1. Adblock – I do not consider Adblock an extension anymore. I feel that this is an essential part of the browser. Adblock is the reason why I refuse to use any other browser ever. This extension allows me to enjoy the web the way it should be – clean, and without blinking banners, and loud annoying flash ads. If you are not using Adblock, you are missing out.
2. Session Saver – this must be one of the most useful extensions of all times (except for the king of extensions – Adblock of course). It will save your browsing session, and restore it next time you open your browser. Have you ever closed the browser window by mistake, loosing your long blog post or comment? Have you ever lost a link to a really cool website because of a sudden crash? If you did, then this is an extension for you. I absolutely love this extension, and it made my life so much easier – I can simply close the browser whenever I want and have all my tabs restored for me, from a cashed version – complete with scrolling, and data entered into text forms. This one is a must-have.
3. Spellbound – spellbound is a spell checker for online text forms. It allows you to check and correct text in virtually any web form. I can’t spell to save my life, so this extension comes extremely handy when I post comments to other people’s blogs, or use online forms that do not have a built in spell-checker. I use it even on sites that provide spell-checking features – because my SpellBound is trained to my style, and contains a custom dictionary of geeky words that I use on daily basis.
4. del.icio.us – as the name suggests this extension allows you to post del.icio.us bookmarks with a click of a button. The dialog box provided by this extension, replicates all the functionality of you get when using the bookmarklet.
5. Gmail Manager – the ultimate Gmail extension. Unlike some other extensions that I tried, this on just works. It always shows the updated state of your inbox, and never “gets stuck” on some rogue email. In addition, it allows you to manage multiple accounts.
6. Greasemonkey – Greasemonkey is one of these extensions that you either don’t care about, or absolutely love. I would die without Greasemonkey. I mainly use it to streamline adding technorati tags to my blogger posts. Until Blogger adds folksonomy tagging, I use a Greasemonkey script to add that feature to my Create Post pages :)

These are my favorites. Few others that do warrant a honorable mention are ImageZoom, Disable Targets for Downloads and Timestamp.

First things first – Medow’s strip dance thing scene was definitely to short. Was that a flashback scene or was this new? The whole beginning sequence was kinda funky, mix so I don’t know anymore. I don’t remember seeing it before though, and I can’t google up anything at this moment so I guess this is new. And I want more.

Could someone please explain to me the whole Burrough’s Western Lands quote? It went totally over my head the first time around (mostly due to distracting Jamie-Lynn DiScala’s sexy dancing thing). Burroug’s piece is talking about the 7 souls in Egyptian mythology. Here is the actual text:

The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls.

Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren the Secret name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that’s where Ren came in.

Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power. Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.

Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she or it is third man out…depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense – but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to Heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the land of the dead.

Number four is Ba, the Heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk’s body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

Number five is Ka, the double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the Western Lands.

Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives.

Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.

– William Burroughs, The Western Lands

I’m to tired to actually do some proper analysis but I bet this is supposed to be some really deep shit right there. The die-hard Soprano fans should get cracking on deciphering the symbolism here.

I’m guessing this is about Tony’s life falling apart and him slowly dying inside, and getting more fucked up (and thus loosing his souls) or something like that. Although he seemed to really be doing well recently… Maybe this is supposed to be foreshadowing, or whatnot? I don’t know. I’ll leave it to the true soprano-heads to figure this one out.

I know one thing – there is no way Tony is dying. He is the show, so killing him off in the first episode of a new season would be ridiculous. Nice attempt at a cliffhanger, but we know better than this. :P

Meanwhile you are on your short lunch break trying to eat something really quick and go back to work. But no… You have to wait 15 minutes, as the picky eater makes up their mind on the order, then changes it, and then complains when they mess up his crazy ass order. And the fast food employees always mess it up – partly because they are not the smartest or motivated folks on the block to begin with (otherwise they would not be flipping burgers) and partly because these orders are plain stupid.

When I go to a fast food place, I’m not picky. Hell, all fast foods sell you garbage. If you want to customize your sandwich go to Subway or something. But when you are at Burger King just picked a numbered combo item, and move along… It’s all the same shitty food anyway.

You suck! If you want to stay in this business, please get your shit together. You already lost me¹ as a customer, and I will make sure I tell all my friends and business contacts to stay away from your wireless services.

Let me give you a hint – when you send your customer a new blackberry using next day delivery, that said customer expects the device to work upon arrival. Not 3-5 days later. Not 2 weeks later. Not a month later. We really want to take the device out of the box, and stat using it.

Why is it so difficult to get a blackberry activated on your system? I went through this process 3 times in the last few months, and each time it’s the same old story. After the mandatory 5 day wait, your customer service apologizes profusely, offers me downtime credit and escalates my case. I am told to wait another week. Another week goes by, and my device is still not working. I call you, threaten cancellation. Usually at this point one of your managers promises me to “personally” take care of the case.

This happens every single time!

Is it really that hard to get these thins squared away quickly? Why do you make your customers wait half a month, and make no less than 6 customer service calls just to get their mobile device registered on the network?

