B10[mg]

At this very moment, according to my statistics, 67.1% of my blog visitors use a MS Windows operating system and 52.8% of all of them use (or claim to use) Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE). MSIE 6.0 is by far the most popular version with 48.1%. Time for me to get the MSIE 6.0 experience!

I forced myself to use MSIE 6 (using WINE, c'mon, I'm not going to lower myself even more) for at least two straight hours. My browser calls itself "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)" so that's a good start.

A thing that bugs me straight off, is the lack of a search box in my upper right hand corner, like FireFox has. I use that little box very often with multiple search engine plugins, but I also believe I could install a Yahoo or Google toolbar in MSIE to fix that annoyance slightly (still missing links to CPAN, IMDb, Metal Archives, etc.)

After doing some casual browsing, I didn't see much difference with my regular FireFox, until, from out of nowhere, a window popped up! Quite annoying, but ok, I can close it and also for this, there are popup blockers I could install.

Time to check one of my favorite websites: Perlmonks! After logging in and seeing the list of new nodes, I come across another failure of MSIE 6.0: no tabs. Opera started this wonderful idea with browsers, as far as I can remember, and I loved it ever since. Perlmonks shows me a long list with links that I should read (partially), and I now have 10+ windows open and quite lose track of what is where. Tabs would easily solve this problem, but that is taken care of in MSIE's next release.

On Perlmonks I also notice that I see advertising again. I've been using Adblock for quite some time now and almost forgot the heinous advertising the web offers us. There must be a MSIE alternative for this extension, right? I only know of proxy'ish solutions for this problem, but someone can probably point me to a (yet another) toolbar.

Posting replies is another thing where I find yet another annoyance. How do I launch vim to edit the textarea? I can't seem to find the setting that would allow me to do this (mozex handles this for me in FireFox).

One thing that really is annoying, is that MSIE shows me its own 404 error message, instead of the one the server in question is giving me. "The page cannot be found". Often, 404 messages are very funny, and some are even extremely useful. But after digging through the numerous options, I found a way to disable this annoying behavior (Tools - Internet Options - Advanced (???) - Show friendly HTTP error messages).

Yet another thing that FireFox handles for me is the infamous 'www' prefix that some sites seem to require. I don't know why these sites insist on a 'www' prefix, but at least FireFox adds it for me when it's needed (e.g. vim.org). MSIE does not do that.

All in all, I've found MSIE not pleasant to work with and cannot imagine people actually choose to use this product. I'm fairly sure the users of MSIE are just too lazy to try something else (I already have a webbrowser right here!) or just don't know there is an alternative. There's still a lot of work left for the browser missionaries.

At this very moment, according to my statistics, 67.1% of my blog visitors use a MS Windows operating system and 52.8% of all of them use (or claim to use) Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE). MSIE 6.0 is by far the most popular version with 48.1%. Time for me to get the MSIE 6.0 experience!

I forced myself to use MSIE 6 (using WINE, c'mon, I'm not going to lower myself even more) for at least two straight hours. My browser calls itself "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)" so that's a good start.

A thing that bugs me straight off, is the lack of a search box in my upper right hand corner, like FireFox has. I use that little box very often with multiple search engine plugins, but I also believe I could install a Yahoo or Google toolbar in MSIE to fix that annoyance slightly (still missing links to CPAN, IMDb, Metal Archives, etc.)

After doing some casual browsing, I didn't see much difference with my regular FireFox, until, from out of nowhere, a window popped up! Quite annoying, but ok, I can close it and also for this, there are popup blockers I could install.

Time to check one of my favorite websites: Perlmonks! After logging in and seeing the list of new nodes, I come across another failure of MSIE 6.0: no tabs. Opera started this wonderful idea with browsers, as far as I can remember, and I loved it ever since. Perlmonks shows me a long list with links that I should read (partially), and I now have 10+ windows open and quite lose track of what is where. Tabs would easily solve this problem, but that is taken care of in MSIE's next release.

On Perlmonks I also notice that I see advertising again. I've been using Adblock for quite some time now and almost forgot the heinous advertising the web offers us. There must be a MSIE alternative for this extension, right? I only know of proxy'ish solutions for this problem, but someone can probably point me to a (yet another) toolbar.

