Big Brother

Posted on October 13, 2007 at 9:43 am | 13 Comments
Filed under Internet Insanity • Random Realities • School Sabotage

Once you have entered any Big Brother house, I’m sure, your wouldn’t have any privacy and confidentiality, or if there is, only a little of the two. It’s sad isn’t? You can’t do things without the others knowing it, or should I say the whole world. It’s a breach to everyone’s right: the right to privacy. But then, to relinquish one’s privacy and confidentiality is a prerequisite or a mechanic or whatever you want to call it of the reality show. Besides, the housemates have consented to relinquish their privacy and confidentiality by joining the game.

Tomorrow, the gates, doors and windows of the Pinoy Big Brother house will open once again, and the cameras will start to roll and monitor every move of the housemates. And I don’t care. You know perfectly that I loathe the show. And let me state here that this post is not about the reality game show.

I used to abuse the unlimited Internet surfing my school offers for an exchange of a price of around Php 500.00 even though the only browser installed in the computers in school is the freaking IE and they don’t even have the latest version. Now, I’m wondering if their Windows are of legitimate copies. After surfing the Internet (in school), I clear the cache, browser history, cookies, and other whatnots for my privacy. I don’t want other students know what sites I visit. The last time I surfed the Internet in school, I’ve learned that they disabled access to the “Internet Options” unless you’re an administrator. And this really sucks.

This is another reason why Firefox is better than IE, in Firefox, you don’t need to be an administrator to delete all of those private data. When I’m on an Internet Cafe (which is very rare) — the Internet Cafes I have been to have Firefox installed — I just click Clear Private Data, and presto, no unwanted private data left.

Behind all of this, it’s really better browsing the Internet at home. No people shouting foul words at each other. No rude looking people reading whatever you are typing. No hassles of clearing your private data.

And this reminded me that if our phone line won’t get fixed anytime soon1, I have to buy a wireless router so I can browse the Internet in my room.

  1. We have a temporary line in our dinning room. [↩]

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Desktop Madness

Posted on October 9, 2007 at 10:01 am | 15 Comments
Filed under Random Realities

It has been ages since I last did a meme here so I stole this one from Juice. I am really itching to do this meme despite that I have to sit a final exam later this afternoon at 3:00 pm. Oh, don’t worry, it’s just Theology, and really, I don’t have to memorize anything, I only need to read pages and pages of photocopied lectures.

Without any further ado, here it is…

As you can see, my wallpaper is from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’ve been using this wallpaper for months and I’m tired of it. I tried to look for another wallpaper but nothing suited me. On the left side, you can see my desktop icons. I only put two columns of icons on my desktop to make it look neat. On the other side is the Windows Sidebar. I don’t usually use it but I like its functionality and features.

And now, my top five programs.

  1. Adobe Photoshop CS2 I use this program to manipulate my photos and create the images that I use for my layouts.
  2. Yahoo! Messenger Aside from texting, I use Y!M to get connected to my high school classmates. This also serves as my connection to my online friends and present blockmates.
  3. Mozilla Firefox Do I still need to explain what this program does?
  4. Notepad For encoding my layouts. Yes, I’m comfortable using Notepad to encode HTML, CSS and PHP.
  5. Limewire and uTorrent (tie) For downloading mp3 files and other whatnots.

Feel free to steal this meme. I’m now signing off to continue reviewing for my exam later.

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Safari on Windows

Posted on June 12, 2007 at 6:41 pm | 16 Comments
Filed under Digging Delicious • Internet Insanity

Before anything else, I just want to greet every Filipino out there a happy Independence Day. Seriously, I can’t feel the vibe. I haven’t received any text messages greeting me “a happy Independence Day” or read a blog entry about this very special day. Don’t tell me I got the wrong date.

*****

When I started surfing the internet today, the last day of my last summer vacation I came across with this headline on digg.com: Safari on Windows. I thought that Safari — the default web browser that comes along with every new Mac — was available for Windows before today. Obviously, I was wrong. But now, you can run it on your PC. Now we can tell if our blogs do break or not on Safari without buying a very expensive Mac. I tried mine and my site doesn’t look awkward or whatever. Safari renders my site almost like Firefox.

Pros:

  • Cool UI. I’ve read somewhere that it gives you the feel of how Safari looks like on a Mac. Sleek!
  • In my experience, almost all embedded Quicktime movies would make Firefox and IE7 crash on Windows Vista. Since Quicktime and Safari’s creator are just one, they blend smoothly.
  • I really like the Private Browsing1 feature of Safari. Best used for viewing porn sites. Haha.
  • Firefox greatest feature was also copied by Safari: tabbed browsing. But what’s original is that you can make an existing tab to open into a new window by just dragging it out and if you want to put all of your opened windows into just only one, you can merge them.
  • There’s also a built-in pop-up blocker. That’s self explanatory.
  • Text fields are resizable. No more unnecessary scrolling for text fields!
  • The built-in RSS is astounding, but that does not mean I’m leaving Google Reader.
  • The “Find” feature of Safari is better than Firefox. The highlighted text is easier to locate.

Cons:

  • Safari for Windows is still in beta, so it’s buggish.
  • You can only resize the window with the bottom-right corner of the window.
  • I think this one is only a bug, whenever you minimize a maximized window and you want to restore it, it wouldn’t go back to the maximized state, but to the restored down one.
  • There is no button on the toolbar that’ll open a new tab. The “New Tab” is buried under the “File” menu, so it would take you two clicks to open a new tab, alternatively, you can use Ctrl+T (the same shortcut for opening a new tab with the other browsers that support tabbed browsing). Moreover, the “+” button on the toolbar is misleading especially if you use have used Firefox for a while, because it only creates a new bookmark. Firefox, on the other hand, would create a new tab when you click the “+” button.
  • Other features in Firefox are also available (copied?) in Safari
  • If Firefox loves memory hogging, Safari loves it even more. It uses most of my memory. But since I’ve got 1GB of RAM2, it’s not really a big problem.
  • Only basic plugins (e.g:Java, Flash) are available.

