Look carefully…

I shot this photo at Busch Gardens just a few days ago.  They do run multiple trains, but not this close together.  How did I do this?  Well, my Nikon D40x can take photos very quickly.  I took six in quick succession and then used Microsoft’s Live Photo Gallery to stitch them together.  This photo is the cropped results of that stitching.  The whole photo is  below.  Live Photo Gallery is a terrific tool to view, manage and do small edits to your  photo’s.  Of course, it does not replace a ‘true’ photo management/work flow tool, but for normal people-like me-it is sufficient.

How to Stitch

Of course, the first thing you’ll need would be photos.  Select your photos by hovering over the photo and  clicking in the box just above the photo to place a check there. Once you have all of the photos selected, click MAKE, then select Create Panoramic Photo.  Depending on how many photos you selected, and the complexity of the stitch, it could take a few minutes to compose the new composite photo.  If the photos were taken close together, the results can be quite impressive. Try experimenting.  You can stitch vertically or horizontally or, as in the Apollo’s Chariot, a combination of both.  Unexpected things can be the result.  The only limitation is … well, there isn’t one.

Live Photo Gallery is free and available for Windows XP or Vista and you can get it here.

Been meaning to post a couple of photos from Busch Gardens, but it has slipped my mind.  Below are a few photos and I plan to upload more to flickr shortly.  The first photo is of the Apollo’s Chariot rollercoaster. The second is the Loch Ness rollercoaster as it comes down the first hill. Then you see the boat escaping Pompeii and making a big splash to boot.  Finally, there’s the Alpengeist model-because I could not photograph the whole thing in one shot. Cool little toy, wish it were for sale.

Do they realize they are obsolete?  Seriously.  The writer, a hack named Randall Stross, claims that Windows is built on an 'ancient frame.'  He goes on to deride Microsoft's desire to hold on to legacy compatibility and that they should follow Apple's decision to screw it's customers in 2001 by introducing OS X.  Can you imagine the outcry if Microsoft did that?  Look at what happened with Vista. Vista, which, by the way, is built from the same code base as Windows 2000, hardly an ancient frame.  Mature, yes, ancient, no.  And don't try to trace it back to NT 3.  The code today bares some resemblence but is sufficiently removed.  Once could argue that OS X is also an 'ancient frame' since it's roots go back to the late 1980's when Next appropriated it's core from BSD.  But, I digress. 

Mr. Stross quotes an infamous Gartner Group 'report' about Windows imploding as proof that Microsoft needs to rewrite Windows from the ground up and forego legacy support.  What he fails to realize is that that is not feasible or practical for Microsoft.  The problem is that Microsoft's success has dictated what it can do in the area of Windows backward compatibility.  That Windows works as well as it does on the vast multitude of hardware speaks volumes of the quality of work coming out of Redmond and of the stability of the operating system.

The problems some people experienced with Vista stemmed, mosly, from inadequate driver support or total lack of support by peripheral manufacturers, some of whom did not believe that Microsoft would even release Vista when they did.  Vista's underpinnings had nothing to do with manufacturers dragging their collective feet.

Another thing that Stross fails to point out-or, more likely, does not know, is that much of the kernel and driver code has been re-written out of necessity.  The video subsystem is nothing like it was in XP, which, if I recall, was different than Windows 2000.  That is why XP video drivers do not work with Vista. Vista's video drivers no longer reside in ring 0, making the whole system more stable.  The video driver can now fail with out bringing the system down.

It's a shame that writers like Stross perpetuate misleading stories like this-which seems more like he expounding the garbage from Gartner more than coming up with something more legitimate on his own.

Link to NY Times article

Whew! I thought I would be stuck using the Fox in order to use it’s super cool add-on, PicLens.  Good news…it is available for Internet Explorer as well.  It had not occurred to me that add-ons are also out for IE like they are for the Fox.  I knew IE had add-ons, but I never think to look for them.  I am going do so and will write about what I find.  In the mean time, go here for PicLens.

