Michael Hartog » browser

Back to Chrome

Michael Hartog — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:30:33 +0000

I was outside the CSClub today, studying hard for that CS246 midterm when a conversation about Firefox’s stagnation broke out. Many points about it having an incredibly old base and just not being so great compared to Chrome.

So I looked back at why I switched away from Chrome the last time I was using it.

Too much RAM usage on my netbook with Windows 7
No bookmark syncing, Xmarks wasn’t working at the time
Missing many add-ons I loved in Firefox

And effectively all these problems have been solved. My netbook is now running Ubuntu, Xmarks works and google has their own built in syncing with google docs and there are many more add-ons (like ad-blocker) so I’m not missing any functionality. Not to mention that Chrome feels like a faster browser and uses less vertical space by default.

So I’m back with Chrome. I might look like a google fanboy but I think of it as the same as I think of Logitech. I didn’t decide to buy a Logitech mouse (or three), keyboard, speakers and headset because I’m in love with the company. I chose it because those were the best products at the time. Google makes some really nice products, so I will embrace them.

Another First Week of School

Michael Hartog — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:47:09 +0000

Another first week of school started this week. I’m doing something new this term, using the wiki at http://www.michaelhartog.com/wiki/ (no, you can’t see log in to see anything) to keep track of my class notes. It’s much faster to type notes on my laptop (and much more legible) although it comes with some weird issues. For my CS courses, everything is fine since that is normally done on the computer. But in linguistics and math I have other issues.

In linguistics we have to write all of those crazy symbols they use in the dictionary to tell you how to pronounce the word. Luckily, I very quickly found how to write them through the IPA website with simple html codes.

Math, on the other hand, is a little more complex. There are a few ways to write math for browsers, however, they aren’t supported across browsers. The other option is some scripts that will take input and then it will create a images. I still have to figure out how to implement it, but I think I’m going to go with the image option.

The Idle Thumbs podcast ended last month and I’ve taken some of my spare time to listen to it from the beginning.

I’ve also picked up Bored to Death and Modern Family as two new TV shows to watch. No, I haven’t finished Buffy, get off my back!

And with a week off, steam shows what one week of vacation can do for me:

Omegle

Michael Hartog — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:29:50 +0000

Omegle is website that lets you join another random person in chat. I wasn’t really interested at first but I was bored while watching another episode of Flashpoint and someone had just linked it in IRC so I decided to give it a go.

My first chat was with a guy named ‘Fox’ from Brazil, I told him about how we recently had snow (In April!) and he remarked on how he almost never had snow. He was rather polite and after a few minutes he had to go. +1 for Omegle.

Second chat? He started with “Electric boobs and fallopian tubes” and just went downhill from there. I won’t get into the details but I had to tell him to see a doctor… and then a vet. -1 for Omegle.

My third chat started with him saying “cyber?” and ended with me saying “notnx” rather quickly. -1 for Omegle.

And my last chat? It went absolutely nowhere, neither of us had anything to talk about. No points either way.

Should you try it out? sure, it’s worth 5 minutes. Just don’t expect to gain anything at all from it.

Bookmarklets

Michael Hartog — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:46:08 +0000

Bookmarklets are little peices of javascript disguised as bookmarks that you can run on any site. They let you do things like Resize forms. You can test it out by dragging it into your bookmarks toolbar and trying it out on the comments section.

Other good bookmarklets I’ve come across are:

BugMeNot for getting past registration quickly on large sites.
is.gd for making urls smaller, similar to tinyurl except an even smaller url.
You can also download videos from youtube and other places with this link (not a bookmarklet)