of software in case I needed it right after the upgrade, uninstalled a few programs that I’d been told by the upgrade advisor were potential problems, and then I put in the DVD and clicked “Install.”

After spending some time churning away “analyzing” something or other, I finished the initial questions and the installation proper began. Based on my experiences from upgrading from XP to Vista, I knew this would take a while – as in, a LONG while. So I turned off my monitor and let the computer churn for a few hours.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take as long as my XP to Vista upgrade did. After about 4 hours I came in to check on it, and caught it rebooting – and I was excited to see that shiny new Windows 7 boot screen (with the glowing Windows logo). Certainly, it seemed as though the installation (sorry, upgrade) was proceeding nicely. After the boot screen, setup appeared again, and I saw that I was on the last step (out of 5 steps), with the progress bar at the bottom of the screen about 3/4 of the way across. I figured it’d be done before I went to bed that night.

Well, turns out, it was done before I went to bed – but not in the way I’d imagined.

I came in about an hour later and I could immediately hear that the hard drive wasn’t churning away. “Excellent,” I thought, “it must be done!” So I turned on my monitor… only to be greeted by my usual Vista desktop, and a message box letting me know that the upgrade could not be completed, and suggesting I visit Microsoft’s website to find out why. Fortunately, the setup was kind enough to restore my system to exactly the way it was before the upgrade began, instead of leaving my computer in a half-upgraded state. (I was actually quite surprised it managed to pull this off, given how close it was to being “done.”)

Unfortunately, I have no idea if there’s a log or something to tell me why the upgrade couldn’t be completed – although I can guess. (The fact that my user profile is directory-junctioned to a 2nd hard drive probably has something to do with it.) I can only hope that some of the data about my upgrade experience was sent back to Microsoft, so they can learn from it and improve the upgrade process.

So it looks like I’m stuck where I am until later this year, when I upgrade my PC to a 64-bit processor – which will require a clean install of a 64-bit version of Windows anyway.

BUMMER!

UPDATE: I tried to upgrade again – turns out the directory junction wasn’t the problem, though, because the upgrade failed – AGAIN. Anyone know how to find out why an upgrade failed – what log file to look in, for example? Because I’m stumped!

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Keeping in mind that I bought my extender on sale for a measly $99, and that normal models can go for a lot more (I’ve seen models in stores with HDD-based DVR-capabilities running upwards of almost $500), I can’t say that I’m disappointed with it… but I can’t exactly say I’m pleased with it, either.

That’s not to say I have buyer’s remorse or anything, though. I like having it – it is handy to be able to pull up some music while I’m cleaning, for example, or to sit down and watch some movies I’ve got on my computer out in the living room (on the big – well, bigger screen) – but I guess the bottom line with Windows Media Center Extenders is that they are “not bad, but not perfect.”

For example, it goes without saying that music purchased from iTunes isn’t going to play via a Media Center Extender (unless it’s the DRM-free kind). The Linksys extender comes with a software program to “import” your iTunes playlists into Media Center, which it does… but as for playing iTunes music, well, it sort of “hacks” it. The software uses a feature of many sound cards which is often called “what you hear” – basically, it’s a way of recording exactly what is playing through your sound card (without using a loopback cable or anything). And, yeah, it works… but while it’s working, your computer is playing music too!

What the software does is when you choose an iTunes DRM-protected song from the Media Center Extender, it opens up iTunes on your computer and starts playing the song – using the “what you hear” recorder to effectively “re-record” or “transcode” the music and stream it back out to the extender. As I said, it’s a bit of a hack. (And it’s kind of annoying if someone is using the computer while the extender is in use, too.)

iTunes aside, there are also a few other niggling issues which make the experience of the Media Center Extender “just OK” rather than “really nice.”

• It’s slow – dog slow. The UI feels like it’s made of cold molasses.
• It doesn’t play nearly as many video formats as your computer can.
• Managing playlists (for music) is more than a bit of a pain in the neck – sometimes playlists that you can see on your computer in Media Center don’t show up on the Extender until much, much later (as in, the next day).

Now, I know there are very valid technical reasons for some of these things – the slow UI comes from the fact that it’s sort of a hybrid of a remote desktop client, and although it’s slow, it’s at least bearable. The video format problem comes from the fact that video is not streamed in raw format across the network (it’d take up too much bandwidth, I suppose), but instead the video file is streamed, and then decoded on the extender device itself (and since the extender doesn’t have a very powerful CPU, it doesn’t have the muscle for certain video formats/codecs).

The playlist thing I really don’t understand – I know that there’s a “Media Center Maintenance” task that runs every night, and after that runs my playlists will show up on the extender – but I don’t know why that is. It’s incredibly frustrating sometimes – I’ll make a new playlist on my computer (where the UI is faster), but it won’t show up on my extender right away.

As for the video format limits – there are ways around that, of course, but they are all generally video versions of the same method used by the iTunes software – something called “transcoding.” Basically, when you choose to play a file, your computer will transform it from whatever format it’s in to a format that the extender can understand – on the fly, as you’re playing it. Sounds like it’d work pretty well, if your computer has a bit of CPU power to spare (re-encoding video on-the-fly is very CPU intensive). Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well. I’ve tried several methods to do it, and they’ve all failed, horribly. Some people claim to have much better luck with it – I guess I’m just not one of those people.

In the end, I just seem to come back to my original conclusion – Windows Media Center Extenders are “just OK” or “not bad.” They certainly do what they are supposed to… if slowly and within some rather draconian technical limitations. You’d think with competition from things like Apple’s Mac TV thing that Media Center Extenders would raise the bar or something – but sadly they do not. (And if you own a Media Center Extender, stay away from anyone with an Apple computer hooked up to their TV – you’ll become insanely jealous. As always, the Mac does things so much better, cleaner, and more elegantly.)

So if you can get a good price on an extender (as I did), and you want that kind of functionality (and you’re a Windows household, of course), I’d say go for it. It won’t be great, but you’ll still be able to do things you couldn’t before. But if you paid a lot of money for an extender… well, you have my sympathy.

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