Category — Technology

LiveJournal decided that it made really excellent business sense to redesign their site. In doing so, they removed subject lines, added a full size icon browse feature, and changed how comment links worked.

Truly an excellent design, full of useful and helpful things to make using the site easier, and value-added. Bravo.

Expert: Invalid Warrant Used in Raid on iPhone Reporter’s Home | Threat Level | Wired.com

I am shocked, and frankly appalled that anyone would have their home searched and things confiscated over a story reported in the news.

And there shall be no more. David Eddings passed last night and he will be missed. I was a fan of all of his books, and he was one of the writers that inspired me to actually think about writing as a career.

I’ve been arguing with Pluck for about two days now about getting the stupid thing to sync the IE version of their RSS reader and the Web Edition, which has a lot of feeds and links I don’t have anywhere else.  IE only shows the local stuff and well Firefox isn’t showing ANYTHING even with the debug hack of merging local tree with server.  I’m not very happy right now and its ridiculous that you can import into the web edition yet can’t export?  Um okay.  Now I remember why I quit using Pluck in the first place.

LOL.  Sorry couldn't resist.  I'm trying out Flock and it seems VERY useful for those who live in a media-rich world.  Some minor issues-taking forever to load the favorites list (did a mass import of 3K bookmarks from IE, plus 8k from FireFox {most are duplicates}) and a serious lack of themes, but the default theme is pretty and useful.  It had no problem importing about 1,104 feeds from GreatNews and I really like the news feature they have.  Not to mention the handy-dandy blogging client built-in so I can write a post on the fly, or blog a neat post/site I see while browsing about, plus linking to my flickr account and even sharing my favorites/bookmarks.  

This Is Your Brain Online, How Video Games, Multitasking And Blogging Are Shaping The GenTech Brain – CBS News via digg

Interesting points yet oddly enough its not just teenagers who seem to do too much.  For instance, as I was writing this blog, I read a few comments on digg, ran a web search for something that wasn’t even related to the article, downloaded a new copy of Trillian, added a new extension to Firefox, and started Party Shuffle on iTunes, not to mention talk with my 5 year old.  

I think that the increasing availability of computers and the Internet, not to mention the increase in TV, movie and music choices is causing a corresponding rise in ADD-like behaviors/multitasking.  Then again I have ADD myself, so perhaps I’m merely filtering my observations through the ADD filter.  

I've been messing around trying to get my stuff together so that I have no distractions so I can settle down and get stuff done. Previously I've written about setting up a Control Journal a la FlyLady and various bits I've been trying to get my stuff in order and to keep myself from contanstly thinking of what I have to do when I would rather do the stuff and spend my brainpower on being a better mother, wife, daughter and writer. So I've decided to write down my toolkit that I've settled into.

