BlueMM

Firefox 4.0 released

2011-03-23T15:31:00.003+11:00

Mozilla released Firefox 4.0 today, with many UI changes, faster everything & improvements to open web technologies.

It appears a lot of early adopters have jumped onto Chrome, together with normal users from massive marketing efforts & other programs which install Chrome during their setup. I'm personally sticking to Firefox because: non-profit organisation with a open web vision, takes privacy seriously (the way Sync works means they never see my data, unlike Google which can see Chrome data - don't think this includes passwords though). Also, 99% of their decisions & planning is in the open, which is incredibly brave (since it opens them to continual criticism), shows how actual transparency works & lets normal people view how these processes/decisions are made.

The things that interest me for this release include:

New UI which should allow more space for the page (will take a while to used to the changes)
New Add-ons Manager
Restartless Add-ons
Inbuilt Sync
Quicker startup times
Hardware accelerated graphic layers drawing for video & pages
Improved page load
Faster JavaScript by using JägerMonkey
Upgrades to DOM and Style Resolution performance
Do Not Track feature

I won't be upgrading to Firefox 4.0 just yet. I'll wait a little while so my Add-ons are updated (is their an easy way to check?). Also, I have been using the same profile since ~Phoenix v0.3, so plan on doing some research about only transferring over needed user data & setting options (& Add-ons) from scratch. I have done a fair bit of customising, so it will take a bit of effort.

Update (2011-03-29): It took a far bit of yesterday to do it, but I'm now on Firefox 4.0. Used the list of important profile files from Mozilla Support: Recovering important data from an old profile to copy across to the new profile. Cookies wouldn't work at all, so had to export them from the Firefox 3.6 profile to cookies.txt (original Netscape/Mozilla format) using Cookies Exporter and import into the Firefox 4.0 profile using Cookie Importer, worked like a charm!! (better than my attempts to do in low level with sqlite3.exe and/or SQLite Manager).
All Add-ons had to be reinstalled, which is probably a good thing, but took a long time. The Lazarus form recovery database failed to transfer, had to reset. Greasemonkey & Stylish worked well once their data files/database was copied over.
Finally, I made sure preferences for Add-ons were transferred (manually) & I checked the profile prefs.js file to transfer any important hidden settings I had in my old profile.

Download Firefox 4.0 now.

Upgrading to Firefox 3.5 issues

2009-07-09T09:46:00.006+10:00

Having recently upgraded to Firefox 3.5 from 3.1b3, I stumbled onto a few issues. In the 2 profiles we use, both showed a empty (blank) Options dialog box with only Ok & Cancel buttons. Also tabs behave strangely and won't close + web pages seemed strange, most had scrollbars on the left hand side.

Solution:

Tried a few different things, but deleting the localstore.rdf file from the profile directory (see How to find your profile) fixed everything. A bit like the Firefox Support article Toolbar keeps resetting and it's solution, Method 2: Delete localstore.rdf manually

Happy now :-)

Actual Solution:

Whoops, turns out my localstore.rdf solution was wrong :-(
It was because I forced SwitchProxy v1.4.1 (homepage & Mozilla Addons page) to be compatible with Firefox 3.5 when it is only claimed to be up to 3.0. Turns out it really was incompatible, who would of thought??

Fixing wrong date/times within a photo and setting the correct file time

2009-01-18T14:14:00.013+11:00

I keep forgetting to correct the camera's time when changing back & forth from daylight savings. So a stack of my photo's are 1 hour behind. This is how I did it and present some of my research findings

Goals

My goal is to keep the photo byte-for-byte the same, except changing the embedded dates. This means I can easily verify that the process hasn't changed anything else (by doing a byte comparison). It also means backups are easier because a tiny binary change is required for each photo, not needing to do a full copy. Versioning systems that handle binary data like SVN, Git & Mercurial will find these changes very compact (making everyone happy :-).

Modify all the embedded date/times so they are moved forward 1 hour.
Change the file time of the photo to match the embedded Date Taken.

Programs used

Exifier v2.1.5 (build 263) Graphical image manage & metadata editor. No updates since 2002!!
Exiv2 v0.18 Console app, easy to use (nice syntax/manual)
ExifTool v7.62 Console app, Perl based but compiled for Windows. Has a million options, but hard to find all the right options (a bit of a rabbits warren).

Fixing the EXIF date/time within a photo

Most photo's taken with a digital camera will have 3 date/time's in them.

Date Taken
Date Digitised
Date Modified

Date Taken is the most important one, as that is what Windows Explorer and most Photo editors/viewers use. Usually they are all the same, unless the photo has been edited in some way.

Therefore, I'm trying to change all the embedded date/times by 1hour, relative to their original time. All these programs let you specify the relative time to alter.

This comes in handy if you notice that the camera is the wrong time, but not just a simple Daylight Savings difference of 1 hour.
Before you change the camera's time to the correct time, take a photo of a clock with the correct time. Ideally a GPS (which has to always have the correct time & sync's it with satellites) or something that shows seconds and has an accurate time. Then on the computer, look at the photo's time & the clock's time to work out the relative difference. You can then use this when fixing the time of photos.

Program	version	Byte for byte?	Time (min)
Exifer	2.1.5	Yes	2:12¹ (1:53²)
Exiv2	0.18	Yes	3:27.31
	0.17	Yes	4:05.25
ExifTool	7.62	No³	3:52.22
	7.25	No³	3:34.58

Notes:
1. Wall clock time
2. Exifer preloads all the EXIF data when selecting a folder, which means a lot of the Images are in the OS filesystem cache (cheating, kind of :-).
3. Looks like there are sections of the EXIF header removed, as well as random bytes have changed (looks like it might still have the same information). But it makes it very hard to verify proper changes, and stuff's up byte diffs for backup/version control.

You can see that the Exiv2 guys have been working hard on performance, making some serious improvements between v0.17 & v0.18.

Setting the photo's file time to match the EXIF date/time

Since we have changed the embedded date/time, the date/time of the file will not match, and it makes it much more convenient if the photo's file time is correct.

Program	version	Time (seconds)
Exifer	2.1.5⁴	53¹ (2²)
Exiv2	0.18	7.02
	0.17.1	13.81
ExifTool	7.62	14.64
	7.25	15.16

Notes: 4. For some reason, Exifer creates a hidden "descript.ion" file that is empty in the folder. Can't find an option to turn that off, and there aren't many programs that use descript.ion anymore (used to be used in DOS days to enter a description for files within a directory, since images didn't always support some kind of embedded metadata).

Warning: NTFS formatted drives will show a different time when you change into Daylight Savings time, as NTFS saves file times in UTC (GMT) which is universal time and has not timezone offset. When your region moves into Daylight Savings time, your timezone offset from UTC changes, therefore Windows displays a different time. FAT32 stores only the local time, so it doesn't change with Daylight Savings changes. Camera memory cards (SD, Memory Stick, Compact Flash etc.) are Fat16 or Fat32 formatted, and some external backup drives are also FAT32 formatted. Assuming the file time has been set to the Date Taken time, these will always match.

Recommendations

For normal usage, use Exifer to altering EXIF date/times & make file times match.
If wanting to automate (using batch files etc.), use Exiv2.
Keep all your photo's & any backups on the same formatted drive. I have everything on FAT32 formatted drives, but if you are going to be on NTFS for one, use NTFS for all (not typical with camera memory cards & USB falsh drives).

Test Specifications

Acer Travelmate 3220 Notebook
Windows XP SP3
Intel Pentium M 2.26Ghz
2.26Ghz 1Gb
Toshiba MK8025GAS HDD
- 2.5" 80GB
- 4,200rpm
- 8MB Buffer
- ATA-6 Interface
- 12ms Average Seek Time
- NTFS formatted
Photo's taken with a Panasonic Lumix TZ-11 8Mpixel camera
- All contained within a single folder
- 251 photo's
- Total size of 769MB (806,767,153 bytes)
- Average size of 3.07MB (3,214,212 bytes)
All devices deactivated where possible
- Wireless LAN turned off
- Bluetooth turned off
- CardBus turned off
- LAN turned off
- Firewire (IEEE1394) turned off
- Extrenal drives disconnected
All programs shutdown where possible
- Anti-virus turned off
- Programs in system tray terminated
- Explorer windows closed Had to retest when realised I had explorer opened on test directory, meaning Windows was updating the view during the test
Between test, Operating System File cache cleared by copying very large files (is there a better way/utility to do this for you?

Test commands

Exifer

Fix wrong time

Select images as needed (can show sub-folders as well)
"Edit EXIF/IPTC data" (Ctrl+E)
Select "EXIF data" tab
Select "Date" sub-tab
Tick [x] Apply to Date modified and Date digitized
Adjust "Date/Time offset" settings as needed

Set file date/time to match EXIF date

Select images as needed (can show sub-folders as well)
"Rename/redate images" (Ctrl+N)
Untick [ ] Rename
Tick [x] Redate (by EXIF date fields)

Note: Sets Fat32 2sec accuracy time on NTFS

Exiv2

Note: For testing Exiv2 & ExifTool, I wrapped the console commands in echo %time% to find out the elapsed time to run (I'm sure there's a nice chuck of DOS batch code that even does the duration time calculation for you).