Bottom Line

I’m sticking wtih Firefox, it is still the best browser in my opinion no matter what Mac says (that Safari is 1.6 times faster than Firefox in rendering HTML and executing JavaScript). With Firefox, you can do more things aside from visiting websites. But I’m not removing Safari from Snidget. I’m going to use it the layouts that I create are compatible with it and watching Quicktime movies. You can download Safari 3 Public Beta at the Apple website (that just got a new makeover).

Opera isn’t installed on Snidget yet, I might try it the next time I got a free time.

So I end this post with screen shots on how my site looks like on IE7, Safari and Firefox:

IE7
Internet Explorer 7.0

Safari
Safari

Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox

PS: I just want to say thanks to digg, without it, I wouldn’t see these kind of stuffs, or if I would even without digg, at a later time. Visit it and subscribe to make your vote count! Digg on!

Hey! Why am I blogging about an Apple product when my notebook is running in Windows Vista? Haha!

  1. Firefox 3 will have this feature. [↩]
  2. I haven’t blogged that I got a free 512 MB RAM. It was added on Snidget a week after we bought my notebook. [↩]

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Big Surprises

Posted on May 16, 2007 at 11:38 pm | 34 Comments
Filed under Amazing Adventures • Daily Dose

Last Sunday, I and my family had another unplanned trip. This time, we went to Subic where we had some fun in the beach. I miss Subic so much, I think it has been seven years since we last went there (and about four years since I last went to a beach). Here are some photos from our recent trip to Subic.

Subic

Summer

Let's go to the Beach!

And of course, I want you to meet Snidget.

Vistah!

Yep, that’s Snidget, my brand new notebook. It’s a Compaq Presario V3324TU Notebook PC (click the link to see the specifications).

I got the name Snidget from the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by JK Rowling under the pen name Newt Scamander. It’s a magical creature that can fly fast. Before, the Snidget was used in the game of Quidditch.

As you can have seen in the picture, my laptop’s operating system is Windows Vista, and hey, Vista rocks! I like some of the new features like the sidebar (which can be found in your desktop). I’m not sure if other computers have it, but my notebook has a feature called voice recognition. I can simply say what I want to type! Isn’t that cool?

Now, are you wondering how I got this laptop? My father decided to buy me this notebook so that I’ll stick with the course that I took the previous academic year. I just hope I made the right decision.

Nevertheless, I’m enjoying my brand new laptop. It’s already one day old and I’ve already installed lots of programs that I use like Mozilla Firefox (plus the add-ons and plugins), Yahoo! Messenger, and Xampp.

Argh! I don’t have Microsoft Office! I badly need that application. Now, I’m wondering how much is the license of that application…

Yeah, this is another lame post.

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Meme: Abused Programs

Posted on April 12, 2007 at 9:09 am | 15 Comments
Filed under Random Realities

Whoa. I just posted an entry yesterday, and here I am, posting another one. Oh, well, because nothing worth-blogging has happened to me this week, I’m just going to do a meme.

Instructions: Click “Start,” you’ll see there shortcuts to the programs you use most often. Put ‘em here, and give each an explanation. If there are other programs that are listed in your Start Menu, feel free to include them here.

Notes: As far as I know, only Windows XP and Vista have this feature. If you were using Windows XP or Vista but you don’t see a list, right click your Task Bar and select properties. Under the Start Menu tab, select “Start menu” and click OK.

Mozilla Firefox

Do I really have to tell why it is on my Start Menu? You know how Internet Explorer sucks. And this might interest you:

Adobe Photoshop CS2

I think I made a wrong move when I upgraded to this version (from 7.0). There are only a few changes that I have seen.

Notepad

I use this program to create my HTML, CSS, and PHP files.

Winamp

Everybody needs a dose of music everyday, eh?

MS Word

I use this for papers that I need in school.

SmartFTP Client

It says that it isn’t free, but its free trial of 30-days never expire. Lol. I use this for transferring file to the server.

Oh, there is a plugin for Mozilla Firefox called FireFTP. You may want to use it for transferring your files to your server. It is very lite, that means, there are only limited features.

Minesweeper

Hey, I know how to play this game. You don’t just click here and there. You need to use your brains! I love this game because it tickles my mind. My best time for the expert is 234 seconds.

Command Prompt

The reason why this is on the list is because I’ve been pinging my site for the past three months. And did you know you can reformat your diskettes with this program?

Xampp

This is the program that I use to run LAMP (minus the “L”). It’s very helpful for me because I can now squash the bugs in my WP Themes even though I’m not connected to the internet.

PSPad Editor

It’s Notepad with many features. I only use this program when I have to look for a certain line in a PHP file.

Flickr Uploadr

Lately, I’ve been uploading pictures to my Flickr account.

Hearts

Lol. Yeah, I also know how to play this game. It’s very simple. I play this game when I wait to be connected to the internet.

Limewire

Despite that I’m on a dial-up connection, and sharing of mp3 files is illegal, I still use it. Lol. I love Limewire! Thanks to it, supporting piracy is easier! :lol!:

Nero StartSmart

No, I don’t usually burn those music files that I’ve downloaded from the internet. What I transfer into CD-R’s are files other than mp3 and wma.

*****

Plugs: I’ve got two new hostees, visit their blogs! Vincent and Drex.

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