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Moving to WordPress

As soon as I can get it looking right, I'll (probably) be moving from Movable Type to Wordpress. This is actually just a test of the WordPress trackback function. Hopefully, it will work.

Anywho: If you want to see the work in progress, click here.

That's strange...

I saw a very strange advertisement today over at baldilocks.



So... I should pay $17 to write about somebody else's idea?

Here's a better idea if you have writer's block. Go to Google News, pick an article, and write about it. It's current, about something that's interesting to a number of people, and you got the idea for free.

YAY!!!

Yay! Our friends over at w.bloggar have issued the first upgrade to their software in over a year! It has better support for extended entries, and, I'm told, better trackback support. Can't complain about that. I think that I'm going to like it.

Cool FireFox Extensions

Acts of Volition has a great conversation going on about some of the best extensions for FireFox.

Let me back up a step: In case you didn't know, FireFox is one of the best, most critically acclaimed web browsers in existence. Quality-wise, it blows Internet Explorer right out of the water. It has several cool features that IE doesn't, such as a built-in, high-quality pop up blocker, the ability to look at several webpages in one window using "tabs," and, most importantly of all, immunity to most kinds of spyware. Really, you need to at least *try* it. You can download it here. It's great software, and it's *FREE*.

Now, one of the other cool features that it has is that it supports "Extensions," which are extra features that aren't built into the browser, but that some third-party creates and that you can install. For example, I have AdBlock, an extension that lets me right click on a banner advertisement and prevent it from *EVER* *LOADING* *AGAIN* on the website that I'm looking at. (Actually, this works for any image or flash dialog.) My mom finds this to be very useful, as she finds those flashing banners to be very irritating to the eye. So she just gets rid of them.

Anyways, the Acts of Volition site lists several great extensions that I hadn't encountered before. So, I thought I'd list and describe all the great extensions that I have installed now. Just open up the extended entry, and we'll get started.

UPDATE: There's a few more extensions listed at Mounty's Corner.

These are listed in the order they appear in my "Extensions" Dialog:

Tabbrowser Extensions: Adds all kinds of features that *should* have been in FireFox in the first place. You can change tab colors, drag tabs around to change the order, double click on an empty part of the tab bar to create a new, empty tab, and do all kinds of cool stuff.

AdBlock: As I mentioned before, this lets you block any particular image or set of images (using the wildcard *) or flash plugins. You can either hide them, or you can do what I do: remove them so that they never load, saving you the time of loading something you never wanted to see in the first place.

BugMeNot: Don't you really, really hate getting a link to a news article and being forced to submit to a free registration process before reading the article? I do. So, I use BugMeNot: Just right-click on the password field and click "BugMeNot," and the program will look up a name and password from BugMeNot.com. Voila! You can now read the article without the hassle of lying to the newspaper publisher about you age and household income.

Copy Plain Text: Does what it says: Highlight some text on a webpage, right click, and click "Copy Plain Text." Now you have just the text you wanted, and not the hyperlinks, colors, or fonts from the original webpage. This is handy for pasting text into Word.

SwitchProxy Tool: This is handy for BJU students who use a different proxy server (or no proxy server) when using the Internet off-campus: You can save different proxy server settings and switch between them. So, when I'm on campus, I right-click on a webpage and switch to BJU Proxy; when I'm at home, I switch to my Proxomitron proxy filter, which I use as a profanity filter.

Context Search: Highlight some text, then right-click on it. You can now choose to search Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Creative Commons, Amazon, or eBay for the highlighted text. I actually don't use this much, preferring to go to the web address bar at the top of the screen and type in "google [search term]" or "ebay [search term]" so that I use some Quick Search bookmarks.

Reload Every: Automatically reload a webpage every so often, such as every minute, every half-hour, or whatever. Handy when you're expecting a webpage to be updated soon.

WeatherFox/ForecastFox: Puts a weather forecast in the browser. I have mine set to put a 3-day weather forecast in the top-right hand corner of FireFox, just beside the page-loading indicator.

Now, stuff I found via the link at the top of the page:

McSearch Preview: Enhances Google by putting screenshots of the search results next to the text links. (It gets the screenshots from some site called Alexa.) The site I linked shows what it looks like. It's pretty cool.

