Floor Blogging...

I am currently posting to this weblog from the ground... literally on the carpet of my apartment. My computer is one of the last things left after the movers took away my possessions.

Perhaps I will take a picture and post it as soon as I have my USB linker (that I foolishly packed).

BTW... It is tough to type on the floor, but an optical mouse works just as well on carpet as it does on a table.

FDA Approved Drug Allows 40+ Hours of Wakefulness With Minimal Side Effects.

Real Tech News - Independent Tech » Modafinil - the Scary Time-Shifting Drug
via Digg.

I am going to make a guess that this drug will soon be the new darling of the black market.

I cannot even imagine the ramifications of this drug's release for all-night cramming sessions. If kids aren't all tweaked after studying all night, having worse retention than the kids that actually read the book, how are students that don't use drugs going to compete?

I can't wait for this to hit the mainstream legal prescription drug-taking population to hear the horror stories of lives destroyed and families ruined. Or perhaps to lives regained after being able to use their newly-found wee hours.

I doubt that the come-down is as rosy as the article suggests. Messing with your body's circadian rhythm has potentially debilitating side-effects. This would more than likely shift your time so that, without the drug, the person would be unable to regain their sleep schedule.

Being the skeptic that I am, I checked-out Google News to find stories on this drug and its authenticity. This Gizmag article is much better than the previously linked article; it has information about military trials and such. An abstract from the British Journal of Psychiatry also sounds fascinating (but I am not going to hunt it down--it is sad to not have access to articles online).

Categories: drugs, sleep, fda, timeshift

Mad for Firefox Extensions: InfoLister

I will admit it; I am a Firefox extension addict. I currently have 52 extensions enabled for Firefox, and I would say that I use about 75 percent on a daily basis to search the web.

I see numerous posts on popular websites referring to the "top-ten" extensions or the "best," but mainly these articles are just showing gimmicky features that do not add to the browsing of the interweb. In an attempt to make myself post more often, I am beginning a series focusing on my favorite Firefox extensions and how they enrich the web-browsing experience. This list will be in order of preference, but I will begin with the obvious first choice for the extensophile: InfoLister.

InfoLister is an extension that lists the information about what extensions, themes and plug-ins are currently enabled in Firefox (or Thunderbird or NVU). I was going to highlight significant snippets regarding the extension, but their website has some mal-formed XML. Here is the homepage anyways. Maybe it will be functioning by the time anyone reads this article.

Thanks to the power of Google to turn anything to HTML, I was able to visit the homepage and obtain this awesome info:

Features:

• High customizability

• HTML, plain text and XML output.

• FTP upload (help page)

• Quick access: toolbar button and “about:info”” in the Location Bar.

Honestly, this extension is pretty much useless for most people. Firefox has a splendid extension manager that will allow you to obtain this information easily, and actually manipulate the settings.

The only reason that I even have this extension is so that I can easily show people what extensions I have enabled. You can also upload it to an FTP or do other wonky shit, but I just go into the extension manager, click on options then choose "show information" on the General tab. This opens a window that displays the information about extensions and such. After Highlighting the contents and using CTR-C, the pasted info looks like this:

Last updated: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 19:00:41 GMT

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

Extensions (enabled: 51, disabled: 1)

• Aardvark 1.0
• Adblock 0.5.2.039
• Add Bookmark Here 0.5.3
• All-in-One Gestures 0.15.2
• Allow Right-Click 0.1.1
• BetterSearch 1.8.7
• Bloglines Toolkit 1.5.6
• BlogThis 0.3
• Bookmark Backup 0.3.3
• Bookmarks Menu Button 0.2.3.2005012802
• BugMeNot 0.6.2
• Compact Menu 1.7.2
• Coralize 0.4
• CuteMenus 0.4
• del.icio.us 0.5.5
• Disable Targets For Downloads 1.0
• Download Manager Tweak 0.6.6
• EMbuttons 1.1.3
• Extended Statusbar 1.1
• Firesomething 1.7.0
• Flipper 2.9
• FLST 0.8.3
• Forecastfox 0.8
• Furl Tools 0.6
• Gmail Notifier 0.4.3
• Greasemonkey 0.3.3
• InfoLister 0.8.2
• LastTab 1.1
• Linkification 0.9.20
• LiveLines 0.4.2
• OpenBook 1.2.0
• Platypus 0.5
• Print 0.2.2
• Print Preview 0.4
• Research Buddy 1.02
• Resizeable Textarea 0.1a
• Sage 1.3.5
• ScrapBook 0.15.5
• Scribe 0.21
• Signature 0.3.1
• SmoothWheel 0.43.1.20041107
• SpellBound 0.7.3
• Spurl 0.35
• Stop/Reload 1.1
• Tabbrowser Extensions 1.13.2005030502
• TargetAlert 0.8.8
• Text Link 1.3.2005070402
• text/plain 1.1.5
• Toolbar Enhancements 0.16.2
• URL Link 1.06
• Web Developer 0.9.3 [disabled]
• “About Firefox: Soviet Edition” 2005.0606.1552

