Friday, November 05, 2004

GMail's down so I thought I'd post here. I was able to look at the configuration of our school's WiFI router without any problem. I could've changed any of the settings. It wasn't even password-protected! Well, I'd better get off this old IBM THinkpad I1300 that is my friend's. I can't wait until he burns the CD image file I BItTorrented yesterday onto this PC. It's Linspire Live.

Monday, October 25, 2004

This is a friend's blog. I think what I'll do soon is copy my blog's template over to my website. Won't that look slick? I also may get AdSense ads. I'll put 'em in a place that isn't annoying, but please click on them to your heart's content.
bugsy

Monday, September 27, 2004

I haven't posted in another age and a day, so here's one big post that I hope will make up for it.

I just looked over at the Folding@Home project descriptions and there's some pretty neat stuff there. It's kindof neat knowing that your PC is helping do some noble work on proteins and such. I've finished up 2 work units (I think about 900 frames of simulations), and consequently got about 390 Folding@Home points for it. Nifty, although you can't redeem 'em anywhere. It does give you gloating rights, though.

I used WindowBlinds to make my desktop look very Macish, and the Aqua Dock pretty near finished the change over to Maclikedom. You never notice how clean a mac's interface is (or how confusing to PC users, since the minimize\maximize\exit buttons are on the left) until you've tried it in this way. I have to tell you that where it worked it was suweet . Then I tried the MacOnPC theme that imitates OS 9 and I think that I wouldn't switch over to an OS 9-based mac for the interface by any means. It's kindof creepy, the greyish titlebars and such. OSX's look is way more cheerful, if not a little toylike, but that's OK. I then installed ObjectBar and tried its Mac theme running in tandem with WindowBlinds' theme (both are free for basic typa stuff), and it looked more like a mac than ever before. I had less of a preferance toward the OSX theme for this, but I still had that tendancy. If ObjectBar really took out the menu bar and put it into its bar, then I think I'd really look into it, but it doesn't do I'm not really, but I'll use it from time to time. As I will with the OSX Windowblinds theme. Right now everything on my system is OSX-looking except the taskbar, windows, and some icons. That means that quite a bit of the icons, the pointers and the sounds, as well as the background, is straight outta OSX practically (and totally, with some of the icons).

I'm downloading Digital World right now from PCWorld's site. I'm getting the HiRes version. I think the much longer wait will be worth it. I don't want to see low-res graphics. I want something I could print and it still look good.

I'm also trying to connect and failing to with MSN messenger. It seems I'm having a problem connecting to MSN's service no matter which program I run on my PC at least, which is annoying, given it says that everything is fine with Messenger on MSN's site...but I've tried again and it just won't work. Ah well, I can't work on it tonight really.

Over the past few months or however long it's been, I've been downloading lots of programs. One of them is the ZipGenius Suite. This handy little set of utilities (made in Italy) gives you a very comprehensive zipper, a nifty file cutter, and an FTP program that looks promising but I haven't tried out yet. ZipGenius, the main part of the suite, supports nearly all of the major zip formats out there (with the exception of the aging Stuffit and Stuffit X file types, which nobody supports and I don't see why they should quite frankly, more on that later, or maybe dyasfrom now). It also does slideshows and optimizes OpenOffice documents so that they're even smaller than how small they already are. Cutter (the cutting program) takes your file and spits out segments of a size you choose, plus a batch file that reassembles the parts, and a readme file that tells you how to go about the reassembling. Very useful.

Okay, about Stuffit. I tried compressing several things and in a race\compression contest between the free and very powerful (albeit a little techie) 7-Zip and it, 7-zip won on speed against Stuffit X and won in compression most of the time. Why pay for something that's slow, unstable and doesn't give you the best compression when the best things in life are free?

Well, I've gotta go to bed now. I hope I've been informative. I hope you've learned something from all of these rants and things. :)

Friday, August 13, 2004

Here is the first blog entry of mine in a long time (insert profound "Duhs" here), and I'm going to talk about lots of stuff as a consequence.

First of all, my dad and I have several jobs lined up. The one that looks like I'll do for a Scout fundraiser (I'm in Troop 351, see the link at my site) is a thing where I buy coupon books for somewhere around $10 and sell them for $25...around here the actual coupon value is between $240 and $480, minus $1 per coupon mailin...

