Category Archives: Technogeeky

IRC – what a hoot

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My friend and Finkville citizen Suzanne lives in the Netherlands with her handsome Dutch husband, Harold. She wrote a comment on yesterday’s blog that really brought back some memories. All ye who are geeky and all about this here internet thing, read on. (Those who aren’t can read on as well, what the heck.)

I have met some wonderful friends through a protocol developed in the late 80s/early 90s called Internet Relay Chat – or IRC. Users downloaded mIRC and pIRCch software and used it exclusively to communicate real-time on a daily basis with people from all over the planet. It was instant messaging’s granddaddy. How can I explain it…it was a cult of sorts; a brotherhood, to wit:

  • We didn’t call them “chat rooms.” That was for silly AOL users who didn’t want to know the guts of anything. Our hangouts were called “channels.” Many of us were Usenet junkies, and we made the transition pretty easily.
  • We had channel operators (chanops or just “ops”) who controlled the mayhem. We (including the Thriller, Suzanne and myself) worked our way up through the ranks and were made channel operators by the IRC gods. At one point, Thriller and I were “499” level ops, with the highest designation being 500 (or channel owner). Think of a jail setting…we were trustees of the highest order. HA
  • These weren’t just cute little “chat rooms.” At the time, we operated the channel called #newbies, where everyone who was new to IRC came to get help and learn the ropes of the software and the environment. Hundreds and hundreds of people cycled through that place every day. There were also a lot of IRC veterans who just came to hang. Many relationships, involving lifelong friendship, romance, and even animosity, developed in there. (I’m thinking of some certain Canadians…)
  • There were lots of people from Europe, Asia, Canada and the US, all coming together in one place to talk, laugh, and generally be silly. It was great, and at the time, extremely novel. It wasn’t the norm back in 1993-94 like it is now.
  • Suzanne is a wonderful friend I made through IRC, and I’ll be forever grateful for that.

Suzanne: So I just blew the dust off my copy of mIRC, and connected to Undernet. Went into our old stomping grounds and found Mahatma & Clotho…whaddya know?? Cool that they’re still together, just like us.

:-)

Have a dandy day, everyone.

Fink, dinosaur

Stormy

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Yep, I’m all excited about the new phone. I must admit it’s a little frustrating — even for a self-proclaimed geek like myself who likes to think there isn’t a single piece of software tough enough to stump me — to struggle with a device like this. No matter, though. I spent some time on it yesterday, and I’m a lot farther along than I was. I will get it, though. Mark me.

So yeah, my BlackBerry Storm is pretty cool, I must say. However, as with any new phone, people rush to judge it without really playing with it long enough. I read a review in PC Magazine where the journalist didn’t even know the most basic functions that can be executed by simply reading the owner’s manual. Anyway. Here’s my Storm, all prettied up with a violin background:

storm3

Getting used to a phone with no keypad has been interesting. It’s just a different set of steps you have to go through.

I really like the text messaging and email setup, though. That’s probably my favorite feature. (And the web access doesn’t bite, either.) Turning the phone horizontally reveals a full text keyboard, which I really like.

Lots of upsides to this phone make it worth using for me; namely, the text-messaging and email. Amazing, both. There are a few annoying disadvantages, however.

  • The learning curve is sizable. I’ve heard from sales people that folks often buy these phones, only to return them in frustration a few days later. Be prepared to outlast the head-scratching. It’s been just under 48 hours for me, and I’m starting to see daylight.
  • If you don’t have tiny little hands, forget about easily typing on the keyboard.
  • I have yet to figure out how the two-letters-per-key keypad works. It types seemingly at random when I try to use it. Fortunately, I prefer the full keyboard, so no biggy.

So, not 100% intuitive, but that’s OK with me. I still love it. And this wasn’t exactly a Wired-worthy review of the Storm, but hey, it’s 5:54. Have a great Monday, my fiends. Today we start Year Two.

:-)

FO

Zoom zoom indeed

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Isn’t it just all about speed? At least in America, it is. We Americans have more speedy solutions than any other country in the world, it seems. Drive-up banking, express toll lanes, drive-through food joints, self-checkout at the grocery and Home Depot, microwave meals in a minute, movies on demand, zip, zoom, ka-chang….you’re outta there.

Then why, I wonder, are we so slow compared to other countries when it comes to broadband?

Couple nights ago, I took an upload/download speed test at speedtest.net. Here’s how I scored after repeated go-rounds (click the picture):

Now, the Thriller pays more per month to get “business grade” speed, so my zip-chang is a little faster than the average Joe’s. But wait till you see how it stacks up to that of other countries. Check out this chart from a study done by the Communications Workers of America union, which shows where we stand in comparison to other countries:

Look at Japan – Sheefus, Mary & Joseph. Sixty-three MBPS compared to my nine? What’s up with THAT? In fact, the report states that the US – the country that invented the Internet – is “15th behind other industrialized nations in the percentage of the population subscribing to broadband.” Friggin’ Luxembourg has better download speed than we do. That just ain’t right. According to the study, Americans pay more for sub-par internet speed than their neighbors across the sea, too.

