Say you have a brother-in-law (a.k.a. bother-in-law) and he is a web developer and he develops almost exclusively for Microsoft products. You know, the type that develops those web pages at work that are only viewable in Internet Explorer because they are not even close to being W3C compliant. What is the best way to get him to see the light and switch to Firefox? I'm not sure this is the best way to present the argument, but here are some thoughts:

Advantages of the browser itself:

• Tabbed browsing - once you start using tabs that open with a center mouse button click, you can't stand using IE, right clicking, and selecting "open link in new window". IE7 has tabs, but too little to late, and they are not a configurable (especially with the Tab Pref plugin)
• Security - not integrated into Windows - this means that ActiveX can't be used, which is a pain for developers, but also for virus writers. Why use a browser with so much potential to install mal-ware? Firefox is even more secure when you install the "Disable / Enable Java & JavaScript" plug-in.
• Search while you type - start typing a phrase and Firefox auto-searches the page. By default, it searches link text only, but it can be switched to search all text through the Options menu. Once you go back to IE and realize you have to hit CTRL+F before using search, you become even more frustrated
• The favored browser of Google - the first third party application to be featured on their home page (with the Google tool bar extension, of course). If Google likes it, it must be great, right?
• Standards-based, so it follows the design standards of governing bodies
• Extensions, extensions, extensions

Extensions:
Say Firefox doesn't behave exactly the way you want it to. Your brother-in-law is probably used to that, seeing as he is using five-year-old browser technology, so he's not into improvements. However, you could probably show him something to get him interested because there is probably something he doesn't like about his browsing experience and there is probably a plug-in to fix that. Here are some links to lists of extensions:

• The most popular extensions on the official Firefox extension page
• Security extensions
• 25 Extensions you didn't know you needed
• List of Extensions recommended by Google engineer
• List of almost-necessary extensions
• Download.com extension lists: Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, User Favorites
• Carlton Bale's personal list of extensions

For web developers:
Your brother-in-law is a web developer after all. How about a list of the enhancements that make it easier to develop. Here are a few:

• Basic Web Development Search extension - A basic web developer extension that allows a user to search the PHP function list, mySQL developer database, freshmeat, and the Java API. Also comes with session destroyer. Just what a Microsoft developer needs help with.
• Web Developer extension: Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools (disable functions, CSS, Forms, etc.)
• View Cookies extension: It adds a tab to the Page Info dialog box, which shows the cookies of the current webpage. Great if you're brother-in-law is using cookies on the site he develops
• ColorZilla extension: Since your brother-in-law copies all his designs from everyone else, this extension will help him quickly figure out the color being used within any aspect of the to-be-copied page.
• HTML Validator extension: Since he can't write valid code, this handy HTML Validator will come in handy to point-out the mistakes.
• FireBug extension: Because of the the bugs in his code, he can use this to explore the far corners of the DOM by keyboard or mouse. All of the tools you need to poke, prod, and monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax are brought together into one seamless experience
• View formatted source extension - To help with the countless hours of debugging, this plugin displays formatted and color-coded source and optional CSS information for each element.
• List of 9 must have extensions for web developers
• The official extensions pages list many more besides these

Look cool even if you are running IE:

IE Tab extension: Your brother-in-law needs a status upgrade and using a 5-year-old browser doesn't help. Even if he can't let go of IE, he can at least make people think he has by running IE inside of Firefox. With this extension, he can still easily open links in IE tabs within Firefox. Just right-click the link and select "IE Tab".

Is your brother-in-law still not convinced? Well, there is probably no hope for him. Unless maybe he gets a new car and then realizes how great new and improved models/versions can be.

I've been working on a branding project that required consistent use of color throughout every aspect of the company.  The specified standard was a Pantone color.  I figured I'd search the web and find a color equivalency  converter.  I found several, and most all of them gave different results.  So I called Pantone and got the exact HEX (html) / RGB conversion values.  It turns out, only one of the color conversion sites was correct.  And the winner for best Pantone color conversion goes to:

SEO Consultants
http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/colors/conversion/

Seating Location: Third row in the center.

This is my second INXS concert in two months. I never thought I'd be doubling-up on INXS, but the first concert was a total surprise and I'm back for more.

I was expecting the concert to be pretty much identical to the previous concert. I was impressed that it wasn't. These guys are a real band. Not only was the setlist extremely different, but the songs they did play were not the same. They weren't afraid to stick an extended bridge in here and there. The music was just as great as the first show, but the added perception of how they approach it made it even better. I respect any band that can write their own lyrics and music and perform it well live. These guys are the real deal.

After the show, I talked to one of the concert hall workers and found out where the stage entrance was. Nicole and I headed out there and she befriended a security guard and able to get a very favorable spot. She respectfully got all of the original band members to sign her vintage 20-year-old KICK World Tour t-shirt. It made her night and mine as well. I was very proud of her for doing it.

Link to thread discussing the show.

Opening Act Dirte Blonde: Great voice from the lead singer, great harmonies with the bass player, great band. Too bad the album samples didn't sound very similar.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've build a media server to store all of my music and movies for playback throughout my house. I decided to store everything the original, lossless format. This means that music is stored at full CD bit rate, and more significantly, movies are backed-up with all menus and extras in the original file format. Although I could save a bunch of space by compressing everything to a different format, I want to keep everything in the original format. The drawback is that this requires quite a bit of disk space, more than I originally anticipated.

I justed added another 500GB disk to my RAID array, for a total of 1.5TB of usable space. The great thing about the combination of an Areca 1230 RAID controller and Windows Server 2003 is that I can grow the array / partitions / drives as I add disks. Because this is not exactly a straight-forward process, and because I'm bound to need to do this again, I'm documenting the process here for my reference as well as for the benefit of others.

