Feel the difference – Java 6

Java version 6 update 2 (internally 1.6.0.2) is now available. What version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) are you running in your browser? Does it matter?

To find out your JRE version, just click here. So does it matter what version you are running?

Typically the newer versions contain more features, bug and security fixes, and improvements.

As the newer versions are usually better, you should upgrade when possible. And version 6 boosts quite a significant performance improvement over version 5. I was quite surprised by how much faster it is.

The only thing to stop you is that some site that you need to use does not work with the new version. In that case, you may want to send them some feedback to upgrade their site.

However, do note that installing/upgrading to the new version does not usually remove the older versions. Therefore, it is possible for attackers to exploit known bugs in older versions. So unless you need the older versions, uninstall them. In addition to avoiding the attacks, you also save on disk space!

So what are you waiting for? Run along and now and experience the difference! By the way, unless you do java development, you only need to install the JRE and not the JDK – it’s a much smaller download. Have fun!

Filed under: Internet, Software

My Favourite White

I used to not like wine that much, and I still don’t like many.

Two years ago, one of my friends (Alan) recommended I start with the whites and introduced me to the Brown Brother’s Flora and Muscat. Ever since then, this has been my favourite – refreshingly light, fragrant, sweet and not overly cloying or dry.

There are a couple of others which I like but none that resonates with me so. Do you have any to recommend?

Filed under: Notes, Wine

Introducing Foxit Reader

PDF is usually associated with Adobe. And that’s perfectly natural as the PDF format is created by Adobe Systems way back in 1993. And most often than not, Adobe Reader is the software that is used to read PDF documents.

Over the years, Adobe Reader has grown both in features and size. As of now, Adobe Reader 8.1 for Windows XP is a 22.3 MB download and after installation, it takes up 115 MB (according to the Add and Remove Programs statistics).

The huge size also means that starting it up takes quite a while. Version 8 does some tricks to speed this up, by starting up together with your system but not showing itself until needed. This works but it does take away some of your computer’s resources as well.

The good news is Adobe Reader is not the only free PDF reader available. In fact there are quite a few available. After my last post on Firefox, I bring you another foxy software – Foxit Reader 2.0!

Foxit Reader 2.0 is a free PDF document viewer, that is just only a 1.5 M download and after installation takes less than 4 MB!

It loads fast and all the things you likely need it to do. So, if you don’t require any of the special adobe reader functionalities, which most of us won’t, Foxit Reader will do more than just fine!

Save some of your computer’s resources and try out Foxit Reader now!

Filed under: Software

Your Own Firefox

Introduction

Firefox is a free web browser that is fully customizable, secure and fast. If you haven’t tried Firefox, you should.

To start, download and install Firefox.

Next, start Firefox and start surfing (you may need to set up your connection settings first). Yup, that’s it! You have Firefox now, and for some this is sufficient. Plug-ins can be installed as needed while surfing.

However, there is so much more that can and should be done! Take a look at the extensive add-ons available.

Making it yours

Pick a theme, start by changing the way it looks! I prefer the cool Ice Blue theme.

Add relevant dictionaries for the spell check feature in Firefox to use when you write on blogs, forums, online word processors or web-based emails.

Get rid of annoying advertisements with Adblock Plus (just right click and block!). For those who prefer a less DIY approach, use one of the many subscription filters. I use Easy List and Easy Elements. There are some debates on whether it is ethical to block online ads, so you may want to think about that. Adblock Plus by itself allows you to choose which ads to block, if you use a subscription filter, then you may want to know what they are blocking and decide if you are fine with it.

The All-in-One Sidebar creates a simple sidebar with access to many things, convenient and looks nice too!

Download files? Use the download statusbar, this extension provides a easy to view and manage your downloads in a tidy statusbar.

I love tabbed browsing. And it’s even better with Tab Mix Plus!!

