I’ve decided to try and give up using Firefox for at least one week. In it’s place I plan on using Konqueror and in some cases where I’m using OSX, Safari or perhaps Camino. The real test for me though is to see if I can make Konqueror do everything I’m used to doing (and worry that I can’t live without) with Firefox.

I’ve been falling slowly out of infatuation with Firefox for a while now. Version 2.0 left me mildly underwhelmed and dealing with much of the same-old including an annoying memory leak. Since I use KDE as my desktop environment, I’ve always had Konqueror kicking around and have been very impressed with it’s abilities as a file manager. In my job, where I often have to migrate many files from server A to B, Konqueror’s view splitting features kick serious ass. As a web browser that I’ve had access to for almost two years, I’ve probably used it a handful of times, mainly because of my dependence on Firefox extensions.

This reliance on extensions bothers me. The fact that enough people use it now that exploits are starting to show up isn’t great news to me either. Granted, they’re generally addressed pretty fast, but whatever. Really cool people use fringe, obscure browsers like Konqueror or Lynx.

(more…)

I’m writing this post using Lynx, a command-line, text-only browser, just to see how it works out. I feel cool, thrilled, even daring. Lynx is pretty neat shit, however extremely limited. It manages to handle text, links and frames but can’t handle such things as CSS styling, images and all that newfangled fancy shit.

I first installed it as a fall-back if I should ever have a problem with my X server not starting, which is possible since I like to beta and even alpha test shit. This way, even though I didn’t have a GUI desktop environment to launch my usual browser of choice, I could still boot to just a command-line and hit the support forums for assistance using Lynx.

After a bit of tooling around in the options, I configured Vim to run as my default text editor within Lynx, so in an instance where I would need to enter text (like for this blog post), I can launch Vim and start typing away. Vim is a command-line text editor that I’m sorta-kinda-almost comfortable with. It’s one of those editors that at first glance looks ridiculously difficult to handle, but the more you use, the easier it becomes and if you have the balls, you learn the myriad assortment of commands and eventually become the ultimate text wrangling master. You also never get laid again, ever. A geek milestone that I’m not ashamed to aspire to.

Now that I’ve proved to myself that I can effectively post to my blog with a command-line browser, the likelihood that I’ll do so again is pretty much nil. Yeah, it’s cool, old-school shit, but I do prefer the glittery trappings of the WordPress GUI. Still, I think Lynx is a must-have install for situations like I mentioned above when all hell breaks loose and your GUI has shit the bed and died. It’s also a great barometer of how well put together your website is. Fire up Lynx and check out what your site looks like. Like I said before, CSS styling and graphics will not be displayed, but if you’ve laid things out properly, you’ll see a sane and coherent text-only version of your website. If shit’s all jumbled with stuff that’s supposed to be at the bottom running at the top, then perhaps some redesigning is in order.

On any given day, I might bounce around three different computers and use usually two to three operating systems. One thing that drives me crazy about this is managing my RSS feed subscriptions&8212;of which I have quite a few. I’ve tried various readers like Sage, Bloglines, Firefox’s live bookmarks and my personal favorite, KDE’s Akregator. It’s always the case that while one RSS feed has one necessary feature, it lacks another. So, I keep trying new aggregators. Enter Newshutch.

Right now, my biggest peeve is keeping my feeds synced with where I happen to be, so that news I’ve read on one computer with one aggregator won’t show as unread on another machine. I really hate it. As I mentioned above, I’ve played with Bloglines, which is web-based and was about to give it another try when I heard about Newshutch. In all honesty, it’s really no different from Bloglines in functionality except for some fancy Ajax action. I like the look of it and appreciate the 21st century feel Ajax brings. There’s no notifier apps/extensions to use, which is a downer and feeds update every thirty minutes. I uploaded my OPML file, importing my feed list and am willing to give it a try for a couple weeks.

Someday, someone will make the better aggregator. One that’s either web-based or synchronizable between computers, has a decent notification system where the user can tweak individual feed update schedules and delivers feeds attractively or at least lets you edit a CSS file to display them with. Someday.

Addendum
After using Newshutch for a couple hours, I’ve left it behind and am now back using Bloglines. Newshutch is too damn clunky and slow for any real usage, unfortunately.

This morning I felt like I wanted to try something new, so I installed Flock, the plugged-in, oh-so-social spin-off of the Firefox browser. Flock is basically the same as Firefox, but with integrated support for Flickr, Photobucket, del.icio.us, Shadows and most popular blogging software. Lotsa whiz-bang fancy shit going on.

After installing, I went through the setup and hooked Flock into my Flickr and del.icio.us accounts as well as this blog (typing that word makes me feel dirty… go figure). Currently, I’m typing this post using Flock’s built-in editor. I write the post, click publish and the post should go live, I guess, we’ll see.

(more…)

I’ve become so sick of Flash-based websites that I’ve installed a Firefox extension that blocks all Flash by default, giving me the chance to voluntarily decide to play it or not. I’d used this extension, Flashblock a few years ago, but removed it after only a few days. I guess back then my temper for shitty Flash menus, complete with streaming and screaming soundtracks was a bit softer. No more. I can’t deal with Flash-based sites. I won’t deal with them. They’re retarded.

