Firefox 2 - The Return

Ok, I can say I've tried them all now. Well not quite all, but the major players (excluding the Mac one of course). Opera is definately top notch, but I missed the look and feel of firefox and my firefox extensions. I gave IE7 betas, release candidates, and final a fair shake and must say they have come a long way. It still feels clumsy. When are they going to understand that I want an integrated ad blocker or at least integrated 3rd party plugins like firefox. I want to be able to control what I see and do it by clicking on the site I'm on.  I don't want to have to dig around the options and manually add everything to the restricted sites list. I like what they have done with the  custom search engine generator. So, I've come back to firefox and really dig the new on the fly spell checker especially when doing webmail.  I also really like the latest del.icio.us bookmarks plugin and clipmarks looks promising. Tags are definately superior to bookmarks after you get use to them and having them wherever I go using the Delicioius Bookmarks plugin is sweet. I have also recently discovered the Firefox Extension Backup Extension (or FEBE).  Finally my firefox can be exactly the same at home and the office. Some other must haves in my opinion are Adblock Plus and sidekick Adblock Filterset.G Updater, NoScript, Greasemonkey, and IE Tab just for the occasional backward website. Some other optional cool ones that I like are VideoDownloader, Viamatic FoXpose, StumbledUpon, Scrapbook (might be replaced with Clipmarks), Preformancing (for blogging), PDF Downloader, Mouse Gestures, and Download Statusbar.  I hope TorPark updates to v2.0 soon for the extra bit of anonimity.

powered by performancing firefox

Battlefield 2142 - A consolidated BF2 Mod? (3/5 stars until EA gets it together)

My brother told me about this game, saying that he thought it looked like it was going to be cool. I've bought the last two episodes and thought they were pretty cool. So I threw down the cash and happily took it home. All I have to say is BETA at best. Well that's not all I have to say, because I want to rant some more. EA get your QA act together! As far as I can tell this looks like a detailed mod of Battlefield 2 with a whole lot of bugs. I dropped out of servers left and right, experienced weird graphic glitches, and lag died oodles. My biggest complaint is on the most compelling part of game, moving up in rank and getting unlocks. I was moving up in rank and had a couple of locks when out of the blue they were gone! So sadly I started over at recruit... and then a little while later they were back! I got up to 200 points and was waiting for my promotion to gold gunner, and waited, and I'm still waiting at 280+/200 for my promotion and new unlock. Then finally last night after coming home from a 10hr shift at work, I thought I'd play for a half hour. After I find a server that I think looks good and hit connect all I get is a message saying "invalid CD key". I spent my half hour and more trying to get it to work. Finally, in desperation, before taking the game back for an exchange and new key, I reinstalled and re-patched and it worked again. But then sadly it was time to get the kids to bed. Oh, yes, I did say re-patched. Be prepared, the game only recently released and already there is patch you have to download (more waiting, less playing) and I can't say I can tell that it fixed anything. So in conclusion, if your the easily frustrated it might be worth waiting a while for EA to work out the bugs on this one. I wasn't sure I liked the consolidation of soldier types at first but it has grown on me along with some of the other minor changes. I still think Titans suck at the moment but I'll give it some time before I make a final opinion. All in all, when it is working, it is pretty fun (maybe because if nothing else it's something semi-new).

EA, if by some chance anyone reads this, I want to have my unlocks in single player mode! And, I want to be able to move up in rank and have it stay with me even if I don't get credit for it in multiplayer mode. Also, I want to be able to play the larger sized maps with more than 16 bots. If my computer could handle it I want 64 bots. Oh, and I think the command system was easier in battlefield 2 (but maybe I'll get use to that too and love it).

Parrallels Is Amazing

I thought I'd give Parallels a shot. For those of you who don't are completely off the radar, it is the software that everyone is talking about for the new Intel chip based Macs that allows you to run Windows and the Mac OS at the same time (without rebooting). OK, for those of you who know me, you're probably thinking to yourself why does he care he doesn't even have a Mac. Well, I don't care about that exactly, what I care about is there is a Windows version that allows me to run Linux with out doing a stupid (and frankly scary) dual boot system. In fact, I am running both right now and just happen to be in SUSE 10.1 (Linux) writing this blog entry. What is cool about this VM (virtual machine) technology that it is portable. You can throw it on an external HD and take it to any machine running Parallels Workstation.

Another mobile VM type technology I'm testing out is the Mojopac v1.0 that was recently released. It's so new, they don't even have their store open yet. The trial is 30 days or 99 boots and goes for around 30 buck (but supposedly is going up after the first month) You can basically have a windows to go on any removable storage device. Cool idea for an Ipod. Think about putting your Itunes and other music software right on the Ipod and being able to run in on any computer you plug into to charge up. So far I've noticed a few quirks, but it is still an amazing idea.

Recently I bought a new 2Gig thumb drive that had the U3 technology. I thought it was going to be cool but was very disappointed. It is limited to a handful of portable apps that you can download from the u3 website. Also, it failed to boot up every time I inserted the stick. I promptly uninstalled it and luckily heard about Mojopac shortly after, which was everything I thought U3 was going to be.

My Latest Verizon Rant

So I finally got around to try and dump my photos off my new Motorola V3c phone (on Verizon). I can swallow that they crippled my phone (so that I can't easily transfer my photos off my phone via my usb cable I one easy go) just so they can try and get more money per picture message. So I start painfully uploading each photo 1 by 1 to verizon's pix place. I think this upload is free, I might get a surprise on my next bill (70 pix x 25 cents). A few transfers go fine, then I get an error that the file size is too big!! Holy crap, come on guys!! Now I can't use the full resolution or full quality (was set to medium quality) of my camera phone without cropping each photo just to make it small enough to send. What a joke!