When Vista was released, there was a half hearted attempt to sell it’s ‘basic’ edition to pc makers for machines that did not quite cut the mustard graphically, memory wise or processor wise.  These tended to be lower end machines and mostly powered by Intel chipset—older chipset's that were either being discontinued or on the verge of being discontinued like the 915 graphics chipset.  Intel, according to papers released via a court battle, apparently convinced Microsoft to change it’s minimum requirements so Intel could sell more of these older chipset's.  The program was called ‘Vista Capable’ and meant that the machine shipped with Windows XP and had a coupon good for a copy of Windows Vista Basic and, in a few cases, Windows Home Premium.  Microsoft was sued over this program. Through the course of the discovery phase, many emails were made public that implied that middle and upper level Microsoft employees/management were burned themselves by this program.  The problem was that these chipset's were either inadequate or barely adequate for Aero under Home Premium (Basic does not do all of the Aero effects.)  Essentially, Microsoft went out on a limb to help Intel sell more chips and up it’s bottom line.  In the process, they alienate customers, release a product that did not have adequate support at launch from device makers who were slow to release drivers for devices-old or new-get sued, and, worse, damage relationships with certain partners like AMD/ATI who had taken the time to write Vista drivers for some of their product line.  Today, the device driver picture is much better since the penetration of Vista is also better.

Fast forward a year and Intel drives a golden spike right through Microsoft’s heart by announcing that the company is not going to upgrade it’s 80,000+ desktops to Vista.  That’s gotta really sting at Microsoft.  Here they go out on a limb to help out Intel and Intel repays them this way.  Pretty sad.  I have to wonder how much of the decision was influenced by Apple.  I’m not blaming Apple, but I do wonder if there was any influence there, especially given Apple and Intel’s new love for each other.

I think Microsoft will think twice about doing something like this again.  I have to wonder if maybe they will do something for AMD next time.  Maybe make Windows run better on AMD chips…probably not, but it will be interesting to see how they handle Intel going forward.

Has browsing some sites seem to get slow or seem slower when in Vista?  Internet Explorer crashing when you go to certain sites?  It may not be your imagination.  Vista has a feature called ‘receive window auto tuning’ that is supposed to help optimize how Vista gets data from the network.  Unfortunately, it does not seem to be compatible with many network cards, routers or even some web sites.  In some cases, it can crash.  Fortunately, it is easily disabled.

The easiest way to turn off auto-tuning is to open a command prompt as an Administrator (to do so, type "cmd" into the Start box, right-click on the command prompt and select "Run as Administrator”), then enter the following line:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

Turning it off should not have any adverse consequences. You can turn it back on with:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal

To read more about this, go here.

Yes, that’s right.  There are a couple of virus/trojans out in the wild that are targeting Mac OS X.  I’m not going into details, you can find them here, but suffice it to say that they require human action in order to work.  Just like 99% of Windows virus/trojans/etc.  You know, the same thing that many Mac/Linux fans just eat up when they hit Windows.  It’s a huge deal, and Windows users are stupid for using the operating system.  Now we have it hitting the Mac OS and the Mac fans are, naturally, downplaying.  “Well you gotta do this in order to get it.  We are safe.”  Huh?  On Windows, they’d be blasting it to death.  On Mac, it’s nothing.  While it is true that you have have do something like downloading a file to get attacked, they should be treating this much more seriously than they are. 

The intent of this post is not to point and laugh or to reciprocate for once (though it is tempting.)  The intent is really to point out the Mac OS X is not any more safe than Windows.  People can be tricked, no matter what kind of computer they use.  Without proper safeguards and just plain common sense, ANYONE is fair game for attack.  The years of false security will one day, and I suspect very soon, really bite Mac users.  Vista, like it or not, is probably more secure, at the moment, than OS X simply because of the UAC. Even so, if you ignore the warning and allow something to run that you do not know anything about, even UAC won’t save you. 

Due diligence will go a long way.

Mentioned in the post:

Mac Security issue details

This item featured in Windows 2 Apples Video News. Click to go to the Video News Podcast homepage.

