Raim�is » Technology

Google’s new web browser: Google Chrome

maca — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:49:06 +0000

Today is the day Google are set to release a windows beta version of their new web browser Google Chrome (edit: @ 4am Irish time apparently). I for one am not too excited but I suppose I’ll download, test and uninstall it just to satisfy my curiosity.
If you want to get an idea of what Chrome is all about you can check out Google’s pretty naff “comic” or have a look at TecCrunch’s first images of the browser.

Is the web world ready for another web browser? I dunno, all I know is that i’m not too bothered about it.

Edit: It was made available earlier than many reported: download it here.

Fx Wrld Rcrd

maca — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:18:45 +0000

Cos im 2 lzy 2 typ a msg tdy…

The Photoshop Anthology: Free until June 13th

maca — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:17:12 +0000

Sitepoint are giving away free copies of their book The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques! The book is available for download in pdf format until June 13th so if you have even the slightest bit of interest in Photoshop, especially if you’re into web design, pop over and grap yourself a copy.

Firefox 3 RC 1

maca — Sun, 18 May 2008 23:40:11 +0000

I’m a few days late with this but tonight I just noticed that Firefox 3 RC1 has been released! I’ve been using Fx 3 Beta 5 for a while at work and have been very impressed with it so would recommend upgrading to FX 3 asap; RC1 should be stable enough for the masses to install though most of your extensions probably won’t work yet.

On windows: as Gaeilge, suomi, en-gb, no sign of welsh yet.
Mac: as Gaeilge, suomi, en-gb.
Linux: as Gaeilge, suomi, en-gb.

p.s. some languages can be installed as language packs allowing you to switch between various languages if needed. Irish isn’t listed here yet but we’ll see if we can get it up there soon enough. Btw, when I say “we” I mean the Mozilla guys & the ‘Firefox in Irish’ team after I whinge so much that they decide to pacify me by adding it to the list.

Upgrading wordpress…

maca — Sun, 11 May 2008 23:37:12 +0000

…is a nightmare. I suppose if I haven’t have left it for so long it wouldn’t be so difficult but I did so it is. I was on version 1.52 until I upgraded; and the only reason I upgraded was because of some bug in MySQL which was reversing the order of my posts. The big problem I face now is sorting out problems with the incompatible template. I suppose the easiest solution is just to install a compatible template but then it means time trying to edit that to get the look I want and time is something I have very little of these days.
I didn’t get to test any of the plugins so if you have problems with the maths questions or posting in general I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a line.

EDIT: Bear with me while I try out a few new themes…

It’s been a bit quiet around here recently…

maca — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:51:07 +0000

… in case you haven’t noticed. Work is unfortunately infringing on my personal life, more so that its done before. Late nights and early mornings are becoming the norm these days. The end is in sight though; another few weeks should see things back to normal. Hopefully; so bear with me in the mean time.

You may also have noticed that workpress seems to be taking on a life of its own. It has decided, without consulting me I might add, to reorder the posts on my blog … the most recent post is now at the bottom of the page.
And it doesn’t end there; it also seems to have screwed up the RSS feeds as I am getting a lot of old posts coming though on Google Reader. In addition the 15 “most recent” posts it shows in the admin pages are actually the very earliest 15 posts I made on this blog.

Perhaps it’s time to update wordpress … i’m only about a year or so behind everyone else!

My 10,000 Gspam milestone

maca — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:33:35 +0000

I never thought that I would see the day that I’d have ten thousand (10,000 – you read it right) spam mails in my spam box! But it’s happened. As of some time in the wee hours of this morning I broke through the 10,000 spam barrier.

Now, this isn’t simply a case of me not deleting my spam mails and letting them build up over a period of months. No, I use gmail, which automatically deletes spam mails older than 30 days. Therefore these ten thousand spam mails have all been received within the last 30 days … that’s 10,000 spams in one month! Savage!!

I should point out that I use gmail as a pop mail client and it pulls mails from my rarely used website email accounts but even so it’s quite a figure. I’m certainly glad I gave up on Thunderbird; imagine having to trawl through that number of mails every month checking for legitimate mails! With Gmail I don’t bother as I’ve found it very reliable at the spam catching lark plus it’s easier to search for legit mails than with Thunderbird.

I’m wondering now if I should delete them all or wait for Google to give me an award for hitting this milestone.!.

Netscape Navigator 1994 – 2008 RIP

maca — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:10:51 +0000

It’s the end of a web era. Poor aul Netscape Navigator has been dying a slow death for a number of years and has now been dealt the final death blow as AOL will no longer support the browser as of tomorrow, March 1st.

I feel like we should hold a wake or something. Netscape was the first big browser used by over 90% of web users in the mid-90′s; until Internet Exploder came along; it’s market share is now around 0.6%.

Although the browser will soon disappear within a short while in body it will still remain in spirit in the guise of Firefox [FF 3 coming out very soon] and Firefox clones such as Flock [1.1b out now]. AOL are of course recommending people switch to either of these two browsers.

IE8 is due out soon enough, beta testing begun a while back, and it is expected to support some advanced CSS stuff such as CSS tables which, with my limited knowledge of CSS browser support, should mean css tables can be more widely used. Which is nice.
CSS tables, fyi, should provide designers with an easier and more robust way of producing multicolumn css layouts.

Now if only people would make the switch from IE5/6/7 asap without holding on to old browsers for donkeys years we’d be in a much better situation.

Anyway … Netscape Navigator … all the best me aul mucker!

Web Site Grader, SEO Tools

maca — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:01:45 +0000

Just found this quite handy tool this morning …

“Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.”

At first glance it looks quite interesting; it’s certainly worth a test try anyway.

Still at the 3D

maca — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:21:14 +0000

Blogging is slow I know and I do apologise though can’t promise it will improve at all in the 4c-able future. What limited free time I have these days is given over primarily to dreaming about how I will spend the 100m I’m sure to eventually win on the Euro lotto. The rest of the time I’m either 3D modelling or surfing around all the social network sites I am a member of thinking “this is an absolute pile of shite, why do I keep coming back here?”.

Re 3DCG: I found a handy tutorial on YouTube for modelling aircraft and while serious modellers would frown at the techniques used it did allow me to actually complete a plane model for the first time to an almost acceptable level so currently I have some renewed interest in modelling and am working on a number of planes and perhaps even a short animation. I won’t post any images here cos they’re crap but any images I create will be posted to my flickr page if you are curious. Just don’t be expecting anything high quality.

That’s what I’ll be at though I will try to post more.

p.s. while searching for plane reference images I came across this site with some damn interesting aircraft. I can’t believe some of these actually flew.