Fix wrong time

exiv2.exe ad -a 1 -k *.jpg
Note:

ad -a 1 adds 1 hour to all 3 EXIF times (can use 1:03; -0:34.57 etc.)
-k keeps current file time

Set file date/time to match EXIF date

exiv2.exe mv -T *.jpg
Note: Sets 1sec accuracy time on NTFS
Manual talks about having to set TZ enviroment variable, but seems to work fine without...

ExifTool

Fix wrong time

exiftool.exe -overwrite_original -P -AllDates+=1 ./*.jpg
Note:

-AllDates+=1 adds 1 hour to all 3 EXIF times
-P keeps current file time
-overwrite_original doesn't create a backup copy of the image

Set file date/time to match EXIF date

exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal>FileModifyDate" ./*.jpg
Note: Sets 1sec accuracy time on NTFS

Please suggest any other programs or configurations to try...

Performance of copying files to an external drive

2008-11-22T18:01:00.005+11:00

Did some tests to see if the claim of the "fast copying" programs are true. Below is the results I got from copying a Firefox profile from a laptop hard drive (NTFS) to an external USB2 hard drive (WD Mybook Home 1TB as FAT32) on Windows XP SP3. The Firefox profile was 18.6MB (19,552,413 bytes), 630 files & 174 folders. This contains lots of small files, which usually hurt performance when copying & deleting. I copied 5x100MB files from the laptop to the external drive to make sure there is nothing in the drive buffer (which only takes about 10 seconds), to make the results fair. The WD Mybook Home has Firewire400 & eSATA ports as well, but I didn't try those (but I have done some informal testing in the past, and USB2 & Firewire seemed to be pretty equal.)

The Results:

Program	version	Time	Maintain folder date	Free?	Notes
Beyond Compare	v2.4.3	209.8s	Yes	No
FastCopy	v1.91	96.1s	Yes	Yes	default 32MB buffer
TeraCopy	v1.22	426s	No	Yes	default (to another HD)256KB buffer
WinXP explorer copy		97s (stopwatch)	No	Yes	Ext. HD still spinned for a while afterwards

Based on the results, FastCopy is my new "copy bulk amount of files" program of choice.
Please suggest any other programs or configurations to try...

First update on mapping OpenStreetMap (long overdue)

2008-10-13T19:00:00.008+11:00

Australia » Victoria » Melbourne
I signed up for OpenStreetMap about a year ago, and there were plenty of warnings that it's very addictive, but little did I know!!!
I do mapping in spits & spurts (like a lot of other people I'd imagine).

Progress

Turns out I have done a fair bit since I signed up:

Looks like I'm the biggest contributor in greater Melbourne, scary stuff.

I've traced streets, added a lot of names and added some POI's like parks, foot/bike paths, pubs, schools etc.

Rough order of Suburbs I've done:

Essendon
Moonee Ponds
Aberfeldie
Strathmore
Ascot Vale
Flemington
Travancore
Kensington
West Melbourne (industrial area)
Strathmore Heights
Gowanbrae
Airport West
Keilor East
Avondale Heights
Maribyrnong
Maidstone
West Footscray
Footscray
Braybrook
North Sunshine
Sunshine
Keilor Park
Tullamarine

Since I don't have a GPS, I trace from Yahoo! imagery and fill in as many details as possible.

My usual steps:

Trace streets, parks, foot/bike paths from Yahoo! imagery
- Add as many tags as is obvious, leave alone if in doubt
  - eg. highway=residential, source=yahoo
Ride along "main" roads to pick up all the side street names, scribbling on my Palm T3 Notepad application (exports to PNG)
- Tag as name=blah, source:name=survey
- Later on use Maplint or NoName layers to spot missing street names
  - Plan another ride that swings past all remaining streets
Walk or ride down *every* street, after printing off a Mapnik layer map of the area
- Note down:
  - All street names/references/lanes/bike lanes/speed limits
  - Schools, park, shopping centre names and shapes (to refine the rough tracing from Yahoo!
- This takes a long time, and I've only done a little bit so far, but it does make the area almost 100% complete

Wishlist

Either Yahoo! updates their Melbourne satellite photo's (~5 years old) and provide higher zoom levels (currently level 16) or Google provides their photo's to OSM
Potlatch is my editor of choice, and it has improved a lot since I started using it
- Zoom further in by scaling the Yahoo! tiles when hitting the highest zoom Y! provides
  - Potlatch used to do this, which made it much faster to trace, but a Flash bug that occurs when the auto-maximise feature was added means this had to be turned off :(
- More tag "autocomplete" entries (especially source:name=survey/photo etc.)
- When crossing a way with another (either as a T-intersection or cross), I think the snapping feature of Potlatch means the created node is not where the two ways mathematically cross, but the nearest snapped point
  - So the angles of ways change a bit, needing zooming in to fine tune
    - But snapping is very obvious at z18, which becomes dodgy when ways are close to (but not) orthogonal
  - I usually layout a grid of streets with a little overlap, then come through and join all crossing ways, crop T-intersections overhang and fine tune
Get a GPS and:
- Circumnavigate local parks etc. which are hard to see the boundry from Yahoo! imagery because of trees
- Enter POI points like postboxes, speedhumps, changes of speedlimits
- Take photos as I go of all the street signs, amenity names etc. which, with a GPS, can be geotagged (and upgrade name's to name:source=photo)

Ownership

I've noticed that there is a fair amount of pride/possessiveness around the contribution that OSM users have made, and I'm no different.

I get annoyed when other users come through and add inappropriate tags (not what was on the ground, "for the renderer", not "best-practise" etc.), move carefully smoothed ways around/offset. I guess the "pride" of one's contribution is a double edged sword.

Good tools for letting me know when someone has editing "my areas" would be fantastic, and I've just signed up for Itoworld's osmmapper (RSS feeds of changes to specific areas). But I think it's hard to communicate what has changed, how do you convey changes in a concise/meaningful way?

eg. Mary St is now oneway & nodes moved; Frank Rd deleted; Railway Hotel pub added+tagged opening hours; etc.

Crossposted at OSM diary

Palm T3 Documents To Go problem

2008-07-11T15:15:00.005+10:00

I sync my Palm T3 on 2 computers, which sometimes cause problems after I've had a hard reset (a complete data wipe). This time it was because it ran out of battery juice (I suspect - a button was held pressed when packed in a bag).

I mostly fixed all the issues (after having to manually hard reset again after not entering the correct time/date - stuffs up the forced sync for some reason), but Documents To Go (v6.008) sometimes gets confused about syncing existing documents.

The error message I see is:

Another file exists with the same name as this one...

But there is no documents with the same name!!!
DataViz support had nothing in their Knowledge Base. I have seen this with both "Sheets to Go" and "Microsoft Excel" formats.

I tried everything to fix this, but was left with the poor option of just changing the name of the document to something unique. But today I found a solution

Using either Filez or Resco Explorer, I deleted all of the Documents To Go Palm databases. I think that DocsToGoDB.DATA is the one that solved the problem, hard to tell. It did cause all the categories and their assignments to disappear, but easy for me to add again. So I deleted:

DocsToGoDB.DATA
DxtgTempDB.TDAT
(in Resco Explorer) all Documents [DTGP,xx].pref "files"

I was then magically able to see the "existing" files of the same name, delete them, rename each document to their "proper" name, assign a category and sync properly!!

Firefox 3.0 released, download now!!

2008-06-18T16:28:00.004+10:00

The Mozilla corporation/community have released Firefox 3.0 today, with many improvements (both UI wise and backend changes).

Similar to Firefox 2.0 & 1.5, this release has had some serious amount of QA pounding on it, I would say it is their most planned & executed release management to date.

The things that interest me for this release include:

Awesome bar (smart location bar)
one-click bookmarking
Tagging history/bookmarks
Better password manager (not getting in your face)
New EV certificates (better identification of secure sites)
Add-ons Manager with inbuilt Addons listing
Download Manager improvements (mainly resumable across sessions, more robust backend)
Full Zoom (images & text zoom together)
Improved Memory Management (cycle collector, reduced leaks, jemalloc allocator to use less memory)
Faster JavaScript
Faster Page Load
Advanced Graphics (reflow rewrite, better SVG/Canvas support, better graphics backend (Cairo))
Future Weave sync'ing

I only started using 3.0 with the release candidates (RC1), because of the "addons not yet updated" problem. But I found updates for my day-today addons during RC1, so upgraded.

Finally Firefox 3.0 has places support, which I think will make a real difference to users web browsing experience (mainly through the "Awesome bar"). Here's my anticipation from earlier:

When Firefox 1.5 came out, I was already excited about 2.0, what with Places & the SQLite backends, but that didn't really pan out, should be in Firefox 3.0 though...

