FRIDAY FUN: Morven Christie

Morven Christie is a Scottish actress. According to Wiki, she “grew up in Scotland, splitting her time between Glasgow and Aviemore. She traveled and worked a series of jobs including teaching skiing, before studying acting at the Drama Centre London, graduating in 2003. Christie has worked on stage, film and television drama since. She currently lives in North London”.

I think she’s as cute as a button, and looks a bit like a Scottish Piper Perabo:

morven_christie_01

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SONGS I LOVE: “Magnificent Oblivion”

You know that moment shortly after you start drinking (or enjoying your intoxicant of choice) when you haven’t been feeling anything quite yet… but then you toss your head back and suddenly feel awesome?

The song “Magnificent Oblivion” by the Fleeting Joys is the perfect song for that moment. Have a listen and tell me what you think:

[audio:oblivion.mp3]

Firefox Extensions Revisited Revisted

I first wrote an article on this site about Firefox extensions on July 2nd, 2007. I wrote an updated article about them on August 30th, 2008.

A lot of time has passed since then, and so I thought I’d revisit my favorite extensions again:

AdBlock Plus – AdBlock Plus is still the premiere ad blocking solution for Firefox. Although some sites have figured out ways around it (and other sites have learned to detect it, and block content to visitors using it), it’s still an absolute requirement for any Firefox install I use.

Coral IE Tab – I’ve long been a fan of the IE Tab extension, which lets you use the Internet Explorer rendering engine within Firefox. But the current version of IE Tab caused newer versions of Firefox to crash on my system, so I found Coral IE Tab, which is an offshoot that not only does everything IE Tab does, but adds a few key features (like allowing AdBlock Plus to work on IE Tabs in Firefox, or swapping cookies between Firefox and IE, so you don’t have to log in to a site again after switching engines… Nice!).

Extended Copy Menu – Copy Plain Text was one of my favorite extensions; as the name suggests, it allows you to copy plain text from web pages, so you can paste unformatted data into programs like Microsoft Word. Sadly, Copy Plain Text isn’t updated often enough to keep up with new builds of Firefox, so you have to tweak it every time a new version of the browser comes out. Or you could just use Extended Copy Menu instead, which not only lets you copy plain text, but also the HTML code underlying a web page.

Continue reading “Firefox Extensions Revisited Revisted”

R.I.P. J.D. Salinger

According to the AP, J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye has died. He was 91.

From the AP obituary:

“The Catcher in the Rye,” with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made “Catcher” a featured selection, advised that for “anyone who has ever brought up a son” the novel will be “a source of wonder and delight – and concern.”

Enraged by all the “phonies” who make “me so depressed I go crazy,” Holden soon became American literature’s most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn. The novel’s sales are astonishing – more than 60 million copies worldwide – and its impact incalculable. Decades after publication, the book remains a defining expression of that most American of dreams: to never grow up.

Salinger was writing for adults, but teenagers from all over identified with the novel’s themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, not to mention the luck of having the last word. “Catcher” presents the world as an ever-so-unfair struggle between the goodness of young people and the corruption of elders, a message that only intensified with the oncoming generation gap.

Novels from Evan Hunter’s “The Blackboard Jungle” to Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Prep,” movies from “Rebel Without a Cause” to “The Breakfast Club,” and countless rock ‘n’ roll songs echoed Salinger’s message of kids under siege. One of the great anti-heroes of the 1960s, Benjamin Braddock of “The Graduate,” was but a blander version of Salinger’s narrator.

It’s a sad day.

Stop using IE6

When I look through the logs of this website, I can’t help but notice that many of you are still using Internet Explorer 6, which was released on August 27, 2001 – almost eight and half years ago! For the love of God… why are you still using IE6? In 2010?

The governments of France, Germany and Austria have advised their citizens to use something else. Google, Adobe and other companies have advised their customers to use something else. And now, Microsoft itself is asking IE 6 users to upgrade to IE 8. You can read for yourself on a Microsoft blog here:

We recommend users of IE6 on Windows XP upgrade to a new version of Internet Explorer and/or enable DEP. Users of other platforms are at reduced risk.  We also recommend users of Windows XP upgrade to newer versions of Windows.

Perhaps you work for a company that refuses to upgrade from IE 6. If that’s the case, print out this article from noted Windows expert Ed Bott and give it to your boss. Bott suggests that if your IT staff can’t replace IE 6, it’s time to replace your IT staff. It may sound harsh, but it’s true: IE 6 – with its “Swiss Cheese security” – has got to go.

Thursday’s News Dump

– Hummel Figurines used to be worth a fair amount of money, oftentimes selling for $350 (or more) on eBay. Although there are still a few highly collectible figures selling in the thousands of dollars, most Hummel figurines are lucky to fetch $50 on eBay… and that’s on a good day. Why? Because the people who collected the things are dying off.

– Bradley Cooper is having a sex change. No, not that Bradley Cooper.

– Some idiots in Chattanooga stole some computers from a local school, then took them to Best Buy to have Geek Squad reset the passwords. When the geeks noticed that the domain name was the same as the school name, they called the cops, and the thieves were arrested.

– Some people seem to think that America has a monopoly on stupid. Not so. In a recent study, 26% of British children under sixteen thought bacon came from sheep, 29% thought that oats grew on trees, and 17% of all respondents (adults and children) thought that the main ingredient of bread was eggs. Read all about it here.

– Jessica Simpson likes to keep it classy by farting during business meetings. Nice.

– Wanna know why tech support people are always in a bad mood? Read this article at cracked.com; although it’s a humor site, there’s a lot of awful truth in what they guy says.

– Some Holiday Inns in the UK are offering a “pre-warming” service in which someone in “footie” pajamas will get in your bed and stay in it until the temperature reaches 68F.

– Lastly… the current estimated budget deficit for the United States government is $1.35 trillion dollars. Ever wonder how much that really is? Well, Alex Rodriguez is the highest paid player in baseball, and he gets $33 million a year. $1.35 trillion dollars could pay the same salary to 40,000 people for a year. If a dollar were a mile long, $1.35 trillion could circle the earth 54 million times. Heck, the earth has only been around 4.5 billion years; 1.35 trillion years is 300 earth life times. The Washington Monument is 555 feet tall; stacked end to end, it would take 2.4 billion copies of the monument to equal 1.35 trillion feet, which is significantly more than double the distance from the earth to the sun.

Sorry!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately! I’ve been either a) social or b) working on a problem with iTunes\Outlook for the past few days, and that’s kept me from posting stuff. More articles are planned, I promise!

In the meantime, enjoy this cute picture of Erika Forster of Au Revior Simone:

Erika Forster

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-24

  • So… the Cards, the Ravens, the Cowboys and the Chargers all lose this weekend? And people say there's no God! #
  • Jeez – CNN LOVES themselves, don't they? #
  • To the Democrats: Ha-Ha! Love, your Libertarian friends #
  • I guess I can't call 'em "Massholes" any more, huh? #
  • Heidi Montag's new album sells 656 copies: http://ping.fm/eQH3Q #
  • "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." #
  • Hawaiian pizza for dinner and Chunky Monkey for dessert… YUM! #
  • Man, the Wii kicked my ass last night! Had fun with Amy & Tricia, though! 🙂 #

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