MuseScore

Several years ago I was making a simple arrangement of a song, most of which was done using copy/paste and manually drawing things onto a photocopy of an existing piece of music. I found a free, open source software package called MuseScore, which was kind of difficult to get through the learning curve but seemed like a great tool in spite of my awkwardness with it. Over the years they have come out with several new versions of the software, and I have practiced with it quite a bit to where I'm much more efficient with it.

In addition to the software for writing and transposing music, it has a community which lets people share arrangements they have created with others. As the platform and community has gotten bigger, it has started gaining the attention of the music industry, and they have had to start charging to gain access to download the arrangements other users have made in order to have money to pay licensing fees to the original artists for making arrangements of their works. Some are upset with the system changing to charge for what used to be free. But the best part about it is still free - the software itself.

I think a lot of people were just using the community to download free sheet music, but taking it to the next level, using the software to create your own arrangements is the best part, because you learn to create something for yourself. I have learned a lot about music theory and about the instruments I have been arranging for by doing it myself.

Thanks MuseScore!

Internet Explorer has stopped working

Yes, thank you, Windows Vista, for that great error message. I think I already know what made it stop working, though. It probably has something to do with the fact that I clicked the red X thingy in the corner to close it.

SteadyState

Many people I've talked to lately have either had some kind of spyware infestation, the notoriously scamacious Antivirus 2009 (or 2008), or just something that the kids did weird that messed up their computer.

In looking around for something to help keep computers under control, I found Windows SteadyState, which is a free program put out by Microsoft for locking down Microsoft Windows. As much as I dislike some of Microsoft's business practices and their frequent security problems (stop laughing Mac fans - the Mac OS has been bitten by malware as much as Windows has lately), this is a program that appears to have what it takes to really lock down a computer. It won't help in cleaning one up after the fact but in keeping it from getting messed up in the first place.

I used it to create an account for the kids. The account is locked down so no programs can run except Internet Explorer. Then IE is locked down so it is more limited than normal. You can set it up with a whitelist or only specific sites that can be visited, but I didn't turn that feature on.

If something strange does get installed even with the limited version of IE that is running, when you log out of the account, all changes made to the computer are automatically removed. Pretty cool. You can unlock the account so you can make changes and then just lock it back up.

I'm still playing with it, so I don't have a full review for it yet, but I recommend trying it out.

If you don't want to totally lock down your computer to just a small list of websites but still want good protection, I recommend K9 Web Protection from Blue Coat Systems. It's free for personal use. It lets you pick from a huge list of categories of sites that you can block and logs all sites that are visited.

And if you do happen to get the Antivirus 2009 trojan installed on your computer, I've found System Restore, which is automatically enabled in both Windows XP and Vista, to be the easiest option to remove it.

The Windows Matrix

Helllooooo

Microsoft has reportedly hired Jerry Seinfeld for an ad campaign to counter Apple's well known Mac vs. PC ads and address some of the issues people have with Vista. Have Bill and Steve ever watched Seinfeld? You recall that Jerry's apartment on the show had a Mac sitting on the table in the back corner, although I don't remember him ever using it. Hopefully they will be good ads, although the campaign is put together by the same firm that gave us the freaky Burger King king, so we'll just have to wait to see.

I'm running Vista on my work machine and have issues with it, of course, but overall I don't think it's a huge deal. When I think back to the early days of XP, it's all the same complaints about driver and program compatibility problems, unnecessary GUI changes, need for better hardware to even run it, etc. Fast forward 7 or 8 years, and we see Save XP petitions to pressure Microsoft to allow users to continue purchasing XP licenses. I imagine Vista will be generally accepted at some point like XP was.

The question, however, is how much longer will the operating system even be relevant? I mean, there will always be such thing as an OS of course, but as we move more and more to accessing our applications and data via multiple combinations of devices and networks, the PC just seems less important as a standalone machine.

Perhaps Seinfeld can delay Microsoft's demise temporarily.

Reset Vista

I have a new computer that's been sitting on my desk, waiting for me to have time to move everything over off my old computer. I only use it only occasionally, but have logged into it several times. So yesterday, as I was trying to transfer some music files over that I didn't want to store on the file server where I'd been putting everything from my old computer, I couldn't get my old computer to connect to the new one. I end up rebooting it, and when it comes back up, the password doesn't work. I don't know if I changed it or if a security update did something weird, but I was locked out. No other account to login with.

I found a nice Linux CD that boots you up to a registry editor that allows you to reset the passwords on accounts and enable or un-lockout accounts. The website itself was confusing to navigate, but once I found what I needed, it went pretty quick. I reset the password to something else a couple times. Nothing. I tried enabling the Administrator account and setting a password on that (since the Administrator account is disabled by default in Vista). No go.

So as I start looking through his FAQs, I find that setting the password is a bit flaky but just blanking the password should be pretty consistent. So I tried that and was in, and then within Windows I set the password to what it should have been all along. It won't let me change anything on the Administrator account, so I'll have to go disable that again, I guess.

When I was setting the password, I got this little hint from Vista: "If your password contains capital letters, they must be typed the same way every time you log on." Yes, thank you, but the question I have to ask is that if my password does not contain capital letters, does it not have to be typed the same way every time? If it's all lower case letters and numbers, do I not have to type my password the same way? I'm not sure I want to actually find out.