Firefox 1.5 released today
... Already waiting for Firefox 2.0 (from the 1.8.1 Gecko branch) with its "Places" support (redoing bookmarks, history, feeds etc. into a new user interface and storing in a super fast SQLite DB).

Firefox 3.0 will come off the 1.9 branch, with it's massive Gecko improvements (rewrite rendering using Cairo on all platforms, reflow rewritten, complete SVG support??) and the aforementioned Places with tagging system for bookmarks/history etc.

Download Firefox 3.0 now.
Hopefully download before 3am, 19th June AEST to create a new Guinness world record for the most downloads of a software program in a day!!

Be careful of wet newspaper!

2007-09-28T12:54:00.001+10:00

Riding into work today, I got about half way in before noticing that my rear shifting wasn't working very well. Looking down, it looked like a rag had got caught in the jockey wheels/cassette.

So I stopped on the Moonee Ponds Creek bridge and had a look. It turned out to be a single sheet of damp newspaper, all caught up and mashed around the jockey wheels & cassette & under the chain.

Cleaning it out was difficult because it was caught up under the chain, and that it disintegrated when picking it out. Took about 5 minutes to get it out but then I noticed that the cassette, the paper had somehow loosened the locknut on the cassette and the cassette & the separate sprockets were very loose. Tried finger tightening the locknut, but that only worked a little bit, it was still loose.

Seems that the paper must of compressed on each rotation, in the gap between the locknut & chainstays. And since the chainstays are "going backwards" in relation to the clockwise drive of the cassette when pedalling, it unscrewed the locknut!! Who would of guessed, I'm going to make it nice & tight when I get back home to my cassette locknut spanner.

PS. I've heard some horror stories of plastic shopping bags wrecking the rear derailleur, so I got away pretty cheaply, especially since I just replaced my Shimano Deore 2001 rear derailleur with a SRAM X.9 2007 one.

Firefox Mouse Gestures (Optimoz extension): Snapback gesture

2007-09-28T12:31:00.000+10:00

It seems the Optimoz gesture exchange page is down. But the project page on Mozdev seems to be up!!

matt added a comment (well 3) to the Firefox Extensions I use (2007-08-09) post, asking for it since the page is down and googling didn't find anything, so here it is:

In Firefox, goto Add-ons -> Mouse Gestures -> Options -> "Edit Gestures" button (at the bottom of the General tab, and click New.
In the Gesture code textfield, enter: LR
For Function Type, select: Custom
In Gesture Name textfield, enter: Go to first page
In Custom JavaScript code textarea, enter: if (gBrowser.sessionHistory.index > 0) gBrowser.gotoIndex(0);

Now, you only have to hold down the Right mouse key, and flick the mouse to the Left and then back to the Right!!

Bikely.com - Cleaner (Stylish site style)

2007-09-13T19:37:00.000+10:00

Bikely.com - Cleaner site-style at userstyles.org

I been using the www.bikely.com site for a while now to plot my bike routes or to plan them. I've created some Stylish (a Firefox extension) site-styles to modify the page to remove some of it's clutter. I finally got around to publishing it, mainly because of the functionality lose (favourites adder missing in the header) that users in the forum's have been complaining about. Seems Bikely hasn't been actively developed for a while now, hopefully Jules or someone from BikeRadar continues to develop Bikely soon. Here is my created "site specific stylesheets" site-style:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix("http://www.bikely.com/maps/") {

/* Get rid of Flash object and make the title info wrap */
#headerline > OBJECT { display: none !important; }
#lblRoutetitle > BR { display: none !important; }
#lblRoutetitle { clear: none !important; }

/* Hide Google Ads & Map copyright details */
#mapadcontainer { display: none !important; }
#map > div:first-child + div { display: none !important; }
}

So install the Bikely.com - Cleaner site-style & enjoy!! The userstyles site let's you install it directly into Firefox via Stylish or optionally, as a user-script into Greasemonkey. The user-script also works with Opera.

Firefox Extensions I use (2007-08-09)

2007-08-09T15:08:00.000+10:00

Update from my previous post Firefox Extensions I use (2006-06-21) and Firefox Extensions I use.

Anyway, here is a list of the current Extensions I am using in Firefox 2.0.0.6:

Browser tweaks
- Enhanced History Manager v0.5.8.05.1 (amo homepage)
  Ok, so I'm an old Mozilla App Suite user, and like my advanced History manager to prune my huge history list.
  Update: I'm running a custom EHM version from AnonEmoose that let's you filter by referrer.
- Favicon Picker 2 v0.3.4.1 (amo)
  This is great for fixing favicon issues in bookmarks, especially for adding custom one's for Bookmarklets on the Personal Toolbar (and can therefore get rid of the text, making more visible).
- Menu Editor v1.2.3.3 (amo homepage)
  Don't use this that much anymore, but used to aggressively prune the context menu to make it faster to use (by getting rid of stuff I don't use).
  Maybe should again, extensions add a lot of crap to the context menu :-(.
- Google Toolbar for Firefox v3.0.20070525W (homepage)
  I don't use the toolbar (I have it hidden), other than use the pagerank feature. This means almost all pages I visit get checked for Pagerank at Google, and it saves all of that history to my Google History page. This means I have a full text search of (almost) all my browsing history.
- Kelvin's Australian English Dictionary v2.2.0 (homepage)
  A strict Australian Dictionary.
Downloading
- Download Statusbar v0.9.5 (amo homepage)
  Very nice, download's popup just above the statusbar (like the find bar), and I changed it so they disappear after 10 seconds. Great for directly opening ZIP, exe and PDF files after downloading them (which download by default now).
- DownThemAll! v0.9.9.10 (amo homepage)
  Great when downloading lots of the same type of file linked from a page (ZIP downloads, images etc.).
- Fission v0.8.8 (amo homepage)
  Adds a loading progress bar to the address bar (ala Safari).
- Linky v2.7.1 (amo homepage)
  Lets you open multiple links in a variety of ways. I use it by selecting links I'm interested and opening them all in tabs.
- Magpie v3.2.8 (amo old homepage new homepage)
  Great for downloading content/pictures from a series of open tabs. Hopefully DownThemAll! will be able to do this one day.
Navigation
- ChromaTabs v2.0 (amo homepage)
  Changes the colour of a tab based on the pages site icon (can be configured based on other algorithms).
- Grab and Drag v2.1 (amo homepage)
  Instead of the cursor being used for selecting text (except for links), it makes the mouse pointer act like Acrobat Readers', where you click and drag the page around to scroll. Feels weird using a browser without it.
- Mouse Gestures v1.5.2 (amo homepage)
  Lets me use gestures, which for me involves shortcuts for going Back and Closing a tab/window (customised to use a down stroke).
  Also added a custom gesture to Go to first page in the tab's history (Snapback??) as L,R
- SmoothWheel v0.44.9.20061102 (amo homepage)
  Makes scrolling so nice and smooth (includes de-acceleration when getting to the top or bottom, sweet).
- Tab Preview v0.3 (homepage)
  Great use of the new Canvas feature in Firefox 1.5, it shows a thumbnail of each page when you mouse over non-current tabs. There are a lot of tab preview extensions out there, no idea how this compares.
Page Tweaks
- Aardvark v2.0 (amo homepage)
  Lets you point to sections of a web page and delete, isolate, de-widify etc. Great for pruning a page before printing.
- Adblock Plus v0.7.5.1 (amo homepage)
  Couldn't live without. While I have maintained my block list of many years, when setting up for other people, I subscribe to the EasyElement+EasyList & ABP Tracking Filter through Adblock Plus's Subscription feature (it's very easy to update them).
  I used to use FiltersetG list (usually via the updater extension), but apparently it isn't tuned for performance.
- AJAX Yahoo! Mail v0.6 (amo homepage)
  Modifies Y! Mail so that I can open messages inline (meaning I can open many at once and see them all on the one page). It also lets you download attachments with one click and "instant reply" without having to load a new page.
- Greasemonkey v0.7.20070607.0 (amo homepage)
  Uses JavaScript to modify a pages content. Many JS scripts are available from userscripts.org. Never got into it until I found a few useful scripts at Userscripts that make Y! default to secure login, remebers Y! account names, hides the search section on the Google Personalized page (redudant with FF searchbox) and makes some improvements to All music guide.
  I've also created a few of my own (published scripts).
- Resizable Form Fields v0.2.4 (amo homepage)
  Means you can (sometimes) resize textareas & form fields.
- Stylish v0.5.2 (amo homepage)
  Uses CSS to change the style of a page, similair to Greasemonkey. Many styles are available from userstyles.org.
  I used to put customisations in my usercontent.css and userchrome.css files, but with Stylish, I can see the changes instantly and toggle on and off.
  I use it to increase the size of the Firefox search box (used to use the Resize Searchbox extension, should be in FF v2), show a crosshair when over a link that opens a new window. I created a few styles, for removing clutter from Yahoo! mail and yourTV.com.au TV guides (I should submit those to userstyles.org one day.
Web Devel
- Console² v0.3.7 (amo homepage)
  Replaces the inbuilt JavaScript Console with the "Error Console", makes the console very useful and adds advanced features.
- Firebug v1.05 (amo homepage)
  All web development tools in one, it's truly amazing. HTML & CSS inspection/editing, Network traffic analysis, JS profiling & debugging, logging & error console!!!
- JavaScript Debugger v0.9.87 (amo homepage)
  Great for serious JavaScript development. Need to try Firebug as well.
- Live HTTP Headers v0.13.1 (amo homepage)
  Works well when debugging what the browser is sending and what the server returns (especially for redirects).
- View Source Chart v2.5.03 (amo homepage)
  Useful when trying to analyse how a website is structured, when checking out how it works or for customising.
- Web Developer v1.1.4 (amo homepage)
  Analysis and debugging pages. I use mainly for outlining block elements in HTML, validation and resizing the window for common sizes.