Themes (3)

• Firefox (default) 2.0
• Phoenity 1.5.1 [selected]
• Batman Begins 1.0

Plugins (13)

• Google VLC multimedia plugin 1.0
• QuickTime Plug-in 6.5.1
• Mozilla Default Plug-in
• Shockwave Flash
• Shockwave for Director
• RealJukebox NS Plugin
• RealPlayer(tm) G2 LiveConnect-Enabled Plug-In (32-bit)
• RealPlayer Version Plugin
• MetaStream 3 Plugin
• Java(TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 4
• Adobe Acrobat
• Microsoft® DRM
• Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library

After going to the Google HTML-ized version of the homepage, I realize that I could have simply put "about:info" in the URL bar. This clearly shows that, although I enjoy the added functionality of extensions en masse, I am still using only a fraction of the potential that these extensions add to Firefox.

You can download InfoLister from their website or at the Extensions Mirror (an excellent website for extensions updates and tips).

Categories: firefox, extensions, unhacks, tips&tricks, reviews

Your year is about to get just a tad longer...

Those who ask for just a bit more time are in luck... the year 2005 is about to get a little longer. Of course, the powers that be did not deem it important enough to give us an extra half-hour to sleep in--only a measly second will be added to the year of our Lord 2005.

Take Your Time: Extra Second Will be Added to 2005.
via DIGG

Makes me think of that damned song by the Steve Miller Band: Fly Like an Eagle... "time keeps on tickin' tickin' tickin'... into the future."

God I hate that song... I even had to Google it to find out who it was by just to exorcise it from my soul...

I am glad that scientists and international bodies are on top of the changes in the rotation of our planet. I often worry if my time is arbitrary (as are most things... such as months). Fortunately, time is actually based upon the rotation of the Earth.

My skepticism of internationally regulated events was shaken momentarily... but I am back to my chronic cynicism.

Categories: time, science, skepticism

Robert DeNiro is not Funny...

Whenever I see a film with Robert DeNiro in it, I think of the agonizingly painful out-takes for Meet the Parents. I enjoyed the damned film, but the outtakes showed that DeNiro has no comic timing and will laugh at anything that is a fuck-up. It is not funny if a person says "Fucker" and means "Focker" after the eightieth goddamned time. There is a reason that he is suited for dramatic roles: he has no sense of irony to foul his acting like himself time after time.

This picture is the only way that the man can be funny... if he looks the damned fool.

Hey, when I am eighty she will be 18... don't knock me!

By the way, I just wasted an hour and forty-five minutes of my life watching Hide and Seek. Dakota Fanning continues her reign as the most talented thespian still in grade school, but DeNiro is just phoning it in... as he has for the past twenty years.

The screenwriter tried to have a "tricky" film device (that the bad guy is another aspect of the main character's personality... oooh, original!), but just served to infuriate me and damn myself for investing any of my hard-earned leisure-time in this film. I thought about five minutes into the movie that no-one would be so obvious as to use this hackneyed and unoriginal plot device again... but I was wrong.

Obviously you can rehash this story over and over again as long as it has a big enough name in it. Fools (such as myself) will rent it to see Dakota Fanning get traumatized (yet again).

I am sure DeNiro was like, "hey... this is brilliant, where did you ever come up with such a creative idea...? and the script... to die for!" Either that or he said, "okay... I will do anything for twenty-million dollars."

DeNiro in the oughts = crap.

Categories: DeNiro, badmovies, obviousplottwists, lame

Conspiracy nuts... or grand satire?

Is that Bigfoot?

This is what I love about the internet. Sites such as this: Waiting for Bigfoot Live Feeds, which are completely ambiguous to their intent.

Is this a joke, a lampoon, or are they hoping that Bigfoot will just, through miraculous happenstance, walk in front of their webcam.

In the end... if I knew it would be far less fun.

via boingboing.

Categories: bigfoot, conspiracies, webcam