Posting replies is another thing where I find yet another annoyance. How do I launch vim to edit the textarea? I can't seem to find the setting that would allow me to do this (mozex handles this for me in FireFox).

One thing that really is annoying, is that MSIE shows me its own 404 error message, instead of the one the server in question is giving me. "The page cannot be found". Often, 404 messages are very funny, and some are even extremely useful. But after digging through the numerous options, I found a way to disable this annoying behavior (Tools - Internet Options - Advanced (???) - Show friendly HTTP error messages).

Yet another thing that FireFox handles for me is the infamous 'www' prefix that some sites seem to require. I don't know why these sites insist on a 'www' prefix, but at least FireFox adds it for me when it's needed (e.g. vim.org). MSIE does not do that.

All in all, I've found MSIE not pleasant to work with and cannot imagine people actually choose to use this product. I'm fairly sure the users of MSIE are just too lazy to try something else (I already have a webbrowser right here!) or just don't know there is an alternative. There's still a lot of work left for the browser missionaries.

At this very moment, according to my statistics, 67.1% of my blog visitors use a MS Windows operating system and 52.8% of all of them use (or claim to use) Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE). MSIE 6.0 is by far the most popular version with 48.1%. Time for me to get the MSIE 6.0 experience!

I forced myself to use MSIE 6 (using WINE, c'mon, I'm not going to lower myself even more) for at least two straight hours. My browser calls itself "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)" so that's a good start.

A thing that bugs me straight off, is the lack of a search box in my upper right hand corner, like FireFox has. I use that little box very often with multiple search engine plugins, but I also believe I could install a Yahoo or Google toolbar in MSIE to fix that annoyance slightly (still missing links to CPAN, IMDb, Metal Archives, etc.)

After doing some casual browsing, I didn't see much difference with my regular FireFox, until, from out of nowhere, a window popped up! Quite annoying, but ok, I can close it and also for this, there are popup blockers I could install.

Time to check one of my favorite websites: Perlmonks! After logging in and seeing the list of new nodes, I come across another failure of MSIE 6.0: no tabs. Opera started this wonderful idea with browsers, as far as I can remember, and I loved it ever since. Perlmonks shows me a long list with links that I should read (partially), and I now have 10+ windows open and quite lose track of what is where. Tabs would easily solve this problem, but that is taken care of in MSIE's next release.

On Perlmonks I also notice that I see advertising again. I've been using Adblock for quite some time now and almost forgot the heinous advertising the web offers us. There must be a MSIE alternative for this extension, right? I only know of proxy'ish solutions for this problem, but someone can probably point me to a (yet another) toolbar.

Posting replies is another thing where I find yet another annoyance. How do I launch vim to edit the textarea? I can't seem to find the setting that would allow me to do this (mozex handles this for me in FireFox).

One thing that really is annoying, is that MSIE shows me its own 404 error message, instead of the one the server in question is giving me. "The page cannot be found". Often, 404 messages are very funny, and some are even extremely useful. But after digging through the numerous options, I found a way to disable this annoying behavior (Tools - Internet Options - Advanced (???) - Show friendly HTTP error messages).

Yet another thing that FireFox handles for me is the infamous 'www' prefix that some sites seem to require. I don't know why these sites insist on a 'www' prefix, but at least FireFox adds it for me when it's needed (e.g. vim.org). MSIE does not do that.

All in all, I've found MSIE not pleasant to work with and cannot imagine people actually choose to use this product. I'm fairly sure the users of MSIE are just too lazy to try something else (I already have a webbrowser right here!) or just don't know there is an alternative. There's still a lot of work left for the browser missionaries.

Some time ago, I came across this game and this game is still very addictive!

The objective is to get all lightbulbs turned on, by placing mirrors in the right possition, so the laserbeam can go through. Very well done and pretty hard here and there!

Last night, I've went to see the forum / presentation of J. Walter and others on Confronting the Evidence: A Call to Reopen the 911 Investigation. (reopen911.org)

I've always been a skeptic on the true reasons behind the 9/11 drama that happened in New York. The group of people that held this presentation, in my humble opinion, clearly pointed out many flaws in the conspiracy theory that the US government/media wanted us to believe.