Retired Extensions:

Download Manager Tweak v0.7.1 (amo homepage)
Seems to add nice little tweaks to the Download Manager. Not as useful as Download Statusbar for me.

Old retired list:

Adblock - Switched to Adblock Plus mainly coz of the small icon on status bar.
Forecastfox - Used to like a lot, but the weather date provider (Accuweather) is usually way off for Melbourne weather, so I use the Bureau of Meteorology's plain text based forecast.
Performancing - Post to Blog's: Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, WordPress & MoveableType.
Google Suggest - adds "Suggest" to the Firefox Google searchbox
Hash Coloured Tabs - creates new tabs with colour coding
Link Visitor - lets you selectively mark links as visited or unvisited
Resize Searchbox - creates a grippy for the Firefox searchbox so it can be resized

Excel formula to calculate distance between 2 latitude, longitude (lat/lon) points (GPS positions)

2007-01-06T17:42:00.002+11:00

I've been looking for this one for ages, and the one I created based on an equation I found a little while ago didn't work too well :(

Investigation

Calculate distance, bearing and more between two Latitude/Longitude points shows lots of equations in math, and implemented in JavaScript. Chris Veness's page also contains an Excel formula of the ‘Haversine’ equation (actually, using the "spherical law of cosines") for distances between points in kilometres:

=ACOS(SIN(Lat1)*SIN(Lat2) +COS(Lat1)*COS(Lat2)*COS(Lon2-Lon1)) *6371

But it wasn't working, because my GPS points (Lat/Lon) were in decimal degrees, not radians. So I used the formula I found at Latitude And Longitude In Excel (under the "Great Circle Distances" section) by Chip Pearson:

=RadiusEarth*ACOS(COS(RADIANS(90-Lat1)) *COS(RADIANS(90-Lat2)) +SIN(RADIANS(90-Lat1)) *SIN(RADIANS(90-Lat2)) *COS(RADIANS(Long1-Long2)))

where Chip gives RadiusEarth as 6378.135 kilometres. This didn't match up with distances I had when calculated from other systems. But Chris's page has:

R = earth’s radius (mean radius = 6,371km)

Digging deeper, I found Chris's Vincenty formula for distance between two Latitude/Longitude points page which includes a table on different datum models (treating Earth as an ellipsoid), it shows WGS-84 & GRS-80 having the greatest radius on an ellipsoid as 6378.135km & the smallest as 6356.752km.

So Chip was using the maximum radius of the Earth, not the mean radius like Chris (I'm not sure where Chris gets the mean radius from). Substituting Chris's R for RadiusEarth in Chip's formula gives:

Solution

=ACOS(COS(RADIANS(90-Lat1)) *COS(RADIANS(90-Lat2)) +SIN(RADIANS(90-Lat1)) *SIN(RADIANS(90-Lat2)) *COS(RADIANS(Long1-Long2))) *6371

and my final version that uses Excel cell references is:

=ACOS(COS(RADIANS(90-A2)) *COS(RADIANS(90-A3)) +SIN(RADIANS(90-A2)) *SIN(RADIANS(90-A3)) *COS(RADIANS(B2-B3))) *6371

PS. To calculate distances in miles, substitute R (6371) with 3958.756 (and for nautical miles, use 3440.065).

Firefox 2.0 released today

2006-10-25T10:32:00.000+10:00

The Mozilla corporation/community have released Firefox 2.0 today, with many improvements (mainly behind the scenes).

Similar to Firefox 1.5, this release has had some serious amount of QA pounding on it, I would say it is their most planned & executed release management to date.

The things that interest me for this release include:

Session restore (all tabs & data in pages return after a crash)
Undo close tab (part of session restore, but there's so many times I could of used this)
Inline spell checking (just need to download an Australian dictionary from Mozilla.com's Add-ons Dictionaries, why they make it hard to find that page, I'll never know
Plus lots of tiny stuff not worth mentioning

I'm personally waiting for a few of my many extensions to become compatible with 2.0. It's weird, I only used 1 or 2 extensions for years, but now I use a whole heap (with some disabled when not in use), but I've become so accustomed to them now, I can't live without them. Though based on the amount of time I've had to manually spell check some words in this post, it would probably be easier to be using Firefox 2.0 :-)

When Firefox 1.5 came out, I was already excited about 2.0, what with Places & the SQLite backends, but that didn't really pan out, should be in Firefox 3.0 though...

Firefox 1.5 released today
... Already waiting for Firefox 2.0 (from the 1.8.1 Gecko branch) with its "Places" support (redoing bookmarks, history, feeds etc. into a new user interface and storing in a super fast SQLite DB).

Download Firefox 2.0 now.

Firefox Extensions I use (2006-06-21)

2006-06-21T11:40:00.000+10:00

Update from my previous post Firefox Extensions I use.

Anyway, here is a list of the current Extensions I am using in Firefox 1.5.0.4:

Aardvark v1.1 (homepage)
Lets you point to sections of a web page and delete, isolate, de-widify etc. Great for pruning a page before printing.
Adblock Plus v0.7.0.2 (amo homepage)
Couldn't live without. While I have maintained my block list of many years, when setting up for other people, I use FiltersetG list (usually via the updater extension).
AJAX Yahoo! Mail v0.6 (amo homepage)
Modifies Y! Mail so that I can open messages inline (meaning I can open many at once and see them all on the one page). It also lets you download attachments with one click and "instant reply" without having to load a new page.
Console² v0.3.5 (amo homepage)
Replaces the inbuilt JavaScript Console with the "Error Console", makes the console very useful and adds advanced features.
Download Manager Tweak v0.7.1 (amo homepage)
Seems to add nice little tweaks to the Download Manager. Not as useful as Download Statusbar for me.
Download Statusbar v0.9.4.1 (amo homepage)
Very nice, download's popup just above the statusbar (like the find bar), and I changed it so they disappear after 10 seconds. Great for directly opening ZIP, exe and PDF files after downloading them (which download by default now).
DownThemAll! v0.9.9.5.1 (amo homepage)
Great when downloading lots of the same type of file linked from a page (ZIP downloads, images etc.).
Enhanced History Manager v0.5.8.05 (amo homepage)
Ok, so I'm an old Mozilla App Suite user, and like my advanced History manager to prune my huge history list.
Update: I'm running a custom EHM version from AnonEmoose that let's you filter by referrer.
Favicon Picker v0.3.0 (amo homepage)
This is great for fixing favicon issues in bookmarks, especially for adding custom one's for Bookmarklets on the Personal Toolbar (and can therefore get rid of the text, making more fit).
Seems a little un-maintained, but someone updated it for Firefox 1.5 and it works a treat.
Grab and Drag v1.5.3 (amo homepage)
Instead of the cursor being used for selecting text (except for links), it makes the mouse pointer act like Acrobat Readers', where you click and drag the page around to scroll. Feels weird using a browser without it.
Note: Doesn't seem to be updated on AMO, goto the homepage instead.
Greasemonkey v0.6.4 (amo homepage)
Uses JavaScript to modify a pages content. Many JS scripts are available from userscripts.org. Never got into it until I found a few useful scripts at Userscripts that make Y! default to secure login, remebers Y! account names, hides the search section on the Google Personalized page (redudant with FF searchbox) and makes some improvements to All music guide.
I've also created a few of my own.
JavaScript Debugger v0.9.87 (amo homepage)
Great for serious JavaScript development. Need to try Firebug as well.
Linky v2.7.1 (amo homepage)
Lets you open multiple links in a variety of ways. I use it by selecting links I'm interested and opening them all in tabs.
Live HTTP Headers v0.12 (homepage)
Works well to debugging what the browser is sending and what the server returns (especially for redirects).
Magpie v3.2.5 (amo old homepage new homepage)
Great for downloading content/pictures from a series of open tabs. Hopefully DownThemAll! will be able to do this one day.
Menu Editor v1.2 (amo homepage)
Don't use this that much anymore, but used to aggressively prune the context menu to make it faster to use (by getting rid of stuff I don't use).
Maybe should again, extensions add a lot of crap to the context menu.
Mouse Gestures v1.5 (amo homepage)
Lets me use gestures, which for me involves shortcuts for going Back and Closing a tab/window (customised to use a down stroke).
Also added a custom gesture to Go to first page in the tab's history (Snapback??) as L,R
SmoothWheel 0.44.7.20050605 (amo homepage)
Makes scrolling so nice and smooth (includes de-acceleration when getting to the top or bottom, sweet).
Stylish v0.3.2 (amo homepage)
Uses CSS to change the style of a page, similair to Greasemonkey. Many styles are available from userstyles.org.
I used to put customisations in my usercontent.css and userchrome.css files, but with Stylish, I can see the changes instantly and toggle on and off.
I use it to increase the size of the Firefox search box (used to use the Resize Searchbox extension, should be in FF v2), show a crosshair when over a link that opens a new window. I created a few styles, for removing clutter from Yahoo! mail and yourTV.com.au TV guides (I should submit those to userstyles.org one day.
Tab Preview v0.3 (homepage)
Great use of the new Canvas feature in Firefox 1.5, it shows a thumbnail of each page when you mouse over non-current tabs. There are a lot of tab preview extensions out there, no idea if how this compares.
View Source Chart v2.0.02 (amo homepage)
Useful when trying to analyse how a website is structured, when checking out how it works or for customising.
Web Developer v1.0.2 (amo homepage)
Analysis and debugging pages. I use mainly for outlining block elements in HTML, validation and resizing the window for common sizes.