• Control Journal
  • Routines-Morning, Afternoon, Late Afternoon, Evening, Before Bed and Weekly
  • Menus and Master Pantry, Household and Grocery Shopping Lists
  • Household Information: Passwords/User Names, Insurance Information, Phone List, Medical Information and Doctor's numbers.
• EssentialPIM Pro-calendar, to-dos, basic notes and contacts-in the middle of adding family address information to EPIM
• Evernote-notes, quotes, clippings, recipes from the 'Net
• GMail
• FireFox with 43 Extensions/6 Themes
  • Adblock 0.5.3.042
  • Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.0.4
  • Always Remember Password 0.4
  • BBCode 0.4.1.3
  • Blogger Web Comments 1.3
  • Bookmark Backup 0.4.1
  • Bookmark Duplicate Detector 0.5.0
  • Bookmarks LinkChecker 0.6.8.2
  • BugMeNot 1.3
  • Colorful Tabs 1.4
  • Context Search 0.2.1
  • Copy Plain Text 0.3.2
  • CustomizeGoogle 0.49
  • CuteMenus 2 1.0
  • del.icio.us 1.1
  • Disable Targets For Downloads 1.0.1
  • DOM Inspector 1.8.0.4
  • Download Manager Tweak 0.7.1
  • DownThemAll! 0.9.9.5.1
  • EverNote Web Clipper 1.0.0.42
  • Fasterfox 1.0.3
  • File Title 1.1
  • Forecastfox 0.9.2
  • FoxyTunes 1.2.5
  • Google Notebook 1.0.0.5
  • Google Toolbar for Firefox 2.0.20060606W
  • Greasemonkey 0.6.4
  • IE View 1.2.7
  • Image Toolbar 0.6.3
  • Linky 2.7.1
  • LiveLines 0.4.5
  • MediaPlayerConnectivity 0.6.3
  • MR Tech Local Install 5.0.4
  • Performancing 1.2
  • Sage 1.3.6
  • ScrapBook 1.0.6
  • SecurePassword Generator 0.5.3
  • Tabbrowser Preferences 1.2.8.9
  • Talkback 1.5.0.4
  • TimeTracker 1.1.2
  • undoclosetab 20051204
  • UnPlug 1.3.1
  • WebmailCompose 0.6.6
  • Abstract PC 1.0
  • AquaFox 1.1.01
  • Aquatint 1.6.6
  • BlackJapan 1.15
  • Firefox (default)
  • iCandy Junior 2.0.5
  • Adobe Acrobat
  • Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 7
  • Microsoft® DRM
  • Mozilla Default Plug-in
  • QuickTime Plug-in 7.1
  • RealPlayer Version Plugin
  • RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
  • Shockwave Flash
  • VLC multimedia plugin
  • Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library
• Del.icio.us/Furl/Simpy for bookmarking and saving copies
• Bloglines-in the middle of cleaning up feeds and will mirror Omea
• Omea Reader-RSS/Bookmarks/Usenet-very handy especially with a WordPress blog posting plugin-it was very slow on my computer and took FOREVER to close-now using Sage and Performancing.
• iTunes-Music
• Picasa-Photo Organizing and basic editing
• Media Player Classic-plays pretty much any video/music format when installed with K-Lite Codec Pack
• VLC Client-catches whatever MPC doesn't play
• Trillian Basic 3-IM-pretty much all my services except AIM which I haven't used since 2000
• Money 2006 Deluxe-right now using a trial version, will pick up full version soon

Spent Sunday afternoon helping the hubby disassemble two computers and create a new one using the video card and HD from the old one and putting them into the new to us computer. I like this one since the monitor is much newer(the old one was bought in 1996 and could only do 800×600.) and I have lots of space on the hard drive. Spent all day Monday (fromm 10 am Monday to 1:30AM this morning) installing Windows XP, the service packs, plus the security fixes (about 60+ in all) and getting the majority of the programs installed and moving files. I still have some disk housekeeping to do, mainly defrag, plus set up SyncToy to back up files/folders to the second HD which was the one out of the old computer.

I’ve started back into using Omea Reader for RSS/Usenet since I’m using Gmail’s web interface for my mail. I liked Thunderbird but got tired of the huge archive I was keeping so Copernic could index my emails. I’ve switched back to Google Desktop 4 for desktop search since I don’t have to have a archive on the HD which is not fun backing up.

All in all it was one of the easiest clean installs of XP I’ve done, since I had the files I wanted to move handy on another HD and I wasn’t concerned about settings (well except FireFox since I have passwords saved).

The Great HDCP Fiasco

Idjits. Hollywood, the MPAA, ATI and nVidia, not to mention Sony and Microsoft are all just a big bunch of money grubbing IDIOTS who seem to think making it *harder* to even WATCH what people f'ing buy will cut down piracy.
Bullfuckingshit.
They have farted around about HDTV, DRM and copyright and they who THINK they are the powers that be are merely bringing on a lovely little fight between people who want to watch or listen to what they buy *LEGALLY* and those who think that there are pirates around every corner. No they are in bed with those who give a nod and wink to piracy in China and other places and punishing the legal buyers of their products be it software, DVDs, games or music.
I for one, would be very pissed about not being able to watch a DVD on my snazzy new HDTV (not like I could afford one for a few YEARS) or hell play a game on my new PS3 (altough I'm seriously reconsidering that in light of my little run-in with MediaMAX courtesy of Sony/BMG) that I bought and paid for.
Of course the article has the disturbing news that the GPU manufacturers-ATI/nVidia- have been *advertising* a feature that the retail versions don't have but OEM versions that can only be in new computers, which is a bait and switch in my opinion.

I've been a bit puzzled lately with the v. odd behavior of my blog in FF 1.5. I've had two posts not show up properly in the main page but they show up in the archives and mix up comments etc. Very peculiar. I changed templates, updated any scripts, even disabled adblock. Showed up perfectly in IE but was odd in Firefox. So I tried a fresh profile in FireFox and voila-the issue was fixed. I'm keeping it fresh by installing extensions rather than copying the backups.