Invert Your Mind

Adding an image to you HTML signature in Thunderbird requires a slight HTML hackery. You need to locate the image on disk and add the IMG tag with the src attribute using the file URL of the image:

Linux:

<IMG src="file:///home/brian/.mozilla-thunderbird/image.jpg" alt="Cool"/>

Windows:

<IMG src="file://c:/foobar/image.jpg" alt="Cool"/>

I’ve tried to post this message 3 times this morning and three times I’ve lost the post. First it was IE7 sucking and then it was my hosting company sucking worse and finally I’m starting over again. This time I’m keeping it short. Here’s my morning thoughts.

• VIsta looks freakin’ amazing!
• Looks aren’t everything, but help make life nicer
  • I can’t run Beryl or Compiz on my desktop because of ATI support - sucks - so linux still looks horrible even with the best theme available and hours of tweaking.
  • Even with Beryl or Compiz, X windows sucks because of the networking code at the bottom. OpenGL, FB, DRM, DRI, whatever should really be at the bottom of X and the rest of it can go. It sucks a lot anyways.
• Vista sucks for developing. No shell with completion, no virtual desktops, you have to install everything by hand and it sucks to find good free software.
• Linux has so much good support now, that even though it looks like butt, it is still better for developers. Any developer that say they are more productive on Windows has been smokin’ some serious crack.

I made it to the top of the clicks list this week over a DZone for my post on IntelliJ winning. So, in the spirit of IDE debating, I’ll definitely keep those posts coming.

Also be sure to check out my IDE comparison page which compares things based on keyboard only usage. It’s great if you loath the mouse like I do.

I just went over to MSDN to look for my product keys from my subscription which I received at last years Microsoft Technology Summit. However, looks like someone really messed up a deployment of that application and I got one of those nasty ASP.Net errors, which anyone who has ever developed in .Net knows very well.

So, I figured I’d call MSDN and let them know. Well, the MSDN office is closed on the weekends and I tried calling Microsoft support direct to let them know. However, the call center employee I talked to had no clue how to let the folks who manage the website know. When I heard that I was floored. A company as large as Microsoft should at least have so kinda of system that employees can use to raise alarms about website failures so that they get handled. Hell, Orbitz call centers could always contact Orbitz headquarters to let them know the site was down. But most of the time we already knew that since the website is monitored 24/7. Well, guess I just have to wait for them to restore the website but here’s the screen shot I grabbed just for fun.

Enjoy!

I’m convinced that Microsoft hates developers and leaves them as the last group of individuals it is concerned about when developing software. I’ll write about all sucking from Microsoft later, but for now, just enjoy these images of how Microsoft supports their developers.

Visual Studio 2005 Professional from Microsoft

Of course, JetBrains to the rescue!!!! Visual Studio 2005 Professional from JetBrains (ReSharper installed):

[tags]visual studio, .net, resharper[/tags]