Retired Extensions:

Adblock v0.5.3.042 (amo homepage)
Couldn't live without. Need to check out Adblock Plus, with heaps of improvements like whitelisting. While I have maintained my block list of many years, when setting up for other people, I use FiltersetG list (usually via the updater extension).
Switched to Adblock Plus mainly coz of the small icon on status bar.
Forecastfox v0.9.2 (amo homepage)
Used to like a lot, but the weather date provider (Accuweather) is usually way off for Melbourne weather, so I use the Bureau of Meteorology's plain text based forecast.
Performancing v1.2 (amo homepage)
New extension that adds a Blog poster to Firefox, for Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, WordPress & MoveableType. Seems very slick and I like the way it acts as a docked bar at the bottom of a FF window, allowing you to flick between normal tabs without losing the editing window. This is my first post with it, so lets see how it performs (no pun intended). Update: publishing failed for some reason, so having to cut-n-paste into Blogger's editor. Also ask's for the master password 4 times on start, still not fixed in v1.1 (not sure if publishing is fixed now).

Old retired list:

Google Suggest - adds "Suggest" to the Firefox Google searchbox
Hash Coloured Tabs - creates new tabs with colour coding
Link Visitor - lets you selectively mark links as visited or unvisited
Resize Searchbox - creates a grippy for the Firefox searchbox so it can be resized

DIY Bike light systems

2006-05-12T17:54:00.000+10:00

Have been thinking about upgrading my bike's lighting system for a while, as I have a Cateye HL-EL300 at the moment. It is apparently one of the first LED lights to meet Australian standards. It has 5 LED's that are very directional, and as I found out a few weeks ago on a rainy night, no real side visibility (a car didn't giveway at all).

DIY LED Luxeon lighting

I was initially looking at the DIY high power Luxeon LED's. I can't remember what got me thinking this, must of seen a mention of them at one point (maybe seeing the new Cateye double/triple high power LED lights, costing upwards of $450AU !!)
Update: My Google search History shows I hit the Wikipedia bike lighting page when looking up details for a Powerbeam halogen headlight from Torpedo7 (great site).

Wikipedia article: Bike Lighting
As always, a Wikipedia article that is a good introduction to the subject that covers it broadly. It used to have ~4 links under the "Home Made LED lights" section (since removed):
3W Luxeon bike light
Very well made (and machined) LED light system, if only we all ad a lathe handy. Include a design diagram as well!!
3W Luxeon bike light
Another Aussie one, this time with parts straight out of a hardware store. Nice a cheap option, using some plumbing PVC pipe and heatsink from an Electronics store. A little dodgy though, like holding the batteries in a cut up VHS case and the switch just hanging, but then again its cheap, and the article provides heaps of construction details and part numbers.
DIYcycleLEDs Wiki
A nice page detailing the prototyping & construction of 3x 3W Luxeons using 12x 2000mAh NiMH batteries (about $60AU worth). Nice photos and going into the finer details.
Twin 5W Luxeon bicycle lights MK2
A whole series of articles, from the prototype to 3 different version. Given the detail that these articles go into & technical quality of the approach, I was thinking of following this route. Though maybe use 2x 3W Luxeon's, as they seem easier to drive and keep cool (& therefore service life).

Even Silicon Chip had an article on a Luxeon LED driver circuit.
Update:They now have a article on "Universal High-Energy LED Lighting System" which specifically uses a bike (a recumbent) as the example system, need to check it out big time!!!

Update (2006-07-11): Found the High-power LED mountain bike light page. Another Aussie LED project (are they all) so includes some good suppliers. Some nice design ideas here, especially the AA NiMH bottle.

DIY Halogen lighting

Then I stumbled on the Bicycle Lighting Systems page by Steven M. Scharf. It goes into so much detail (especially technical and sourcing parts) its scary. This site seems to have convinced me that a DIY Halogen system might be better and cheaper than a DIY LED light system. I think it was the "Watts Versus Lumens" section that convinced me of that, with the table comparing Halogen, LED and HID. Also the 5W LED Luxeon's sound as if they have a short life span. It also helped me reach the conclusion that for my night time commuting (with street lighting), it is better to be seen rather seeing (especially after the above mentioned close call)

Particular sections that are good are:

Seeing versus Being Seen
Watts Versus Lumens
Includes a table of common Halogen (MR11 & MR16) globes, High power LED's and HID (High Intensity Discharge). It also includes data for when over-volting Halogen by 10% & 20% (it improves the effeciency, but trades life)
System Recommendations
My current theory is to follow this almost spot on with:
- Globes: 2x 20W MR16 Halogen (hopefully a 7/8^o and a 24^o, but sourcing is hard)
- Headlamps: Cheap, compact set of car halogen driving lights, as the housing (turf the 50W globes)
- Battery: 12V 5-7Ah SLA, hopefully housed in the bottle cage near the bottom bracket
- (Thinking in future) a Xenon rear flashing light (like on trucks/trailers)
Headlights
Has so many details about MR11 & MR16 Halogen globes it's not funny. Also includes the options for the headlamps, mainly different car driving light sets.
Batteries
Includes discussion of choosing a battery system, includes techincal data and equations. Goes through the pros & cons of SLA and NiMH systems (NiMH are good for over-volting Halogens). Also talks about housing the battery on the bike.
Charger
Again a discussion of the different types, models, requirements and options. Talks about a few DIY system additions, but nothing concrete.

While looking for sources of Halogen globes in Australia for Bec's NiteFlux Visionstick 5.5 (a MR11 6V 5W 10^o that I can't find anywhere except $$bike shops$$), I found a link to another DIY Halogen system from a web forum.

the fat hippy's home made bike lights is an Australian site so the details of sourcing parts should be very useful. It shows 5 different iterations of the system, including part details, costs and sourcing. It also comes to the same conclusions as the Bicycle Lighting Systems page and myself :)
The tow bar cower housing seems pretty good, except for the hose clamps holding it together, kills the look if you ask me. But this page really is great, it goes into lots of the kind of details I like. The last version (Mk V) even has a digital controller circuit which uses one button to control the power and sounds like it helps a battery last longer.

Update: Just discovered the bikecurrent FAQ page from fat hippy's site. Seems very promising, with lots of details, equations, pros/cons of choices and many links to other sites.

Update (2006-07-11): Found the BIKE LIGHT 500 Lumen "Mt.Bike" for under 10 bucks by Veggiecycle page. Another great article on using products from hardware stores (Home Depot so US). The comment section is also good, with some useful links such as Home Depot Homebrew Headlight, using Landscape Spotlights and Batteryspace.com which has a great range of Battery packs, chargers, leads, mounts & bike light systems.

Update (2006-07-11): Found the Beenz Meanz LIGHTZ ???!!! page. While tin cans seems a little cheap, there's some great thrifty ideas here.

