Archives for September, 2004
The Anti-Bush Video Game
Posted on September 30th, 2004 @ 3:09 PM EST
;)
I just stumbled upon The Anti-Bush Video Game and found it rather amusing. It’s a bit harsh but I think Bush deserves it. Characters such as Hulk Hogan, Christopher Reeves, Jesus Christ, John Edwards, and more all join in and help fight against the Bush Administration. It’s definitely worth playing if you have the time. If not, you can select the issues from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the page to see the educational parts.
Link to this entry • Posted in Humor, Internet •
Intercourse
Posted on September 27th, 2004 @ 8:11 PM EST
;)
Last weekend, my wife and I attended Matt and Jessica’s wedding. It was a perfect weekend for such an event. The sky was clear, the temperatures were in the 70s, and the humidity was low. The wedding took place at the Conewago Manor Inn and was followed with a reception at the Catacombs Restaurant in the cellars of Bube’s Brewery. Before dinner, we took a tour of the brewery. The tour guide told us that it was built before the Civil War and was part of the Underground Railroad. It’s the only brewery left in the country that has remained intact since the mid-1800s.
The day after the wedding we visited Pennsylvania Dutch Country in Lancaster County which has a large Amish population. We rode on a train on the Strasburg Rail Road and saw some beautiful farmland. Later that day we drove through some of the Amish cities such as Fertility, Blue Ball, and Bird-in-Hand then went through Intercourse to get to Paradise. It’s kind of ironic to have names like this for cities since the area is known for their religious conservatism.
Link to this entry • Posted in Travel •
Keep Going Firefox!
Posted on September 17th, 2004 @ 4:37 PM EST
Three days ago, Mozilla launched a new marketing campaign to chip away at Internet Explorer’s marketshare with Firefox 1.0 Preview Release. They set a goal of one-million downloads in ten days. After just three days, there have been close to 790,000 downloads, which brings them within arm’s length of their goal with another week to go. You can view the total amount of downloads at Spread Firefox.
I’ve been using Firefox for the past year, while it was in the beta testing stage, and although I liked it a lot more than Internet Explorer, there were several bugs that I experienced. The other day I downloaded the Preview Release and installed it on my Windows machine. After the install completed, I had a few problems so I deleted my profile so it could create a new one. After loading it for the first time, I immediately noticed that all of the bugs were gone and several enhancements had been added.
New Features That I Like
Find Bar
Press [CTRL] + F and the Find Bar will appear at the bottom of the window. I frequently use the “Find in this page” feature when I’m looking for a certain word on a page that has a lot of content. The new toolbar has Next/Previous buttons and also a Highlight button that will change the background color of all instances of the word throughout the page.
Address Bar Background Changes Under SSL
While viewing a website under SSL, the background of the address bar turns yellow to let you know you’re currently viewing a secure site.
Favorite Extensions
One of the best things about Firefox is that you can install extensions to add new functionality to your browsing experience. Listed below are a few of my favorite extensions:
Web Developer
A toolbar that has a lot of nice features such as disable JavaScript, CSS, etc., view/edit CSS, show passwords (instead of seeing ***** you can see the password), display image paths, outline block level elements and table cells, validate HTML, CSS, links, etc. just to name a few.
Tabbrowser Extensions
Enables you to add a close icon on each tab.
IE View for Windows
Adds “View page in Internet Explorer” links to the content an link context menu. This is useful when stumbling upon pages that only load correctly in IE.
Secure Password Generator
A nice tool to generate random passwords.
Bandwidth Tester
Tells you the bandwidth of your Internet connection.
If you’re a Windows user and are still using Internet Explorer, I strongly recommend downloading Firefox and using it instead. It’s been about three years since Microsoft has released any updates to IE. They’re not planning on releasing any updates to the software unless you upgrade your entire operating system to their next version of Windows (which isn’t due to be released anytime soon). By switching to Firefox, you’ll be able to use extensions, tabbed browsing, a built-in popup blocker and Google toolbar, you’ll be using a browser that conforms to Web standards, and most importantly your Web browser will not be susceptible to all of the fundamental design flaws of IE which in-turn, increases your security and prevents adware and spyware from being installed on your system.
