Depressing Comic

Internet Safety Tips

How to make Myspace.com suck a little bit less in Firefox (UPDATED FOR THE YEAR 2108)

Step 1: Update firefox

Step 2: Install the Grease monkey extension. Install Script Block.

Step 3: restart firefox

Step 4: Go to this page and browse to the myspace.com section. When on MySpace, you need to click on your script block icon and allow scripts from MySpace.com.

Step 5: Click on the first two extensions listed to install them. Now when you are clicking on other people's profiles, you are less likely to get infected by their virtual STDs (third party scripts). Now you would have to allow scripts for any page that uses Javascript to work properly. This could be annoying because you will find that more than 100 pages on the internet use the brand new javascript technology. Is the hassle of manually allowing scripts worth it? I think it is.



The End

Currently listening : Panopticon By Isis Release date:

Software Review

I was just updating and reconfiguring some software in the midst of some hard drive problems, so I thought I'd write a mini review of some of my favorite programs right now.

Ubuntu Linux is so awesome. I'm just running it off a live cd right now. I'm going to install it once I get my computer sorted out. It is the nicest Linux OS that I've tried. Very user friendly, which Is something I need right now.

Foobar 2000 is the best audio player available. If you customize it correctly, it can look really awesome. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to customize it. Especially since the community who makes the skins has horrible taste in graphic design and just to find something worth copying is impossible. If I could find the link to the customized layout that I'm using, I'll post it. Right now I have it set up to display album art and lyrics for the songs that it plays (Although I haven't got the lyrics plugin set up yet).

Crystal Player has replaced winamp as my favorite video player. I wish the playlist could be separated, but otherwise it is a pretty decent player. It has a lot of nice on screen displays to make it very easy to use a mouse to manage it. It can also be set up to display thumbnails of random parts of the video when browsing the playlist. I am haven't configured the hotkeys and programmed my remote for it yet, but I will shortly.

Synergy is the best program to use if you have more than one computer. It allows you to share a keyboard and mouse over the network so you can type, copy and paste seamlessly between two screens.

Song Bird is a audio player that is supposed to rival itunes. I am not a fan of itunes, but itunes beats this thing for now. It has really good ideas, though. It has a built in web browser and links to podcasts, allmusic and many other websites. I was able to listen to a podcast by Pen & Teller with just a couple clicks after installing it. This program may get better in the future, but it's a little bulky and clumsy right now.

That's all for now,

Niem

Currently listening : Dub Side of the Moon By Easy Star All Stars Release date: 18 February, 2003

Why, God Why?

Why is MySpace so popular? It's the ugliest social networking website available. It's loaded with spyware and ads. It runs very slow and is full of horrible music, videos, background art and font colors that hurt your eyes.

Why is it that friendster and orkut are so unpopular?

The only reason to use the bloody thing is because so many of my friends have been sucked into it's unholy vortex.

I love you, crazy fools. Please wear protection when surfing the internet. Run spyware and virus scans regularly. Back up your important information on CDs or DVDs (double back ups if necessary). If you let Firefox remember your passwords, at least set a master password. Encrypt files on your laptop because every 7 seconds, 1 billion laptops are stolen. And most importantly: Never teach kung fu to a zombie in hopes of making an unstoppable zombie army.

Much love and respect,
Niem

Portable MP3 Players

I am sick of MP3 players.

I held out for a long long time before buying an mp3 player because I was holding out for something that played Ogg formatted files and worked well. I finally cracked and bought a Rio Sport Forge from target on clearance. It doesn't play Ogg files, it has a slot for SD cards and it accepts AAA batteries. I use NiMH rechargeable batteries and it's very convenient to carry a fully charged spare battery with me.

The player was working great. The menu was clear and easy to navigate. I was really happy until it started to glitch out on me and had difficulty turning on. After doing some research, I found out that these types of problems were common because some problem with the memory chips. Also, Rio had just gone out of business so I could not really send it in for repairs.

After that, I ordered a replacement that I thought would be comparable. I bought a SanDisk e140 1gb player that also accepts SD cards for additional storage and AAA batteries.

After using it for a short period of time, I noticed a lot of issues with this MP3 player. It didn't play the songs in the order of the track number or even the artist name which was very upsetting. Also, the quality of the sound was really horrible, through the headphones and my car's stereo input are not the greatest.

I found that SanDisk had firmware for the device on their website that would allow tracks to be sorted by track number and artist name. Also, after tweaking with the equalizer settings, I was able to make the player sound acceptable.

Part of me wants to throw this thing at ebay and get a new MP3 player, but I can't find one that meets all of my needs. I would consider using an iPod if I didn't have to use the iTunes software.

I'll just stick with this thing for now.

Martian Sunset

I was reading through the Wikipedia article for Mars when I stumbled on this picture of a martian sunset.

Pokemon no longer causes cancer

Here's an interesting article from Joystiq.com:

It was almost one year ago when scientists had found a gene that causes cancer and named it POKEMON (POK Erythroid Myeloid ONtogenic). The name was indeed clever, but is no more. The reason? Pokemon USA, not wanting its "gotta catch 'em all!" card associated with anything that causes cancer, had threatened to sue Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where the gene had been discovered and the term coined.

The new name for the gene is the not-so-interesting (and unpronounceable) Zbtb7 - as it turns out, Sonic the Hedgehog is already taken.