So a while back I heard about Writely and signed up for an account. I was cool but since I don't write many docs I can't say I ever used it. Well, I guess Google has absorbed another cool internet tool. So I thought I'd give it another look to see if anything has changed... I'm not sure I can tell. Still cool though... Unfortunately it seems registration for new users has been restricted/closed? So I hope you were like me and already have a account. I heard a rumor that there are invites like google gmail had? But I haven't seen that yet. Of course I haven't looked to hard, after finding out to my relief, that my account hadn't been deleted.

ReGenesis

This looks interesting. Heard about it on Amber McAurthers podcast, "Inside the Net." Wish we could get it in the US. Torrent maybe?

Read more at www.regenesistv.com/ind...

Orb Networks - Stream everything To Go

This looks really promising!

Read more at www.orb.com/

Democracy: Internet TV

Heard about this on DL.tv so I'm giving it a download. I'll post my thoughts shortly...

Read more at www.getdemocracy.com/do...

iProvo.net - Speed Test

Are you getting what you are paying for? Try this cool java based speed test to see if you are getting the upload and download speeds you are paying for.

Read more at speedtest.iprovo.net/

Windows Live Local - Virtual Earth Technology Preview

Wow! Make that seamless stiched panoramas of everywhere on the globe and that would be something amazing!

Read more at preview.local.live.com/

Goowy really is Licky and Sticky

I decided to give this site a try after hearing about it on ITN podcast with Leo and Amber. Protopage was pretty cool. Goowy is cooler taking it a step (or two, or a few, maybe a lot) further. Free is nice too! Give it a try, dump it if you don't like it. It also has an interesting desktop widget like interface that you can take or leave. I'm not sure if all the bugs are worked out of it as it acted a bit weird at first on my computer. Maybe it was just trying to make friends with my firewall and was a bit preoccupied. Couple of things I did notice using firefox. Goowy is Flash based so, for a good experience I recommend adding the site to your whitelists if you use flashblock (obviously) and Adblock plus (seemed to mess up the windowsize with the adblock transparent icon making scrollbars apear).

Testing Performancing Firefox Extension

Burried deep within the Firefox popular extensions I ran accross this blogging extension called Performancing. I'm not sure why they called it that but at first glance I would never had guessed that it was an in-browser blog editor, which actually looks and works quite well.

Actually, I ran into some problems after I hit the publish button. I almost gave up on the extension. :( I still really like the interface, it's just what I wanted. The main problem posting was with the hyperlink I was trying to post. I didn't seem to like it, and worked just fine when I removed it. Also, I was a bit bummed that I couldn't just drag my window snapshot from my desktop into the interface. Actually, It did go in but I think it was an image linked to my desktop. I'll have to do some messing around to see if it was classic DSO error (dumb @#%! operater) or the interface. Keep an eye on this one.

Belkin CableFree USB Hub

Biggie-Size Cool! This is what I've been waiting for! Finally I get to un-tether my laptop. It does seem a bit pricey, but as others have said, "if it works"...

Hey and don't I have a birthday coming up. ;)

Read more at www.belkin.com/pressroo...

An Interesting Combo: Hamachi and ITunes Network Share

When I first heard about Hamachi a few weeks back I thought "that is really cool, but how can I use it?" The other day I was messing around with ITunes (which is also new to me because I finally broke down and got an IPOD) and the ITunes sharing music over a network feature, when it dawned on me that it might be able to use my Hamachi VPN between home and work. By the way, if you haven't tried Hamachi... simple as using an IM (instant messenger). Anyway, So I downloaded ITunes at work and installed it at work. There it was, my music share from home, and I didn't have to do anything! Cool, so now I can listen to any of my songs (or any audio and maybe video now) that I have on ITunes at home, anywhere I want.
That's all good but what if my home connection goes down while I'm away? I wanted to be able to have an actual copy of what wanted to listen to. Or say you have no morals and aren't squeamish and you want your buddy to have a copy. Or you really don't want ITunes on your other system. Well, there is a free, neat little JAVA standalone program called Ourtunes (OT44.jar) on sourceforge.net (currently version 1.33) which can see the share across the Hamachi network and allows you to play or download a copy of any song in any share it can see. Imagine getting all your poor buddies together, making a mini virtual private network with Hamachi and pooling your resources just like all those cool guys at the university. ;)
Me? I'm happy just to be able to listen to my music collection at work. I'm impressed because of the two corporate firewalls that thought would make something like that impossible.

Find Music You'll Love - Pandora

Heard about this streaming music service on the ITN podcast. It sounded cool, so I gave it a try. I love it! It learns your taste as you use it I guess, but it has been pretty "spot on" so far. streams at 128, so the quality it pretty dang good. And best of all it is FREE! (unless you absolutely can't handle ads and want to subscribe)

Read more at www.pandora.com/

WFM Exploit Info. Run Temp Patch, ASAP!

I tried to tell my IT guys in my department about this last Thursday. I was dumbfounded at the lack of concern. I guess because it wasn't on the favorite security website. Hmmm, Ok, I did it (applied the tempory patch) anyway and I am crossing my fingers for the rest of my coworkers. Should be interesting! Anyway, I recommend that you at least read Steve Gibsons Security Now show notes for his podcast episode 20 and make up your own minds. I think this one has some serious potential to cause havok, mayhem, and destruction. The sky is falling... :)

Read more at www.grc.com/sn/notes-02...

Happy New Year Message...