Let me explain about the coupon books. They aren't the normal 'buy something you'd never use otherwise and get something you don't want for five dollars off' books that you buy out of sheer pity for some organization. They also aren't useful little cards that you buy for $10 and if you're smart can save $20 over a year with. What you do is fill out one of the twenty-four $10 coupon certificates in the book with codes that are shown in the back of the book, which partain to the coupons you'll get, and mail the certificate, along with $1 and a self-addressed stamped envelope, to a placee called Coupon Connection of America. A few weeks later, you get $10 in coupons. Nifty. Technically, the last $40 in coupons are compensation for the envelopes and dollar you have to send them. Anyways, you get $10 of coupons you picked out per certificate. If, like our local Super S, a store near you, say,k doubles the value of all coupons up to a dollar, you've almost certainly got yourself $480 in coupons! Wow.

Okay, next up: I've just found that Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.1 has strayed away, in a good sense, from the AOL Instant Messenger smilies, replacing them with more handsome ones. When the new Netscape comes out, who know? Maybe these nifty smilies will flood into Netscape's Mail client and even AOL Instant Messenger! Yes, yes, thousand times YES! Of course, that isn't as good as having about sixteen more smilies to add to your esxpression range, but it's an improvement.

Next, I want to talk a little about the neat extensions (addons) for Firefox that I have.

Tabbrowser Extensions - This nifty little addon gives Firefox tons more functionality in the tab arena. There are tons of features, like coloring tabs and telling tabs that they can't auto-refresh, but the two most-used functions for me are an ability to undo closing a tab (very useful for when you wanted to take a look at a reply to an email but had an itchy mouse finger) and a function that makes every window have to open in a new tab, aka no popups for any reason at all, aka a very nicely consolidated browsing experience

Image Toolbar - I don't use this much, but the three shortcuts on it, rendered in true 'XP Pizzaz' style, is just the ticket for people missing the feature that Internet Explorer 6 has. I think it also resizes pictures to fit in your browser window when the pictures are viewed alone, but that may be Firefox itself.

DOM Inspector - Disects and trisects and so ons a webpage into the minuteist parts. It's pretty useful for figuring out just how that whiz-bang site's style sheet is set up. I don't use this much either, because I think my site is set up just fine, but it is useful.

Sage - This RSS reader is an extension of Firefox, meaning that it's small, light, and great. It shares your bookmarks view, which can be annoying if not set up right. To kill that annoyance, I made a subfoler 'RSS Feeds' and redirected all of its power to there. You can read headlines and text from hoer-overs in the sidebar or you can view the feed as a handsome webpage.

GMail Notifier - This little gem tells me if I have new mail in my nifty GMail account. It also gives me one-click access there from its statusbar icon (I could use a toolbar icon but I'd call that wasting space). Plus it gives me info on how much of my 1000 MB of storage is filled up (it is at, and has been at, and will be for at for quite some time, 1 MB, 0%)

These are my nice little set of extensions for Firefox.

I am now integrated into the wonderful world of Yahoo, with its chess games, homepages, comics, headlines, news, and the inability to get my Yahoo Mail account working. But I've gotta say that even without a working email the experience is impressive. Yahoo's new Messenger 6 draws a little closer to MSN Messenger in some areas, but that's not a bad thing.

Well...that's about all for right now. I have to keep my mind on the game of chess or I'll be beaten very badly. I've already lost a knight...

Friday, June 18, 2004

And this is the new and vastly improved Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 mail client, also with Charmel... Posted by Hello
I downloaded the new version of Mozilla Firefox, 0.9, yesterday. Here's what it looks like with the Charmel theme (IMHO, it looks a lot like the beloved-by-me Apple Cocoa theme, without the toylike sounds and stuff that Apple puits in their OS). Posted by Hello

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Since this template doesn't seem to have a placeholder for links, I'll say it right here: my site is at ian.profitabilityexperts.com

Also, look for the Spam Cam soon...it'll be there...
Yet another blog template change. This time it'll actually work, as you can see if you're reading this blog. I know, it's a dumb comment, but anyway...

