Christmas List

I have been pestered (probably rightly so) by certain loved ones ( you know who you are) to give them a list of what I would want for Christmas and my birthday. So I decided to modernize the process by posting it on my blog. I'll be giving lists with some examples. Please don't feel you need to buy the exact thing that is listed (unless I specify it) this is just a set of examples of what I want. I'll be updating it as I figure stuff out so keep watching for changes. I' ll make sure to put dates on the ones I post later.

1) Socks & Underwear (Something I'm always in need of)

2) An Electric Shaver (Preferably the tri-blade style, cordless is not nessecary)

3) An Electric Beard Trimmer (Kinda like the one listed, definitly want the adjustable gaurd)

4) A golf swing trainer ( There are serveral on the market that are a lot cheaper than this that will be just fine)

5) A full swing golf net (Not to be confused with a chipping net, also check around for deals at sporting goods places)

6) A poker table top

7) A set of heavy, thick clay poker chips ( as oppossed to cheap plastic ones. The link is a bit overpriced compared what you can get elsewhere so shop around)

More to come

Firefox 1.0

I know my postings are sporadic at best, but I promise to try to keep a more regular schedule. Anyway, Firefox 1.0 is out now. Download at your own merriment. Be forewarned if you have any extensions installed they might not work. I have no clue why, but hey who knows. Regardless, if your addicted to your extension like me this might be a bit of an annoyance. Oh well, I'm sure I'll just wait until they update the extensions on the website. Happy downloading.

Matt

Update: The website that host most of the Firefox extensions seem to be down, so we are going to have to wait.

Gmail Review

Ok, I have been using this service for the past several weeks. I can say I can't imagine using any other web based service. Heck I can see this replacing my regular fat client email program. It struck me as a very mature, well thought out setup. It makes send web based email a pleasure not a pain. When you type in address it demonstrates its type ahead feature where it give you options of who it might be based on your contact list. A feature that is usually recovered for fat clients. Heck lets talk about the contact list. The act of sending (or reply to) someone an email puts them on your contact list. I thought that would annoy me but I have found it very useful. It has actually spoiled me. Its going to be rough to go back to fat client for normal non work email. There is a few philosophical differences on how it works compared to any other email setup. The philosophy that Google has is that with 1 gig of space you should never have to delete email. Well I'm a person who loves that. I'm a notorious pack rat especially with email, but I do end up giving up and deleting email just to keep it from getting too cumbersome. I know I can use folders but I am too lazy to be that organized and its a pain to back up those folders anyway. Well there is this wonderful button on Gmail that takes away that headache. Its the archive button. It be kinda redundant to talk about what an archive is. That archive is searchable though. That is something of note. It does make for simply clean and usable mail account. I could go on for quite a bit, but I got to cut this short. (yeah I thought it was funny too) All I can say is that if can try it out you won't regret it. I got invites coming out of my ears now so I can give them to those who want one. Happy mailing.

Next episode: Firefox PR1

Gmail

About the Gmail thing. I have an account now. So to those who were nice enough to offer me an invite, Thank you. But I don't need one anymore. Lets be honest anyone wants on just email me at lostnerd@gmail.com. I have given away as many as I can seem to have plenty to spare. I'll go into more detail later about. I'm just going to say that I have no clue why I would bother anyone else. More on this later. Again if you want one. Email me or post to the comments section.

I'm back

Ok I know I haven't update this thing in a while. Call it laziness, call it preoccupation with greater things. Heck its laziness. I got some exciting news to talk about, maybe I'll get motivated and actually do some updates on a regular basis. Keep watching.

Matt

Musing for Thursday June 24,2004

Well apparently Hotmail is following Yahoo's lead in upping the mail file size to a more reasonable amount (250 MB). All I can say is, I still a want Gmail account. Read about it on Cnet

Well the impossible happened today, my opinion of Darl Mcbride lowered. Thanks to this Wired article that I found out about thanks to Groklaw. If you want to know more about the whole fight between SCO and Linux( IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Autozone and DC. Check out Groklaw.

Ok on a happy note I found an article on DesktopLinux.org about cool app that is not only cross platform, and free but also allows you to use your computer as a free point to point ip phone. No long distance charges, just pure voice over ip, no service to sign up for or pay for, just ip phone. I still got to play with it myself until I can officially recommend yet. Hopefully I can convince someone from a far away place (cough Michigan) to help me test it out. Well if anyone checks it out and gets it work (or not) I would love to hear from you either via email or the comments section. Happy playing. You can download it here.

Matt

There are 10 type of people out there. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Firefox 0.9

I'm sure this isn't news to some people but last week FireFox 0.9 was released. They have did some major rearrangement of the Theme manager and Extensions manager. Ok maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself. FireFox is a browser that is based on Mozilla with the objective to create a lighter and faster version Mozilla while keeping all the browsing features. It was originally called Phoenix, then change its name to Firebird until its renamed again as FireFox (hopefully for the final time) Anyway gone are IRC chat client(Chatzilla) and mail client. Mind you mail client now lives as a very versatile stand alone app called Thunderbird. Well that's another post I'm sure. Anyway the new Firefox has a slightly noticeable performance increase( I have been happy with the speed and stability since 0.7)over the last version. I had a chance to use it both at home and at work for the last few days. This product is showing serious signs of macerate. If your an IE users (or a Netscape/Mozilla for that matter) and are wondering what everyone is talking about give it a whirl. Its only a 4 mb download. IE users will notice right off the bat the lack of popups. Mozilla/Firefox has one of the best butane popup blocker out there. You need popups to make a certain site work doing a site by site by site exclusion. You can just double click the icon in bottom left hand corner and select the site and hit unblock. That easy. Don't get me started on tabbed browsing, one o f the most powerful browsing feature out there. My suggestion is to get in the habit of using them. They will decompiling your browsing forever. Themeing (read: skinning) gives you flexibility that IE can not do without a third part app. They also centralized and improved the website that has all new themes on it. I generally been using FireFox without any extents. This is the first version I ventured to using some. I have to admit, I'm not too sure why I haven't been using the GoogleBar before. Now I need it on all computers I do research on. Its too useful. I could go on for hours about this ( especially about tabbed browsing) I promise you if you give it chance, and get used to the small nuances of the Mozilla style browsers, you will mumble in disgust when you have to use IE on someone else's computer. Give it a try, you wont' regret it. But that's just my humble opinion. Its available for the window's, Linux and Mac OS X at Mozilla.org

Matt

Would love to hear your comments. Click on the comments link below and post. Open to all.


Edit:
I have found the coolest feature on the googlebar. Mind you I have never really used the Google Bar in IE so this might be old news to some. If you right click on the googlebar then go to "page info" you find something interesting, a Translate to English" option. Once you click on it will make an icon availble that will facilatate your translating needs. Have found a chance to use it but I'm sure I'll come accross one. See the picture below for more details.

Gmail

Ok I admit it, I originally signed up for this service because I heard you got a Gmail Beta account. Anyway I have been watching this whole Gmail invite thing play out. I have seen anything from begging to offers of children, virginity or votes, just for a mail account(a big one mind you). I'm not sure if its just because everyone else wants one ("Tickle me" Elmo anyone)or its just an elitist thing. On the upswing there is a site that is trying to distribute these accounts to the troops. So there is a positive swing of things to wanton greed. Oh well I might have to wait till the official release to get one. I'm not going to waste too much time on getting into the beta.

Matt