Globe sourcing

Had lots of trouble trying to find Bec's globe, as well as the one I want. Couldn't find a website (mainly US ones via Google) that had the globes I wanted (none had Bec's) for a good price that shipped to Australia :-(
Bec's globe: Halogen MR11 6V 5W 10^o (ANSI code = FTB for 10^o)
My globes: Halogen MR16 12V 20W 7-8^o (ANSI = EZX) and 24^o (ANSI = BBF)
Did find the following:

GMT Lighting (03) 9819 1777 Hawthorn
MR16 in 13^o (ANSI = ESX) for ~$10 (GE 5000hr model)
MR16 in 38^o for ~$8
MR11 in 30^o for ~$10 (FTD - Wide Flood maybe?)
Lamp Technologies (03) 9874 8100 Nunawading
MR11 in 30^o for ~$11
Koala Wholesale Lamps (03) 9326 8244 West Melbourne
MR16 in 15^o for $9.5 (GE)
MR16 in 36^o for $6.95
Calmatronics (03) 9326 5888 West Melbourne
MR16 in 10^o for $4 (Osram)
John R. Turk (03) 9318 9955 Yarraville (also in Fairfield
MR16 in 12^o for ~$2.5 (Compton)
MR16 in 24^o for ~$2.5 (Compton)
MR16 in 38^o for ~$2.5 (Compton)

ImageVenue.com Image Focuser (Greasemonkey Userscript)

2006-02-10T17:40:00.000+11:00

My ImageVenue Userscript

I have been annoyed by the junk they surround an image with when viewing an image at www.imagevenue.com. In the past I created a series of "site specific stylesheets", which look something like this:

@-moz-document domain(imagevenue.com) {
  .adHeadline {display: none;}
  #mbtb {display: none;}
  IFRAME {display: none ! important;}
  BODY > P > FONT {display: none ! important;}
  BODY > BR {display: none ! important;}
  P { margin: 0 ! important; }
}

This was over a long time, but it still had issues. First was that I was still loading the IFRAME, then I realised that I could simply use Adblock (Addons @ Mozilla homepage) to block the IFRAME.

Second, was trying to stop the page from scaling large images to a maximum width of 720 pixels. Hey, I have a 21" monitor, I have no problem displaying anything larger than 720 pixels. The scaling was happening in a JavaScript (JS) function that was attached to the images 'onLoad' event, meaning it would scale after the image has loaded. This means you get the annoying effect of viewing the image as it downloads in it's normal resolution, then it abruptly scales and stuffs you around!!

So I tried to make a Greasemonkey (GM) "Userscript" that would use the scale function again to return it to normal resolution. Since I am new to Greasemonkey, this took a little bit of getting used to.

I tried calling the scaleImg() function in the Userscript. No dice, since the Firefox JS console reported that I don't have access to the function (I later read that you need to use specific GM API calls to work in the page's "sandbox" to get to its JS functions).
Tried copy-n-pasting the scaleImg() code directly into my Userscript so sandboxing isn't an issue. Didn't work, as a variable saved for later was needed (the original width of the image), but I didn't have access to that.
Using Firefox's Document Inspector, I discovered that I can get to the original width by accessing its "naturalWidth" DOM property. This still didn't work.
I then found out I needed to run my code after the scaling function has been run from the onLoad event. Using the Tip from the GM Authoring page, I used:
```
window.addEventListener("load", function(e) {
  what = document.getElementById('thepic');
  what.width=what.naturalWidth;
}, false);
```
This worked!! Though I then realised...
That I could just "view" the plain image by changing the browser location to the image!! (redirection)
```
what = document.getElementById('thepic');
document.location = what.src;
```
GM scripts run after a page has downloaded, but before any onLoad events have occurred. This means that my code is called before the image is downloaded (and maybe before it starts downloading).

So, it turned out to be dead simple, why didn't I think of that Before!!!!

Firefox Extensions I use

2005-12-21T17:31:00.000+11:00

I've blogged about this before Mozilla (+Firefox) user pref/extensions back in April 2004 (when I primarily used Mozilla App Suite).

Anyway, here is a list of the current Extensions I am using in Firefox 1.5:

Forecastfox v0.8.2.5 (amo homepage)
Used to like a lot, but the weather date provider (Accuweather) is usually way off for Melbourne weather, so I use the Bureau of Meteorology's plain text based forecast.
Adblock v0.5.3.042 (amo homepage)
Couldn't live without. Need to check out Adblock Plus, with heaps of improvements like whitelisting. While I have maintained my block list of many years, when setting up for other people, I use FiltersetG list (usually via the updater extension).
Enhanced History Manager v0.5.8.05 (amo homepage)
Ok, so I'm an old Mozilla App Suite user, and like my advanced History manager to prune my huge history list.
SmoothWheel 0.44.7.20050605 (amo homepage)
Makes scrolling so nice and smooth.
Aardvark v1.01 (homepage)
Lets you point to sections of a web page and delete, isolate, de-widify etc. Great for pruning a page before printing.
Menu Editor v1.2 (amo homepage)
Don't use this that much anymore, but used to aggressively prune the context menu to make it faster to use (by getting rid of stuff I don't use).
Mouse Gestures v1.0.4 (amo homepage)
Lets me use gestures, which for me involves shortcuts for going Back and Closing a tab/window (customised to use a down stroke).
View Rendered Source Chart v1.5.02 (amo homepage)
Useful when trying to analyse how a website is structured, when checking out how it works or for customising.
DownThemAll! v0.10.6 (amo homepage)
Great when downloading lots of the same type of file linked from a page (ZIP downloads, images etc.).
Web Developer v1.0.1 (amo homepage)
Analysis and debugging pages. I use mainly for outlining block elements in HTML, validation and resizing the window for common sizes.
Linky v2.7.0 (amo homepage)
Lets you open multiple links in a variety of ways. I use it by selecting links I'm interested and opening them all in tabs.
Console² v0.3.2 (amo homepage)
Replaces the inbuilt JavaScript Console with the "Error Console", makes the console very useful and adds advanced features.
JavaScript Debugger v0.9.85 (amo homepage)
Great for serious JavaScript development. PS. Had to use the altered version because its the only one to work with Firefox 1.5.
AJAX Yahoo! Mail v0.5 (amo homepage)
Modifies Y! Mail so that I can open messages inline (meaning I can open many at once and see them all on the one page). It also lets you download attachments with one click and "instant reply" without having to load a new page.
Tab Preview v0.3 (homepage)
Great use of the new Canvas feature in Firefox 1.5, it shows a thumbnail of each page when you mouse over noncurrent tabs.
Greasemonkey v0.6.4 (amo homepage)
Tried a few times in the past but never used it for long. Then I found a few useful scripts at Userscripts that make Y! default to secure login, remebers Y! account names, hides the search section on the Google Personalized page (redudant with FF searchbox) and makes some improvements to All music guide.
Grab and Drag v1.0.1 (amo homepage)
Instead of the cursor being used for selecting text (except for links), it makes the mouse pointer act like Acrobat Readers, where you click and drag the page around to scroll. Just starting to use it, and it's great.
Performancing v1.1 (amo homepage)
New extension that adds a Blog poster to Firefox, for Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, WordPress & MoveableType. Seems very slick and I like the way it acts as a docked bar at the bottom of a FF window, allowing you to flick between normal tabs without losing the editing window. This is my first post with it, so lets see how it performs (no pun intended). Update: publishing failed for some reason, so having to cut-n-paste into Blogger's editor. Also ask's for the master password 4 times on start, still not fixed in v1.1 (not sure if publishing is fixed now).
(2006-01-27)Download Manager Tweak v0.7.1 (amo homepage)
Trying out this for the first time. Seems to add nice little tweaks to the Download Manager. Will see if it is worth keeping...

Extensions used but no longer:

Google Suggest - adds "Suggest" to the Firefox Google searchbox
Hash Coloured Tabs - creates new tabs with colour coding
Link Visitor - lets you selectively mark links as visited or unvisited
Resize Searchbox - creates a grippy for the Firefox searchbox so it can be resized

Firefox 1.5 released today

2005-12-01T15:37:00.000+11:00

The Mozilla community finally released Firefox 1.5 today, with lots of improvements (mainly behind the scenes).

I'm impressed with the level of QA in this release, they had 3 real release candidates. In fact Firefox 1.5 is the exact same bits as Firefox 1.5 RC3 (which is what I'm using right now).

The things that interest me for this release include:

Lighting fast back/forward navigation
Improved update system (tiny binary diff patches)
Partial SVG support (wait for all the demo pages to spring up)
Gecko improvements (mainly CSS additions)
Plus lots of tiny stuff not worth mentioning

Already waiting for Firefox 2.0 (from the 1.8.1 Gecko branch) with its "Places" support (redoing bookmarks, history, feeds etc. into a new user interface and storing in a super fast SQLite DB).

Firefox 3.0 will come off the 1.9 branch, with its Gecko improvements (complete? SVG support, rewrite rendering using Cairo on all platforms, reflow rewritten) and the proposed tagging system for bookmarks (which might appear in Firefox 2.0).

Download Firefox 1.5 now.

Make Google's Personalized Home more compact in Firefox/Mozilla

2005-11-29T18:32:00.000+11:00

Google's Personalized Home is a great "portal" to use as a homepage, adding and removing whatever content takes your fancy.

But even with a large monitor, it takes up a lot of screen real estate given the content. So I wanted to get rid of spacing where I thought it wasn't needed.