SOME JOKES (some about obesity; just a warning)

Want to hear a lame joke? A guy broke his leg.

She has more chins than a Chinese phone book.

When she sits around the house, she really sits around the house (email me if you don't get this one; I didn't at first either)

There are so many Wings and Wongs in China that when you Wing you always get a Wong number

Ththththats all for now...tune in later for more inanities, insanities, commentaries on spam, the tech world, etc...

Monday, June 07, 2004

My mom finally tried working on my computer last night and this morning. I put her on Internet Explorer, as Firefox with Charmel would probably be too strange for her, as would maybe even Firefox with Qute..., but even with Internet explorer, she couldn't figure out how to disconnecft. Probably because of XP's 'wave of the future' LCD screen connect taskbar icon. :/ I like it, but there should be an option to switch back to the old style stuff. Anyway, she got everything done that she needed done (that was possible, at least; part of a site she needed to go to was down), and her computer (as opposed to our 2000-or-so Gateway) didn't crash three times during the process, have the keyboard act wierd, etc. Posted by Hello

Sunday, June 06, 2004

I've changed my blog's stylesheet to match the rest of my site. Hopefully, the bug dealing with the...well, it was worked out if you're reading this, but at the time of my posting I'm pretty sure there's a bug in the template that makes everything show up as and other things like that...annoying, but I've had it fixed once before, and it'll be fixed again... Posted by Hello
I'm writing this blog post from a program called Picasa Hello. Its interface is great, and it negates the need for me to click any links or do anything except type, send, and even put photos on! Posted by Hello

Thursday, April 15, 2004

A really neat theme for Mozilla Firefox is Charmel. You can get it at shaw.ca/lucx. It's, in my opinion, a lot "friendlier" to the eyes than the average Windows XP theme. It also has an icon set that sorta reminds me (but not too much) of the old Netscape. :) Its menus and buttons are kind of like Apple's OS X or iTunes (read suweet), and the backgrounds for everything are the same hue (except lighter) as brown sugar\cinnamon and white sugar. Now, if there were only a Windows XP theme like this, so that the titlebar wouldn't be so contrasting. :)

Sunday, April 04, 2004

Hi. This blog is back again, and it's better than ever, as I'm going to take this down to just noncomputer stuff and tiny stuff that I wouldn't want to post on my forum or make a webpage of. I'm not using the Bravenet WebJournal service any more; it has too many ads and it's easier to just open the BlogThis module than go to Bravenet's ad-infested site and do all of that. :) I look forward to posting more on here soon.

Monday, January 19, 2004

If you need help with Thunderbird, email me at iansl@alex4all.com. I don't know everything, but what I know may help.

Saturday, January 17, 2004

Alternative medicine, vitamin b17, apricot kernels, healthy apricot seeds, b-17, b 17, b17 Apricot Power! Got pits? If so, great. If not, oh well. You need some, though.
Here's a card talk with Will McCormack from Wednesday (I put question numbers in parenthesis for Will's questions, since I put them there on the card):

CARD 1

Will: (1) What are you doing? (2) Are you wirting a computer program? (3) Whats your favorite word? (4) Where were you born? (5) Whats your favorite computer program? (6) Are you still in debt? You should call 1-800-debt-free

Ian: 1 Making a website 2 Not at the moment. I need a BASIC-to-EXE compiler. 3 Wizened, maybe? 4 Palm City, Florida 5 Mozilla Internet Suite w\Lotsa Addons!

CARD 2

Will: Ian Littman why is your website have a orange background?

And if you call 1-800-In Debt you (?)should(?) call 1-800-Debt Free in the future

Ian: It doesn't. The background is salmon. PC World made the background.

Will: Oh, thank you. Salmon is a nice color

A little later, I got this note from Jess, on a card that had some old work on it:

I have a nervouse habit of puncturing weasels,



Ahhh...don't we all...

And while I'm at this, I might as well tell you that I've changed main browsers since I wrote that. Mozilla is still my emailer and web editor, but now Mozilla Firebird 0.7 is my web browser. Right now, I'm trying to download Mozilla 1.6, the really really new version (2 days old when I wrote this), which once again steps a huge step ahead of Internet Explorer and Outlook. I just can't wait until Firebird and Thunderbird (the new emailer) come out, really. I wonder how I can transfer all of my 262 (and counting) messages and my address book from Mozilla Mail to Thunderbird. If you have a way of doing this, email me.

