Year: 2007

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News for 07/03/07

Hey hey everybody! It’s the day before Independence Day… so let’s do THE NEWS!

(In)famous Russian music site Allofmp3.com has finally shut down… don’t cry too much though, because they’ve already launched a replacement site: MP3Sparks.com. In fact, were it not for the new site’s radically different color scheme, you’d be hard pressed to spot the difference between the two sites. Why shut down one site, only to open an exact duplicate on the same day? Your guess is as good as mine. At least they didn’t sell out completely – unlike, say Fergie. The erstwhile member of the Black Eyed Peas has completely sold out to Candie’s (the shoe\clothing company). Sources say that the company will pay Fergie $4 million to “to promote their clothing line in her songs”. I guess something like this was inevitable – hell, Fergie’s already promoted Dolce & Gabbana and Fendi for free, so why not get some coin for dropping Candie’s name in her music? Still, I can’t help but find the whole thing distasteful. Actual product placements in music? What’s the world coming to?

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COOL WEB SITE: bookins.com

Bookins.com is a website that allows people to trade their old books with other book lovers all over the United States. Using Bookins is simple: just sign up for an account (a credit card is needed; I’ll explain why in a moment). You then gather up a bunch of old books and enter the ISBN* of each book into your Bookins “trade list”. When someone wants one of your books, you’ll get an email with a link that prints a free mailing label – all you have to do is print the label, put the book in an envelope, tape the label to the envelope and drop it in any mailbox!

Bookins uses a “points system” to asses how much your book is “worth” and to keep trades flowing. Each book you trade is worth a certain amount of points, depending on which version it is (hardback or paperback) and how in demand the book is. Each book you trade earns you points and each book you buy costs you points. Bookins will start you off with some amount of “introductory points” (I think it’s 20 points, but I could be wrong), but you’ll really need to trade a few books in order to keep buying books. Oh, and when you see a book you want to buy, Bookins charges you $3.99 for the book. This is to cover the postage costs and the upkeep of the Bookins site (you didn’t think they did this for free, did you?).

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My Favorite Firefox Extensions

One of the best features of Firefox is its support for extensions. Extensions are kind of like WinAMP plug-ins; they allow you to do everything from tweaking some of Firefox’s built-in annoyances to enhancing your web browsing experience by making life just a few clicks shorter. I’ve been meaning to post this list for some time, but thanks to the new site (and one helpful Firefox extension), it’s much easier to do now. Here’s a short list of some of my favorite Firefox extensions:

AdBlock Plus – My absolutely favorite extension, AdBlock Plus not only blocks 99% of the ads you’d see in your web browser, it also re-renders the page without any kind of placeholders for the ads. I’ve gotten so used to this extension that it’s almost jarring to use a browser on someone else’s computer. While the original AdBlock extension was great, AdBlock Plus has automatic updating of block lists built right in, so you always have the latest and greatest protection against annoying ads!

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DOWNLOAD: Assorted PDFs

Here’s a bunch of old PDFs from the old site that might interest someone somewhere:

USS Cofer – There was a WWII-era ship called the USS Cofer. She was  named after a cousin of mine from Louisville, Georgia. She fought at the Battle of Leyte Gulf and won numerous service awards. This short PDF has some basic infomation about her.

Notes From Boston – A moderately amusing travel memoir from a trip I took to Boston in the late 90s.

Notes From Chicago – A moderately amusing travel memoir from a trip I took to Chicago in the late 90s.

Mazzy Star – The complete lyrics (zipped).

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It’s Done!!!!

Ohmygosh! It’s finally done! The all-new jimcofer.com website is absolutely, completely done!

As I said in my previous post, you can click the Old Site Archive link on the sidebar to see any items from the old site that didn’t make the transition to the new site. Around 10% of the old site’s content didn’t make the cut at all and was deleted altogether – especially ancient Windows 98-era tips and some of the oldest posts from the first site.

In any case, WELCOME to the all-new jimcofer.com – I hope you enjoy it! I’m sooooo happy to be done with this transition – as I’m sure you’re sick of all the updates!

Have a good Saturday, everybody!