CuteMenus: Puts various icons next to the built-in components of FireFox, making them easier to find. Another one of those that should have been included with FireFox in the first place.

Linky: Lets you download a big group of links all at once. Say there's a site like GameSpy that has a bunch of screenshots you want to see, but you've got to click on a bunch of thumbnails. Before: Click on each one, then click back, click on the next thumbnail, etc. After: Load them all at the same time in different tabs and scroll through the tabs (Ctrl-PgUp and PgDn)

Web Developer: Lets you do all kinds of helpful things when developing a website. Very feature rich; I haven't really begun exploring it yet. One example: You can have it resize the browser to simulate a 800x600 monitor, so you can make sure that everything still looks good for people who need to buy new monitors.

Lastly: The powerful Download Manager Tweak: I use this to move FireFox's download manager from its own window to a sidebar, like the BookMarks and History sidebars. Much, much, much cleaner-looking and less irritating. Very nice.

That's all for now; if I find anything else particularly good, I'll let you know.

This Makes Me Happy

G-Mail is soon to be enabling POP access.

In my Salesmanship class, that's called a feature. Here's the benefit:

I will be able to use Mozilla Thunderbird (on my PC) or SnapperMail (on my Clie) to access my G-Mail acount.

Now... the waiting until the new feature gets to me.

(Via Gizmodo)

Flying Taxis? Cool!

Check this out: AVCEN, a British aircraft company, is developing Air Taxis that are supposed to be very quiet, hover capable, and remote-controllable.

Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars.

Of course, there are a few obvious objections, such as: With all the car wrecks we have now with only 2 dimensions, what's going to happen when we add a 3rd? What happens when an Osama wanna-be flies one of these into the capitol building or Mt. Rushmore or something?

On the other hand, since AVCEN is marketing these things as taxis instead of private air craft, and since they cost "under a million dollars," we probably wouldn't see a whole lot of these at first. And since the company is based in an ultra-cautious nanny-state, the UK, there will probably be some sort of extensive licensing procedure to pilot these mini-aircraft.

But still: The future will get here. Eventually.

(Via Samizdata.net)

Google Desktop

I downloaded the Google Desktop Search utility they released today, and my response is a whole-hearted meh. It's OK, but not what I was really looking for.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool for what it does. For example, a desktop search on my computer for Investment turns up this:

(The colorful splotch above covers up my IP address)

Basically, it can be useful for finding some information. What I was really looking for was something that a replacement for the stupid WindowsXP search dog sidebar. I want an old-fashioned dialog box where I can type win*.txt and the computer will know what to look for.

At the very, very least, Google-friends, I need the ability to sort alphabetically.

But, anyways, neat service.

Let me tell you, I love the Google company. You have a company that gives away every consumer product it has and limits its advertising to text ads only--no flashing banners, no popups. I've never gotten any spyware from Google. Basically: Google isn't evil. God bless 'em.

But if they ever do turn evil, hoo boy... Western civilization will fall. Or we'll go back to Yahoo. One and the same.

G-Mail Invites

If this won't get people to comment, nothing will: I've got three G-Mail invites that I'm giving away. First three commenters w/ email addresses get them.

A New Toy

Brian over at Spare Change has found a new toy: "Google Talks." You should try it. Here's how it works:

I typed in "Jeremy is not" and it returned with "Jeremy is not a homepage.... The cult of the dead is not a low carb diet?" before going off into gibberish.

Spyware Update

I mentioned earlier my parent's spyware problem. Well... it turns out Kernel32.dll is pretty critical to running windows ME. Don't mess with it. I nearly killed my Mom's computer by trying to trade it out with another version I downloaded. Good thing I made a backup!

Anyways, I eventually found out that several files that were supposed to have been deleted weren't really. After killing them in safe mode, and upping the security settings on internet explorer, it hasn't (so far) been reinfected. However, sometimes when you open IE, a second windows pops up and tries to run a script (presumably to redownload all the spyware again). I don't know what's causing that, but as long as it isn't downloading the spyware, I really don't care.

So far, so good....