So, in a moment of weakness, I bought a new Sony Playstation 2.  For years, we’ve been a Nintendo home.  We’ve had every Nintendo console since the original except for the Super Nintendo.  Since we have a child, we’ve been real careful about the material that comes into the house, including games.  Since Nintendo has always been a family friendly console maker and games producer, I’ve always avoided the other consoles.  Lately, I’ve been wanting an XBOX—not the new-ish 360, but the original. They are cheap ($59 used, at Gamestop) and cheap games (ninety-nine cents to under ten bucks) plus a huge hacker scene, I figured it would be a good buy for myself, not my child.  (My wife says she has two children.)  However, I realized that new games are still being made for the PS2, which is a cheap console itself: $129 new, anywhere.  Since I am a NASCAR fan, and the new NASCAR game is NOT available for the Wii, but it is available on the PS2, I bought the console and the game.  A trip to Gamestop yielded five more games for under twenty dollars, including a Star Trek game, another NASCAR game and a Splinter Cell game.  I picked up Them Park Roller Coaster for my son.  I started playing the NASCAR 09 game and was amazed at how fresh the console still seems.  I’ve had PS1 for years, but we don’t play it much since the graphics are just horrible and it is not overly suitable for kids.  Yes, I know that contradicts what I said earlier, but the PS1 was a gift from my Dad.  I have the bolt on screen for it as well. I’ve used it more as a portable monitor/cd player than to play games.  Back to the PS2.  This little (and it is small) device is much better than I ever gave Sony credit for making.  I can fully understand why they sold millions of them.  I now find myself wondering if the PS3 is as bad as it has been portrayed…kind of like Vista.  I love Vista.  Maybe I would PS3 as well.  It is still way too much money, so I won’t find out until PS4 comes out and PS3 is $99.  My concern now is that I will go overboard with buying games.  At just a couple of dollars each, it could be very easy to lay down thirty, forty or even fifty dollars buying those ‘cheap’ games.  I’m still a Nintendo fan boy, but I’m expanding my horizons.

Ok, have people gotten completely ignorant with the advent of the Internet?  I’m constantly getting mail, instant messages (when I run Messenger, which is not very often these days) forum postings, etc. just full of poor spelling and grammar.  The grammar part I can overlook since it has become so bastardized in everyday life but the spelling just drives me nuts.  What the hell is ‘UR’? Here in Richmond, Virginia, that means ‘University of Richmond’ and that’s what I think of when I see it.  In reality, it’s “your”. How freaking ignorant is that?  What the hell is wrong with adding the other two letters and looking intelligent?  I generally stop reading at the first ‘UR’ I see.  If you are too darn lazy to spell it out, then you probably do not have anything worth reading.  Texting has made people lazy and, it seems, dumber.  Now, don’t get me wrong. We all make spelling mistakes from time to time.  I sure do.  I have an issue with reversing certain letters.  When I spot them, I correct them.  And thank goodness for spell check.  BUT….intentional misspelling is just stupid and really makes the person doing so look really ignorant. 

End rant.

Super Paper Mario Review

By Chase

I will rate this game on a scale of 1-8, for there are 8 Pure Hearts.

Story: 7
The story in Super Paper Mario is bizarre. An odd evil "wizard" named Count Bleck wants to destroy all worlds. So he uses the Chaos Heart and forces Peach and Bowser to get married. Then he kidnaps Luigi and all of Bowser's minions. I won't go farther than that. Let's just say it's the best plot in all three Paper Marios.

Controls: 8
Simple controls, of course. 2 is to jump, 1 is to use your Pixl's power, the Pad or whatever is used to move. The + button lets you look at your stats, change Pixls, change heroes, use items, and more. Very simple and easy to use.

Graphics: 8
I was quite impressed with the graphics in this Paper Mario. They did great with the switching to 3D aspect. They probably used the same sprites for the returning characters that they used in PM2. Either way, the graphics are great.

Gameplay: 8
Perfect gameplay. This is, unlike the other two Paper Marios, a side-scroller game, but with RPG elements, such as Heart Points. You attack
enemies in the field instead of in turn-based battles. A cool feature is that you can switch to 3D graphics, but when your 3D meter runs out, you lose 1 HP and it refills itself. Of course, the game has traditional Paper Mario puzzles.