Especially the reports on the Pentagon crash (Flight 77) really cannot be taken seriously after really looking at the pictures. What happened to the plane itself? Why is the hole in the wall too small for such a big plane? Why aren't there any surveillance videos available that really show what happened?

But also the theory of these (and other) people that the collapsing of the twin towers was controlled demolition seems plausible now. There are just too many unanswered questions.

For those who are interested in this too, I'd like to point you to reopen911.org. There's also a free DVD (with very much information) that can also be downloaded (yes, it's not copyrighted material, so feel free to copy) at, for instance mininova.

All in all, I was very impressed by the information and the whole presentations. Let the truth be unveiled soon!

I get the feeling that I miss so many good/nice/fun Firefox extensions, for I just discovered Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction.

It seems like there is already a large user base, writing a lot of useful scripts (see Greasemonkey script repository)

A few good examples (IMHO):

• Hide Adsense: Hides Google Adsense IFrames.
• No Middle Man: Rewrites links to remove redirection scripts.

I definitely have to check this out and see if I can hack my way around a few annoying sites and I definitely have to pay more attention to new extensions!

More information can be found at http://www.diveintogreasemonkey.org/.

I get the feeling that I miss so many good/nice/fun Firefox extensions, for I just discovered Greasemonkey.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction.

It seems like there is already a large user base, writing a lot of useful scripts (see Greasemonkey script repository)

A few good examples (IMHO):

• Hide Adsense: Hides Google Adsense IFrames.
• No Middle Man: Rewrites links to remove redirection scripts.

I definitely have to check this out and see if I can hack my way around a few annoying sites and I definitely have to pay more attention to new extensions!

More information can be found at http://www.diveintogreasemonkey.org/.

Black Messiah is new to me. I missed their debut full length, as well as the demos, but now I caught them with Oath of a Warrior. An epic album full of Viking related material, sang in both English and German. I must say I like the German language with certain kinds of metal, it even sounds good here, but hey, German Vikings?

Anyways, the recording is ok. The bass drum sounds like that on Ablaze my Sorrow - The Plague. Quite like a plastic bucket that gets a good beating. But the funniest part of all must be the Greek/Venetian sounds in the third track, Blutsbruder. I can live with German speaking Vikings, but Greece and Venice aren't the first places that come to mind when I think about Odhinn loving creatures. Nevertheless, I like this album! Have to start looking for the albums I've missed.

Label: Einheit Produktionen

Woohoo!

Today I reached the 300-day threshold on my server's uptime! As usual Netcraft is slightly behind but it will catch up soon.

Up to the 1 year milestone!

Woohoo!

Today I reached the 300-day threshold on my server's uptime! As usual Netcraft is slightly behind but it will catch up soon.

Up to the 1 year milestone!

"Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!?", well, looks like Scooby is joining the guys of Necrophagia in the studio. I've dubbed the new album (Harvest Ritual Vol. I) Scooby-Doo metal. Mirai Kawashima (also known from the band Sigh) is abusing his keyboards to the point where you really start wondering when the Mystery Machine will pull up in front of your home.

Besides the Scooby-factor, the album is pretty nice. The recording is pretty good and the strange gore-infested, bloody sounds of horror (Yikes!) will keep you amused for quite a while.

Shaggyyyyyy!

Label: Season of Mist

I once hacked up a small Perl/Tk script called T[kV] Gids. It used to fetch information from http://www.tvgids.nl/ and print it in a "nice" format.

Unfortunately, the source site thought it necessary to change the layout, and I'm too lazy to patch it. In other words: the project died. (Actually, the only user besides me had to email me, pointing out it didn't work any more.)

And as usual, when something has been broken, you need it. So my quest for the next tv guide software started and not much later it ended at FreeGuide TV Guide. This software uses XMLTV, which in turn also uses http://www.tvgids.nl/ (and/or other sources), but luckily there are more motivated scripters at work there and a patch is already available.