On more than one occasion I have been told by your reps, that the communication system you use is really bad and not all the requests go through. I don’t care about that. This is your problem! This is not an excuse. All I need is a working blackberry – I really don’t care how you guys do this. I don’t care about the poor implementation of your systems, or the lack of communication between the departments. If it is so bad, then fix it! I really couldn’t care less.

How can you call yourself a service provider, if you failt to provide me with any kind of timely adequate service. I do not need my blackberry to be activated in April – I need it working NOW! What is this so damn difficult?

I do understand that according to the blackberry warranty the replacement device will be a refurbished one. However, last time I checked “refurbished” in the dictionary it did not mean “broken piece of garbage”. That is exactly what you have sent me 2 weeks ago. The blackberry refuses to sync up with the PC. The only thing your tech support is able to offer me is a new another refurbished blackberry.

I have waited 3 weeks to activate my replacement device. There is no way I’m waiting another 3 weeks again. I had enough of this. I’m switching to Verizon. You people suck.

¹ – when I say me, I actually mean my boss. It is his blackberry, but I figured that this letter would sound better if written in first person. Especially since I am the person doing all the footwork and making all the calls in this case. :)

Please excuse my language but the only thing I can say to this is: [click to view]
Fucking ass bonesmen motherfuckers!

But hey, we are much safer now, right? I feel so much more confident knowing that the Thought Police Homeland Security will be there to make sure that people are not watching online porn or that they don’t pay off their credit card bills to fast.

The man says Patriot Act is doubleplusgood so it must be true! And we get new provisions! Wohoo! We can probably expect more of the same in 4 years, unless we get some sane, people in the government. At this pace the bill of rights should be completely dissolved within my lifetime…

The blatant anal rape on freedom continues.

I just want you people to know that if you voted for bush, it is all your fault :P

My dad used to used to give his AOL email to his customers. He doesn’t really have a need a professional email account or anything but he likes to be reachable that way. I’m concerned he might miss important emails due to the whole AOL tax issue. I’m considering setting him up with gmail or something like that.

I should probably set him up a domain, so that he can have a professionally sounding email for business use. The bottom line however is, that we can’t trust AOL anymore.

Btw, go and sign the open letter to aol. They already said they don’t give a shit about it, but hey… It can’t hurt, can it?

Yup, this guy wants to abolish online anonymity. It is very obvious that he does not understand the internet. If I had a penny for every jackass who wants to legislate the internet, I would probably be invited to join the Skull and Bones club by now :P

I wonder if Mr. Biondi knows that Internet != USA NJ. I wonder how he plans to enforce this bill on message boards hosted outside the US state? Does he realize that this bill will close down free blogging services, severely impact online social networks and force hundreds of American most NJ interner companies out of business to move out of state.

How would you enforce this for email? For java or AJAX based chat clients? For IRC? If google implements an identity check for Blogger, it will likely loose 80% of it’s user base. There is no way anyone in their right mind would even consider complying with this. The only people who will benefit from this are… Canadians. Because if such a bill would pass, there would be a mass exodus away from US based hosting to Canadian based :P

If this bill passes, then we are not better than China…The only thing this bill can achieve is to create a gigantic traffic jam on interstate highways, as people move the servers to more internet friendly states.

We please send some letters to this dude and tell him that he just ruined his political career? I would never vote for someone who actively tries to break the internet.

Update Tue Mar 7 09:49:43 EST 2006

Um… I updated the post slighly, because zewrestler mentioned this bill will only apply to NJ – not the whole country. I appologize for spazzing out. :P

First thing I wanted to do when the student approached me is to suggest contacting helpdesk. I really don’t have time to fix computers for my students – and I’m not getting paid to do it. However, I’m always willing to take a look and give advice if they need it.

I was shocked to find out that OIT Helpdesk turned him down saying that there was nothing they could do… So I decided I check out the machine. The laptop had a classic BSOD on boot-up issue. When your computer consistently BSOD’s while booting, even in safe mode, you probably have probably a corrupted registry hive.

Windows registry is funky, and when it gets trashed it usually takes down the whole system. You can of course try to copy some system files from the installation CD hoping that you will restore it to a usable state. But I have never, ever seen that working. Essentially the best course of action in this type of problems is, recover data and reinstall the OS.

Is this stuff out of scope for helpdesk? I really don’t know. I sent them an email describing the issue and asking for advice. Let’s see if they respond.

It’s not like this is a complicated process. All they need to do is to grab a 2.5″ enclosure and extract the students’ data. Either that or use Knoppix to burn his stuff to CD’s/DVD’s. Or walk him through a parallel install of windows… This is really not rocket science. Especially that last step seems to be reasonable.

All this poor guy wants is to get his iTunes music,and his homeworks out of there :P Of course there might be an issue with the DRM and transferring songs between computers… But once again – this is a topic for a whole new rant.

Isn’t this the type of stuff we have the helpdesk for though? Helping students to fix their machines when they break, and help them recover homeworks when the machines die? Maybe I’m wrong here…

Ill update this post when I get a response form the helpdesk… Let’s see if I end up being quoted at Giant Robots for this one :P

Update Fri Mar 3 13:57:26 EST 2006

Yes, this seems to be out of scope for the helpdesk. Korun who works for OIT says that they are only supporting faculty, and only with computers that are MSU property.

