Picture of everything

Check out this really interesting webpage The Picture of Everything. Hard to describe, it has cartoon characters, artists, philosophers, etc.

Firefox vs. Opera

A friend of mine asked me to compare using Opera with Firefox, so I used both for a few hours of browsing to see how they compared.

Upsides
1. Its as fast as Firefox is or vice-versa
2. If you download email onto your computer, you may find the opera mail feature useful but I cant tell how good it is as I didnt use it.

Sorry, but I couldn't find more.

Downsides
1. I find the interface too cluttered, big contrast with firefox which is as minimalistic as things get.
2. The ad window (in the free version, paid costs $39) is also annoying as my pages have gotten smaller, very annoying. You'll really notice this when you switch between Opera and FF, very obvious.
3. Search feature isnt flexible, firefox lets you search hundreds of sites from within the broswer, literally and you can add your own :)
4. Its ad blocking is nowhere close to ad-block, not even close....
5. No extensions, for me this is a big deal, it really makes my browsing better.
6. I dont understand the way it handles RSS feeds or why it does what it does. My impression is that its using a default system used to handle emails/messages to handle RSS, very clunky.

Minor Cribs
1. Extensions again, no music control from within the browser. You may find this more important that I do.
2. Another extension i didnt write about but you may like is "blog this" on right click, it takes the text to a new window, redirects to blogger, signs you in, and gives you the edit post page with the correct URL hyperlink in place. As ever, try it..

Bugmenot

Bugmenot is a great site that allows you to bypass compulsory web registration that many sites require. It provides usernames and passwords only to free sites and works pretty well most of the time. Putting this for anyone who is irritated by the link on the previous post that goes to NYTimes (which requires registration).

Who has 460 terabytes of data?

Walmart does. Here's an interesting article about Walmart and their obsession with collecting data. By the way, 460 terabytes is more than twice the size of the internet! Among its other uses, all that data let Walmart predict that people in Florida would buy more beer and strawberry pop-tarts before the hurricanes hit. Go figure..

Firefox

It suprises me that people still use Internet Explorer. I have been using the open source browser Firefox for about a year now and its finally reached the version 1.0 milestone. A good reason I think to write about why its slowly replacing IE and why I hope everyone who reads this will at least give it a try.

One of the first things you notice using Firefox is its speed, it has a clean interface and uses few resources. Also, it has tabbed browsing - all your browser windows actually live inside a single window, each demarcated by tabs that you can click in and out of easily, which allow you to keep track of them. If you haven't used this feature before, try it. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Searching via Google is built into a search box in the upper right hand corner. Nothing special you may say, but the "add more search engines" option lets you do so much more. This allows you to search many sites/engines directly (eg. Dictionary.com, Wickipedia, Amazon, Pubmed, etc.; you can get a full list here) from your browser.

Firefox also has a number of themes that change the way your browser looks, very important if screen space is at a premium and you are looking for a minimalistic user-interface. My personal favorite is Pinball. Pop-up ads are also easily blocked and all this is very customizable, which brings me to another really cool feature - Extentions.

Extentions are basically add-ons that different users and groups have created that add functionality - extend Firefox. Not all the extentions are useful to everyone but I use 4 extensively:

Ad-block - very powerful ad-blocker, can block flash ads too
Foxy Tunes - allows you to control your music player (supports most of the major players) from within firefox, adds a small control bar to the status-bar
WeatherFox - weather updates from weather.com, again built into the status-bar
Fire-FTP - add on FTP engine
QuickNote - a Post-it like note-taking extention

Another new feature that I have just begun to use is called live-bookmarks, which cuts down on time spent checking sites you read regularly. Its based on using RSS feeds that many websites are now serving up as a way to give frequent readers an easy way to keep track of new stuff they've just published.

So if you're reading this in IE, give Firefox a spin for a day.

Search Google for Jet Airways

As I was blogging on airlines, here's something funny. Search google for 'jet airways', the second result reads "Lizard found in Jet Airways food- The Times of India". Try it please :)

And finally Indian Airlines

The last leg of my journey home was the flight from Singapore to Bangalore with Indian Airlines (IA). I had travelled with a friend who had regaled me with scary stories about his flight on IA to Bangkok and back, Indians who got drunk (common feature on all airlines I think), who fought with air-hostesses, who took 20 free apples as he had 'paid' for them. So I got on wondering what this was going to be like.

The real story as it turned out weren't the people but was the airline. Some of the flaws were just flabbergasting. For example, my seat wouldn't stay upright, everyone knows 'keep your seat upright, we are landing/taking off', mine wouldnt. If I leaned on it even a bit, it would sway backward like an old tree, I dont know if there is some safety issue regarding keep your seat upright, but I hated it.

What food would you like sir, Veg or Non-veg?

Non-veg please

Sorry sir we have only veg

Huh?

The reading lights wouldn't work, the guy sitting next to me asked the air-hostess and then they came on. Come on, its not like you're saving on an electricity bill at 36000 feet. And to top it all off, we were half an hour late without any assistance from the weather or other external factors. Its things like this and other small stuff that really put me off. My wife travels IA within India and claims they are pretty good; maybe, maybe not.

Changi Airport

I really need to talk about this as Changi International Airport at Singapore is such a nice airport. After having passed through what felt like a million airports, Changi was a really nice change. I was stuck there from about midnight till 7 the next morning, when I had to catch my final flight home.

Its a very modern airport with what looked like very good duty-free and some rest areas where you can actually catch a longish nap. They have these massive plasm display TVs placed in many places showing news or movie channels and it also has a number of computer terminals with free internet access (sadly, no free WLAN). I mention these things in particular as one of the things that ailed me at most airports where we stopped was lack of things to do apart from staring mindlessly at passers-by.

So if you have a choice of which airport you are going to rot in, Changi is pretty good :)

Common Loos and Naked Men

Staying at the cheapest place in town is bound to have its downsides. One of the features of the dorm-style accomodation at HI-San Diego is common bathrooms. Call us Indians a prudish lot, but I draw the line at bathing in a common bathroom with the shower-curtain open.

A feature of using the loo at the hostel was the naked german. He refused to close his shower-curtain while bathing and would psychotically stare at everyone who entered or left. That was ok in some ways as you didnt have to look at him unless you wanted to, but it felt much worse when we spotted him at one of the posters during the SFN meeting...

I'm Back

Sorry about the long silence, I got back about a week ago but I have been caught up doing stuff at home and the lab. I have lots to blog about and will do so soon.