The good and the bad of new stuff

Well, I’m not being good at keeping posts up. This shouldn’t suprise anyone, but oh well. Let’s go through the bad first.

Well, those new browsers that I announced aren’t exactly what I would call great products. IE7 is a pretty good browser with only the occasional crash. I really do like the updates, but it isn’t to what I liked with extensions of Firefox 1.5. It’s Firefox 2.0 that I’m really disappointed in. It absolutely is not stable. It crashes way too often for me. I would suggest using 1.5 until 2.1 comes out. You can check out the old firefox releases.

And now for some good news. Well, I installed Opera 9.2 recently and was again very happy with Opera. It also had an auto-rss widget maker so you can add the rss feed form this site to opera by clicking the link that’s on the left. It’s still my favorite browser, though it isn’t supported by a lot.

Also, the Fleck beta has started. It’s a web addition that allows for centralized notes to be taken about web pages and either keep them for yourself or send them to your friends. I’m not sure exactly how public the notes are, but it seems like it will be useful when looking up information. It doesn’t work in IE or Safari yet (and I haven’t tried Opera or anything obscur), but it supposedly works in Firefox (I haven’t tested). It looks cool. You should try it out…

That’s all for now.

Server Updates

Well, I can’t say i’ve been idle, but I can’t say that you really can see what I’ve been doing either. I am working on a project, but unfortunately, I cannot reveal anything about it yet (if not until it is done). Because of this, I actually set up subversion on this server finally. It’s running quite well actually. This project can take advantage of the Zip package for PHP though. This isn’t standard in php5 < 5.2, so I updated PHP tonight. It seems to have gone over without a hitch. While it might be pushing it, I really would like to update Apache to Apache 2… but I’m really worried about hosing my web server if I do that. If suddenly the web server dies, that might be why.

I was listening to some music from Spyra and was quite happy, but I would have to go back and listen again to really give an opinion. Nothing else for now.

Released new browsers!

So I’m a web junkie, right? Is it any wonder that I was waiting for the release time of Firefox 2 as it was posted on the BBC earlier that day? Well it shouldn’t be. That’s actually the second new browser release. The first was Internet Explorer 7 (Windows only).

Let’s look at IE 7 first. If you’re like me, you’ve been playing with IE7 since beta 1 and know that it’s appearance has changed drastically even through the beta stages. It’s look now is actually extremely slick in my opinion with some nice new features. The big three are RSS feeds, tabs, and PNG support. The RSS feeds are strangely modeled after the Safari’s RSS feed reader. This is actually a very nice way of reading through a feed. The searching on the right will prove to be more useful than you might think at first glance if you read feeds like the BBC where they get updated 50+ times per day and you still want to find something (or digg which is worse). It is a nice reader all around for actually reading the topics of the feeds instead of firefox’s where you can only see the titles (which I only see useful for things where the title can tell you everything or you want to read every entry). Tabs have been officially supported in IE with IE7 now and I think that this is a great improvement. I use tabs almost all of the time so this was a requirement. A lot of people turned to IE-based browsers like Avant or slimbrowser as an alternative or used the Yahoo toolbar for tab support. Now they are native and easy to use. People who use Avant and are used to Ctrl-n being a new tab (I still don’t understand why someone would pick n which everyone else calls new window…), you cannot remap the keys natively and will have to get used to every other browser in the world’s use of ctrl-t (or just keep using avant). The png support might not seem like much in comparison to the security updates, but I realize most people won’t ever realize the security updates are there and will probably see the png transparency support. Yes, this means things like google maps will actually look right now.

My opinion is that IE is better now, but it still offers little than another browser doesn’t already have. The biggest advantage in my opinion is still the security zones that Opera kind of has on a per-site basis, but none but IE have done quite as well. Past that, there are still a lot of add-ons for IE to get the features that extensions will get you in Firefox, but IE doesn’t add anything wonderful to draw me back.

Firefox 2 is another big launch just this week. Unfortunately in my opinion, it doesn’t change much. The tab support has been greatly improved to have a drop down for all of the tabs listed, a close button on every tab, and dragable tabs. Spellcheck is also nice now that it has been added to every textarea that you type in including webmail boxes, etc. The anti-phishing filter (probably stolen from IE7 which probably stole it from spoof-stick) probably is good to have, but I haven’t had the fortune to get to see something that it deemed as phishing. The updated interface is nicer than before, but themes are still probably what anyone who really cares about UI will turn to. The SVG support apparently was also improved, but I doubt that anyone will actually start to use SVG for quite a while.

In the end, these releases didn’t redefine anything. Most firefox extensions still work, are integrated, or there is an equivalent that exists. IE hasn’t pulled above anywhere, but it is closer as a contender.

1 CD, 1 DNS Change

Well, I’m not exactly keeping up with posts, but that was somewhat to be expected. I did get my cd shortly after my last post, and it was so good i had to run up and post about it. If the fact that it has been weeks wasn’t enough to imply sarcasm, let me be a bit more exact: it was quite disappointing. It’s a Nettwerk various artists compelation called Chillout 04: The Ultimate Chillout. I head one track from it on Yahoo’s Chillout “stream” (it’s not really a stream. it’s more of a streaming playlist) which follows the American view of chillout. This entire production is even a US only release. If you like European chillout (like what is on DI.fm), this doesn’t mean you like American chillout. A lot of American chillout is remixes and still contain vocals. It also isn’t very chilled; I would call it pleasent vocal trance for the most part (some is better, some is worse).

