DB#409 - Santa’s Red Suit
In this episode: Cold nights in Kentucky; Golden Compass Feedback and Ain’t it Cool reviews; Writer’s Strike update: get a phonecall of your favorite actors! Vista navigation why I turned off the new search functionality; Xbox 360 now plays DivX and Xvid; how Santa got his red suit; the future is here! Promoting SQPN.
Article about the origins of Santa’s Red Suit
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I don’t have a Vista PC to test it on, but I would expect the backspace key to take you up a level in an Explorer window, even in the absence of an arrow icon to click.
To get a new Explorer window, press WindowsKey+E then you should be able to click on Desktop in the Folder pane.
You can probably set up a keyboard shortcut to open an Explorer view of Desktop directly, but I’ll leave it to somebody with Vista to work out the details.
Chris and Fr. Roderick,
The backspace will not take you up to the Desktop. One way to get to the Desktop is in the folders tree view the Desktop is at the top of the tree.
Though I must admit I never use Explorer in the first place. I have always preferred a dual pane file manager since the days of Norton Commander and DOS and use Servant Salamander since it has so many navigation and file features and you can setup favorites to paths that can be accessed with keyboard shortcuts. This though is shareware. There is a program called free commander that also has many features and allows very easy navigation.
http://www.freecommander.com/
As a new Mac user, but a Windows user since 2.0 I agree about the search button. It is an improvement to have the search features in Vista, but they don’t go far enough. The search within the start menu is for only items within the start men.
OSX Tiger Spotlight also wasn’t very good and it was slow and not very usable. The Spotlight in OSX Leopard though is great. You can easily find files and go to them and even use it as a quick application launcher.
Though I am not much of a fan of Finder, again in Leopard there are good improvements such as bread crumbs for the path, but as a power user I need something to rapidly navigate around. I ended up buying Pathfinder because it has the features I want. The best being a drop stack where you can drag files and folders into it and then navigate to another folder and drag items out of the drop stack to new locations. This sounds exactly like how you use the Desktop in Windows. But for Windows you would be better off using something like free commander rather than Explorer.
One online link for the first five minutes of The Golden Compass movie as Fr. Roderick mentioned is here at Yahoo.com:
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808718640/video/5305481
There is also 16 other trailers for the movie at that link.
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Concerning the overreaction/fear? by a very small fraction of people who refuse to see this fictional fantasy movie that is different than the book and/or read the books using the defense of “Why should I read something that challenges my beliefs?”. I think it is very important that everyone should read or see things that challenge things they believe in. After all that is how educated opinions are formed. As the great american president Franklin Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Something that is only a fictional fantasy movie is hardly any challenge and does not take away at all from any well informed/educated belief and your faith.
In fact the book controversy(it really is only a controversy over the books not the fiction movie) is an opprotunity to explore your faith and maybe practice it in a gentle loving way a little closer to the walk among humanity of Jesus.
Peace and God Bless,
Michael
“An educated man can entertain an idea without accepting it.” - Aristotle -
I’ve posted a roundup of links re: the books and movie on my blog. Particularly telling is the interview given by director Chris Weitz, who has said that although he was willing to dilute the message of the first movie for the sake of commercial success, he wouldn’t be doing that with the second and third movies.
Jeff is half right about opening the desktop folder in vista - he doesn’t explain that folders are hidden by default, you can show them from a button in the bottom left of any Explorer window.
The other way is actually available via the breadcrumbs - if you click the little right-arrows that separate the folder names in the address bar, you can pick any subfolder to navigate into (it makes the breadcrumbs seriously handy instead of just a cool toy).
You want to click on the far left of these. If you aren’t many levels deep, the left of the address bar will be “computer”, otherwise there will be a double left arrow.
The dropdown menu will let you navigate into any of the folders in your home directory. including the desktop.
Fr. Roderick,
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the raving reviews you gave this year about windows Vista. A few months ago I bought a new computer and thanks to you and a few people around me I had them put XP on it instead of Vista. And I’m as happy as a bunny.
Perhaps a day’s work to (re)install XP is worth the effort instead of the annoyance every day of a computer not working the way you want it to be.
Thanks again and keep up the great work.
Justinus.
P.s.
There are some bills I have to pay of this years Christmas bonus, but if there is anything left it’s yours and Greg’s/Jennifer’s.
I haven’t read any of the “anti-Christian” books you talk about. With that said…
I get quite confused and angry, actually, by people who says “I won’t do that” or “I won’t read that” etc, because that particular thing is “against” their beliefs. If you’re fast rooted in your belief, why are you afraid? Take those books and that film for example, what on Earth can an anti-Christian opinion do to harm you? Absolutely nothing, if your faith is rooted.
Another example is from the school my parents work at. When the spring term ends, all the pupils gather in the church to sing songs and receive their grades. Basically it’s because it’s the only locale available to house all the pupils and their parents.
Some non-Christians won’t allow their children to go to church on this occation to be with their friends and every year there is this HUGE discussion whether to hold this event in church or not. What’s the problem? The “worst” thing that can happen is that you’ll find Christ! And that is not such a bad thing, is it? I mean, if you do you’re no longer a non-Christian and then it’s ok to have found Christ. It’s a win-win situation.
I don’t have any problems spending time in church, though I am not a Christian. I am going to church during Christmas Eve, not because of Jesus but because of I want to hear Mom and my brother and the rest of the choir sing beautiful Christmas songs and psalmes.
I guess that the thing I want to say is this: I am not afraid of seeing/hearing/reading/witnessing any kind of religious message, because I am a firm non-believer. And therefor I am “safe”. Should I find God in any of those religions, then so be it. Then I’m religious, but that’s fine too.