What would Jesus blog?

'God blogging' workshop spreads faith: "Read full story for latest details." - CNN.com Technology

GoogleUPS

GoogleUPS: "I just noticed putting in your UPS tracking number in to Google brings up a link to the correct tracking page on the UPS website. Pretty handy so you don’t have to go searching though the UPS website looking for the tracking page (even if it’s on the front page)." - digg.com

iTunes is the media player to use IMHO. I've been using it since the podcast aggregator feature was added. I've found other reasons to love iTunes, like it's free mp3 encoder, stylish looks, and usable media library.

EDIT: I'm now thinking of uninstalling iTunes. I don't see anything wrong other than this: What about those who can't see? I recently heard (literally, on a podcast) that iTunes doesn't really support screen readers very well, which makes me less inclined to like this app...

OpenOffice.org Releases RC3 of Version 2.0

OpenOffice.org Releases RC3 of Version 2.0: "OpenOffice.org made available for free download a third release candidate of Version 2.0 of its popular open-source office suite Friday. The release includes bug fixes only and no new features." - from digg.com

Some people were commenting on digg about weather or not they would upgrade their RC2 to this RC3 since the final realease is scheduled so soon. Kids, please keep your software up to day, don't complain about something that we've been begging MS to do for years, which is test their products thouroughly before releasing it to us low life complaining types...

Upgrading software is just as important as upgrading the OS it runs on, please keep your system up to date people.

Can't copy/paste in Firefox?

About two or three days ago, I started having problems copying and pasting text using Firefox. Not only that but the problem was very strange. I could copy from one section of a document and insert into another portion of the same document, but when I tried pasting elsewhere like the address bar, another tab's document, or another window's document the copy buffer would mysteriously disappear, leaving me shocked and annoyed when I went to hit CTRL+V...

I have since then solved my problem by removing New Dot Net using Microsoft AntiSpyware (Beta). I found out this might solve the problem at the Cant copy and paste in Firefox article on the MozillaZine Forums.

For more information about the behavior of the Firefox "bug" see bug 311844 on Bugzilla.

P.S.
I know a lot of people's stomachs churn when they go to install another MS application, but I demand that these people forgive MS for the past and start realizing that they are finally turning themselves around and doing good things once again.

Edit: Looks like NewDotNet isn't really anything more than a glitchy piece of software, you can remove it without using MS AntiSpyware per the instructions at http://www.newdotnet.com/removal.html.

Google RSS Reader

While scoping the interesting web design of irishstu.com I happened accross the information that Google has an RSS reader. See the post on irishstu.com, or go directly to Google Reader.

How to create an extension for Firefox 1.5.

Building an Extension on http://developer.mozilla.org.

16.7 GB in images/wikipedia/en/

And that's a tarball!

Wikipedia offline.

I'm not done with this yet, but I am working on running the latest backup of Wikipedia on a computer not connected to the internet nor Wikimedia/Wikipedia servers.

For those who don't already know;

• Wikipedia is a project under the Wikimedia Foundation.


• MediaWiki is a PHP/MySQL application which hosts and serves the contents of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects, including Wikipedia.

What this means for those who don't already understand, is that with a running copy of PHP, MySQL, and MediaWiki (all of which are open source and free of charge) along with a properly populated MySQL database any computer can host and view the contents of Wikipedia without a connection to the internet nor Wikimedia/Wikipedia servers.

More later, once I've accomplished my goal...

For information regarding obtaining a copy of the latest database backups of Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects see Wikipedia:Database Download on Wikipedia.org.

Accessing Wikipedia from your application.

If you're writing an application that uses information within Wikipedia, this might be handy; You can access an XML version of any article without any HTML convertions like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/Title_of_the_article

This is much more efficient than pulling down HTML, which has to be converted by the Wikimedia servers first.

New chocolate created.

NOT!

I'm sorry, you have been the victim of a practical joke link. Pass the joke on, the humor can't hurt you, unless it attacks you or something, but I promise it won't do that.

Have a nice day! :)

P.S.
Here's the url;
http://davidmonaghan.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-chocolate-created.html

Teh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teh

Asa Dotzler's article entitled Mozilla Custom Keywords.

If you are a Mozilla or Firefox user this is a tip you just can't ignore. This article describes using a Mozilla feature which can save anyone time when browsing to one of those common sites on their list.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

I have many apologies to give, for not blogging for an eternity, for closing down my web server, not returning calls, etc. I'm like that, I let things get in the way, but now I'm back and things are a changin'

Most of the images here on the blog were hosted on my old host, which I am no longer using. I can't afford the cost especially since I haven't been using it lately. Luckily there are many free places to host text, photos, etc and I'll be using those to maintain this and my new blog (about gardening.)

I can't promise that I'll be better about posting here, but you will see me more often in the near future.

For those wondering where my time has gone, I have one word for you, "Podcasts." If you don't know what they are, google it... (For a hint download, install, and run iTunes.) More on that later.

I've been doing some other things as well. My search for a good calendaring application still runs strong, nothing looks good yet. I've been digging into XPCOM, XUL, etc. A week ago I wrote a Perl script that organizes my photos into folders by year/month/day/hour which I now use to transfer images from my camera to my computer. I've also been checking out flickr, evdb, and some other sites worth mentioning. Channel 9 at Microsoft is very interesting, they have video interviews of all sorts of people from Microsoft. I'm very interested to use Vista (Longhorn) and Avalon (recently changed to some other name.)

