Raiméis

The Beta 2 Preview of IE7 has been released to the XP SP2-using public. I think the only people actually waiting for this were the self-pleasuring nerds who hang around the MS forums and would cut your throat if you dared diss their favourite browser. Still, I donned my geek cap for a short while to give the browser a quick test drive (and quickly sent it back to the garage).
As well as getting a facelift to give the toolbar a cleaner, streamlined look (it’s nothing special to be honest) they have added a number of other features which IE6 badly lacked; tabbed browsing (the tabs including the ‘new tab’ button are not nice looking at all), quick tabs (like the Mac Éxpose feature), built-in search box and integrated RSS – all of which every other browser has. Support for web standards has improved, security is supposedly much better (it has a phishing filter) but it couldn’t actually get much worse than IE6.

On the plus side clicking an XML icon link on a webpage opens the feed in a RSS reader which beats Firefox. And that unfortunately is the only plus I could find. It’s a slow, clunky, awkward to customize browser which uses a lot of memory and while it is certainly a big improvement on IE6 it still falls way short of Firefox or Opera. There’s nothing new or exciting in there which would encourage me to even open the browser again. In fact I might just uninstall it before the night is over.

Via Ciarán’s very very roundabout route comes this wee site: Unphotographable. There are times when you might be travelling (for example) and see something interesting but not have a camera at hand. So if you can’t capture the moment on film capture it through words. Nice idea.

Alex Bruce, son of Steve Bruce, who was selected by Northern Ireland last week for an under-21 match against Israel has now declared for the Rep.Ireland. Alex is entitled to play for either the Republic or Northern Ireland through his grandparents but chose Rep.Ireland purely because they are a better team. If that’s the only reason perhaps he should have chosen NI. It’s my national team and I’d prefer players chose to declare for us because they felt passionate about playing for their country. If it’s a better team he wants shouldn’t he declare for England? We’re not a club side, shouldn’t there be more to playing for your national team than the fact that they happen to be better than some other team you are entitled to play for?

The second round of the Finnish Presidential Election was today and Tarja Halonen was re-elected by a tiny margin. She claimed just 51.8% of the votes beating off Conservative candidate Sauli Niinisto. Halonen would be my choice too, I think she’s a better ambassador for Finland than “neo-liberal hawk” Niinisto.
Thankfully this candidate, Timo Soini, went out in the first round; dodgy policies and a Millwall fan … unacceptable!

Related:
IPS: Election Marks Ideological Crossroads

The draw for the Euro 2008 qualifiers has taken place. In Rep.Ireland’s (24, FIFA ranking) group (D) … Wales (71), Cyprus (96), San Marino (155), Slovakia (44), Germany (16) and the Czech Republic (2). Not as bad as I expected, it’s almost manageable … apart from the Czechs.

UEFA Euro 2008
FIFA Rankings

Back in November I posted some news on browsers, mainly Firefox and related extensions but I also mentioned the release of Opera Mini, a web browser for mobile phones, which was initially released only to users in Nordic countries. Well Opera have now officially launched the scaled for mobile version of their browser (2 days ago actually) so you can pop on over and download it.

Opera Mini™ is a fast and easy alternative to Opera’s mobile browser, allowing users to access the Web on mobile phones that would normally be incapable of running a Web browser.

I installed it yesterday on my Nokia 7600 and have tried it out on a few sites. It works well, better than the default browser anyway.

Sad to see Chris Penn has been found dead at his home in Santa Monica, he was only 40. Chris was the younger brother of Sean Penn and starred in a number of films including Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Mulholland Falls, Rush Hour and many others. No news of the cause of death yet.

Jaypers, who’d have thunk it … whale vomit … $20 per gram … feckin hell. An Australian couple may net up to US$295,000 after finding sperm whale vomit on a South Australian beach! So next time you find waxy smelly rocks on the beach it might just be “floating gold” … then again it might just be pollution.

24/01/2006 – The IRA must end all involvement in criminality if there is to be political progress in Northern Ireland, Democratic Unionist leader the Rev Ian Paisley insisted tonight.

24/01/2007 – The IRA must apologise for all the innocent loyalist terrorists they killed during the Troubles and must lick the sweat from the arse crack of the most holy Rev Paisley if there is to be political progress in Northern Ireland, Democratic Unionist leader the Rev Ian Paisley insisted tonight.

24/01/2008 – Gerry Adams and the Sinn Féin leadership must denounce the Free State Government, swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen of England, convert to Protestantism and join the Orange Order if there is to be political progress in Northern Ireland, Democratic Unionist leader the Rev Ian Paisley insisted tonight.

24/01/2009 – Nationalists must admit they were wrong all along, give up their Irish citizenship, stop speaking like leprechauns and breeding like rabbits if there is to be political progress in Northern Ireland, Democratic Unionist leader the Rev Ian Paisley insisted tonight.

Miserable aul cunt, sooner he fucks off the better IMO. He is the only human being on this planet I utterly detest.

United absolutely hammered the scousers yesterday … eh, 1-nil. Further south Chelski’s slide began with a 1-1 draw with Charlton, ending their 100% home league record, dropping two valuable points and allowing United to close the gap to a mere 14 points. This surely must be the beginning of the end for Chelski as United look set to steal the title from the Londoners. Eh … maybe not … but ya never know.