Drinking whiskey clear!
If you attempt to surf to jimcofer.com with Google Chrome, you will probably get the following error message:
This webpage is not available.
The webpage at http://www.jimcofer.com/personal/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
Error 320 (net::ERR_INVALID_RESPONSE): Unknown error.
This is caused by a known bug in Chrome.
Just when I thought I had fixed my problem with Firefox, another one rears its ugly head!
I have a client that wants a Flash-based slideshow on their home page, so I downloaded and installed the demo of Adobe’s Flash CS4 to create it. The only problem was that Flash upgraded the web browser plug-ins on my system from Flash 9 to Flash 10 without telling me. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but Flash 10 breaks the “image upload tool” in WordPress (read all about it here), so upgrading to 10 is a no-go. And, as it turns out, Flash 10 (the program, not the plug-in) is way overkill for the simple slideshow thing I want to do, so I uninstalled Flash, then the Flash plug-ins, and rebooted my computer.
I was good to go… or so I thought. I reinstalled Flash 9 and everything was OK for a couple of days. But then anything to do with Flash ground to a complete halt on my box. For example, a YouTube video would drop frames like crazy. Remember the early days of Internet video, when everyone had RealPlayer installed so they could watch postage stamp-size videos that often “froze up” on slow dial-up connections? That’s exactly what a YouTube video looked like on my system: the audio was fine, but the video would play fine for the first few seconds, then freeze up, then slow down to about 1 frame every 5 seconds, then freeze, then continue on slowly again.
Another example: the audio player on this very site. If you click this link, you’ll be taken to a “SONGS I LOVE” post, which contains a small audio player embedded inside. If you click on the “play” button, the player should smoothly expand to reveal a progress bar for the song. On my system, clicking that button in Firefox would cause the bar to move to the right a few pixels and freeze, then move a few move pixels and freeze and so on, until the player finally opened all the way (the audio would sound just fine, however). If I opened the same post in Internet Explorer or Safari on this very same system, the player would expand smoothly as expected – only Firefox had a problem.
Continue reading “Fixing Poor Flash Video Performance in Firefox”
I’ve been using WordPress for around 18 months now, and I really like it. Unlike old-school “manual” solutions like FrontPage and Dreamweaver, the WordPress platform makes it easy for me to simply publish the stories and information I want to get out.
I’ve toyed with several WordPress themes during this time. I’ve downloaded and played with them late at night when few people go to my site. I’ve even liked a few well enough that I’ve used them for a few days here and there. But the fact of the matter is that I’ve never found a theme I like more than Kubrick, the default WordPress theme. It’s simple and elegant, and unlike many third-party themes, everything in it “just works”.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I’ve stuck with the original kubrickheader.jpg file. By default, Kubrick uses a boring blue box at the top the screen. Early on I replaced it with the cover of Madonna’s Ray of Light album. After a while, I changed it to a picture of Ian Curtis. And just in the past few days I changed it again to an awesome picture of Don Draper (from a Mad Men wallpaper I found on AMC’s site).
You can easily make your own Kubrick header files. All you need is Adobe Photoshop and a copy of the default kubrickheader.jpg file. Although I could easily type up a quick list of instructions, I think it just might be easier to show you. Here is a link to my very first screencast. I’ve never made one before (at least, not in the past 10 years), so please be gentle:
http://www.jimcofer.com/personal/screencasts/kubrick/kubrick.htm
Although my friend Scott probably thinks she’s “plastic” or “fake”, British model Gemma Atkinson just does it for me. British? Check! Pretty eyes? Check! Slammin’ bod? Check and double check:
When I was a kid, I loved clam chip dip – you know, the stuff they sold in the dairy case at the grocery store right next to the French onion and ranch dips. For whatever reason – increasing cost, decreased demand, or both – it simply disappeared from store shelves… I haven’t seen it in ages.
The other day I went on a nostalgia trip and tracked down a recipe online. After some tweaking, I’ve come up with a recipe that’s not exactly like the stuff I remember from childhood… but it’s pretty close:
Ingredients:
1 6oz. can chopped or minced clams
1 16oz. container sour cream
1 package soup mix (see below)
Fresh or bottled lemon juice
Hardware:
1 container (with lid)
1 spoon
1) Pour or spoon the sour cream into your container.
2) Add the soup mix.
3) Open the can of clams and drain the juice into the empty sour cream container (do not throw away yet!)
4) Add the clams to the dip and mix well.
5) Add a small amount of the reserved clam juice to the dip and mix well. You want to add enough to give the dip a clam taste throughout, but not enough to make the dip runny. I use about half the reserved juice, but that’s just me.
6) Add enough lemon juice to “brighten” the flavor of the dip. This is around half of a fresh lemon, or a couple of squirts of ReaLemon.
7) Cover and chill for several hours before serving.
As far as the “soup mix” goes, I use the “Savory Herb with Garlic” style from Lipton’s “Recipe Secrets” line. Plain old onion soup mix will work in a pinch, but I like the garlicky taste the Recipe Secrets mix gives the dip.
The revolt against the leadership of The Episcopal Church continued today.
Firstly, the Diocese of Quincy (Illinois) voted to leave TEC and join the Province of the Southern Cone. That the diocese voted to leave is not surprising; the overwhelming vote in favor of the move was:
Clergy: 46 Yes, 4 No (92%)
Lay: 55 Yes, 8 No (87%)
For the record that’s three entire dioceses that have voted to leave the Episcopal Church (the other two are San Joaquin and Pittsburgh). I can smell a new American province already!