Want to customize how some web sites look? Or even the browser itself? With the Stylish extension, that’s exactly what you can do. These are the styles I am using:

• Colorize Firefox 2.0 Active Tab for browser user interface
• Hide unnecessary browser buttons and menus for browser user interface (compiled by me!)
• Sliding Menubar for browser user interface
• WellRounded 2 for browser user interface
• Stylish – Menu/Button Icons for Stylish user interface
• Bright Focus (for buttons, links, and textboxes) for all web pages
• Link warning (cursor hover) – various filetypes for all web pages
  • Original script applies to everything instead of all web pages only.
  • Add the following to the beginning of the script

  @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
  @-moz-document url-prefix(http), url-prefix(file) {

  • And add the closing “}” end of the script
• Style the “Highlight all” results (Ctrl+F) for all web pages
• Gmail with different and bigger attachment icons applies to mail.google.com
• Google Homepage (using a theme) Transparency Edits for www.google.com/ig
• Addson header styling for addons.mozilla.org

With Stylish, you can preview them and decide if you want to keep it. If you know some CSS or know how to copy and paste, you can update some of them to your liking. Some of the styles come with comments to precisely do that.

If you are a user of the popular Google Calendar and Google Mail, there are also extensions made just for them. Check out Better GCal and Better Gmail. They are really better!

And then you will come across sites that only supports IE, with IE Tab, just switch the rendering engine and you have IE in a tab in Firefox! You can set it up to always use IE for certain sites as well. By the way, IE Tab makes use of IE, so you still need IE to be installed on your system.

If you are a web developer, Web Developer provides you a whole suite of tools. If you are not, the proxy enable/disable feature is useful if you need to switch between the 2 modes, e.g. if you have a manual proxy setting that is only active in your office but not at home. By the way, if you just need the proxy feature, there are extensions that just provides that. I’m checking out FoxyProxy now. Just do a search on the add-ons page and find the one that suits you!

Want to know the weather forecast? Forecastfox gives you weather forecasts on your status bar. I have since disabled this but try it out for yourself.

For those who prefer smoother scrolling, try out SmoothWheel. I am still trying it out myself.

I have also recently installed BookBurro to play around with. It allows you to check the availability and price of books using ISBN on various sites including Amazon, BookMooch (book swapping site), and libraries (Singapore’s libraries catalogs may be available through WorldCat).

One final extension to take note of: Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is to javascript what Stylish is to css. Basically, Greasemonkey allows you to customize a site using javascript and there is a lot that can be done. It can do more good but it can also do more harm… so use those scripts you trust. I have not got time to look into using this yet (I’m doing quite well with Stylish and specific extensions) but eventually I might.

Firefox Keywords

Firefox also supports keywords. Simply add a keyword to a bookmark for quick access.

If you have some search engines that you frequently use. Go to the search engine and right click on the search box. Simply select “Add a Keyword for this Search…” and you can then just key in the keyword and search terms and you will get the results page immediately. I have these search engines set:

• g for Search Google
• gs for Search Google for Singapore pages only
• sd for Search StreetDirectory.com for Singapore maps
• w for Search Wikipedia English pages

Going Beyond the Basics

There are quite a few things you can set. Check out the Tools menu.

You can limit the amount of caching done by Firefox. Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network and you will find the option there. I set it to 20 MB.

In addition, you can also change additional configurations via the “about:config” page. Most of these changes are more advanced (manual edits). Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return.

If you have a broadband connection, pipelining can speed up your page loads by allowing Firefox to load multiple things on a page at the same time.

• Type “network.http” in the filter field
• Change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
  • Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
  • Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
  • Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a bigger number (you may want to jump in small increments and find what works for you)

You can and probably should reduce RAM usage when Firefox is minimized.

• Right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean
• Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to “true”

By default, browser.cache.memory.enable is set to “true”. However, you may want to configure the size of the memory cache.

• Type “browser.cache” in the filter field
• Set “browser.cache.memory.capacity” depending on your RAM size
  • 256MB RAM – enter “4096″
  • 512MB RAM – enter “8192″
  • 1GB RAM and above – enter “16384″

Important: If you want to restore to default settings then change browser.cache.memory.capacity value to “-1″.

You have to restart Firefox for some of these settings to take effect.

Enjoy your Firefox

Well, I hope sharing all these will help you all enjoy Firefox better. Have fun and enjoy your surfing experience (whichever browser you decide to use eventually).

By the way, installing add-ons may slow down your Firefox, so do remove those you don’t need.