So what about this album? It is all vocal. I personally don’t see that as a positive in general, but it’s not always bad. The tracks that were literally giving me a headache would definitely be a bad thing though. There is far more trance than chill in most of these tracks and one is downright house. That I see as bad. There are a few tracks that I think fit the chilled status enough to be considered good. I got the cd for USD 10 so it wasn’t a bad investment for the 5 tracks that I like to varying degrees. Just because I think they are worth noting (as opposed to the others that I wouldn’t even put on my portible player, and I almost always move full albums). The first two are particularly good:

• At The End (Sat & Lee Howler Reprise) — iio
• Center Of the Sun (Solarstone’s Chilled Out Remix) — Conjure One (I might have heard this one elsewhere. There is also a real media demo on the album link above)
• As The Rush Comes (Gabriel & Dresden Chillout Mix) — Motorcycle
• Everything In It’s Right Place — Radiohead
• One Too Many Mornings — The Chemical Brothers (I know I heard this one before)

Well, hopefully that gives you an idea whether or not you want the cd.

Thursday night I’m going to see the Blue Man Group on their new tour. This will be the third time i’ve see Blue Man Group and expect to say nothing less than those who have not heard it are truly missing out. Even after you have heard them, you have to be there. Between the concert and another cd i’m getting for my mother (both for her birthday), hopefully I’ll have something good to tell you.

For DNS, I set up an account through EveryDNS to handle the domains on this server so cardamar.quad341.com should be working, but please continue to use chilloutmixes.com to get to the mirror. If any dns errors arrise, can someone drop me a line? Thanks

That’s all for now.

Project Available

I know I haven’t posted in almost a month and am sorry for that. I do have a bunch of music news, but that will have to wait until tomorrow (time is precious these days). I did promise to give out the code for a project I was doing. It was supposed to be a system to track prices in the game Dofus, but I didn’t finish it. It follows a strict MCV set up (which it probably didn’t need. it was more to make an example like that). The comments past PHPDoc are sparse so please ask questions via email, a messenger, or even just posting comments here if you would like. Anyway, assume my standard CC license.

Download DofusCommerce.zip

No real news

Well, I’ve been bad about updates. This probably isn’t going to stop. If anything, I have more to do now than before. In all actuality, I haven’t even logged into my Dofus account in quite a while. Because of this, I’m going to release my code for the dofus commerce application i’ve been writing. it’s written the way i like to write bigger projects (even though it isn’t one. it was more for an example than because it needed it). No eta for that because, well, i have to remember to do it.

Cardamar seems to be preoccupied or something, so if you are looking for the Marco Torrance album, just preorder it on cardamar’s site and he’ll probably mail it out when he has time.

Oh and I changed how my dns is handled (again). Sites may seem down for a day or two while it updates.

Silly Kiddie, Tricks are for Smart Ones

Ok, so would the script kiddie who is trying to use 202.134.126.179 as a bounce point please stop? You should try to spoof another email address so it doesn’t just seem odd for me to be emailing myself with a .com file attachment. Also, basically every windows email scanner will just freak out at any com attachment (i’m on my mac so it wouldn’t even mean anything to the computer if my server didn’t return an error).

I’ve been hit with it twice tonight. It is acting like its using outlook express. It seems like that might actually be the kids ip (it’s an asian ip) since his english is pretty poor. Also, the standard trick to attachments is to name it something like help.txt.com so it will still execute, but the person thinks it’s a txt file. Please at least get up to snuff about your spoofing (although i guess using the postmaster name from my account should mean that quad341 isn’t the administrator because obviously the administrator wouldn’t have his name the same as the domain.)

I think I used to have some other email addresses posted like “authors” and such. at least send it there, please. Thanks!

DNS Problems?

Ok, something went wacky on the server and it restarted itself last night. Now, for some reason, I can’t seem to get to cardamar.quad341.com. If you are trying to get there, just go to 216.120.255.175. I’ll try to fix later

Quick Peek at a talented designer

I’ve always really respected those who can make extremely attractive web sites. I cannot… well, more of chose not to put the effort into the appearance and focus much more on the functionality. Anyway, I stumbled across JP33′s portfolio and was pretty impressed. It’s a very nice use of dreamweaver design (with the generator tag cut out since no one actually likes to admit they use that) and apaarently programming know how. I can’t say this is the best, but it’s really nice looking (and oh so not compliant). Be warned, it has 60 large-ish pictures on that screen alone

Careful with Opera 9.01

(If I remember, my music post will come this evening after I get home).

On Friday I want to say, a new version of Opera came out, 9.01. I, of course, had to have it. Unfortunately, it appears that it has one major bug that could stop you from logging in to certain sites. It does not appear to be redirecting properly from login forms (sometimes. This is occurring mainly in an application I wrote that worked great with Opera 9.0). I’m going to submit a bug report in about 10 minutes (after I can test with the Mac version and see if it is a Windows only bug or all Opera 9.01) and hopefully an update will come soon. Just be careful about upgrading otherwise.

On a positive note, 9.01 rendered almost all of the SVG tests from the W3C flawlessly (it had a color problem and seems to render a circle as an arc from 1 to 179 degrees and reflects it). That’s pretty cool.

Til Later