Soon I will go through the history of this blog and get things back on track, until then please forgive me... :)

Flash games, quick fun.

I recently browsed over to http://bloggrunn.blogspot.com/ and found these cool flash games.

Minigolf
BlackJack
PinBall

We're back!

Well, it was an amazingly awesome vacation, despite how happy I am now to be back home where we have the essentials of daily life; TiVo, internet, and the beloved dog-butts.

I won't entertain you with the dirty details just yet, because we just got back less than 20 minutes ago, but I however must say it was an incredibly beautiful week spent in a house which was surprisingly immaculate even with our high expectations from the pictures, details on the web site, and the name of the house; "Tranquility." The view was great, the beds were soft, the beach was less than 20 feet away, and across the highway we were located on was a grocery store (which is surprising since
Depoe Bay is home of the smallest harbor.)

The dogs were happy to see us, though Lucy did not pee on the floor as we had expected which is a plus. Another unexpected turn of events took place as I turned on my computer to find my wireless network card could not connect to the router... Now that this has been taken care of, I have many pictures to move over to my computer, and it's slide show time....

Thats all for now...

Preparation for digital photo printing.

I recently ran across this article which prooved somewhat useful;

Preparing digital images for photographic printing

Online Printing

Because I have recently been checking out places where I can get prints made of either my digital or film images, I decided to look around more to see if there is anything better than what I have seen so far. I haven't taken a look at anything in full detail, but before I do I want to have a list of places to start with.

Please, let me know if you know of or find anything I don't have listed here, I may edit the post to add your suggestion. If you haven't already, you should check out deviantART and SnapFish.

Photothru
Shutterfly
PhotoWorks
Ofoto
Mpix
Club Photo
winkflash


And this online photo processing article looks possibly helpful, as does this cnet discussion...

Hackers set up fake wireless access-points.

From news.bbc.co.uk:

"People using wireless high-speed net (wi-fi) are being warned about fake hotspots, or access points.

The latest threat, nicknamed evil twins, pose as real hotspots but are actually unauthorised base stations, say Cranfield University experts.

Once logged onto an Evil Twin, sensitive data can be intercepted.

Wi-fi is becoming popular as more devices come with wireless capability. London leads the global wi-fi hotspots league, with more than 1,000.

The number of hotspots is expected to reach 200,000 by 2008, according to analysts.

"Users need to be wary of using their wi-fi enabled laptops or other portable devices in order to conduct financial transactions or anything that is of a sensitive or personal nature," said Professor Brian Collins, head of information systems at Cranfield University.

Read the rest...

Snapfish.com

My Uncle and I have recently been talking a lot about photography, and we especially tend to dig into details such as the development/printing process, lens mechanics, and extremes like astrophotography and micrography. Yesterday night he browsed to and mentioned a website as well as some of the information about it, and this website you may have already guessed is Snapfish.com. The site boasts that they are "The best value in film and digital photography." I haven't ordered anything from them yet, but here is some information about their services that might be handy if you are contemplating services such as these.

First of all, Snapfish gives you all the space you need to upload your digital photos, and they provide what I have found to be the easiest way to do it over the web. Their solution is an ActiveX application, so you have to use Internet Explorer, but it is well worth it to avoid the inability to upload more than 12 photos at a time, which still requires you to select each of the 12 photos individually... Not only will you have your digital photos online, but you can share them with friends and family. Digital photos are not the end of your online photo album though. Read on...

Snapfish offers 35mm film processing. You send in your film and for about $5 after shipping you receive one set of prints, negatives, and each of your images is scanned and added to your Snapfish account. Snapfish gives you standard prints initially, and now that they are digitally scanned, you can print them just as you can your digital photos, in various sizes.

Unfortunately you have to pay a fee to download the full-resolution images, and the images scanned in from your negatives are only 1612 x 1024 pixels. Apparently any digital photos you upload are stored in the original size you uploaded them in. To get the images, you can either download them or order a CD. The CD pricing seems a bit extreme comparatively, but to download them it costs 49 cents each for 1-10 photos, 39 cents each for 11-24, and 19 cents each for 25+ (limit of 50 files per download.) The nice thing is you probably wont need to download many pictures. Maybe after you have a few rolls stored you could find 11 you really wanted, the price would only be $4.29. If you take better pictures than me you may want all the photos, in which case you would download two rolls or 48 images at a time which would cost 9.12, cheaper than Walgreen's.

Prints are pretty affordable as well, though they are without a frame. A 4x6 is a mere 19 cents, a 5x7 ranges from 95 cents to 59 cents depending on quantity, an 8x10 is $3.79, and you can get wallet prints and family packs as well. Poster prints, which we all love, can be obtained with a high enough resolution image. Prices are $6.99 for a 11x14, $9.99 for a 12x18, $14.99 for a 16x20, and $19.99 for a 20x30. Standard shipping on each order is around $2.00 it seems like, which is reasonable for UPS ground, and you can always splurge if you get in a pinch.

I just started uploading all of my digital photos, I ordered the package kit which gives you the packaging and postage for sending your film in, and I plan on soon ordering my free 10 digital 4x6 prints and sending in a roll of film to be processed for free.