I’m making this a one stop shop for my previous Firefox posts.
First, here is a great article in Macworld.
Now here is a list of plugins that I use:
Firefoxy DOM Inspector Web Developer Greasemonkey ColorZilla foXpose Tab X SessionSaver
I’m also using the iFox theme.
I also applied these config changes, for tabbing.
I think there is a bright future for India. Yes, it has some issues, but with growth on their side, those will get addressed.
Anyways, here is the video/article. Great stuff.
If I was younger, I would consider going there.
Ok, a question came up at work? What is something innovative that I’ve seen under the radar that was significantly better than what is shipping out there today AND was shipping out in the real world.
The most recent example is NextSTEP. I cannot recall anything else that was a great technology that was under-represented in todays world. This was my quintessential example to hold up… and it is old and tired. I must move on.
Type-Free OO Languages - Pretty much mainstream now. Java and C++ are finally getting the hurt put on them that they deserve. If you want to try a language, you can. Just go download it and run it.
Prototype languages - Javascript. Need I say more?
Good Garbage collection - coming on line. Most languages have decent garbage collection now.
Continuations, CPS, Coros - all becoming mainstream and accepted as we speak.
I guess the only one that I can think of, is the Newton Soup. Still, even there, Mac OS X and Windows Vista all have the concept of shared data available for all applications. Still, none of these are OO DB’s that are as cool as the Newton Soup storage.
I’ve occasionnally seen a few things in the past, but none of these were real shipping products that some people used, and were amazing, and under the radar.
I think the reason that this is the case is simple. The Internet. You can now see anything you want on the Internet. “Back in the old days”, you had to wait for conference proceedings or a magazine article. These prevented people from having access.
Today, I can download the original Unix for a PDP-11 and run it under an emulator !
Anyways, I need to stop using NextSTEP as my example.
So, does anybody know anything that fits the bill?
So, last Thanksgiving, I fell asleep early. Surprise!
I woke up about 1:00 AM, and everyone was asleep. This is a perfect opportunity to get on my new mac mini computer, so I get on. While I’m on, I had the idea that I need some memory and that I should clean up some of my email. I notice a Fry’s ad in my email. Hmmm.
1 day only
Hmmm. I look at the deals. Hmmm! I do need another Linksys WRT54g, and it’s on sale! Hey, my wife needs a new printer, they have an HP Color Inkjet for $20 (no rebate!)! Hey, check out that firewire 160gig drive for $40 in an external metal case!! Wow.
Ok, when does Fry’s open. 5 AM. Uh.. ok, I’ll go!
I wait.
Its 4:50 AM as I’m sneaking into my room to grab some clothes and Aiden wakes up and asks where I’m going. I say I’m going to Fry’s. He says, “I want to go!” I don’t know why. He has never been there.
5:20 AM, we’re cruising down 101 to the Palo Alto Fry’s. We hear on the Radio that the one in So Cal is on record as being a ‘mad-house’.
5:30 AM. We get there. Wow! There is no parking in the entire parking lot! We cruise around a few times. It is also raining. We find a spot from a guy in a BMW who is out of there.
We’re in. First we go wait in line for the Firewire drive. They already brought a palet of the Hitachi drives out and people almost tackled the guy delivering them. He kept shouting above them with his 6′ 3″ voice, “there are MORE palets in the back, don’t worry!” The palet is emptied in under a minute of drives. These were the 80 gig drives that were essentially $0 after the 2 or 3 rebates.
The Firewire drive line I was in hands one to each customer and urges them to move on. Unfortunately, my box says USB 2.0, but I don’t question. I must move on.
I then go grab a printer for fear that they will be gone before I get one. I must get one for Char. Luckily, there is no line and I score a printer.
Aiden at this point is highly entertained by the whole thing.
Now it is time for the memory. This line is very slow. It takes a good 20 minutes. Aiden gets a little more bored. We get the order for the memory and I grab the Linksys router that is there as well.
I then head back over to the Firewire drive spot. Aha. The red box has the Firewire drives, so I grab one and drop my USB 2.0 drive.
What is next? We look around for an MP3 player that was on sale for Aiden. We can’t find it and then decide to get in line to get out of the place.
This is where it sucks. I wait in line for a good 30 - 40 minutes! Ouch. We snake from the back of the store by the air conditioners to the check-out lines. Aiden hangs in there like a champ, but I could see how that would stink.
We finally get to the check-out. The memory is the tricky part. We wait a good 15 minutes for the cashier to come back with the memory. They always suck at this. Tada. It’s the wrong kind. So, instead of buying it I leave it and get the hell out.
Several observations:
The place is basically wall to wall packed with Asian’s, with a particular strong showing of old Asian men. Everybody is polite and eager for a deal. The easy conclusion: I’m an old Asian guy, I must have been put up for adoption at birth.
Don’t go to Fry’s at 5:00 AM unless you are already up. Nobody walked out of the place with a deal who got there at 5:00 AM vs. 6:30 AM.
Have someone wait in line for you while you are grabbing stuff. This will dramatically cut down the checkout line wait.
I went later to get the proper memory. I didn’t wait at all for anything.
I love Fry’s
Charlie Chip is a 20 pin DIP
Update: forgot to mention. It’s a good thing I brought Aiden. It turns out he hid my keys and wallet and I would have never found them 
smart kid.
A few weeks back, I saw some memory available on craigslist for my Dell. the guy was selling 1 gig of DDR2 memory for like $45. I contacted him and he said the memory might have some trouble. Long story short, it did and the guy graciously took the memory back and refunded my money.
What was interesting was that it was in Los Altos. What was neat that when I got to the guys place, it was a small office building at night. I could see inside the offices of the building. You could tell that some of the offices were distinct companies. Each company was like 3 or 4 guys sharing a space meant for 2. Each was composed of various ethnic backgrounds. Each looked busy, happy, focused, and determined. In the cool night air, in a sleepy, ’small town feeling’ office building that has an animal hospital… some people were trying to build companies. As I walked into the building, one of the companies looked like your classic valley startup. Posters, books, and papers were everywhere on their desks. An oscilloscope and other EE gear sat on a bench with some prototypes. Other guys were coding away on their cheap computers.
Good stuff!
Ok, so I have Firefox 1.5, of course, and I saw an announcement about this plugin, called foxPose, today over here. Essentially this plugin gives you an expose like view of your tabs in the browser.
I installed it and restarted Firefox. Wow! It’s this kind of stuff that keeps me coming back to Firefox. If it was just the plain browser head to head versus IE or Safari, the others would win. Its the Firefox extension framework that put Mozilla way out in front.
The combination of extensions that I have now are awesome. Just about everthing I’ve needed has been done by somebody else already