Well, turns out the answers aren’t always in the numbers. As I read article after article about it, hidden truths seeped out. The one that struck me was the logistics of upgrading/building the broadband infrastructure in the US as compared to doing so in Japan. I’m talking about sheer size:

Japan = 145,840 square miles

USA = 3,790,000 square miles

Of course it’s going to be easier to set up tighter, faster servers in small places like Japan or South Korea. Unfortunately, despite the movement by the CWA for Congress to step up improvements, I think most American ISPs would just as soon blather on about how good 5 MBPS is, and squeeze us for the $60/month, hoping that we’ll continue to be dumb & happy about it.

But sixty-three MBPS? *scratching head* If that don’t beat all. (Actually, it does.)

Fink out.

Chilly start for Cuil

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With $33 million in investment capital behind its launch, I never expected the new search engine sensation, Cuil (pronounced “cool”) to show me this on my first use:

Nice. You’d think that a team of PhDs, led by former Google Golden Genius Anna Patterson, would remember to ask, “Hey, shouldn’t we probably buy enough servers to survive a humongous traffic spike, seein’ as how we’ve advertised ourselves as more powerful than Google?” Maybe not. And who am I to judge? Maybe it was bad karma having a roll-out on a Monday.

When I finally did get it to work, the results were interesting — somewhat refreshing and different:

The best part about it – no ads.

(Yet.)

PSA II

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Bag o’ Web Tricks

(This post is basically for Firefox users on a Windows OS, but the tricks are doable on your Mac as well. I just couldn’t tell you exactly how.)

Everyone browses the web differently. Some like several windows open at once, and some like tabbed browsing, where you have one window open and several smaller windows inside. Others don’t care. As much time as I spend online, my priority has always been ease of access. Fortunately, the Firefox browser allows users to customize to the nth degree — which I have done. I thought I’d highlight some tweaks and time-savers in case anyone’s interested. Below are a few of My Favorite Things about Firefox customization.

(And since several of my friends and family label themselves “web-challenged,” I’ve included pretty pictures, too.)

1. The Bookmarks Toolbar. This is by far my favorite tool, because I have a ton of sites that I visit every day, several times a day, and I absolutely hate the 4-step process of select Bookmarks – bring down the list – fly out the menu – find the site. I want one-click simplicity.

In case you can’t see the Bookmarks Toolbar, here’s how to activate it. Right-click in an empty space on the main navigation toolbar (like next to your “Back” button). Then select “Bookmarks Toolbar.”

Then go to your favorite site, grab the favicon (the little graphic next to the “http”) with your mouse button, and drag it to the empty toolbar until a little rectangle appears beneath your cursor:

Et voilá – one-click access to your favorite site. From then on, you can just drag sites to the Toolbar with impunity. Another tip: Once you have the bookmark on the Toolbar, right-click it, select Properties, and you can rename it to whatever you want. As you can see on this screenshot, I have done that with all of mine.

2. The Navigation Toolbar. You can customize this, too. I like a clean look, with only the buttons that I use most often. (I don’t use the nav buttons for Print, History, Cut, Copy, Paste, Bookmarks, etc.) Just right click on the navigation toolbar and select Customize:

On the window that pops up, start dragging the buttons you don’t want into the open space below (click the image):

And there you go. Those are my two biggies. Firefox also can be customized with Add-ons; I use a lot of those, too. You can get:

  • Themes – I use Blue Ice, because the buttons are big (which helps my horrendously poor eyesight) and it looks super-clean.
  • Extensions – There are a metric ton of them, designed to save you time and increase productivity. There are a bunch at Mozilla, as well as at userscripts.org, after installing the add-on called Greasemonkey. (Geeks will spend hours on that site.)

The best Add-ons, in my opinion and for my purposes, are:

  1. Adblock Plus. It does what the name says. It blocks those stupid Flash ads and other annoying popups. You can customize it to not run on certain sites (for instance, my Boston U. class website uses popups for content). As of today, over 21 million people have downloaded it. You need to get it.
  2. The Google Toolbar. When you research and write as much as I do, this is a godsend.
  3. Handy Xtra Stuff for the Xtra-geeky individual.
  4. PDF Download. I open a truckload of these files on a regular basis (ever been to JSTOR?). This extension lets me decide what I want to do with it before I open it. Very handy.
  5. Go Up. J’ever want to retrace your steps back to a home page when you’re six miles deep into its subdirectories? It usually involves highlighting part of the URL and pressing delete and all that madness. This extension puts a button right next to the location bar, which, when pressed, will take you, step by step, back to the top-level directory of a website. For instance, if you’re here: http://finkweb.org/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=462&message=4 — pressing the “Up” button takes you here: http://finkweb.org — one level at a time. Nice.

Ok, that’s all for today. But there’s a lot more where this came from…

Finkus outus.