A Geek’s Think

I think I've set a new record for time between posts!  To repeat a phrase found many times in my past blog entries (and journal entries, for that matter), I'll try to do better... :)

Since my last post, I had a blast in Boston for St. Patrick's day (my ship spent the week there), spent a few weeks at home visiting family and friends, and left on my second naval deployment.  Busy times.

We've now been deployed for about 2 1/2 weeks, in which time we've visited the beautiful Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras and passed through the Panama Canal.  Roatan Island's primary industry is tourism centered on its beautiful beaches and many diving opportunities.  While I didn't take advantage of either of those attractions, I did take the opportunity to have a "Dolphin Encounter" at the local marine institute.  For a small fee, we had a 30 minute presentation during which we were introduced to one of their dolphins and were able to interact with her a bit.  Afterwards, we were given another 30 minutes or so to snorkel around the dolphin enclosure with about 15 dolphins.  It was a great experience, even though my camera might not agree - it took a bit of a swim itself in the process...  :(  Hopefully my new Panasonic DMC-TZ5 gets here in time for the next port visit...

On a completely different note, you may not have noticed my blog looking much different lately, but for the last month it's been a completely different system under the hood.  My former blogging software, Wordpress, was becoming more and more difficult to use over my limited bandwidth out to sea, and tended to have security problems on a fairly regular basis.  Fortunately, my site was never compromised, but my inability to update the software while away from home made that a distinct possibility.  Therefore, I took it upon myself to write my own blogging software.  Now some of you may be thinking about what a masochist I must be, but it really wasn't that bad - the Python-based web framework I used known as Django made my job easy.  This is my first real Django application and I'm quite pleased with the power and ease of development the framework offers. Maybe someday I'll give a more detailed explanation of what's going on behind the scenes of the new blog, but for now I'm just enjoying my freedom from the bloated beast that is Wordpress.

Due to my current work situation (see the picture on the right of the page), I’m currently stuck with an extremely-low-bandwidth connection to the Internet.  This can turn simple tasks, such as checking my bank account, into monumental exercises in patience.  I once spent more than two hours trying to pay a cell phone bill without success.

While I can’t do much to get web designers to stop eating up my bandwidth with useless flashy interfaces, I’ve found several Mozilla Firefox extensions that make my browsing significantly faster.  Here are a few of them, in no particular order:

Adblock

Adblock is without a doubt my #1 tool in saving bandwidth, and I’m not just talking about blocking ads. Large images (anything over 5 KB!) or unnecessary Javascript files get the Adblock treatment, too.  Slashdot, one of my favorite sites and a notorious slow loader, now loads in less than a minute versus 5+ minutes before being trimmed down by Adblock. To check for large images, use the Media tab under Tools -> Page Info in Firefox. For a whole-page view of bandwidth sucking files, check out websiteoptimization.com.

DownThemAll

Downloading a large file can be laborious over a satellite link, especially when the connection seems to die every minute or two.  DownThemAll will keep on chugging past interruptions, not stopping until the whole file is down. It’s saved me from many a headache.  DownThemAll also functions as a powerful download manager, with support for download queues and other standard features.

Flashblock

Flashblock replaces embedded Macromedia Flash objects with a clickable image that when clicked loads the blocked object. In my experience, there are very few times that Flash actually contributes positively to a web page, so rarely have any reason to click. For those few exceptions, Flashblock has a whitelist feature to allow Flash content to be displayed without interruption.

NoScript

I just installed NoScript this morning and am loving it already. It blocks Javascript content on pages, which, like Flash, is often superfluous and bandwidth intensive.  Again, for those sites where Javascript is necessary to access the content, a whitelist feature is provided.

ScribeFire

Another recent installation, ScribeFire allows me to post to my self-hosted WordPress blog without actually visiting the slow-loading blog administration page. I’m using it right now, in fact, to post this blog entry. ScribeFire also works with other blog hosts such as LiveJournal, Blogger, and Wordpress.

Others

Several other Firefox Extensions make my life easier, but aren’t specifically bandwidth oriented:

• CustomizeGoogle - Allows me to choose what I see (and don’t see) when searching via Google.
• Download Statusbar - Replaces the download window with an informative status bar at the bottom of my screen.  I like.
• MediaPlayerConnectivity - Allows me to download embedded videos instead of viewing them directly in the page.  Also makes my life easier as a Linux user when dealing with Quicktime or Windows Media Player files, which have no official Linux player.
• Tab Mix Plus - Ever want to customize how your Firefox tabs behave? Ever had 20 tabs open when your computer crashed, losing hours of research? Ever accidentally close a tab? Tab Mix Plus fixes all that and more.
• Web Developer - Developing a web page can be complicated business, especially when CSS or large table-based layouts are involved.  Web Developer provides countless tools to make that process easier. It is one of the most popular Firefox extensions for good reason.

I hope I’ve provided some light at the end of the slow-moving Internet tunnel for those who, like me, are stuck with low-bandwidth connections. Enjoy your new-found freedom!

Check out these new technologies with the potential to make life even easier for us technogeeks:

LED Projectors

Normal projectors use a really expensive light bulb to display images. While offering great image quality, they have the side effects of running really hot, requiring loud fans, and a bulb that needs to be replaced every thousand hours or so. At $300-500 per bulb, costs can soon bypass the original cost of the projector.

Enter the LED Projector. Using LED’s instead of standard bulbs for lighting removes all three of the above-mentioned issues - they’re cool running and long lasting. They’re also small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. All these benefits come with a price, however - less brightness. Every model announced thus far has a brightness of less than 100 lumens, with most outputting closer to 25 lumens. That’s not very bright, but their portability, price (less than $1000), and long life make them a powerful contender for my future spending. Check out the announced models from Mitsubishi , Toshiba, Sony, Samsung, and more.

Electronic Paper

Electronic Paper makes it possible to read from a computer without experiencing the eye strain normally associated with a computer monitor, which refreshes its image at least 60 times per second. It does this by displaying a constant image - no changes unless necessary. In that way, reading from ePaper is like reading from a book - easy on the eyes. Now imagine having a 1 GB flash memory card full of books or papers to read. Thousands of books in the palm of your hand with no eye strain? I say WOW. Pair this with Project Gutenberg and you can have more than 19,000 books at your fingertips. Plus, you’re saving trees as you go. Nice, eh?

Here’s a page I made up several years ago about setting up Eclipse with J2EE on Windows. It’s a but outdated now, but I still get a few visitors looking for it.

Eclipse + J2EE

There’s a site I visit fairly often called Groklaw, which reports on legal items of interest to the technical community. I found a recent article funny and scary at the same time.

The article is titled ColdPizza, a parody by Scott Lazar. To quote Groklaw,

There is no way Scott Lazar can read Coldplay’s DRM notice of terms and conditions without inspiration striking. So here is his latest, ColdPizza.

DRM, or Digital Rights Management, refers to technical measures companies take to limit the use of their products. An example of this would be a copy-protected CD, which has some technical “feature” that (theoretically) stops consumers from making copies of the music it contains. For a better definition of DRM, visit the Wikipedia.

The DRM mentioned in the article is on a recent Coldplay CD, which automatically installs software on (Windows) computers when the CD is first inserted. The software is supposedly there to stop the consumer from making copies of the CD or ripping the songs into MP3’s. The terms and conditions of using that CD/software are rather draconian, thus inspiring a parody thereof.

You’ll never think about cold pizza the same:

ColdPizza, a parody by Scott Lazar.