John Dyer

For classes I've needed a simple way to enter in Greek and Hebrew text. There are some nice programs out there that install new keyboards on your system and allow you to type from the QWERTY keyboard. But this requires you to learn a whole new key mapping system which isn't worth it if you just need a few words. I usually just revered to MS Word's Insert Symbol.

• Unicode Keyboards

So I've created some little tools in HTML to help in typing out a few quick words.

Hebrew Keyboard

Designed to be used with Ezra SIL font. Has all the consonants, vowels, and accents of which I know.

 

Greek Keyboard

This one is designed for use with Gentium font. It has functions for capital letters as well as all diacritical versions of all consonants. When you like on an alpha, a secondary keyboard will show up to allow you to select from various diacritical combinations.

 

• Get them here: Unicode Keyboards

After 9 months experimenting with Windows Vista, I just rebuilt my machine with XP. I have a Dell Precision M65 that I bought July 2006. I installed Vista Betas and finally started using the released version in November. Here are the problems:

• Visual Studio was slow going: initially VS.NET 2005 didn't have a proper service pack, VS.NET 2003 was slow going, VS.NET 2002 had no chance.
• Winrot still seemed to set in after 6 months or so. My system was just incredibly slow to boot up and get going
• For some reason, I never got very speedy disk access. It would take My Computer about 20-30 seconds to find my HD's to partitions and my DVD drive. Also, search was slow.
• While Windows Mobile Device Center is nice, my company uses GroupWise and that wouldn't sync well with Windows Mobile. That's somewhat Novell's fault, but it works perfecly in XP.
• VMWare Player seemed to be much, much slower. Again, that might be VMWare's fault, but I'm glad it's working again in XP.
• I use an air card for always on internet. Windows Vista crashes when you try to sleep with a "dialup" connection still active. There is a hotfix that you can install manually to fix it, but its not a regular fix. I installed the hotfix and it worked for a while, but then started happening again later.

What I miss

• I love many of the nice interface tweaks, especially in the Explorer. I liked that the system tray separated system icons from program icons, the calendar allows you to see future months, etc. Overall I really liked Aero and features like the live window preview that XP can't do.
• Windows Photo Gallery is really nice, so I'm excited that Windows Live Photo Gallery will be released for XP
• Although I like the cascading start menu of XP, I prefer the integrated search. But even in Vista I used Launchy instead.

When I get a new PC next year, I'll definitely get Vista since the machine wil be made for it.

I haven't been keeping up this blog over the last 6 months or so. I also have never been super happy with the name missinghref.com which I thought was kind a funny at the time. So I grabbed johndyer.name and swapped Community Server for BlogEngine.NET. I still like Community Server, but I just wanted something I could use for a simple blog. I can't believe how simple it is to setup and use. Thanks to the dev:  Mads Kristensen, Brian Kuhn, Al Nyveldt.