And let me know if you are experiencing slowdowns, I am hitting some recently and have yet to figure out whether it is due to my wonky notebook or my itchy fingers.

And here’s how my firefox looks like (after merging the top menubar and toolbar and removing unnecessary stuff like the search bar through the customize function):

Filed under: Internet, Software

Good company, ok food, lousy service

Where: Cafe Cartel at Raffles City
When: 19 Jun 2007 Lunchtime

I met up with some friends for lunch today, so what’s the deal?

Everything started fine as we were all chatting away, catching up with each other. But being lunchtime and with the food missing in action after having placed the order for more than half an hour, our stomachs started growling.

So we asked for a status check.

The manager then told us they ran out of chicken sausages for the mixed grill set lunch that 3 of my friends had ordered. He offered to give them another egg (already one in the set) or more fries or additional vegetables as replacement.

It felt kind of unfair so we asked them to give us other sausages instead. The manager flatly refused saying those other sausages are not meant for set meals.

Left with no other choice, we chose to make do with the replacement vegetables.It would probably have been fine if they had made the offer moments after we ordered instead of half an hour later.

Running out of sausages is solely the restaurant’s fault and offering up poor substitutes and options are really lousy ways to treat customers.

By the way, the service was rather slow too.

Luckily the company was good and my food was ok – my pasta set meal still came with its chicken sausage. Maybe different kind from those they are using for the mixed grill set!

But probably because my spicy chicken sausage pasta would become:

1. just spicy pasta or
2. spicy egg pasta or
3. spicy pasta with fries or
4. spicy vegetarian pasta

So what would you choose?!

Filed under: Food, Happenings, Notes

Web Applications that work offline

Web applications have always been the source of mis-placed expectations from end-users who have been used to client server applications.

“It should still work when the network or servers are down” was one of the more surprising one that I got a few years back when doing up a web-based solution for a client.

Well, it seems that is what Google wants to achieve with Google Gears, currently in beta.

Already innovative websites have started offering offline web applications, like Remember The Milk, a web-based to-do lists management site that I’m also using.

Unfortunately, the security settings on my current laptop doesn’t seem to allow me to install Google Gears.

Anyway this is an interesting piece of technology that if it takes off would definitely change the way we use web applications. Keep your eyes on it!

Or maybe develop an offline web application, it could be the next killer application! If that does happen, don’t forget me!

Filed under: Internet

My son and his once long curly hair

After almost a year, Kayden’s hair is a mess of curls. But they do make him look so cute! The many “so cute” comments directed at him certainly proved that. But then the comments also usually tags him as her.

So it was time for the designated family barber for the kids (i.e. me) to straighten it out. I had spotted a barber set on sale ($12.90) at Carrefour some days ago and just in time too.

It comes with a year of warranty as well… but that I had thrown the receipt away already by the time I opened the box and saw the warranty card.

It was a warm Sunday afternoon and it started well enough. Soon though, he was screaming as his fallen hair and the humid weather conspired to make him sticky and itchy and “hairy” uncomfortable.

It took 2 baths for him and lots of vacuuming and cleaning up but finally, it was over.

My wife’s first comment was that he doesn’t look as cute as before.

My mom then told me to leave his hair alone next time after she saw him that night.

My mom-in-law had a good laugh at his hair style (or lack of).

He sure looks different, differently adorable, and definitely more mischievous and cheeky. I would say I didn’t do too bad a job… hopefully the next time it will turn out better though. Probably need to add some style and leave more of his hair on top, I suppose.

Filed under: Family, Happenings

One more time…

Well… this isn’t the first blog or personal web page I’ve done, all of them sort of died off due to lack of time (excuses, excuses) and having other distractions like my 2 kids!! (more excuses again)

Hopefully this time round, it will last longer (that means more than a couple of months or so).

If you know me personally and are looking to catch up on what’s happening in my life, I suggest you try calling me instead.

I may occasionally do some of those updates here but I am mainly looking to share some of my thoughts on various things that catch my interest now and then.

Let’s hope you don’t need to wait too long before you start seeing something! (But don’t hold your breath!)

Filed under: Notes