I need someone drawn and quartered

I've spent the better part of the afternoon and a couple of hours this evening trying to clean out some spyware from my parent's computer. Explains the headline, doesn't it?

And they run Windows ME, which was a giant step backwards in OS development.

//begin long-winded explanation of my activities

Anyways, I start off by finding a couple of programs; I google them, find and follow instructions on how to kill them. Open up ProcessKiller and Internet Explorer; immediately a freakin' little dog pops up in the systray; kill it. Another process by the same company pops up; kill it. I go to windowsupdate.com; same processes come up; kill them. This happens every time I open up windows explorer or internet explorer, or navigate to a new page on internet explorer. Sometimes multiple times per page. Persistent if nothing else.

Finally make it onto WindowsUpdate.com; begin downloading the 22(!) critical updates, two of which requre a rebooting (kill dog, kill other thing), reopening IE (kill dog, kill other thing), renavigating to WindowsUpdate.com (get nasty letter from PETA; kill other thing).

Then I find out how to eliminate adware that was causing the dog and the other thing. Follow instructions, descend into safe mode, erase the files.

Return to normal windows, run an indepth AdAware scan; eliminate several more adware files. Breathe sigh of relief.

Open up internet explorer.

Promptly reinfect the computer with more spyware than before.

*sigh*

I've traced the problem to (I believe) a damaged version of Kernel32.dll. Fixing this will require creating a boot disk and running from DOS, because the damaged file is integral to the Windows OS. Assuming that that's the problem and I don't miss any others.

//end long-winded discussion

Again this process, in total, took about five hours, maybe more.

My brethren, these things ought not to be.

That's why I'm going to, starting now, call for the execution of authors and knowing distributors of spyware, adware, malware, and virus. Think about it: they're actually killers themselves.

I myself spent five hours on this; tomorrow I'll spend longer. Multiply my experience by the millions of others like me who've had to fix these problems. Then add in the man-hours lost by those who weren't aware of the *ware problem, only that their computer was running really slow.

One year is 8,760 hours. (24*365). Assuming the average lifespan to be 75 years, that means that every 657,000 hours is one person's life.

Every 657,000 hours that these... people... force others to spend fixing the problems they cause--viruses and *ware--is the equivalent of killing one person.

These people are slowly killing us all. They must die.

The Media Can't Be Happy

I read some really wonderful news today from the AP. Scientists have tested a gene on mice that "essentially mimcs exercise." The therapy "conferred endurance and prevented the modified mice from becoming obese -- even when they were kept inactive and fed a high-fat diet."

Tell me, what better health news could there be for a nation like America? I don't have to recite for you the ill efffects of obesity; even this morning there was a story on the front page about how obesity increases the risk of cancer. If this genetic therapy could be transferred to humans, then Ronald Evans, the lead researcher on this project, deserves a Nobel prize at minimum.

At last, something that's certain to work, with actual science at work instead of these nonsensical "herbal remedies" for obesity! Great news, right? But look at how the AP introduces the story:

So, we've got a cure for one of the top three ailments of our modern society, and they're worried about... elite athletes using the medicine to make themselves stronger and faster.

There's just no pleasing some people.

Update

I know you guys are just dying to know what's happened with my computer. The short answer is: Nothing.

Despite Edna's valiant attempts, she could not replicate the problem by copying the recovery disk to my hard drive. She wanted me to call the number again and get another service rep as she'd be gone by the time it finished copying. However, upon conference with my father, we've decided to take it back to the Circuit City store on Wednesday and talk to a manager. Hopefully that will work out better than The Adventures of Edna and Travis.

Computer Update

This is frustrating.

I did take my computer to my local Circuit City to have it sent off for repairs, as I mentioned in the previous post. However, when I got there, the morbidly obese black woman who was attending the "Merchandise Returns" desk informed me that because I needed help more than one year after the purchase date, I would have to call the 800 number listed in my service contract and get help from them.

At first I was incredulous, but then I read the pamphlet and saw that, yes, I would have to go through the added steps of calling their number and waiting for them to send me a box to send my computer to them in. Of course, calling them required going through an ineptly programmed computer system to get to a "Technical Support Specialist."