I must say I like the FreeGuide TV Guide already. It has a good interface and the only bad thing I can think of, is that it's a Java app *shrug*. Still, well done though. I like it!

I once hacked up a small Perl/Tk script called T[kV] Gids. It used to fetch information from http://www.tvgids.nl/ and print it in a "nice" format.

Unfortunately, the source site thought it necessary to change the layout, and I'm too lazy to patch it. In other words: the project died. (Actually, the only user besides me had to email me, pointing out it didn't work any more.)

And as usual, when something has been broken, you need it. So my quest for the next tv guide software started and not much later it ended at FreeGuide TV Guide. This software uses XMLTV, which in turn also uses http://www.tvgids.nl/ (and/or other sources), but luckily there are more motivated scripters at work there and a patch is already available.

I must say I like the FreeGuide TV Guide already. It has a good interface and the only bad thing I can think of, is that it's a Java app *shrug*. Still, well done though. I like it!

After numerous "Please skip this song" requests from my girlfriend, I've went too look for a simple solution (didn't want to hack too much) and found it in XMMSd

XMMSd allows you to control XMMS through a webinterface. This webinterface is really simple and intuitive.

This plugin really does everything needed. Skip a song, look at the playlist, alter the volume.

Good work!

After numerous "Please skip this song" requests from my girlfriend, I've went too look for a simple solution (didn't want to hack too much) and found it in XMMSd

XMMSd allows you to control XMMS through a webinterface. This webinterface is really simple and intuitive.

This plugin really does everything needed. Skip a song, look at the playlist, alter the volume.

Good work!

When I read the news about Google Web Accelerator I instantly feared the worst. Google has been dropping in my list of respected companies for some time and currently ranks pretty darn close to Microsoft.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but when I read about basically an HTTP proxy over at the Google empire of satanic servers free for all, I just can't think about: why? Why, oh why do they want to do this? Why would they hand over expensive hardware to the public?

To me the answer can just be simple: Big Brother is only 21 years late.

Google seems to enjoy saving everything, so you never have to delete mail! Now they can also trace your every move on the web (well, HTTP based that is). That information is probably worth a lot of money and boom, back to square one, why do they want to do this?

Satan's new tool seems to have some less friendly features though. Caching can be hard and what links should you prefatch and what not?

I'm getting fed up of having to counter every new precious idea Google comes up with though. No, I do not want to be part of your cache; no, I do not want my images to be listed in your image search; no I do not want you to prefatch my entire site(s) and just keep out of some area's!

It all can be blocked, but why should I have to put effort into something I do not want to happen? Shouldn't I include special robot tags to enable the specific service? No, for "all your base are belong to us"

Freshmeat showed me a new release of Lurker. I've seen it before, but never felt the urge to use it... until today!

The installation wasn't the easiest ever, for the whole bunch didn't want to compile. Luckily, a solution was found and -thank god for sed- the buggy lines could be easily stripped.

Now that I've set it up, I quite enjoy it. Some mailing lists have quite some traffic and takes too much time to follow. This way, I can read entire threads at once (or skip them) whenever I want to.

Highly recommended for people who follow more than one mailing lists :)

Google is big. And therefor it must get corrupt and evil ;) Well, maybe not because of that, but they sure are getting evil using weird terms of use and other exciting big-brotheresque features.

So I've switched to Yahoo! instead for awhile now. I've always liked the My Yahoo! interface, although I prefer Bloglines for news and other RSS feeds that I (sometimes) read. And of course I can share my Yahoo! calendar with my girlfriend, which is a lifesaver (well, probably will be for I just started using it ;)

But for quite some time now, I have been noticing some really nice features of the Yahoo! Search. From out of nowhere, a 'Translate this page' link appears next to some search results. I've looked at a view (translated) sites and surprisingly, the translation isn't bad at all. It takes you straight to Yahoo! Language Tools (a service of which I've missed the introduction).

And now there is also My Web (beta). This allows you to save and block search results, making it easier to find again, for you can search those bookmarks. Neat idea! Then there's the Yahoo! Toolbar, making it even better, for you can store sites you stumble upon in your My Web too. Too bad I true dislike an entire toolbar, so I go with the bookmarklet option ;)