Mozilla’s Firefox Beta 2 is out (coincidentally the same time Windows Vista’s Beta version is as well). You can download it from here. I made a conscious decision not to upgrade or test it yet due to incompatibilities in some plugins that I currently use a lot. Wired has documented the improvements on the latest release.
Pieter Hintjens, the CEO of iMatix, has launched the Capsoff organization in a campaign urging hardware manufacturers to ditch the oft-abused and misused key on keyboards.
For those of you who don’t know this, the manufacture of a Keyboard is “governed” by a universal Standard called ISO 9995. What that means is that all keyboard manufacturers have to abide by the defined keyboard layout and specification of this standards document to sell competitively in the marketplace. For example, this standard is what defines where the “shift” button should be, or where the “ctrl” button is located.
Considering that, I have 3 reasons why “Death to Caps Lock” is a nonsensical idea: Continue Reading »
Happy Hump Day! I have been little under the weather lately with feeling tired and heavy headed all the time. With that, and my constant back ache, I feel really old and useless! I may have to research the web and pay a visit to my doctor to see what’s wrong with me.
Anyway, here are some interesting articles/ops to share:
- A Blog in a Book: You can now publish and sell your blog/photoblog on actual printed books for cheap with a new service called Blurb.com. They officially opened to the public this week - check them out!
- Jellyfish injections: A company called NanoCyte has been creating jellyfish injections claiming it would be used to treat skin complaints like acne, or deliver drugs like insulin to diabetics and to apply tattoos.
- Fighting fruit flies: Ralph Greenspan and Herman Dierick of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, have been breeding fruit flies and have found a way to alter their genes to make them aggressive and have fighting tendancies. Not sure why you would want that but be careful the next time you try to swat a fly! Yikes!
- “Live long and Prosper” - The new Star Trek Bible, a 500 page catalog of Trekkie memorabilia is out for auction this fall in Manhattan.
- Maurice Clarett, the disgraced college football star, was claimed to have been bankrolled by an Israeli Mobster after leaving Ohio State.
- Fact or Fiction? - A 14 year old blind boy with Daredevil super powers i.e. the ability to “see” with sound waves being bounced of object. The technique is called Echolocation and is what bats/ dolphins use to get around.
This is awesome! Ron Patrick, a PHD Mechanical Engineering major from Stanford created a jet engine and fitted it to his silver VW Beetle adding an extra 1350 hp to the car.
The car has two engines: the production gasoline engine in the front driving the front wheels and the jet engine in the back. The idea is that you drive around legally on the gasoline engine and when you want to have some fun, you spin up the jet and get on the burner (you can start the jet while driving along on the gasoline engine). The car was built because I wanted the wildest street-legal ride possible.
I have found yet another addiction, and that is playing a free “fantasy blog share market” game called Blogshares. It is a cleverly designed game that allows me to buy, sell and trade shares in all the available blogs out there on the internet just like a real life corporation. Within this game, you will start with B$500 in cash to trade and all blogs (including your own) are treated like tradable corporations with a total of 5000 initial stock, 4000 of which can be bought by the public and 1000 of which is “privately” owned by the actual blog owner. Blog corporations are categorized in “Industries”. Simply put, an Industry relates to the topic of your blog e.g. if you have a personal blog about life, it will be put into the “Personal Life” Industry. The game spiders every blog on the internet using Weblogs.com (a Verisign owned company that is a blog directory/ repository). So if you have been blogging long enough, chances are that your blog has probably been indexed by them and is “tradable” on the Blogshare Market.
Thanks to Paul Drago of Perfomancing, I finally have a good breakdown/ list of the common and popular Social Bookmarking sites available (I added the URL links): Continue Reading »
Thanks to Recommended, I had the opportunity to download and (try to) test the new Touchstone RSS (Alpha) software.
Alas, after installing it, upgrading to the .Net 2.0 version platform (as required and done automatically by the installer), it didn’t load up at all and my computer started acting really slow. Checking my Windows Task Manager, it seemed that the software was running two similar versions at the same time which was max’ing out my computer’s CPU usage. On rebooting my computer, my desktop would not even load up - I had to reboot into XP Safe mode to uninstall the software. Considering that I had more than the required computer specs, I was very dissapointed as I really wanted to test this solid looking program.
It seems like this Alpha version is pretty unstable and not ready for testing yet due to the fact that I didn’t even get pass the stage of actually loading up the software, yet alone trying to the test the functionality and features of it. Without a second computer to test it on, I would not want to risk installing it again until at lease the Beta stage.
I have to laugh at this one because I have done it a number of times. I blame the “quick fingered syndrome” and Microsoft Outlook’s “autocomplete” email address function. Good thing it wasn’t anything negative or bad. An example: Couple of years ago, I accidentally sent a romantic email to my sister that was actually meant for my wife. I quickly realized my mistake and send a “sorry and oops” follow up letter. How embarrassed I was when my sister read the “accidental” letter, emailed back and jokingly said “I love you too”! Good thing it wasn’t a raunchy romantic letter. Yikes!
Thank goodness that this ridiculous story can be put to rest. I was SO tired of seeing him plastered over almost every magazine/ newspaper, and hearing the nonsense of this guy’s deluded fixation. He had his “15 minutes of fame” and good riddance. I can’t believe that the authorities even believed him and took the matter this far. They should spend their time/money looking for the REAL killer.
BOULDER, Colo. - Prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Monday against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene despite his insistence that he was there when the 6-year-old girl was killed. (Source: USA Today)
Andre Agassi, the flamboyant ex-rebel turned elderly statesmen makes his final appearance (of his 20 year career) on the tennis court this next couple of weeks in the 2006 US Open Grand Slam Tennis Championship. Hopefully he can survive long enough to make a grand finale. Andre is one of the last out of the super brat pack and great American tennis hopes to retire i.e. the last of the talented American quartet consisting of (Agassi), Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Michael Chang. Also deemed the most natural and versatile player of his generation, he holds the current record for the only man in the modern era to win all 4 Grand Slam tennis titles (The Australian Open, The French Open, Wimbledon and The U.S Open) - a feat not even tennis greats like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Boris Becker and Roger Federer could do.
American tennis and tennis is general will lose it’s flavor without characters like him - an old school tennis player. The last great tennis rivalry of Sampras vs. Agassi, is a distant past… no one has actually matched/ lived up to the hype of their exciting rivalry of the 90s. He was the face of tennis for a long time, and will be greatly missed.
Thank you Andre for the interesting roller coaster career, the Hollywood appeal, the dramatic Grand Slam tennis wins, the great hype and for making tennis as popular as it is today. Thanks for also giving back so much to the sport and its community (with your Agassi Foundation for underprivileged kids and Agassi College Prep Academy).
We may not wait long to have another Agassi to star in particular sport, he and tennis legend wife (Steffi Graf) already have two children. I won’t bet against at least one of their kids having a natural sports talent - let me take an educated guess… in tennis?