Characters: 7
There are tons of characters. Mario plus three others are the heroes. Count Bleck, Nastasia, O'Chunks, Mimi, and Dimentio are the main villains. Merlon and Tippi both are helpful throughout the game. Plus you have the Pixls: Thoreau, Boomer, Slim, Cudge, Carrie, Fleep, Dottie, and I think I'm missing one more. There's also two secret Pixls you can get. There is one boss that stood out for me: Francis from Chapter 3. He is hi-technicaaaal! (Not really.) So yeah, SPM is full of great characters.

Bosses: 8
The bosses are just so cool that I had to throw in a rating for them. You battle all the bosses in interesting ways. For example, when fighting
Fracktail, you must throw little Cataquacks at Fracktail's antenna to damage him. Francis the geek is just too cool. He's got comic books and action figures in his castle. He loves a show called "The Grodus Chronicles". You can't forget him. OF course, there are tons of bosses, and like I said, you fight them all in weird ways.

Items: 5
There are quite a few items, but they're EXPENSIVE! A Shroom Shake, which restores 10 HP, costs about 30 coins! Gosh... Anyway, Mushrooms are found in levels instead of shops. In the shops, they're replaced with Shroom Shakes. And of course, Saffron and Dyllis make great recipes! However, the score is lowered for two reasons: the items are expensive in shops, and there aren't many normal items. So yeah...

Difficulty: 7
SPM can get very annoying at times. *cough*CountBleck'sCastle*cough* Of course, the game gets harder the further  you get. But two really annoying things are finding the Heart Pillars, and collecting Catch Cards (more on that next). Some of the enemies can get annoying too, like Francis when you fight him. He turns invisible and reappears randomly, so you could ram into him. Anyway, this is easier than PM2 (which I finally beat), but harder than PM1.

Catch Cards: 7
Card collecting is a fun sidequest. There are 256 cards in the game. They are always hidden well, so use all your skills to find them. Try to collect them all!

Fun Factor!: 7
Really fun game, I especially like the Flipside arcade. Anyway, you'll be enjoying it for a long time!

Replayability: 6
SPM is still fun to replay, but gets old after a while, especially if you beat it and keep playing new files. Then there's no fun ‘cause you know all the secrets!

Overall: 7
Super Paper Mario is a great game, you should definitely buy it if you have a Wii! If not, see if a friend has it and play it!

…was something called Tiny Basic.  In a previous posting, I reminisced about my more youthful days after reading an issue of Doctor Dobbs’ Journal.  Well, while searching for some code today, I came across Tom Pitman’s Itty Bitty Computer web page.  Tom Pittman, for those of you who do not know, was responsible for a 6800 version of Tiny Basic.  He sold his interpreter for five dollars back in the day (circa 1976 or so.)  He has a Tiny Basic page on his site and has graciously posted the source code for the interpreter.  I am still trying to unravel it’s mystery. 

SOME HISTORY

Tiny Basic was initial object of desire and pet project of Dr. Dobbs’ Journal.  Tiny Basic was intended to be a small subset of the Basic language…a language that was deemed easy to learn and use.  By making these compact versions of the language available for free or very cheap to computer hobbyists, the whole notion of computers for the ‘everyday person’ could be within reached.  Tiny Basic typically fit in 2k or 4k ROMs, which were expensive back then.  Home computers typically had less then 8k of RAM. Yes, 8k-that’s 8,192 bytes. No MEGA or GIGA here. It was amazing, though, what could be done in such confined quarters.  One of my first exposures to ‘artificial intelligence’ was a program called ‘Eliza’ and it the Basic interpreter all fit in 8k of ram. 

There were many flavors of Tiny Basic, including Mr. Pittman’s.  I learned at least four, maybe more.  NIBL for the SC/MP, 2650 Tiny Basic (which, I think, maybe have been Mr. Pittman’s version, but compiled for that processor. The syntax and feature set were the same), something called MINOL written by Erik Mueller and, finally, TRS-80 Level I Basic (which was really a souped up Tiny Basic.) 

