Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Microsoft Wedge Keyboard - First impressions

I just opened up my new Microsoft Wedge Keyboard, courtesy of my lovely girlfriend. First impressions in combination with my Samsung Note 8:
  • Setting up and pairing was effortless - a three step process at most.
  • Smooth and no discernible lag. 
  • Probably the smallest blue tooth keyboard out there with full sized keys. I felt it was a bit of a stretch too much to the enter key, but on second glance it seems the same distance as my full sized keyboard, which I never had any issue with before.
  • Some of the extra keys have some functionality - 
    • Esc is a handy back button
    • The context key opens up settings
    • The Play button started up my music player
    • And, think I had some volume control.
As such it's a windows 8 keyboard and functionality would been almost entirely directed towards that. I have yet to establish a report based on constant use. I guess I'll end up using it mostly at work, and my tablet as well.

It does feel somewhat substantial, with polished metal trimming around the edges that wrap around to a matte base of the same material.

The cover is extremely durable. There are two lips on either side made of the same rubber as the back and, sliding it on was very cumbersome and some of the keys were being pried whilst trying to do it. The only option, for someone as pernickety about my technology as me, was to place it on some other way, which required some deft and unnecessary manoeuvring.

It doubles as a stand for your tablet, although mine already has a cover slash stand, so didn't use it. And it apparently turns off the keyboard when closed. I guess i'll take their word for it.

Some indicator on the side would've been handy. There's only a light buried between the top reaches, north of the home row keys. And as such indicates the state and blinks when it is in connect mode. A nifty toy or a productivity/creativity increasing tool, time will tell.
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Friday, November 8, 2013

IDE conflict - course a new path Mr. Zulu

Image representing Aptana as depicted in Crunc...
Image by None via CrunchBase

Ok, when it comes to Star Trek, or any pop cultural references, my knowledge is pedestrian at best. So excuse the title.

In keeping with my current mission, I've been trying to amalgamate and hasten my learning efforts. To that end I was playing around meddling in the forbidden arts of  Javascript/HTML/CSS/PHP or HTML5 if you will. But I ran into a hitch.

I was using two different IDE's - one for PHP, the Eclipse PDT IDE; and one for general purpose web tomfoolery, Aptana Studio 3, which is based on Eclipse.

The latter supports several technologies, "HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby. Supports the latest HTML5 specifications. Includes information about the level of support for each element in the major web browsers."1 The former is focuses primarily on PHP, although a few others are present in the menu system.

Now the issue arose when I was redeveloping my portfolio page to something more current and active. When I tried to work off the same workspace to use XAMPP, the IDE's started going a bit haywire. For one I can't access the same workspace when one is already running and one set of folders seem to persist while the other has vanished.

Anyway, i'm sure there might be workarounds for it but for the moment I'll have to forego Eclipse PDT and use Aptana for my main web development mayhem.


1 http://www.aptana.com/products/studio3
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