riding off

Be back on Friday. Hopefully with both legs.

Expenditure:
    •    Ferry + bicycle carriage: $48.20 + $20
    •    Cateye Cycling Computer: $35
    •    Insurance: $13
    •    Accommodation + Misc.: $105
    •    Cabbing back: $24
    •    DFS: $69

the switch

I used to prefer Maxthon to Firefox. However, Maxthon has failed to develop sufficiently quickly to keep up with evolving Internet standards, forcing me to switch to Firefox now.

Here's what I did to make Firefox work (almost) as well as Maxthon in terms of functionality and ease of use.

     Read the full post »1. Maximise screen real estate


Use a minimal number of toolbars and small icons, and remove as many buttons. Knowledge of keyboard shortcuts is essential to reduce reliance on toolbar buttons and menu options (here are some useful shortcuts).

Further, Smart Bookmarks Bar saves more space by hiding bookmark names in the bookmarks toolbar, showing only the icons; FaviconizeTab reduces the width of a tab to the size of the favicon; Menu Editor removes unnecessary options from the menu bar and context menus (see also Menu Mod).

Optional: remove the search bar.

2. Bookmarks & url aliases

Set keywords for frequently-accessed bookmarks (in bookmark properties) so that entering the aliases in the address bar will load the websites desired (e.g. I type "cal" for Google Calendar). keywordManager is a handy tool for managing your bookmark keywords.

Also, check out deskCut, which allows saving of bookmarks straight to the desktop. A very convenient tool for research.

PlainOldFavourites allows Firefox to use IE favourites, but those will not have the keyword function. A major irritation is that all other tabs will be closed before the selected IE favourite is opened.

Optional: Favicon Picker 2 allows changing of bookmark favicons.

3. Customise search functions

Option 1: Use the search bar for searching. Use Ctrl+K to access the search bar; Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down to select the search engine; Alt+Enter to open the search results in a new tab. Add custom search engines under the built-in function or from Mycroft.

Option 2: Use the address bar instead for searching. Click here for instructions on how to create smart keywords.

4. Tab tweaking & navigation

Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox's tab browsing capabilities; SwiftTabs allow assigning of shortcuts for switching and closing tabs; Super DragAndGo allows dragging of a link to open the link in a new tab; PermaTabs prevents tabs from being closed; SmoothWheel allows smooth scrolling with the mouse wheel.

5. Use mouse gestures with Mouse Gestures.

6. Block ads with Adblock Plus.

7. New: Increase address bar functionality with Locationbar.

8. New: load status in address bar with Fission (use with this image.)

9. New: clean up pages before printing with Aardvark (see here.)

10. New: Backup everything with FEBE, or simply by copying your %AppData%\Mozilla folder

11. Lastly, optimise Firefox by reducing RAM usage and response time (see tips #12 to #14 here).

This post is meant mainly for personal reference and will be updated over time.

a goatie problem

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats.

You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat.

He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?"

Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

Think about it, and I wanna know your answer and reasoning. I'd like to see who gets this right heh.

expanding your mind

A little something I would like to share: a NYT article on how making continuous but small improvements by practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen to stretch, but not stress out, yourself keeps you mentally sharp. Do read it - it's rather enlightening.

After reading it, I have been lazing around much less and committing my time to more useful endeavours. While there is the occasional video watching, (Aliens in America really rocks), I am generally more gainfully occupied than before my exams ended.

Not that I have much of a choice with the pile of work I have heaped upon myself, but at least I don't feel like I have nothing to do during the holiday break. And it's rather enjoyable, for now.

I hope you will be making little improvements to yourselves too.

traumatise your kids

Have you ever seen a kid on a leash? Do you ever think of other ways to keep your kid in line? Well, here's help, in the form of a $10 book which you can order here. It is more than mildly disturbing, I say.

emasculation

iron man getting dressed

Kickass!

Catch the rest of the trailers here.

cool toy: neocube alpha

"Composed of 216 individual high energy rare-earth magnets, the NeoCube Alpha is capable of a nearly infinite number of possible solutions making the NeoCube Alpha perfect for gaming, expression, stress relief, boredom busting, dual hemispherical brain stimulation, and hours of fun."

     Link: Product Page

of gin, tv and wikipedia

Here's a thought: do you feel that 24 hours a day is insufficient? Well, a major time-waster of the modern age is the television set. If you can get yourself away from all that serial-watching (oops, double-entendre unintended), you will have so many more hours to spare on other tasks.

Watch the video above of author Clay Shirky in great talk at a recent Web 2.0 conference, on how people find time to do stuff like editing Wikis. He makes a case that people are just learning how to deal with the "cognitive surplus" of free time modern life affords us. We're waking up from the "collective bender" of mindlessly watching sitcoms and instead, we're choosing instead to spend our free time volunteering, interacting, and Web 2.0'ing online.