Tiny Basic was also chosen for many embedded controller applications.  The SC/MP, for example, was an industrial controller chip that gained some popularity as a home computer chip.  It could be had with NIBL in on-chip ROM.  Intel sold the 8048 chip with a Basic on chip.  Intel also had the 8051 with on-chip Basic.  Even today, you can still buy CPU’s with on-chip Tiny Basic.  Tiny Basic is perfect for many controller type applications that do not require blazing speed. Things like controlling valves, data collection, etc. are perfect and Tiny Basic is easy to learn.

By 1980, many home computers had hit the market and most, if not all, came with some flavor of Basic from Microsoft and the heyday of Tiny Basic was pretty much over, even though some of the machines were running a superset of Tiny Basic but not a full fledged Basic.  Examples would be Apple Integer Basic, TRS 80 Level I Basic and the Basic that ran on the Bally Home Video game.

Even though the language was limited and the syntax liberties taken by it’s developers were questionable, it was good enough to learn the basics (no pun intended) of programming.  It got me excited and ignited a passion that I still have today.  I could make the computer do what I wanted.  I could make my own games.  How cool is that?

Links:

• Tom Pittman’s Tiny Basic Page
• Tom Pittman article in DDJ, 2006
• Chipmunk Tiny Basic – there is a version of chipmunk basic for the Palm-cBasPad and HotPaw Basic (A paid version)
• Wikipdedia entry
• Classic Basic Programs – contains source code which can work with Chipmunk (other flavors with mods)
• uBasic a ‘modern’ implementation of Tiny Basic
• Interesting article about porting a Tiny Basic game (star trek) to C
• The Classic Star Trek Game, in many flavors including tiny
• Article about SC/MP and NIBL

This past weekend, we lost a comic genius and a racing hero.  George Carlin passed away Sunday at the age of 71 due to a heart attack.  Carlin, famous for his seven words you cannot say on television, was an award winning comic who, during the seventies, defined a generation of stand up comedians.  His takes on pop culture are classic.

Scott Kalitta was a two time Top Fuel Champion died in a fiery crash during the final round of qualifying on Saturday.  His Solara dragster burst into flames and hit a concrete wall at nearly 300 mph.   Kalitta was 46 and is survived by two sons and his wife. 

Our condolences to the families of both men.  We’ll miss them both.

One of the better reasons to bother invoking the Firefox browser is the plethora of add ons available.  There are some really nice add ons that do things like give you your local weather, show tab previews like Vista’s task bar previews and more.  While watching twitlive.tv, I heard Leo Laporte raving about this PicLens plug in.  I downloaded the plug in and installed it.  Wow.  I was blown away.  The plug in finds photos and videos embedded on a page. It also appears to spider through linked pages and returns photos and videos it finds.  The results are presented in a video wall like grid.  It shows the requisite reflections and whichever image that the mouse is hovering over will expand. If it is a video, the video starts playing.  Captions also display.  As you navigate the result set, the images will curve slightly, similar to Picasa’s timeline.  The animation is very fluid and smooth.  The plug in works with many popular sites like Flickr and YouTube.  It is free and can be downloaded here.

Also from CoolIris is another really cool plug in called Previews. What this does is give you a pop up window that contains the web page that the link you’ve previewed goes to.  Previews puts an icon next to each link as you hover over them.  Clicking on the icon will then pop up the window containing the web page.  You can then open the page in a tab, email it, view a slide show of images from the page and more.  This is a very clever plug in as well and is available at the Cooliris web site.

These two plug ins alone are almost enough to make me want to use Firefox 3 more.

