psp

this is kind of cool
i am writing this post from a psp. right now i am sitting in a hotel room typing this post. i am in morgantown, wv waiting to do an unloading job tommorow. typing on this thing takes forever. i will give my take on this psp sometime later.
may the force be with you.

Using Flock

Well i am now using Flock to try out some of its features. What I have found is both encouraging and depressing. First the positive.

Flock is the coolest thing I have used since I first used Firebird (early version of firefox). It has features that I wish had been part of Firefox from the beginning. To start off it has almost all of the positive attributes of Firefox. The only problems are small amounts of extensions and no themes. This is a problem that won't affect the browser for very long. Flock says on its website that it is bringing many of the Firefox extensions over to Flock. Forcast Fox and others are already available. They are also setting up a feature that will convert the extensions on the fly. No mention of the themes could be found, but since there is a theme tab on the website I assume they will have some in the near future. The browser only came out this month.

The best feature of the browser is the attempt that it makes to work better with the web 2.0 initiative. For a definition look to my last post. They do this in a myriad of ways. One tool i especially like is the bloggin tool. It allows you to write posts for most major blogs, including blogger and livejournal. This is useful because you don't have to log onto the blogger interface and can write the blog before you even connect to the internet (great for dialup users).

There is also a feature that allows the user to organize and upload photos.  You can upload to Flickr and Photobucket.  This is a good feature though not one that i would use that much.

Another imporant feature is the news feature.  It is a built in way of better organizing rss feeds.  I have not use this that much so I will have to examine it furthur.

More information about Flock will be posted on the next post.

Blogged with Flock

Web Browser War

I more than anyone can appreciate a well designed web browser. Growing up in the dark days when one could only choose between Internet Exploreer and Netscape, the current diversity of choices in the browser market is a welcome change.

Nowadays there are loads of browsers. A search on Wikipedia turned up dozens of different browsers. For example there is ManyOne, based on the Gecko engine on which Firefox is written. Avant Browser which is based on the Trident engine that was developed by Microsoft for Internet Explorer. Despite this huge amount of different web browsers there are three major browsers in use. They are Internet Explorer which comes with the Windows operating system, Firefox, and Opera. Despite the yells of the anti-microsoft crowd's, the new version of Internet Explorer, IE7, has solved most of the security and functionality problems that plagued the earlier versions. Microsoft had grown settled in their position at the head of the market and Firefox's assention caused them to rethink their strategy.

Though i am a fan of the Firefox browser, if Microsoft or anyother company makes a better product i will jump ship. In the fastpaced environment of the internet there is no room for undeserving favorites. I used Firefox from the beginning, first in 2003 when it was called Firebird and then when it was called phoenix. It seems like a long time ago.

I will write further when i have further researched this topic and it is an earlier hour. Extreme Tech has a comprehensive and fair article looking at these different browsers. Read it.

Another test that i find kind of revealing is one that shows how well the browser uses the internet standards that have been agreed upon. Many of these standards are not in use, but as the internet grows up they will eventually be put into use. Webstandards.com has a test to see if a browser can use all of these standards. This is the picture that the page is supposed to make.



This is how Firefox fared.



Not bad but not perfect. Now we look at the abysmal IE 6.0.

Yeah...no wonder half the world stopped using internet explorer. Extreme Tech's test found that Opera 8 performed better than even Firefox, rendering the page perfectly.

Another problem is that the only thing that still sets Firefox apart from the others is the extentions that have been made. Even in the upcoming change to Firefox 2, there are relatively few changes. A new browser call Flock, built on top of Firefox, is trying to give a more multimedia based approach to the internet. Flock is an attempt to bring about the standard of Web 2.0. I would love to explain this concept but I will let Wikipedia do it instead.

The term Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass participation (web-based social software). The concept may include blogs and wikis.


So I will test Flock and tell you what I think. Until Tomorrow. It is quite the time for bed. May the force be with you.

Halo Movie

I have been a fan of the bungie's Halo video game series since the day it came out. No other first person shooter has the level of play or has captured my imagination in quite the same way. So i have been eagerly awaiting word about the new Halo movie. Well there is some new news on the movie; both good and bad.

First the bad news.

It seems that production has been delayed and now the movie is going to come out some time in 2008. That sucks. Rumor also has it that alex garland's script, bought from him by Microsoft for $1 million may not be used. Alex Garland doesn't have that impressive a record on script writing so i really don't care. D. B. Weiss might take up the script instead. This could be bad for two reasons. One is that it will further delay the movie which already won't come out at the earliest until my junior year. Secondly, Weiss doesn't have any past writing according to IMDB, but he is writing the script for Ender's Game movie, which i didn't know was coming out, but will be awesome.