Using the site specific stylesheets in Firefox/Mozilla (David Baron's technical intro and a post on mozillaZine about customising sites ), it allows customising a site by overiding styles within the site by adding entries to a users usercontent.css file.

The following makes the Google Personalized Home page more compact, and draws a thin border around each content block:

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/ig) {
 div#nhdr > font > br { display: none; }
 body > table > tbody > tr > td > center > div { padding: 0 ! important; }
 body > table > tbody > tr > td > center > table { border-spacing: 0 ! important; }
 .modbox { padding-bottom: 0 ! important;
           border:         1px solid #3366cc ! important;
           margin-bottom:  5px ! important; }
 .mhdr { border: 0 ! important; }
 .mc { padding: 2px ! important; }
 .modbox > font > div { padding: 2px ! important; }
}

Update (2006-01-12): Made some more refinements, and works with the Greasemonkey script "Hide Personalized Google Search Box v2"

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/ig) {
  body {margin: 0;}
  #nhdr > font > br { display: none; }
  body > table > tbody > tr > td > center > div { padding: 0 ! important; }
  body > table > tbody > tr > td > center > table { border-spacing: 0 ! important; }

  #modules > table { width: 100% ! important;
                     border-spacing: 5px ! important;
                   }
  #modules > table > tbody > tr > td {display: none; }
  #c_1 {display : table-cell ! important; }
  #c_2 {display : table-cell ! important; }
  #c_3 {display : table-cell ! important; }

  .modbox { padding-bottom: 0 ! important;
            border:         1px solid #3366cc ! important;
            margin-bottom:  5px ! important;
          }
  .mhdr { border: 0 ! important; }
  .mc   { padding: 2px ! important; }
  .modbox > font > div { padding: 2px ! important; }

  body > table > tbody > tr > td > center > br { display: none; }
  #footer {display: none; }
}

Specifications for early 125cc/160cc Victa 2 stroke mower engines

2005-11-11T11:11:00.000+11:00

Bore:

125cc .............................. 53.975mm (2.125")
160cc .............................. 61.493mm (2.421")

Stoke ...................................... 53.975mm (2.125")
Piston taper:

Bottom of Skirt -

125cc ......................... 53.848mm (2.120")
160cc ......................... 61.366mm (2.416")

Top ring land -

125cc ......................... 53.721mm (2.115")
160cc ......................... 61.239mm (2.411")

Piston rings:

Numer .............................................. 2
Size -

125cc ...... 2.381mm x 53.975mm (0.093" x 2.125")
160cc ...... 2.381mm x 61.493mm (0.093" x 2.421")

Big end bearing type:

Early models ......................... 15 steel rollers
Late models ...................... Caged roller bearing

Little end type:

125cc .................................... Bronze bush
160cc -

Early models ........................ Bronze bush
Late models ............... Needle roller bearing

Connecting rod material ................ Hardened alloy steel
Crankpin material ...................... Hardened alloy steel
Crankshaft type ........................ Alloy steel forgings 15 deg taper on drive end 0.5 in B.S.F thread both ends
Crankshaft main bearings:

Type .................................... Ball bearing
Size -

Magnet side ................................ 20mm
Drive side (early models) .....20mm inner 17mm outer
Drive side (late models) ..20mm inner 20mm L.D. outer

Crankcase oil seals:

Drive side (early models) ........................... 17mm
Timing side (early models) .......................... 20mm
Both side (late models) ............................. 20mm

Ignition timing .............................. 3mm (1/8") btdc
Breaker point gap ............................ 0.50mm (0.020")
Spark plug gap .............................. 0.635mm (0.025")
Spark plug type ............ Contact your nearest Victa dealer
Fuel requirement ......... 2 stroke petrol-oil mixture (25:1)

Victa Pace 160 Premier mower

2005-10-12T13:44:00.000+10:00

"Inherited" an old Victa from my chiropractor, used it for about a year. Great mower because it always started with half a pull :), but no catcher with it though.

Model details (printed on mower):

Pace - 160 Premier (Mark 2 - 70 series)
Fit only Victa blade No. 9-263
NGK - BP6E s
Engine No: 77 720 3 594
No model number on air filter casing :(

Based on some messages at OutdoorKing Bulletin board, its got a metal carby (G3) with the black governor sticking out the top. Very thick chassis compared to other 70 series I have seen. Has adjustable angle handles, using a plastic gear mating system.

Victa helpline reckons it is 1968-74, but they also recommended a CJ8 spark plug, when it's definitely a long plug. :-(

Fig 1.

Fig 2. Notice white plastic on bar between handle, might be used to secure a catcher

Fig 3.

canconfirm on Bugzilla

2005-09-30T16:20:00.000+10:00

Gerv gave me "canconfirm" rights on Bugzilla yesterday.

Make WinXP open folders/directories in explorer and not the folder view

2005-09-22T21:53:00.000+10:00

I always hated how a default install of Windows XP made double clicking on folders on the desktop open in its own window, without the folder pane on the left.

Making each folder open in the same window is easy:
Explorer → Tools menu → Folder Options → Browse folders → "Open each folder in the same window" option

But the fact the opening a folder from desktop opened in plain folder view annoyed me, enough to create 2 shortcuts to each folder I was working on, one that was a normal folder shortcut (for navigating while in explorer) and the second one was to manually open explorer and to go directly to the wanted folder!!!!

Found the **obvious** solution the other day.

To make WinXP open each folder in Explorer (with the normal folder pane and any toolbar modifications), do this:
Explorer → Tools menu → Folder Options → "File Types" tab → Select "Folder" file type (not "File Folder") → Advanced button → click on "explore" action → click "Set Default"

Why didn't I think of it earlier :-(

Respect physics above the law

2005-08-27T19:20:00.000+10:00

AKA: Physics always wins.

This is a great quote for all bike riders and other vehicles on our roads:

Respect physics above the law - being 'in the right' is a philosophical debate that can kill you. Anticipate the worst from other road users and ride accordingly. Even with the law cyclists are vulnerable - it pays to keep alert and don't take risks.

by Ben Creagh, Cycle Epic Media Manager.
Located in the "commuting & the epic" article in the Cycle Epic 2005 booklet/application.

Links: File Utilities and Resources

2005-06-02T17:36:00.000+10:00

FILExt - The File Extension Source:
Great site to help find out what an unknown file is, based on it's extension. Provides detailed information like MIME types, applications that create it, links to resources etc.

WinMerge:
Freeware (and Open source) program to visually report on the differences between folder contents and for comparing individual files.
Doesn't do side-by-side folder compares, and limited to mainly text based file compares (it has some plugins for other formats). Better commercial programs include Beyond Compare and Araxis Merge (which has TRIPLE file and folder comparisons!!!!).

Unison File Synchronizer:
Interesting program to synchronise two seperate collections of files. More advanced than a directory compare program (like WinMerge), it tracks what additions/changes/deletions have occured in both locations and sends the changes to sync back up. Works a bit like rsync, but more orientated for the user and not an Administrator.

Securing WinXP by restricting Users access

2005-04-20T11:18:00.000+10:00

Aaron Margosis' WebLog :
A series of articles on how to properly setup Windows XP (and other NT derived OS's) so users don't have admin privileges and can still function well. This is to massively reduce the security attack vector on computers. Will follow advice next time I reinstall WinXP.

LINK: Don't forget the Windows XP Security Checklist, provides a great checklist on Basic, Intermediate & Advanced measures you can take to secure you WinXP.

Stop bloody WinXP modifying folder (directory) dates

2005-04-08T14:22:00.000+10:00

Optimise NTFS or Increase XP NTFS performance
I hate how XP changes the datestamp of folders with changing anything. Hopefully this fixes it and stops things like opening a Word document and suddenly the folder date changes.

BTW, TweakXP.com - Performance Tweaks & Tips has some good tips (& is a great starting place) on performance tweaks.

UPDATE: Turns out it's a "feature" of NTFS to alter the folder (and all parent folders) when files are changed (or added?). Seems there is no way to turn this off. FAT16 and FAT32 don't do this, so it might be better to make a FAT32 patition to put all user files on.

Optimising services in Windows XP

2005-04-08T14:11:00.000+10:00

Windows XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2 Service Configurations by Black Viper and Windows XP Home and Professional Service Pack 2 Services Information
Seem to be a great example configs and references respectively.