Samuel F.B. Morse patented the first practical method of mass communication in 1840.  Morse code, a system dots and dashes that represent numbers and letters, was to become the defacto standard in electrical communication.  From 1840 through today, telegraph/telephone lines sprang up all over the planet. Telegraph, utilizing the Morse code, became the mechanism of mass communication during the nineteenth century.  Most ‘civilized’ areas were connected, but there was a huge missing link:  America and Europe.  In 1857, the first attempt at a trans-Atlantic cable was made.  It failed.  Two additional attempts in 1857 and 1858 were made, with the last in 1858 somewhat successful.  That last attempt resulted in a successful connection between North America and Europe.  The Queen of England exchanged messages with the President of the United States.  The cable could transmit one character every two minutes.  It took nearly seventeen hours to transmit an entire message.  Not exactly dial up speed, but much faster than crossing the Atlantic by ship.  Much praise was given.  Many messages were traded and one message canceling the movement of British troops in Canada actually resulted in a huge savings to the Crown.  However, the cable ceased functioning nearly a month later.  There was a tremendous outcry and many even considered it a hoax. Many things led to the failure including poor materials and a high voltage sent through the wire.  The cable, while it was working, offered up some unusual technology.  The marine galvanometer was a table top device used to receive the messages.  It used an oil lamp to reflect the incoming messages using magnets and mirrors to reflect the light on a screen either to the left or right of a dot. Two operators were needed: one to call out the letters and another to record them.  This method enhanced the speed with which the messages were received.

It took several years before another attempt was made at a trans-Atlantic cable was made.  In 1865, another attempt was made but the cable broke. In 1866, a second attempt was made, but this time, a new cable was to be laid and the broken cable was to be fixed and completed.  It was successful.  Two-way communication was successful and this time it lasted for longer than a month.  Accolades were many and the cable did, indeed, change the way governments and business worked.  Prior to the cable, the State Department just shut down for the weekend.  After the cable, it never closed. There was always someone on duty to receive messages over the cable.  Business was able to quickly get news from across the pond.  It was the internet of the nineteenth century.

As with our early internet, the cables of the nineteenth century were slow and costly. The cost of sending messages was, at first, about ten dollars a word.  As more cables were laid and technology got better, the cost dropped to just pennies per word.  Things like duplexing, multiplexing and recording devices all increased capacity, speed and, most important, profitability.  Technology also resulted in longer life of the cables.  The 1873 cable was still in use in 1923 and projected to work for another 40 years. 

The importance of the cables was diminshed with the advent of radio and satellites.  But nothing can take away from what was a remarkable achievement.  The telegraph (and, later, the telephone) and trans-Atlantic cable were the internet of the Victorian era.

References:

• American Heritage
• Wikipedia

Ok, I’m tired of SproutCore already.  I’ve listened to four podcasts now, mostly Mac oriented, that are calling this JAVASCRIPT framework a Flash and Silverlight killer.  Umm…no.  The podcasters, for the most part, are beside themselves talking about this thing.  They are touting the fact that it is ‘open.’  Flash and Silverlight plug ins aside, there have been MANY Javascript ‘frameworks’ floating around for years. Some of them good, some not so good.  But, no matter, they are all still just Javascript.  Having worked with a few of them in my professional life, I can honestly say that none of them justify the title of ‘flash killer.’  This is just more Apple hype.  It just blows my mind that these people are going on and on about this.  And the fact they are even putting this thing in the same category as Flash or Silverlight is just plain ridiculous.  Another very important thing that none of them are pointing out is that the applications-if you can call them that-still require the browser whereas Silverlight and Flash CAN run outside of the browser.  The downside to Silverlight and Flash is that they are still ‘closed’ environments and require more tools to create.  That does not matter to me and many others like me. 

The first thing that struck me, upon glancing at the SproutCore web site was that you had to issue a COMMAND LINE just to get the framework.  Further reading revealed more command line crap.  Revolutionary, no.  I’m going to have to go back and re-read the site and documentation.  I must have missed something.  I just don’t think this is the holy grail of ‘cloud’ computing.  I don’t get the excitement.  Have these Apple people not seen the various toolboxes, frameworks, toolkits or whatever?  There is some pretty clever browser apps that do not use Silverlight or Flash and look more like a real application?  I just don’t get it.

With all the ‘excitement’ over Firefox 3 being released this week, I thought I’d highlight some browser news.