Also today, the diocese of Pittsburgh voted to reelect Bob Duncan as bishop. Duncan had been deposed (removed from power) by the House of Bishops by a vote on September 18, 2008. The diocese of Pittsburgh then voted to leave the TEC and join the Province of the Southern Cone on October 4. As expected, the diocese reelected Duncan today. Read more about it here.
When wireless networking (Wi-Fi) was introduced to consumers in the late 90s, it included a security feature called Wired Equivalent Privacy, or WEP. There was, however, a fundamental flaw in WEP that allowed hackers to easily hack wireless networks. So if you secure your wireless router with the WEP protocol (even today, several years later), a hacker can break into your wireless network in less than 2 minutes using only a modern laptop and some freely available software… and start downloading illegal music, warez or kiddie porn.
WEP was so bad, in fact, that a new protocol, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) was quickly rolled out. WPA is much more secure than WEP. In fact, many thought that WPA would last as long as current 802.11b and 802.11g hardware. Sadly, this didn’t happen. A couple of researchers have found a hack that renders WPA almost as pointless as WEP.
Sort of. The hack actually affects the Temporary Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) that’s used with WPA. And here’s the good news: most routers will let you switch between WAP-TKIP and WAP-AES encryption. So to make your home network secure again, just log in to your router and change the encryption settings from TKIP to AES and you should be aces. Even better: this hack was only just announced this week, so if you can’t get around to changing your settings for a few days… you should be OK.
Read more about the “AES workaround” here.
College basketball season is starting up soon. I’m not much of a hoops fan (NFL for life, yo), but I do enjoy watching a bit of the college game. And that enjoyment is greatly enhanced by the work of sideline reporter Erin Andrews. Named “America’s Sexiest Sportscaster” by Playboy magazine in 2007 (Brent Musburger lost??), Andrews is a graduate of the University of Florida. She worked for Turner Sports covering the Atlanta Hawks, Thrashers and Braves before getting her big break at ESPN. And yes, she’s really hot:
Another picture after the jump!
If you know me at all, you know how much I hate Best Buy.
It all started with the simple stuff: their Duluth, Georgia store used to have a single cashier for all 40 people waiting in line, so it took you longer to actually check out than it did to listen to the CD you just purchased. Then they started pushing their replacement plans for almost anything (I once had a cashier try to sell me a $6 replacement plan for a $20 CD player!). Then they started with the magazine subscriptions (in several instances, cashiers felt so pressured by management to sell subscriptions that they signed up customers for them anyway, even though they declined). Then Best Buy bought Geek Squad and customers reported being charged hundreds of dollars to fix computer issues that would take me (at most) five minutes. Oh, and let’s not forget Geek Squad employees peeking on female customers in the shower, rifling through customer’s personal desks, and copying their personal data to websites and thumb drives. And then there were the amusing stories, like the guy that tried to pay for a car stereo installation (which was supposed to have been free) with 32 $2 bills and was arrested because the cashier thought they were counterfeits!
But this story… well, it just takes the damn cake. A Consumerist reader from Charlotte, NC took his father to “the newest” Best Buy in town (is that Northlake Mall? Any Charlotteans out there that can verify this?). At the store, he saw a demonstration of Best Buy’s optional (but heavily pushed) “TV calibration service”. Robert reported that one TV looked beautiful, while the other was soft and grainy. It took him a second, but he figured it out: the “calibrated” TV was showing ESPN HD while the “non calibrated” TV was showing a stretched version of ESPN SD! And the reason it took Robert some time to figure it out was because Best Buy had helpfully placed a box advertising their “Black Tie TV Protection Plan” over the lower right side of the SD TV screen, so that customers wouldn’t be able to see the “ESPN” or “ESPN HD” logos! Classy!
When Robert complained to an employee, said employee not only saw nothing amiss with the display, he helpfully added that their calibration service would “decrease power consumption on my TV by 30%”… which is, of course, a flat-out lie.
Look folks, there is such a thing as calibrating your TV. It’s not, strictly speaking, necessary, but it *will* make your TV look slightly better. But don’t pay Best Buy $299 to do it – you can do it yourself with a special “calibration DVD” (available from Amazon for only $22.65 here).
Read the whole sad story here.
I bet you didn’t know that Microsoft still sold Windows 3.11. Or at least they did, up until November 1, 2008.
Although almost no one uses it as a desktop operating system these days, Windows 3.11 was a popular choice for “embedded computers” – that is, computers dedicated to single tasks like cash registers and information kiosks. Because it was so easy to program for, and so reliable when configured as an embedded OS, there are still millions of computers out there still running Windows 3.11. Computers that control alarm systems. Computers that control sprinkler systems. Computers that control heating and air conditioning systems. Computers that control industrial machines (I know of at least one company in Charlotte that uses a Windows 3.11 computer to control a machine that cuts sheet metal). And until very recently, Windows 3.11 powered the in-flight entertainment systems of Virgin and Qantas airlines.
Released in May 1990, Windows 3.11 required a minimum of a 10MHz processor, 640KB RAM, seven megabytes of hard drive space, and a graphics card that supported CCA, EGA or VGA graphics. Contrast this with Windows Vista, which requires a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 20GB of hard drive space, and a graphics card with at least 32MB of memory and you can see why a company making thousands of cash registers might go with 3.11 over Vista or even XP Embedded.
So long, sweet prince! We’ll miss you and your Hot Dog Stand theme!