This Should Work

The duty of pumpkin carving fell on my shoulders this weekend. I wanted to stretch my artistic talents as far as possible this time and came up with these to guys.

The Cowboy was supposed to be modeled after Clint Eastwoods “Man With No Name” character from A Fist Full of Dollars but my skills with a knife were up to snuff to do it justice. I’ve been listening to the cinecast podcast where they’ve been reviewing old western movie, so that’s my inspiration for the cowboy. The pirate idea came to me while seeing a commercial for the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Now that Opera is free I thought I would give it a spin and see how it compares to the latest from Firefox (I also tried obtaining the beta version of Internet Explorer 7 but you it’s not a public release, Microsoft Developers only).

There are a couple of things I look for in a browser, mostly security and user interface configuration. Both of these browsers offer tons of configuration options; everything from different skins to sidebars and toolbars are all available for you to change. Opera allows user to “zoom” in on a page up to 200%. Opera is able to increase the all the information on the page without any pixelation issues; it a great tool to read the fine print on a page, or if one has sight problems.

Another nice feature included in Opera 8 is the Wand. This is a more than just a password manager, it able to auto-complete web forms as well.
I hate typing in my name and address whenever I register for a site or buy something from the web, this is a great solution to the problem.

Opera, like Firefox, has tabbed browsing. But Opera allows you to organize your tabs in three different ways: cascading, tiled, or panel. Tile is an excellent view for comparing two webpages side by side.

Opera also has a RSS news reader built into the browser, in order to read your feeds you click the “Feeds” button it the toolbar. To subscribe to a feed, click the RSS button in Address Bar. While it works okay as a reader, I prefer the Live Bookmarks in Firefox.

The Live Bookmarks work for me because I can place them in my toolbar and click them to read the headlines.

Using the Live Bookmarks allows me to get the headlines without taking me away from what I was browsing. In the latest release, Firefox has changed the subscription button from the lower-right corner of the window to the far right of the Address Bar.

Both Opera and Firefox include a built-in popup blocker (Internet Explorer 6 has one as well, but you need Windows XP SP2). I went to popuptest.com and tried all 13 tests with each browser set to block all popups. Both performed well on the most common popups, but Firefox blocked all but two of the less common popups (Opera blocked half).

Firefox has made few cosmetic changes in the menus for this latest release, but for the most part the look and feel is same. But the thing that, for me, separates Firefox from Opera is the numerous extensions available for the browser. Entensions like AdBlock and BugMeNot are must haves, while others like Click Weather and Homestar Runner Toolbar are just fun.

After listening to Depeche Mode’s new album Playing the Angel a few times today, I’ve gotta DM missed the mark. They’re trying to do some sort of syth-goth thing, but it just doesn’t come together. Apparently, Alan Wilder was more important to the band than I realized.

Some might say that Carlos Sanatana sold out when he teamed up with Rob Thomas for the 1999 hit “Smooth”. While that song may have scarred me for life (that story for another time), at the time Rob Thomas and his band Matchbox Twenty were still had a shred of street and critical cred.

But now Santana has really sold out. On his upcoming album “All that I Am” one of his guest artist is. . . Bo Bice! Yes, that Bo Bice, the American Idol runner-up. I’ll admit that I have never heard Bo Bice sing an entire song, but I don’t think that he should be singing beside a rock legend like Carlos Santana. Neither Smokey Robinson nor Al Green are singing duets with Ruben Studdard, and he “won” American Idol! The only reason I see to have Bo on the album is to capitalize on his fifteen minutes of fame.

Also Santana’s new album has more tracks with guest stars than tracks of just Carlos and his band. It would seem like Carlos Santana is the guest star on his own album.

So I bought the new Netgear Rangemax router for my house. This product alledgely has “1000%” more range than a traditional wireless router, connection speeds up to 108Mbps using MIMO (Multi In Multi Out) technology, and the ability to cut down on interference. Plus, it’s the coolest looking router on the market, just look at the cool blue lights!

While it looks cool and offers the basic NAT Firewall security, I found it to be a let down everywhere else. First, the wireless range is about the same as my other router(a Linksys 802.11b router; second, the web interface is a little difficult to navigate (it took me a day to figure out where to set port blcoking)
It does have some nice features, like the ability to email the router logs to the router administrator, but I’m not sure if it’s nice enough to warrant the price point on it.

After many fits and starts, I’ve finally got this off the ground! What took so long? Well, I’m hosting this on my own computer. After installing Linux multiple times, changing a couple of hardware parts, and purchasing a new router, it’s as ready as it’s going to be.