Jiri Novotny at Dextronet wrote a great post this week on improving installers for micro-ISVs.
One essential that I'd add is writing your installer early and including it as part of the build process. It's the first thing that potential customers see and leaving the installer to the last minute is a huge mistake. You should be testing with a complete installer as pretty much the first milestone in any new project.
For Windows products I'd recommend WiX. It's easy to learn, and easy to include in your build. The latest beta includes Burn, a bootstrapper to install dependencies before the main MSI runs. I'm sick of having to do this part myself and I can't wait for Burn to become a stable part of WiX.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Installation: Early and Often #etc #uisv #msi #installation For desktop software the installer should be part of your continuous integration process as early as possible, )
LEGO Friends is “The new LEGO theme – for girls!”
So I guess the current sets not for girls include Alien Conquest, Architecture, Atlantis, Cars 2, City, Creator, Harry Potter, Hero Factory, Heroica, Kingdoms, Mindstorms, Ninjago, Pirates of the Caribbean, Pharaoh’s Quest, Prince of Persia, Racers, Spongebob Squarepants, Star Wars, Technic, Toy Story and World Racers.
I know they’ve tried this before, but still, how about LEGO Vikings: The new LEGO theme – for Danes!
Misogynistic plastic peddling marketing weasels.
(Published to the Fediverse as: LEGO, now for Girls #etc #lego #girls #denmark Should there be LEGO sets marketed as being specifically for girls? )
Citigroup sent me a nice notice saying they are going to share my information in about four thousand different ways, most of which can’t be limited. For the few that can limit you can’t update preferences on the web site, you apparently need to call them and beg to not be spammed. As I’m writing that number makes you type in your account number and then says ‘I’m sorry, our records are unavailable.’ Most likely they’re in the Citigroup basement behind the Beware of the Leopard sign.
If you decide to just cancel Citi then say that they will continue to share when you are no longer their customer. It reads like even if you take the time to phone in to opt out they’ll revert to happily sharing promiscuously once you leave. But you can contact them again anytime although it’s not clear what can be limited once you leave. Dear customer, we hate you.
Presumably there is some well meaning legislation to require that Citi sends clear information about their marketing policy and opt outs. Only you can’t opt out and I can’t for the life of me understand what happens if I close my account. How about requiring opt out of everything from the web site and no marketing to ex-customers instead?
(Published to the Fediverse as: Shiti #etc #citi #citigroup Citibank is going to share your information regardless of if you want them to or even if you are no longer a customer. )
8.2.3.2 Installation of kitchen or food preparation facilities The installation of a kitchen in premises where the number of staff exceeds twenty requires that proper heating arrangements for those who like pies of high quality are made. Where the number of staff exceeds 50 this should be an aga. (See Chapter 2, paras 2:5 and 2:6.)
(Published to the Fediverse as: Section 8.2.3.2 #etc #pies The installation of a kitchen ... requires that proper heating arrangements for those who like pies of high quality are made. )
Gill found these instructions for making plasma in a microwave by carefully cutting up a grape and then nuking it. I finally got around to trying it yesterday, and it’s awesome. Even better than microwaving a light bulb in a glass of water. Check it out:
Making plasma in a microwave!
(Published to the Fediverse as: Grape Plasma #etc #grape #plasma #microwave #video Video of grape plasma in a microwave (be careful if you try this from home). )
…after a five year break and while it’s true that you don’t forget how, your knees can stop being quite so flexible. I’m eyeing up the dog’s glucosamine laced treats quite enviously.
CNET stopped being a useful source of downloads for me ages ago. Over the lifetime of my account I’ve had nearly 100,000 downloads through CNET, but these days it’s one or two a week. I left my products up there anyway, but I’ve just asked them to remove everything they have listed for Catfood Software.
The reason is that CNET has rolled out a download manager that wraps every single download. Instead of the customer getting the product they thought they were downloading they are dumped into a CNET experience that tries to install a toolbar and push Bing / MSN into your browser defaults. Yuck.
It’s one thing for a vendor to partner this way. It’s quite another to roll it out site wide with little notification and no opt out, let alone a revenue share. CNET sell this as being about analytics. Of course it’s all about referral dollars. This isn’t the experience I want for my customers and so I’m pulling the plug on download.com.
(Published to the Fediverse as: Download.com goes nuclear #etc #download.com #cnet Download.com hijacked my download to install some toolbar and so I'm leaving the site. )
My first and last foray into being a TV production company. Tragic that this never got made…
(Published to the Fediverse as: Cam of Fortune! #etc #letters #cam #cams #channel4 A proposal for the ultimate STEM game show, unfortunately rejected by Channel 4. )
Oh no:
My phone keeps running out of space. A little sleuthing under Manage Applications shows that Contacts Storage is using over 32MB. Can’t move it to the SD Card – I guess this makes sense, although it would be nice to cache some of the non-essential data there. I’ve no idea if this is a HTC problem or an Android problem (I have a HTC Aria), but some Googling would seem to indicate that it’s not uncommon.
In the People app choosing View from the menu allows you to pick which sources to use to display contacts. I had 5,854 contacts from Twitter, despite having configured the Twitter app to only sync with existing contacts. I also had a bunch of Facebook contacts, with the same configuration (existing contacts).
I tried deleting Twitter from Accounts & Sync. This warned that it would remove contacts (great!) but after blowing it away Contacts Storage had more than doubled to over 70MB.
Time to go nuclear. I backed up existing contacts and then deleted all data from Contacts Storage. My phone is happy again.
Contacts and sync in general is the worst part of the Android experience. HTC Sync is a contact-duplicating, pop-up-and-wave-my-arms-in-the-air-every-time-I-do-anything piece of Adobe Air uselessness. Google really needs a better answer for people who live in Outlook on the desktop. Or maybe they’ll eventually grind me down into GMail…
Kate has a VTech Move & Crawl ball. From the name you can guess it’s supposed to help encourage crawling. Actually she was terrified of it for a couple of days, and now she likes to pick it up and interrogate it.
I can’t wait for her to get bored and move on to a BigTrak. The ball is going to get some spray paint and be reincarnated as Sargent Major Zero:
(Published to the Fediverse as: Toys #etc #vtech #bigtrack #terrahawks My abandoned plan to turn a VTech Move & Crawl ball into Sargent Major Zero. )
Accessing Printer Press ESC to cancel
International Date Line Longitude, Latitude Coordinates
3D Printing a Window Mount for a Google Nest Indoor Wired Gen 2 Camera
Is it safe to open securedoc.html (Cisco Registered Envelope)?
Animation of US PM2.5 Air Pollution in 2023
3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat
Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix
3D Printing a 72-58mm step down Camera Filter Adapter