Well, the phone line's clear, now, so I guess I'll post and publish this...

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Texas ISP Providers - Cheap and Free Texas Internet Access Services

Just in case anyone is in need of one. :)
This afternoon at school, Jess and I did a 'card talk', or basically chatting using notecards. There are 3 cards in all, but I lost one. The others I have, so I know they're accurate. The stuff in parenthesis weren't on the cards, I put those in for clarification. By the way, Jess threw the card away. Anyway,

CARD ONE

Ian: What's this? ------------------> J.D. (In upper riighthand corner of the cards he had given me a little earlier)

Jess: Call 1-800 Debt Free

Ian: Why? Why do I need to call debtfree?

Jess: People at your age shouldn't be in debt. Call these people. (This is now the back of the card)

At this point, Alex also chips in (he was between Jess and I, so it was very convenient):

Alex: You should really listen to jess. Call 1-800 Debt Free.

CARD TWO, which I dogear folded into card one and sent back to Jess

Ian: Google AdSense: Make money on your site! I can get out of debt this way, thank you, as well as selling Alex's movies.

------------------------------------------------------------

Jess: You should get your mind off (other side) of websites, they're full of lies and deceit.

Alex, I think: I like cheese...I'm sorry. Is this alchololics anomunis? I have a problem.

Ian: Mine isn'tand neither is Google's, but AAs is. :-| (a bigger shhhh face was on the card, but that doesn't transfer to Blogger very well, and I'm not a skilled enough mouser to draw it)

Jess: Whatever, all you need to do is call 1-800 Debt Free

CARD THREE (a little later, after looking around for card one)

Ian: You have one of my cards, Jess. Give it.

?Alex?: No I don't, False accuser!

(After passing the card to Jess)

Jess: Double false accusor! Me tooo! M2

Ian: Where is the 1st card, then, the 1 with the arrow to JD on it?

?Travis? (I'll tell you about how he figured in later): M2? LOL!

Jess: I have no idea what your talking about

Jess or Alex: Who me?

Thus ended the card conversation. Later, upon asking Jess to his face about the card, he told me he had thrown it away. While I was talking, Travis sorta snatched the cards away from either me or Jess, and read them. That's why I think he wrote that little bit, besides the faqct that everybody has different (pretty much) handwriting, and that's why I divided up some paragraphs into different speakers, and that's why I think it was Travis. Also, I'm sure, pretty much, that I didn't write that.

Well, that's pretty much it. :)

Monday, January 12, 2004

Extension Room :: Extensions

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Here's a neat link for a neat and free office suite...

download: OpenOffice.org 1.1 Downloads

Saturday, January 03, 2004

Sat Jan 03, 01:57:21 PM

Ahhh, a fresh new look to my blog, which will soon be hosted on my site, just as sonn, that is, as I find that stupid ftp address!!!

Wed Oct 29, 06:08:04 AM

I got the PC at last. Mr. Bein said that the Viking cards aren't bad at all. Saved me $40 or so.

2.6 P4C
512 DDr400
160GB 7200 RPM
8x DVD+RW
16x DVDROM
Media Center 2004
HP MC Keyboard, Optical Scroller Mouse

Great!

Tue Oct 21, 02:22:10 PM
EDIT DELETE

My Wish List for the moment:
Hp Photosmart 1000 (4x6 Scanner) - 30
Sandisk Ultra/Extreme 256MB CF Card - 75
10 GB Image Storage - ~200
Sony TRV250 - ~300
Dell Axim X3i - ~325
Belkin Infrared Keyboard - ~50
Rayovac 15min Charger DC cord ~30 (dunno)
Olympus C5050 AC cord ~50 (dunno)

That's what selfish me wants for now. If you wanna give it to me, just email me at iansl@alex4all.com and say whachir gonna get me, and I might respond, if I have enough time, between making Troop 351's newsletter, its website and my website, and selling popcorn/

Tue Oct 21, 02:22:00 PM
EDIT DELETE

Well, everything's OK. I do wish that I could make an editorial of that letter in school, and such.