Update (September 26th, 2004)
Not only did Firefox reach their goal of one-million downloads in 10 days, but they doubled it! Awesome!
Link to this entry • Posted in Internet •
Back From Chicago
Posted on September 7th, 2004 @ 9:30 PM EST
We had a great time while visiting Chicago. The weather was excellent and the temperatures were in the low-80s each day. The first day there we walked down to Millennium Park. My favorite attraction in the park was the Cloud Gate Sculpture. The photo above is a reflection off of the sculpture. We walked around the streets outside the hotel and stumbled upon Boston Blackies where we had dinner. They had an amazing half-pound hambuger covered with bacon and onions for only $6.50, which was voted one of the top-five burgers in the city every year for the past 15 years. That evening we saw “Show Title Deemed Indecent By FCC” at the Second City comedy theater. The theater has established itself as a Chicago landmark and treasure. It launched the careers of great comedians such as John Belushi, Chris Farley, Mike Meyers, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and many more. The show paid homage to how radically our culture has changed and was given its name because the actors want to help increase awareness of how much the FCC is trying to censor our freedom of speech.
Caroline didn’t get back from the conference until late in the afternoon on Friday so we didn’t get a chance to do a lot of sightseeing that day. We ate dinner at Buca di Beppo which is a family-style Italian restaurant. The food was served in portions that were meant for sharing and their “small” was enough to feed two to three people.
The next day we went to the Shedd Aquarium which is the largest indoor aquarium in the world. It took us over two hours to go through all of the exhibits (Amazon Rising, Pacific Northwest, Caribbean Reef, Fishes From Around the World, and Wild Reef). We ended up eating dinner at Baja Fresh because several friends had suggested it was good and they don’t have any locations near where we live. The food was excellent and is nothing like Taco Bell. After dinner we walked down to the Navy Pier and watched the fireworks over Lake Michigan. I was kind of surprised at the number of fireworks during the show. Their weekly show certainly had a lot more than what my local town of Wilmington, NC has on the 4th of July.
The last full day we were there we went to the Art Institute of Chicago. A few of the famous paintings that we saw were A Sunday On La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, American Gothic by Grant Wood, Water Lilies by Claude Monet, Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte, and The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso. There was an exhibit set up for Seurat which displayed 40 paintings and drawings that ranged from rich yet delicate crayon studies to oil sketches on small wood panels, to nearly full-sized paintings which were all studies for A Sunday On La Grande Jatte. The exhibit also had a full-size digital reproduction print that showed how the painting looked when it was first seen by the Parisian public in 1886, before the painting darkened somewhat. After visiting the art museum we browsed through some of the shops along the “Magnificent Mile” including the Apple store that recently opened, Virgin, Pottery Barn, Burberry and several other stores. We then went to the Goose Island microbrewery and took a tour of the brewery. They were very generous with their taste testing and let us try 10 of their beers. My favorites were their India Pale Ale, Red Felt Ale, and Hefeweizen. We ended up spending around four hours at the brewery and chatted for several hours with a few other people we met on the tour.
Overall my wife and I really liked Chicago. We both agreed that it’s the city that we like the most of out of all the large cities we’ve visited. The food was amazing wherever we ate, the city was really clean, the weather was nice, and there was plenty to do and see.
Link to this entry • Posted in Beer, Travel •
Chicago-Bound
Posted on September 1st, 2004 @ 10:13 PM EST
Early tomorrow morning my wife and I are flying to Chicago for a five-day trip. While there, she has to attend a conference for the American Political Science Association. We’re going to stay at the InterContinental Chicago which is on the famed “Magnificent Mile” so we’ll be right in the center of everything.
It’s funny because I was just in Chicago last Thursday when I got on a connecting flight on the way home from Seattle and now I’m going back less than a week later. We’re planning on visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, Navy Pier, Shedd Aquarium, Second City comedy theater, and the Goose Island microbrewery.
Link to this entry • Posted in Travel •
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