• Firefox 3 security flaw: apparently, there is a code execution flaw that could lead to a machine takeover just by going to a craftily prepared website.  Of course, the folks over at Mozilla have played it down by saying the risk is minimal-and, it probably is.  Most of these types of threats usually are minimal and it really depends on WHAT’s flawed:  if it is a WIndows related flaw, BIG press; Apple related, some press and major downplay; Mozilla gets a couple of minor mentions like this one which I nearly missed.  This flaw affects Firefox 2 and 3.
• Apple has patched the Safari (for Windows) ‘carpet bombing’ flaw.  After saying, for weeks now, that is was not a security issue, Apple released Safari v3.1.2 for Windows.  The patch just warns users about saving files to the desktop (which has always annoyed me.  Why the heck do I want to clutter my desktop with downloads? STOP!) There are three other flaws that this patch also fixes.  Read about it here.
• Microsoft issues patch for Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7.  This patch fixes an undisclosed vulnerability and one disclosed vulnerability.  The undisclosed vulnerability could allow remote code execution if the user views a specially crafted web page with Internet Explorer.  Sound familiar?  You can read all of the juicy details here.

Well, maybe it is.  I’ve been playing with the browser since the release candidate became available.  I’ve been underwhelmed and impressed at the same time.  Let me explain.  I rarely ever ran Firefox at home since going to Vista.  FF2’s memory leak was big enough to drive the Titanic through and just seemed worse under Vista.  Plus, Internet Explorer 7’s sandbox mode in Vista made me feel better about IE and less inclined to run other browsers, though I do use Safari under Vista from time to time, just because. 

The Mozilla people seemed to have fixed the memory leak so it runs much better, for longer periods of time and does not make the computer feel sluggish, like FF2 would often do.  The added niceties such as the color coding in the address bar (like IE 8 will do) and the improved look and feel (though not all that dramatic from FF2) all make FF3 SEEM better.  BUT.  BUT stability seems to be lacking.  Since upgrading to the ‘gold’ version, I’ve it crash and burn many times now, often just by opening a web page. Twice, it crashed just while trying to start the browser.  Each time it very nicely asks if I wish to restore the last session.  I’ve learned to say no since the last session killed it to begin with.  I can go into the history and attempt to figure out which site killed it.  So far, the only thing I’ve determined is that there is no pattern other than having more than two tabs open.  Sites open great by themselves.  That, though, kinda kills the point behind tabbed browsing, which I’ve grown to really like-thanks Opera! 

I think my biggest complaint with the upgrade so far is the fact that it seemed to hijack my default browser setting.  Internet Explorer is ALWAYS my default browser and I’ve to find a browser that makes me want to change that.  Yet, today I find that Firefox 3 has become my default browser.  I did not do that.  The only thing I can think of, is that it was checked in setup and I simply missed it.  You DO NOT change my settings! It’s my bloody computer, darn it.

I find myself asking the question ‘So what?’ Why is Firefox any better and is this a big deal?  I don’t think so.  It certainly does not appear to be more stable than IE or even Safari (which has not really caused any problems since Apple’s last update.)  It does not appear be any safer, given the revelation of a flaw which could lead to the takeover of your PC. Hmm…where have I heard that?  The impressive extras are not necessarily enough to sway me either.  FF3 is an improvement, but hardly a watershed moment in the annals of computing.

Overall, browsing does not seem all that faster, no matter what browser I am using.  I’ll use FF3, just as I’ll use IE 7 or 8 and Safari (I’m still not sure why I even bother with Safari as it offers absolutely no advantage over the other three (don’t forget Opera) browsers other than it is different) but I cannot say it is better than IE.  Just something different.  If you liked previous flavors of FF, then you will adore this one. If, however, you are browser neutral or like one of the other browsers, there is nothing really that exciting here to sway you.  At least, nothing that convinced me that I should make it my default browser BY CHOICE.

That’s right, iPhone now ‘runs’ XP.  Well, sort of.  Citrix demonstrated it’s thin client desktop software ‘XenDesktop’. The software allows devices access to Windows sessions running on a Citrix server.  So, since everyone is wearing rose-colored glasses when it comes to XP, I’m taking the huge leap in saying it is the iPhone’s OS of choice.  That’s a bit snarky, eh?  ;-)

Read more and view pictures here.