I did finally stumble upon one, who called himself Travis. After taking some basic information and describing the problem to him, he decided to take me to the BIOS screen and let it sit there for an hour, presumably to see if it would shut down. (Of course, it didn't, because it only shuts down under high levels of CPU activity, but, hey, maybe this guy knows something.) He told me to call him back in an hour if it hadn't shut down. I'm pretty sure that he just didn't know how to handle the problem and, instead of taking it to his supervisor, he led me on a wild goose chase until his shift ended.

Anyway, an hour passes. I call the same number, and attempt to get the same person back. Instead, I get to talk to an "Edna," if that's her real name. English is probably not her first language; she speaks in a heavy Indian accent. Uh-oh.

I give her the same information I gave Travis. Apparently he didn't write it down. ::sigh:: Then I have to convice her that it's not a software problem. ::forehead slap:: It's not a software problem, because it's shut down under several different programs, including my virus scanner, two games, and Windows Media Player. I told her as much, and so she had me dig out my recovery CD for a test.

::red flags go up::

Then, through her accent I manage to determine that she wants me to boot into safe mode with a command prompt.

::klaxons go off::

I confirm that she isn't planning to reformat the hard drive.

::standing down from alert status::

She instead had me copy the CD onto my hard drive, presumably in an attempt to get it to shut down again. But, since it has just finished copying without shutting down, there's no telling what will happen next.

Stay tuned!

*sigh*

I'm taking my computer in to be repaired today. I know I said I'd be doing this last week, but I lied. :-) The problem my computer is suffering from is that it shuts down whenever it does anything that requires a lot of CPU power, like a virus scan. But then, on my birthday, Aug. 15th, it got through one without shutting down. I rejoiced! Perhaps my computer would not need repairs after all.

Of course, no such luck. Yesterday, it died during the virus scan again. Running a computer game (Galactic Civilizations) also triggers the shutdown after a while. So, back to Circuit City it goes.

So, I've spent a good deal of time today erasing passwords, taking off customizations, etc. to prepare the computer to be taken in. After this post is finished, I'll be taking it in.

Fortunately, I have Mo:Blog! I can type up entries for Blog Jones from my Clie! So my already low post rate won't drop any. Hopefully.

I'm going to miss my computer. :-(

Low Post Rate

No, that title does not imply that the USPS will charge you less for shipping letters. It's a mixed apology/warning for the low rate of posts in my blog for the past few days and for the next few days. Reasons for the prior: Work, church, my brother returning from Africa, etc. Future: My computer is sick. :-( Whenever it runs at a high CPU rate for very long (for example, while running a game or an antivirus scan), then it gets hot and shuts down. I believe its fan is broken, causing it to overheat and shut down as a safety precaution. So I've been making backups of my data, and I'll be taking it to Circuit City at some point in the near future. ::sigh:: I'm gonna miss 'er.

The way Circuit City's policies work, if you take the device in, and they attempt to repair it on two occasions and it still has the same problem, then they give you store credit for a new device. So, depending on the competency of their repair people, I might be getting a new laptop soon.

One thing's for sure though: should I have the opportunity to buy a new laptop, I'll not be buying a Toshiba laptop. My old one had a weird problem that caused the screen's backlight to go out (some sort of power inverter had gone out). And now this with my new one. I'm thinking a Sony next time....

Breaking down...

I finally did it. I installed AOL on my laptop. I feel so... dirty.... I haven't had AOL for nearly a year now.

But it's OK! Really! I only installed it to get the high-quality video feeds. I can watch the national conventions--live--on my computer now, and it looks as good as TV. AOL is no longer an ISP; it's a content provider.

Seriously.

EDIT: Two other impressions: First off, they do seem to have taken care of one major problem I had with them before: They didn't try to claim all my file associations. That's good. They did have their other problems, like putting 8 new icons on my desktop and making me (by default) go through an extra step to have links and images enabled in my email, but these are minor issues and easily dealt with. The other major impression I had: Goodness this thing takes forever to install! I've had massive games that took less time to get off of the CD!

And the video works perfectly. Which was all I wanted in the first place. Now I can watch ABCNews "on demand." That's cool.