It is basically a three-step process. First, the RAID Set on the controller card must be expanded. For example, I had a 3-disk RAID 5 array with 1TB usable space (one 500GB disk is devoted to storing parity recovery data, so it is not usable space). After expanding the RAID Set, I have a 4-disk RAID 5 array with 1.5TB usable space. However, this additional space is not visible to the operating system; the operating system can only see Volume Sets and their sizes, not RAID sets (which are only visible to the controller card).

So at this point, the RAID Set is 1.5TB, but the Volume Set on that RAID set is still 1TB. So, the second step is to expand the Volume Set on the RAID controller card. A Volume Set on the RAID controller card can be thought of as a virtual disk drive that is presented to the operating system by the controller card. So I could either create a new Volume Set, which would appear as a new disk drive to the operating system, or expand the existing volume set. Since I don't want a bunch of useless drive letters, I expand the existing Volume Set using the RAID controller card utilities.

Now that the Raid Controller Volume Set is expanded, it appears as a new, larger 1.5TB drive to the operating system. However, this space is not allocated, so the third step is for the operating system to expand the size of an existing "partition" on this RAID Controller Volume Set. Now, here is the slightly confusing thing, the operating system refers to this 'partition" as a "volume set". This should not be confused with the RAID Controller Volume Set. The Operating System Volume Set is a "partition" within the RAID Controller Volume Set. At this point, the process is complete and an existing driver letter on the server will have more space available. Below are step-by-step instructions:

1. Install the new drive in the server, connecting the drive to the RAID controller card
2. Boot Windows Server 2003
3. Go to the Areca RAID controller configuration webpage (must have the Areca ARC HTTP server software installed on the server, the default web address is http://127.0.0.1:81 if you are on the server itself, that machines physical IP address and port 81 otherwise. The default password is 0000)
4. Expand the RAID Set using the "Expand RAID Set" feature.
   • Continue to use the computer as usual. (It took 22 hours 50 minutes to add a 4th 500GB disk in background mode; it took 12 hours 20 minutes to add a 4th disk through the RAID bios a boot-up, but couldn't use the PC at that time.) You can even reboot if you need to, the expansion will continue in the background with no issues.
5. When the RAID Set expansion is complete, perform a Volume Set expansion using the same Areca Web Interface. I simply expand an existing Volume Set to take up all of the available free space with the newly expanded RAID Set. It took about 1 hour 15 minutes to go from a 1TB Volume Set to a 1.5TB Volume Set and 2 hours 17 minutes to go from 1.5TB to 2.0TB.
6. Once the expansion is complete, reboot Windows Server 2003, hit the F8 key the very instant Windows starts to boot, and select Safe Mode Command Prompt
7. Logon to Windows, a command prompt will open, and run the DiskPart.exe utility. Here are some more details on the utility from the Microsoft website. (Windows XP does have this utility now. Norton Partition Magic may be an easier-to-use alternative if this seems too complicated. Instructions for Partition Magic are beyond the scope of this post.) This process takes only a few seconds. Here are the exact commands I typed:

• diskpart.exe (starts the partdisk utility)
• help (displays a list of commands, for reference only)
• list volume (to list the operating system volumes available and figure out the number of the volume you want to expand; think of these as disk partitions)
• select volume 2 (this selects my D drive, the drive I want to expand, may be different for you)
• extend (this extends the selected volume to take up all available free space after the current partition; if you don't want to use all available space, get more details from the Microsoft site listed above)
• list volume (to make sure the intended volume is in fact larger now)
• exit (to exit partdisk)
• CTRL+ALT+DEL (to reboot the computer back into "normal" mode)

Reboot Windows Server 2003; you're done!

Setlist

After attending a great O.A.R. concert in Bloomington a couple of months before, I really looking forward to a repeat. My sister-in-law Wendy, who works at Butler, was kind enough to stop by the box office the day tickets went on sale and got Nicole and I some great seats.

Unfortunately, there was some confusion about the start time because the Clowes Box Office can't figure out Daylight Saving Time. The Clowes website has one time, the ticket another, and the O.A.R. website another. We pick what we think is the correct time but arrive about 30 seconds after the O.A.R. starts playing; we missed the opening act (Scratch Track) completely. I hate arriving late. What I hate even more is people in my seat.

People in our seats: The Clowes staff decided not to enforce seating much, if at all. We try to walk into our row and there are more people than seats. We're not going to the back, so we push our way to our assigned seat and tell the two young ladies there they'll have to fend for themselves elsewhere (they move forward a couple of rows.) Not a great start to a show you were looking forward to seeing.

So how was the show? Well, pretty good but not great. First of all, it started a bit too early. It was way to bright outside to be in concert mood. Also, the tickets were cheap for students and I think most were seeing O.A.R. for the first time. Bands feed off of crowd energy and vice-versa. The crowd started off somewhat low key. Black Rock, with starts-off with a well-known crowd sing-along, started off with weak audience participation that died before reaching the part where Mark Roberg was supposed to jump back in. I swear a sang solo for a bar. A dude in front of me yelled to the audience "you all are lame!" But he wasn't singing either.

After that, there was very little audience involvement or interaction until the finale of That Was A Crazy Game Of Poker. The band was still great and delivered a clean and enjoyable performance, but they didn't have much to work with audience wise. The show seemed somewhat rushed and abbreviated and I thought that was a good thing.

I enjoyed the concert, but not as much as I should have. For the beneift of everyone involved, I hope O.A.R. does not return to Butler University.