Remove image and/or media preview in Explorer

2005-02-17T17:15:00.000+11:00

TweakXP.com - Remove image and/or media preview in Explorer:

XP's Explorer annoys the crap out of me, because it seems to pause when dealing with image and/or video files. Apparently this works:

Simply do the following steps:

Open a command window (Start->Run, type in 'cmd' hit enter)

To remove image preview, type and hit enter:
regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll

To readd image preview, type and hit enter:
regsvr32 shimgvw.dll

To remove media preview, type and hit enter:
regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll

To readd media preview, type and hit enter:
regsvr32 shmedia.dll

How to maintain your computer (for normal people)

2005-02-11T13:47:00.000+11:00

5 simple steps to keep you PC running smooth and fast
(Based on the How to Speed up your computer site)

Spyware and Adware removal (Monthly or so)
Basically, install Ad-aware and make sure its spyware definitions are up-to-date by clicking the globe icon on the top right and following the prompts.
- Keep Spyware definitions up-to-date by clicking the globe icon on the top right and follow the prompts to update.
- Do a full system scan.
- AFAIK, it's safe to delete everything that appears in the scan results.
Virus Removal (Monthly or so)
I'd recommend the free AntiVir Personal Edition.
+ run it in the background ("background checking in installation options??)
- To download, click on the Download button on the left, then click the "AntiVir logo" on the page to start the download.
- To grab the latest Virus definitions file, click "antivir.vdf" link on the download page
  - Follow the instructions to download from within the program (clicking the "2 connected computers" icon.
  - or manually download the definitions file and overwrite the current file.
Speed up your computer Part 3 - Clear Startup Group
Speed up your computer Part 4 - Run Defrag
Speed up your computer Part 5 - Run Scandisk
Speed up your computer Part 6 - Free Software
Speed up your computer Part 7 - Update Windows and Drivers

The Producers

2004-07-10T20:00:00.000+10:00

Bec & I went to see The Producers tonight, it was excellent.
Will write up a quick review later on...

Make Acrobat Reader 6 load faster

2004-07-08T12:33:00.000+10:00

Good information to Make Acrobat Reader 6 load faster from Darrell Norton's blog (seems everyone links to his blog).

Plus use the Adobe Reader SpeedUp tool to help in selecting plugins (using a graphical checkbox system). I'm going to try just the Search/EScript/Weblink path and see how it goes. Currently Reader v6.0.2 uses 33.5Mb of mem opening with no documents :'(

UPDATE:I went with the SpeedUp tools "Fast" recommendation, only EWH32 (81k) / reflow (305k) / Search (201k). And the cool thing is all other plugins are moved to "optional/" so they will load if the plugin is actually needed...
It seems to load VERY FAST, and now only using 18.5Mb of memory :)

Running Batch files on a selected Folder in Explorer

2004-07-07T14:44:00.000+10:00

Configuring Windows Explorer - Context Sensitive Menus

Great way to run a Batch file on a particular directory.
Eg. Say you want to run a batch file after right-clicking on a Folder, so it is performed on that folder.

Go to Explorer --> Tools --> Folder Options --> File Types
Select the "File Folder" file type
Select Advanced --> New...
Action = Moved to Fixed
Application to use = cmd.exe /c cd "%1" | C:\fixed_dir.bat

This runs fixed_dir.bat file in the currently selected folder and exits the DOS window straight away.
In this case fixed_dir.bat contains:

mkdir Fixed move *.jpg Fixed

Having a non-usable foot is not fun

2004-07-06T18:13:00.000+10:00

Thursday 2004-07-1

Went into the Western Hostipal last Thursday for my ankle operation.

1 week ago

Blah, blah

Pre thoughts

I was thinking when I went in that, being last on the list, there was a good chance that I was staying the night (ironic given the "Day Procedure Unit"). I imagine this was because the doctor and physio I need to see afterwards would of gone home (fair enough).

12pm

Arrived at the hosptial, went through a series of people asking questions, then finally got to put the robes on and wait my turn. Turns out the robe thing (front and rear robes + booties) is a complicated procedure, I suggested a flowchart or diagram (Graham would be proud). Chatted to a guy named Brian, he was going in before me. He had been through some wars (type 1 diabetes, skin cancer, cancer under the throught, cancer between the optic nerves), poor bastard.

3pm

Got called in, sat on a trolley for 30min waiting, then went into the theatre and got my knock out juice before going to la-la-land.

More to come

Blah, blah...

Palm Outlook conduit problems #42

2004-07-06T16:06:00.000+10:00

For the last few days, the Outlook Calendar conduit stopped working, with:

Outlook Calendar
The selected source folder [Paul Gregg\Calendar] was not found in Outlook. Synchronization will be performed with the default source folder [Paul Gregg\Calendar]. - Not Synchronized
Outlook Calendar synchronization failed

Tried rebooting, reinstalling Palm desktop and the v1.0.1 Outlook conduit updates (the v1.1 conduits that come with Palm Desktoip v4.1.4 don't work for me), nothing worked. If only I was smart enough to Google for it before, I would of saved myself a lot of trouble. Google came up with one hit troubles with Outlook 2002/XP sync.
The "Outlook /resetfolders" solution worked a treat, and I have seen that one before, if only I had remembered....

Current CD/DVD wishlist

2004-06-18T16:06:00.000+10:00

CD's

Something for Kate - newest
Jack Johnson - newest (maybe, still to listen to...)
John Butler Trio - newest
Powderfinger - Internationist & more
Simpsons - any (!songs in the key of)
Led Zepplin - any (! LZ 1 & 2cd best of)

DVD's

Simpsons - Season 4 boxed set
Blade I & II boxed set
Xmen 1.5 + 2 boxed set
Fast & Furious CE
Predator CE
The Great Escape (CE? or SE?)

Windows 2000/XP SP Slipstreaming

2004-06-02T15:22:00.000+10:00

Windows 2000/XP SP Slipstreaming:

"How can I slipstream service packs into the Windows 2000 or the Windows XP media?"

This makes updating way easier, especially with 3 computers used often, plus other people's that I help to maintain.
Even explains how to create a bootable CD version, plus links to "Slipstream Office XP/2003".

Found via Chris' Corner blog

Seven tricks that Web users don't know

2004-05-26T17:47:00.000+10:00

Seven tricks that Web users don't know:

Ignorance is about things, not people
1. Logos that link to the home page
2. Concepts of security vs. privacy
3. Rollover menus
4. Arrow keys and drop-down lists
5. Navigation by hacking URLs
6. Knowledge of browser controls
7. Second browser windows
The geographic effect
Change sites, not user behavior

Great checklist of pitfalls to avoid when creating websites that real people use (ie. 99% of them). Found via Asa's blog

Design-By-Contract, Object Constructors, and Error Stacks in JavaScript

2004-05-18T19:01:00.000+10:00

Inspector Gadget and Docs: Design-By-Contract, Object Constructors, and Error Stacks in JavaScript

Alex Vincent has a great way to help debugging and pre/post-conditional testing in JS.
I really like the Design-By-Contract methodology.

I've been thinking of this one for a while, using a system of debug asserts to test pre and post-conditions. I remember we used to have a function documenting style in DS309 (PJ's subject of course) that included both pre and post-conditional comments (+ function description). This was for the "user" of the function, to understand what were the requirements of using it.

Then over the years I thought wouldn't it be cool to have this automatically tested, either using main()/test functions in the class, or using Unit tests. Then what about using MACRO based tests via something like PRECONDITION() that would only work in debug code (much like mozilla's NS_PRECONDITION).

Stop Win XP from Searching Within ZIP Files

2004-05-12T13:41:00.000+10:00

Stop Win XP from Searching Within ZIP Files:

From the Start menu's Run dialog, enter this command:
regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll.
Repeat and enter: regsvr32 /u cabview.dll.
Each time, you should get a notice that DllUnregister succeeded. Contrary to numerous Web sites displaying this advice, you need to restart the computer for the change to take effect.

I've gotten different advice over the years, and have instructions at home that I know work, but hopefully this does as well (still need to reboot)...

UPDATE: Turns out this didn't work for me, so need to dig up my info at home

UPDATE2: The hint from Mike works. Run regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll, reboot straight away, then run WinZIP immediately and answer yes to "fully associate ZIP files with WinZip??". Confirmed that it works because search now doesn't look through ZIP files.

Mozilla (+Firefox) user pref/extensions

2004-04-27T10:55:00.000+10:00

(mentioning things not easily found by looking through options...)

These are only from a typical users perspective, not hardcore/web developer needs (like I'm typical)

Site icons

Here's the setup I run, BTW, some are defaults...

browser.chrome.favicons = true
browser.chrome.load_toolbar_icons = 2 (wouldn't try that on dialup :-)
browser.chrome.site_icons = true

(See Hidden Mozilla Prefs by Pratik Solanki)

Popup blocking

This means a website doesn't take over the "Window Open" popup

dom.disable_window_open_feature.location = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.status = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar = true

Adblock

I couldn't live without Adblock.
I run the latest nightly, and just don't see Ad's anymore (after spending a little time training it on what I did/didn't want).

SmoothWheel

Yep, couldn't live without it either. Grab at SmoothWheel
If your on a fast compluter, it beats the built in smooth scroll, especially the "smoothness" and deacceleration coming to the end of a page...

Mozilla 1.7 RC 1 Released

2004-04-23T12:16:00.000+10:00

The latest Mozilla Suite to be released is 1.7 RC 1.

Hopefully lots of people download and "push" the release to see if we can find any problems/crashers...