Much better!

Wow. I really didn't mean to get into two hours of CSS/HTML coding just then.... But now it looks so much better, and it looks good in both IE and FireFox. Ha! Take that Microsoft!

Wanna see? It's here. The links don't go anywhere, they're just placeholders. Enjoy!

My church website

::sigh:: I've still got no idea. So, what I've decided to do is to go with my main blog's CSS and then edit that to look like I want it to, checking it against IE with every step. This could take a while....

I HATE Internet Explorer

Let me tell you why: I was trying to make a new version of my church's website (which was made in FrontPage and is really, really awful) last night, and I got it all spiffy looking in FireFox. Then I show it to my dad who uses Internet Explorer; it's dreadful. About half of the fonts are screwed up; it's like IE is ignoring the CSS information for the sidebar. Most frustrating indeed. What's more, I've got no clue what the problem is. It *should* work right now, the way it is. It just.... doesn't. If anyone who knows CSS better than I do wants to take a look, the first draft is here. Ignore the awful table in the middle; I'm fixing that later on.

SpaceShipOne makes it into space

We can get there, without the government, for cheaper than the government. SpaceShipOne, the Scaled Composites entry into the Ansari X-Prize competition has crossed the threshold into space.

The next step is getting into orbit. After that, I think we should go to the moon. It's only three days away; we could set up a hotel there with a restaurant and a golf course next to it. After all: How much would *you* pay to play golf on the moon?

Then we can work on Mars....

As you'd expect InstaPundit has lots of info. Also, aSamizdata has some good posts on the launch.

Fun Translations

I love it when you can tell a website has been translated by Google. The AM-Tech company in Korea has made a new MP3 player called the Vandisori, which I found on Gizmodo. It's a cool-looking MP3 player, but their website is absolutely hilarious. For example:

Oh, I bet they will be!

Really? I wonder what other ways I could use a flashlight.

I'd really love to buy the Vandisori (if only to read the manual), especially after reading the review that Gizmodo links to. One minor little detail though: They're like potato chips, in that you can't buy just one. They're offered in quantities from 500 to 10,000. We'll have to wait for someone who can speak Korean to buy them and start selling them in the US.

RSS Feed Reader, Part II

I think I'm going to stick with BlogMatrix Jäger. A more full review follows below.

On the left, you see the BlogMatrix program; on the right, you see my broswer, Mozilla FireFox. That's one thing I like about it over Stardock's BlogNavigator: It lets you use your own browser instead of putting the articles in a separate panel in its own window. Another reason I like BlogMatrix better is that the RSS feed detection is better. For example, it can get RSS feeds from posts on Blogger, which BlogNavigator can't.

Another great reason to use an RSS Feed Aggregator: You can get news headlines as well as blog posts.

Watch the Exploding Batteries!

You'll remember, I've had a little experience with the dangers of current Lithium-Ion batteries. Turns out, if their plastic coating is punctured, they can explode. Not so with the Valence Saphion battery.

(Via Gizmodo)

RSS Aggregators

Lately I've been trying out a couple of RSS feed aggregators. And wow! they seem like they'll be very helpful. I had wondered how some people seemed to read the scores of blogs in their blogroll.

For you uninitiated folks, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." Basically, a website (such as this one) produces an XML feed, which is a code that contains details like when the new post was published, the article title, and an excerpt of the body. Yahoo! News has several news feeds, and any site made by Movable Type automatically creates one. What the aggregator does is to read several websites' XML feeds on a regular basis and informs you when they've been updated. More importantly, it gives you the headline, so you know whether or not the article interests you.

Anyway, I've been trying out two RSS Aggregators. The first is Stardock's Blog Navigator, and the other is BlogMatrix Jäger. Right now, I think that BlogMatrix is getting my vote, partially for it's easier importation of blogs/sites and partially because of it's cool interface. Instead of trying to cram a browser into the software, this program just sits on the side of the screen, displaying links. On the other hand, it's a little more cumbersome to get "old" articles to be listed; it only seems to show the most recent articles, whereas Blog Navigator seems to keep them listed somewhere. Also, Blog Navigator is supposed to be able to save the posts to the hard drive ahead of time and let the user browse them later, a la AvantGo.

