Subsetting PowerPoint

September 19th, 2007

I do most of my presentation slides in pure XML, but I also do a few more high-level/less-code talks in PowerPoint. Sometimes I need to give the same presentation to different audiences or at different lengths. In XML it’s easy to “comment out” individual slides or whole sections to reduce a presentation to size. Is there any plausible way to do this in PowerPoint?
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Still Looking for Reliable Mac Sync Software

September 18th, 2007

My search for a reliable, fast, correct, usable program to synchronize my G5 with my TiBook over Ethernet continues. It had been almost a year since I last evaluated and rejected Decimus Synk, but it had been through several minor versions since then. I figured it was time to give it another try, and see if Decimus had fixed the bug syncing large (> 2.1 GB) files that had led me to reject it last year.

I synced up the TiBook before I left for Norway and all went well, after I finally excluded enough data to allow the desktop content to fit on the laptop. However when I came home and ran the sync in the other direction, Synk hung on my Thunderbird Inbox. Seems I hadn’t cleaned it out enough in Norway and it had grown from just about 2.0GB to 2.4GB in the week I was away. Apparently that was enough to break Synk.

When are programmers going to learn that a signed four-byte int (or even an unsigned four-byte int) just isn’t big enough to hold a file size any more? It hasn’t been large enough for years. Heck, I’m not sure even a long would be large enough for some applications. It’s not just e-mail Inboxes that are big but any sort of data recorded from the outside world: sound, video, scientific imagery, DVD images, backup sets and more. Large files are proliferating. We’ve got to stop ignoring them.
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Daring Jumping Spider

September 17th, 2007

Small black and tan spider
Daring Jumping Spider, Phidippus audax
Prospect Park, 2007-09-16
Thanks to Jay Barnes for the ID
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Yet Another Way to Beat Airport Security

September 16th, 2007

Apparently the duty free shops have convinced the TSA (and foreign equivalents) to allow unlimited quantities of liquor, water, and so forth from outside the security checkpoint to be carried onto the planes provided they’re sealed in a special clear plastic baggie at purchase and not removed from the bag before you clear security. I have just one word to say about this incredibly tight security: Tylenol.
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My Norway List

September 15th, 2007

Black-headed Gull on Lamppost

I didn’t do a lot of birding in Norway this trip–I never did get to the wildife refuge or out into the forest–but I did take my binoculars with me most places, and there were still quite a few birds of interest. I didn’t bring my scope, but I never really needed it. Total species count for the trip was 21 including six life birds:
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Hacking Netflix

September 15th, 2007

I’m trying to transfer my Blockbuster Queue to my new Netflix queue but I’m runnign into a couple of problems:

  1. There’s no way to import a list of movies. I have to add each one individually. That’s a pain for 700+ movies.
  2. Every time I add a movie, Netflix creates an annoying popup window. Anyway to turn that off? The popup blocker doesn’t seem to stop it.

Anyone know of a solution for either of these?

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