If you ask me, this kinda sucks… We should really have some tech support for students on campus. I saw people doing the “Virus Clinic” thing in SC several times… I think we should have something like that running all the time somewhere extend the services they offer to stuff like data recovery, and OS reinstallation assistance.

Update Fri Mar 3 15:21:29 EST 2006

Here is the official response from the helpdesk:

Thank you for contacting the Technology Solutions Center about your student’s computer problem. At this time, the TSC cannot assist this student further. The Technology Solutions Center can only provide limited technical support to students on the following three issues:

1-Virus Removal
2-Spyware Removal
3-Campus Network connectivity

It is suggested that the student contact their computer manufacturer for further support. Again thank you for contacting the TSC.

So there you have it… Case closed :( I suspect that there is a reason why they only offer such limited support. Maye they don’t want to be liable for loosing student data, voiding their warranties, or breaching wierd manufacturer EULAS. Eh…

Update Tue Mar 7 09:53:09 EST 2006

I talked to the student yesterday. I’m happy to report that a Knoppix CD that I gave him allowed his more computer literate firend to save all his data to an external drive. Then they reformated, and as of yesterday he is back in business.

I’m telling you – knoppix saves lives! Always have a Knoppix CD’s on you!

I keep looking for a good way to take notes in school. I like to have digital copies of my stuff, because they are easy to backup, transfer and share. Paper based notes are by far the most efficient note-taking method, but they have a big downside. They need to be scanned in at some point – otherwise they are just clunky, physical objects. Scanning notes is tedious, and resulting documents tend to be large and not very printer friendly.

Taking notes on my laptop is not very convenient either. I still haven’t found anything on linux that could even approach to match the flexibility of OneNote. But there is no way I’m booting windoze just to use that app.

Besides, drawing with a mouse is a pain… And I’m not planning to get a tabletop anytime soon. These things are nice for note taking, but kinda clunky for almost everything else. And the Linux support for these things is nearly non-existent, so they are useless to me.

Recently I began noticing these digital pens popping up on the market. Probably the most notable example is the Logitech IO₂. This thing is a regular pen, with a built in motion sensor that tracks the movements of the pen on paper, are records them. Sounds great, but I’m wondering how good is it in practice. Drop me a comment if you had any experience with one of these things. How good are they at actually capturing the handwriting?

I’m not planning to buy the Logitech product. I just picked it because it comes up in the top 5 in a google search for digital pens. But it just to damn expensive for me. I am not willing to shell out $200 on a pen, that I may never use because it’s tracking or storage capacity sucks. Or because it does not work with linux…

The system requirements blurb on the Logitech store page only seems to acknowledge windows. This probably means that unless I hack it myself, I will not be able to use it in a non-windows system. To get it working you need to install proprietary drivers, and support software. The target consumers here are obviously only windows users. In other words, this product is completely useless to me.

What I really need, is a pen just like that – but with a built in solid state memory stick. I want to be able to plug this pen directly into a USB port and find my documents neatly saved as files in an open format (preferably eps or svg, pdf or something related). Just give me raw data in some kind of standardized format, and I’ll convert it to whatever I need it to be.

The pen should be able to take in standard, off-the shelf ink replacements (pick a popular size carried by Bic or someone else and stick with it). It should not require me to install any software, but you can provide some premium conversion app for lazy windows users.

The pen can take a small battery, or charge from the USB port. Battery would make it heavier, but also more reliable. You can always replace a battery in a middle of a lecture, without missing to much notes. You can’t do that with a USB charged gadget though. So I would be willing to trade the extra weight in for added reliability.

So, is there anything like that out there on the market? And if not, how hard would it be to make one? People would buy this stuff, if the price was right!

Who is going to make my pen?

Here is the prime example of how CORE sucks. I was trying to install ENVI on that spiffy new JDS Machine. ENVI is expensive proprietary software, so of course we need to obtain a license, activate and all that stuff. Dr. Robila called up CORE to figure out how to do this. They told him the name of the license server, and the port that he needs to use and not much more… 2 minutes later, he got a notification that CORE opened a ticked for his call, and then closed it showing that the problem was resolved.

Funny thing is, that while checking up our bran new “resolved in 10-seconds flat” ticket Dr. Robila noticed that he still had few open tickets in their system. One of them was open since April of last year… And I think that one also dealt with ENVI licensing stuff…

To make the long story short, I’m running ENVI in demo mode till we figure out the license deal. I only need it to view results of my image transformations in a reliable way so demo is good enough for my purposes. But still…

My complaint number 2 is, could someone PLEASE fix up the RI 108 lab? The comweb boxes are literally sprawled on the floor or hanging between student’s legs by the power cable. The kids keep kicking the cables out and that takes down their whole machine.

Sometimes it seems that the only way to get something done is to actually go downstairs and personally nab one of the CORE guys and keep pestering him till he agrees to help you.

I have nothing against these guys personally. They are good people… It’s just the turnaround time for most of the requests is… Well, less than satisfactory.