Does anyone use a different program that you'd recommend?

UPDATE: DoH! Just found the "All Weblogs" button at the bottom of the BlogMatrix program. That helps!

McGraw Hill to the Rescue!

Remember the Wheels Exquisite accounting problem software I mentioned earlier? Remember how I extolled the great software engineers of McGraw-Hill? Well....

They've done it again! I was in the middle posting the next-to-last entry for this week when the program decides to lock up. Well, no big deal, I'll just hit ctrl-alt-delete and close it. Reopen the program, and *whew* it opens up my files. Good. I check the previous entry, and it accepted it. Good. I post the next entry, then go to look at the general ledger. A nice little box pops up that says "Runtime Error: Subscript out of range." And the program crashes.

Hmm... thinks I. Let's try again. Open the program, wait for the stupid splash screen to pop up, *close* the "Welcome JEREMY" popup box and click the general ledger. Same deal, crash the program. Reset the computer (which solves 95% of all software problems) and try again. No dice.

So, now I've emailed my accounting teacher and *hopefully* I won't have to do this weeks stuff all over again. I really don't have the time.

OK, next up: Investment Portfolio Management test. Then work on my Marketing project. Then work on my Investment class semester project. Oh, and at some point clean my room (which is an absolute mess) so that it looks nice for the appraiser that's supposed to come by on Monday. And do all the regular homework. Three more weeks. Here we go....

Clie Update

I just wanted to confirm something for you guys: Buying my new Sony Clie was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I sold my old PDA, a Visor Prism, and its accessories for something like $225, so it's like I'm getting it for $75. And really, it's worth every penny. It's smaller, has a higher resolution screen, wi-fi (although this can be a pain if you, like me, don't know what you're doing yet), good sound (think MP3 player), and even a built in camera. AND I can play videos too! It's great!

Trying new moblog software

This thing says it can upload attachments. But, like everything else for the Clie, it needs a Memory Stick. Argh.

Oh wait! No complaining. That's right. Sorry.

This Is So Cool!

.I just bought a new PDA, a Sony Clie TJ-37, a few days ago. After spending most of yesterday afternoon workingwith it,I finallytricked it into recognizing our wireless network. Right now I'm writing this entry with it. I love it!

Wow, they really mean it!

Something odd happened to me in my Accounting today. I was sitting there, ever the industrious student, when I noticed my coat pocket felt really hot against my leg. This worried me, because that's where I keep my digital camera, and I feared that perhaps something had happened to it.

So, as discretely as possible, I took out the camera. Then I noticed the spare rechargable batteries I keep in the same pocket were just radiating heat, and were hot to the touch. I wrapped them in some scrap paper to keep them from touching anything, and waited for class to end.

After class, I looked at the batteries, and the plastic coating that was supposed to be around the whole battery had been partially ripped off. (I tried to take pictures, but they came out all fuzzy. And I've thrown them away now. Sorry.)

But, it could have been worse. According to the label, opening the battery could have caused it to heat causing personal injury, ignite, leak, or explode.

Acct. Software Update

Well, I tried to get into the business labs, but they're closed every free hour I have on mondays. So, no compy lab time.

Fortunately, I was able to trick my computer into thinking it had a disk drive by hooking it into my home network and mapping the A drive of our desktop as my laptop's A drive. It worked quite nicely, and I was able to do my accounting project before my class.

Ha! Take THAT McGraw-Hill Programmers!

Argh.

I'm supposed to be doing my accounting project homework, using the program that I mentioned earlier. I don't have it on my laptop, because my laptop has no A drive, so the stupid program can't figure out where to put the files. Anyways, I wandered into the back of the Business Computer Lab, plugged in my archaic floppy, and got it formatted properly so that I could start my work.

There are thirty or forty computers in the lab, and I sat at one in the very back. A class was about to start, but only ten or so of the computers towards the front of the room were occupied. As soon as the bell rang, the teacher announced that everyone who was not in her class needed to log off (and presumably, get out).

This would not have been that bad, if any of the other unoccupied computer labs had the stupid software on them.

I have another free hour at 2; I'll try again then.