The good news is that the rumor is that Denzel Washington will play Master Chief. Oh yeah.

I thought about that for about half a second and I know that his voice is perfect for the part. Hopefully this is more than a rumor.

I can just see Master Chief sticking C4 up someone's butt.

Priceless.

And Michael Jackson is still executive producter.

Awesome.

My Computer Woes

Since I haven't posted anything of substance in months and nothing of real value in weeks, I think an explanation is in order. First off, I am running a dial up connection (AOL actually) that ties up the only phone line into my house. Thus it is important for me to get on and off of the Internet as fast as possible. For those who haven't had to deal with a dial up on a day to day basis, lets just say the internet becomes less than enjoyable.

I have also had computer problems. For those who have seen my ancient machine which until recently has run windows me understand what I am talking about. I recently had the brilliant idea to switch my computer over to Windows XP, an upgrade years in the making. I have developed an irrational attachment to ME operating system. I am seeing a doctor and am undergoing therapy for my condidtion.

Tangents aside I was trying to dual boot both XP and ME. I put XP on my old 4.3 Gb hard drive from my old Gateway 233 Mhz Pentium II (oh memories) and it worked for about a day. I had all my programs loaded, my background set up, my favorites transferred, everything. Then the next morning I turned my computer on. When it got to the part of the boot sequence where it usually asks which operating system would turn my fancy it instead said, “S.M.A.R.T. error on hard drive 0. Failure is imminent.” Well, so much for all the work i had just put into the computer the previous day. My consolation was that the failure of the hard disk wasn't my fault. The disk was nine years old and drives are supposed to last 3-5 years at the most.

After that particular snafu, I was still planning on putting Windows XP on my computer. So I passed the point of no return, transferred all my data onto CD's and formatted my 50 Gb hard drive that had Windows ME on it. I loaded Windows XP Professional on this hard drive and I once again had it set up just right (unfortunately all my Extensions, Themes, and Bookmarks on Firefox were gone. Guess what happened. I, in all of my wisdom, had taken my computer apart waiting for a new case from NewEgg.com (more on that fiasco later) and so my power supply, dvd-rom, and hard drives were sitting outside of my case. I jumped into my chair to use my running computer and .....blackout. The computer turned off and i had to wait a little while till the Power Supply would come back on. Then I found out that my hard drive was deader than the Via 133 chipset. The thing wouldn't even spin up. So that is how I killed two hard drives in four days.

I have ordered a brand new sata hard drive and a PCI add-on card so i can run it on my computer. This hard drive is 250 Gb and is the fastest 7,500 Rpm hard drive in this category. I wanted bigger, but this hard drive was $90 and anything larger would cost exponentially higher amounts of money. The new Seagate 750 Gb hard drive caught my eye, but the $400 price was a bit high. So there is a diamond in the rough in this little computer drama. The hard drive comes tomorrow.

I have another interesting computer story I wish to tell (if you are still reading Kurticus Maximus, I promise I am almost done). I bought a case from New Egg about a month ago. It was only $55 dollars and it was recommended by Maximum PC (excellent computer magazine...by the way) and it had comparable features of a case that was 2 or even 3x the price. Well i received it and, by the hand of Zeus, it was broken. The connectors of the front cover were cracked. So thinking that the price to ship the case back would be comparable to the $16 I originally payed to get it shipped, I went to UPS only slightly upset. The $16 dollars I payed originally was for three-day shipping. At UPS the cheapest and slowest option cost me $33. Well i bit my tongue and payed for the shipping that would allow my package to reach New Egg in a week and a half. When they finally got the package they told me that they were out of the cases so they would refund my money instead of sending a new one for free. Fine, I thought. But they only refunded the price of the case and not the price of shipping. So I lost on that little adventure a grand total of $49 dollars and I have nothing to show for it. Indirectly this also led to the death of my hard drive for if i would have received the case, the hard drive would have been safe and snug and in no danger of accidental destruction. And it seems that i am the only person who has had these problems with new egg, so i bought my hard drive from them to give them a second chance (and because they are the cheapest).

Fwoooooo......

It seems that i have written my longest post on the premise of why i haven't been writing on my blog. Isn't that funny.....

More on my life and where i was this fourth on my next post. I know everyone is dying to find out.....

And if you read please comment. I don't care if you tell me truthfully how much proof this post gives of my idiocy.....

And I am still planning on getting that case when New Egg gets a shipment. Yes....its that cool. External SATA anyone?

May the force be with you......

Oh...and by the way Intel's Conroe CPU's are going to be sick...that is all.