Installing Google's new Chrome browser reminded me of something that really irritates me that more and more software installers do; installing things without my permission. It starts with small things. For example, I like keeping my desktop mostly free of icons, so, I do not like installers that think that their software is so good that it deserves a spot on my desktop. A large number of installers put their program icon on the desktop without even asking for permission. Even those that ask, usually have it as the default option.

Yes, another Amiga OS 4.x related blog entry. That is because a lot is happening at the moment. In an earlier post, it was mentioned that no hardware that could run Amiga OS 4.x was available for purchase; thus, the shiny new Amiga OS 4.1 was out of reach to everyone but the few (one thousand or so) that already owned Amiga-ones. Well, this hardware drought is finally over. This is now available for purchase with a beta version of Amiga OS 4.1 that will be upgraded to an OEM version once the final version is released.

Several weeks ago, Amiga OS 4.1 was announced for Amiga-one systems. I received my copy about a week ago, and have been putting it through its paces since. It is definitely a big improvement over Amiga OS 4.0, but still feels like the same system. Visually the operating system is much more impressive. However, most of the improvements are in the underlying system, and are thus hidden from view. From graphics, to USB, to DOS, almost every part of the  system has been improved in some form. Here is a quick summary of my impressions of Amiga OS 4.1 so far.

One of the first things that is taught in publishing is the importance of white space and visuals. Too much text can be off-putting to a reader, particularly with modern "I want it now" attitudes. A simple picture depicting the main concept that a page wishes to convey could help to not only convey that concept, but also make the page visually more appealing, and thus, more likely to be read. Likewise, having sufficient white space (or blank space if the background is a different colour) ensures that the page does not look crowded.

A generous donor gave me a Diamond Radeon HD 2400 Pro PCI graphics card. This card uses the RV610 chipset and is, thus, one generation ahead of the Radeon x1300 that was used during initial development. After plugging the new graphics card into the Amigaone, I have successfully opened a screen on this new card. This required a small set of changes to the code. Since development of this driver relies heavily on the open-source RadeonHD driver for Linux (the documentation alone is not enough), I had already added most of the code specific to driving R6xx cards prior to receiving actual hardware.

Earlier it was noted that Technorati had stopped updating its listing for this blog. Well, as of today, it is back up and running (see this blog's page on Technorati here). I received no response from my support request. However, they have fixed whatever problem was causing it to fail.

Technorati has not updated this blog's posts in nineteen days. This is despite me using their manual ping function every time that a new entry is posted. Problems with updating started occurring some time after I started using FeedBurner. Whether these two events are related or not is uncertain. Technorati is certainly updating most Blog feeds.

It has been a busy week, so this review has been delayed. August saw a modest increase in content on this website. The first personal project has been added, resulting in a traffic spike for a few days. This has resulted in a number of external links to this website that were not created by me. One negative consequence of this increased visibility is hacking attempts. None of them have been successful, but hacking attempts have been a significant number of hits on this website over the last month. Likewise, spammers have started posting comments, forcing me to install a spam filter.