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DOWNLOAD: Madotate

madotateBack in 2000, I stumbled across a killer free program called Madotate. This program was years ahead of its time, in that it replaced Microsoft’s 2-D windowing model with a 3-D one. Now, I don’t mean “3-D” in the sense of “coming out of the screen” like a 3-D movie. Instead, Madotate takes individual windows and allows you to turn them sideways or lay them flat, instead of the usual “open” or “minimized”. Check out the screen capture on the left for an example (click the picture to enlarge it); in the picture, the open windows are (from left to right): Firefox, Internet Explorer, Azureus, PeerGuardian (just above Azureus), the AIM “Away” screen (to the right of Azureus), Microsoft Outlook and a Windows Explorer window.

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DOWNLOAD: Steelers 2007 Schedule for Outlook!

If you use Microsoft Outlook, you can use the following download to add the Pittsburgh Steelers 2007 schedule to your Outlook calendar! All you’ve gotta do so is:

  1. Download the file to your desktop and unzip.
  2. Open Outlook and select “File” > “Import and Export” > “Import from another program or file”, then click “Next”.
  3. Choose “Comma Separated Values (Windows)”, then click “Next”.
  4. Use the “Browse” button on the next screen to select the Steelers_2007.CSV file you just unzipped.
  5. On the next screen make sure to select “Calendar” as the destination then click “Next” and “Finish”… That’s it!

The jimcofer.com “Pittsburgh Steelers 2007 Schedule For Outlook” is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 98 or later. It contains all pre-season and regular season Steelers games as well as the network airing the game. All times in the Steelers Calendar are for the Eastern (USA) time zone. A reminder is scheduled for 8:00PM the day before each game; if you wish to disable the reminders, open the CSV file in Excel and change the value of “reminder on/off” (column G) to FALSE for each game BEFORE you import the Calendar into Outlook. Fans of other (lesser) teams can also download the file and use it as a template to create a schedule for their favorite teams using any version of Microsoft Excel.

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DOWNLOAD: SilentAIM

Do you use AIM? I do, but one huge problem I’ve found with AIM is the way it handles its notification sounds – there’s no easy way to simply mute just the AIM sounds. As far as I can tell, your options are to mute all system sounds (so you’ll miss the “new mail” and other legitimate system sounds) or you can go to Control Panel > Sounds and remove the WAV associated with each AIM event; this will cause the PC speaker to beep, which makes this option useless.

A couple of years ago, I was watching a movie on my PC and for some reason the movie’s sound level was really low. Naturally, I turned up the sound on Windows Media Player and my PC speakers… so when my missus logged on to AIM and sent me a message THE AIM SOUND WAS THIS LOUD! It shattered the windows in my room, set off car alarms for blocks, made my ears bleed, etc., etc. So this is why I created SilentAIM – a tiny little “program” that instantly mutes the AIM sounds on your PC. It requires no executable file or Registry jiggery-pokery – in fact, all SilentAIM does is unpack some “blank” WAV files (with the extension .SIL) to your AIM\Sounds directory, along with a batch file that swaps the extensions of your existing WAV files and the silent WAVs when you click on the SilentAIM desktop icon! The AIM sounds can be “muted” or “un-muted” at any time while using AIM; your SilentAIM settings will remain in effect until you change them back. (You might need to reinstall SilentAIM after upgrading AIM itself though).

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DOWNLOAD: Free eBook!

Chestertonjimcofer.com is now in the publishing business! OK, not really – but I am proud to offer one of the greatest works of the English language – G.K. Chesteron’s Orthodoxy – in eBook (PDF) format. Chesterton is one of the few Christian thinkers who is admired and quoted equally by liberal and conservative Christians, and even by many non-Christians. Orthodoxy remains one of the greatest works of any of the Christian apologetics, especially since it defends orthodoxy without resorting to endless quoting of the Scriptures or Church doctrine. You may download the file here. (NOTE: this is an unzipped PDF, approximately 480KB in size).

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DOWNLOAD: What did he say?

Shepard SmithHere’s Fox News’ Shepard Smith’s infamous on-air flub during a story about Jennifer Lopez. The story was about how fake her “Jenny from the block” phase was, and how her childhood neighbors in the Bronx didn’t care for her any more. He was supposed to say her neighbors would “rather give her a curb job than a block party”… only he said that they’d rather give her a curb job instead of… another kind of job! Even though the clip is a couple of years old, it’s *still* funny every time I see it! And now you can too, by downloading the file here. (NOTE: file is a 1MB zipped WMA).