Brainspill

Saw speculation about a forthcoming Google Tablet to try and fit somewhere between the Kindle Fire and IPad.

I would not be surprised if they went with a device offering A slightly better screen than Kindle Fire, passable performance, along with expansion (front/rear camera, sd slot, BT, external volume control, hdmi) etc, while keeping the price near $199US. Those are features not on IPad or KF(v1).

If the price point is low enough to achieve ubiquity, THAT is the market entry to want. Get users addicted to ubiquitous full color tablet presence, then up-sell future versions that wouldn’t be able compete on their own with an IPad but have 1: Google ubiquity, 2: foundation of existing user account/apps/familiarity but with better screen, faster proc, 4G service, longer battery, etc.

Google doesn’t have it’s on compelling content to offer like Amazon or Apples’s cult following and chic appeal. They have “open” (no vendor device or platform lock-in), Android marketplace and flexibility (customization, etc). They need “duh, yes get that” appeal.

I work in a Citrix Desktop session all day, and once in a while, the Tab & Escape keys quit working in that session. No Alt-Tab, Ctrl-Tab, Tab, Esc, etc. Really annoying when you’re programming. They work fine on my local desktop, but not in Citrix.

When it happened today I started testing various settings – re-sizing Citrix sessions & windows, etc. I opened my local “Citrix Connection Center” and disconnected that session, reconnected, still no luck.

Then I noticed that inside that desktop session, I had another Citrix Connection Center running – because some of our applications are only available as Citrix instances, and only when using a Citrix Desktop to reach them. I used that app yesterday and it never closes correctly, and Tab & Esc had worked since… but suddenly stopped working today.

So I opened that Connection Center and terminated & logged off from the remote servers and apps there. Tab and Esc started working in my session again.

Not sure this is concrete, repeatable proof of a fix, but wanted to document it.

My wife pointed out that the theme I was using, jQ wasn’t her favorite. So I looked around and found Mystique, which is beautiful (imho) and works well with what I want to display.

And then she noticed that the random Interesting picture from Flickr wasn’t working anymore, and I missed it too… (it’s sudden absence is why I ditched the Vigilance theme in the first place… and I later found out it wasn’t even related to Vigilance. Oops).

So now I’ve updated the Flickr Interesting photo code appearing at the top of my posts/pages. It’s now WP-Super Cache friendly, doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes via a JS call. Note to self: disable hotlinking on that file.

Now the site’s faster (Super Cache is enabled), and prettier (Flickr Interesting is back), and rounder (I added rounded corners to the image area… unless you’re in IE. Sorry.).

That’ll do for now.

Oh, and the reason the Flickr Interesting photos went away in the first place: my host updated the PEAR php library in use, and that broke phpFlickr, until I forced phpFlickr into using it’s own built-in edition of the PEAR files. Now wasn’t that just a bit more than you wanted to know?