• Caterpillar is moving to the #31 team for 2009.  Richard Childress Racing and Caterpillar announced that beginning in 2009, Caterpillar will be primary sponsor for the #31 car driven by Jeff Burton.  Caterpillar will replace AT&T who must vacate NASCAR’s top tier circuit at the end of the 2008 season.  AT&T sued NASCAR last year to allow the name to change from Cingular to AT&T.  Because Sprint is the series title sponsor, they have an exclusive agreement with NASCAR to be sole telecommunication sponsor. However, because Cingular and Alltel were already sponsors prior to Sprint becoming series sponsor, they were grandfathered  in.  The contract with NASCAR stated that the two sponsor’s could not change the name.  When AT&T and Cingular merged, AT&T did away with the the Cingular name and then sued to have AT&T put on the car.  An agreement was reached whereby the AT&T name and logo went on the car, but they could only do so until the end of the 2008 season.  Good news for Childress and Burton that Caterpillar is on board.
• Joey Logano won his first Nationwide series race in only his third start in that series. Logano JUST turned 18 years old.  An amazing kid. Watch for Logano and Brad Kesolowski to be THE two up and coming stars in the sport.
• NASCAR admitted that they made a scoring mistake by placing the #83 car of Brian Vickers behind the #8 of Mark Martin when that last caution came out in Sunday’s race.  It is important because that would have put Vickers in a position where he could have, potentially, passed Kasey Kahn AND Earnhardt to score his first Cup win.  Vickers finished fourth, behind Martin.  While the outcome is not what Vickers wanted, he did, nonetheless, have an outstanding run. He and his teammate have come a long way and are very close to winning a race. 
• Tony Stewart to help out victims of the flooding in his hometown of Columbus, Indiana.  Stewart, who has a heart bigger than his temper, said that he could not ever go home again without doing everything he could to help his hometown.  Stewart is one of NASCAR’s most generous drivers.  He has already given quite a bit of time and millions of dollars to the Victory Junction camps and other charities.  Whenever he is near Victory Junction camp in North Carolina, he makes a visit there.  His actions have directly affect me, personally, since my son is one of the children who were fortunate enough to get to go to the camp.  The camp is for children with conditions that preclude them going to ‘normal’ camps or participating in many activities that most would take for granted.  The citizens of Columbus, IN are very fortunate to have a hometown hero like Tony Stewart.  He will put 110% into his efforts to help out his hometown.

This Sunday, June 22, the Science Channel is running an all day marathon of COSMOS.  This is the breakout series, produced for PBS in the 1970’s, by Carl Sagan.  The show, based on his book of the same name, makes many hard to understand science concepts understandable. Mr. Sagan had a natural way of explaining things in terms that anyone could understand.  This show, and Sagan himself, lit a fire in me that had only been smoldering.  When I watched that show-and I did not miss one episode-I was amazed at I was learning.  Things like Einstein’s theory of relativity, traveling faster than light and other esoteric things were suddenly understandable. It made me want to learn more.  I soaked up as much as I could.  If the Internet had been around then, I’d have never gotten off. I was really sad to see the series end.  I faithfully followed Carl Sagan’s television appearances after that.  I stayed up to watch him on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  I watched the occasional special on PBS or what ever channel that featured him.  I bought his books when I had money.  About the only thing I never bought was the video tape collection that was sold in the eighties.  Fortunately, my father had recorded most of the show, so when I visited my Dad (I did not live with him most of my childhood) I watched those tapes. Unfortunately, they were lost in fire at his house in the early nineties.  When I found the show again on the Science channel, I set the DVR up to record them. For what ever reason, they stopped running the show midway through, as best as I could tell.  Now, they are running it one more time, they say. They are adding ‘for the last time.’ I’m guessing the show is going somewhere else or is being mothballed.  I have to get this show.  The special effects were redone and the show looks as good as new.  I encourage everyone to give it another viewing.  It is a remarkable achievement from a remarkable person.  Carl Sagan’s death was loss for all of us.

COSMOS Marathon

Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 10am on the Science Channel