For example, being a paid member of Crunch Gyms, occasionally, I need to look up some information concerning the particular gym I frequent in Brooklyn. In sane circumstances, I’d have no problem, but the idiots that designed Crunch’s site, aside from being semi-defective in non-mainstream browsers, use Flash to find and display specific gym information, turning what should be 5 seconds of searching into an annoying ordeal of dealing with an inefficient, bullshit site, filled with whiz-bang eye candy that I could give two shits about. It’s a waste of my time. I get better results just calling the gym on my phone.

I can admit that only four years ago, this very website was 90% flash-based. I’ve since learned the errors of my ways, along with most everyone else with half a brain. Why people still pay for second-rate Flash sites that actively annoy and retard the dissemination of whatever information they built the site for in the first place is beyond my ability to understand.

There’s a time and place for Flash when used properly. Youtube is a great example of it being integrated into a site in a sane and constructive way. Building a website using Flash menus is wrong. Delivering text content via Flash is wrong. Automatically streaming sound or video with no warning, especially for a non-music or video oriented site is brain-damaged. I hate it and now, I’m blocking it.

Web filters are retarded. The only times I ever butt against a company’s web filter seem to be when in search of legitimate, non-offensive information. I’m not into breaking the law. I’m not into downloading porn at work. Why penalize me when I try and look up some technical information because an application like SmartFilter or SonicWall considers some geek’s tutorial on getting an Open Source application up and running, “Free Software/Downloads—Forbidden”, even though no actual software or source code is stored on the site? Or blocking a website as pornography because the author of the page has the unfortunate last name of “Dyke”. SmartFilter kind of seems like one big oxymoron. Perhaps StupidFilter is more appropriate. I could give a rat’s ass whether it kept kids away from pornography, all I know is that it often keeps me from accessing harmless, legal and innoffensive information—usually technical in nature. Fuck that.

Sick of being hamstrung by obtuse internet filters I set up a proxy on my server using squid that I tunnel to via SSH. Once connected, I bypass all web filtering wherever I am and as a bonus, all information sent to and from my browser and my server is encrypted and therefore private to anyone snooping on the local network. Here’s how.

(more…)

In a fit of impulse geekitude, I’ve rented a dedicated server. It runs Ubuntu Linux, which is what I run at home and am currently writing this post with, so the ground is familiar, however I’ll have to get used to managing things entirely by command line. Something I should be doing regardless.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this website. Davebgimp.com is hosted on a shared server with BlueHost, who are seriously superb webhosts, IMHO. My account is paid in advance with them for another fifteen months, so probably I’ll just leave this website where it is.

For the near future, I’ll mainly be using this new-fangled server as a secure proxy host so I can get around redundant web filtering and also safely use open wifi spots without risking my passwords and data. I have a few other domains registered that I suppose I could move over to it, maybe even set up a mail server, I’m not sure. I’ve never really run a server before, so it’s all new shit to me.

While I’ve known that Gmail uses SSL to log in, someone recently pointed out to me that while my password is sent to Google fully encrypted, once logged in, all pages that I view are sent via http, meaning that all the emails I read and send can be scooped right out of the ether at any open hotspot.

One remedy I found is to manually change the address from
http://mail.google.com/mail/ to https://mail.google.com/mail/
and for that session, you should be using https and all the pages you view in Gmail will be encrypted. Very cool, but I have to remember to manually check this every time I log in. I smoked way too much weed as a teenager. Half the time I don’t even know what day of the week it is. No lie. How am I supposed to consistently remember this?

Looking further, I found this great extension for Firefox that takes care of the problem for me. CustomizeGoogle lets you set a whole mess of options for a variety of Google services. I won’t get into most of the details since they don’t apply, but check them out because a lot of them are pretty cool. One option that is relevant is that once installed, you can set an option for Gmail to always use https by default. Just check off that one option and from that point on, you have worry-free, encrypted Gmail sessions as a default. Pretty damn useful. CustomizeGoogle also lets you set an https default option for Google Calendar as well. Even sweeter.

Unfortunately, Safari, Konqueror and other browser users are out of luck (IE users, you deserve what you get.) with this extension, so unless there’s something else out there, they have to manually check the session every time or set a bookmark using https in the URL and be consistent about accessing Gmail through that bookmark.

##Update##
The domain name has transferred and everything seems to be up and running correctly. Please let me know if you encounter errors.
#########

Please bear with me over the next couple of days as I once again change webhosts. I’m setting the new site up today and the domain transfer should be finished in 48 hours or less. It’s likely that the whole move will be unnoticeable.

My current host, hostinglite.com, is completely unreliable and it’s one of those things where at least once a week, something on their end fucks up. They’re cheap as hell, so I guess I’m getting what I paid for, but I need a site that works and is not consistently down because of SQL problems and nameserver issues, so if I have to pay more, so be it.

This time I am taking the easy route and selecting the host at the top of the recommended list on WordPress.org. If I pay a year up front, it’s only a dollar more than what I pay now for my lame-ass service. BlueHost.com, let’s hope they pull through.

If you’re a Firefox junky like me, you probably take the built in pop-up blocker for granted. It’s a dandy little feature that helps make browsing bearable. However, you may have noticed that over the past few months, the blocker seems to be letting stuff through. This is due to scumbag pop-up spammers taking a new tactic by using Flash to trigger the new windows. The honeymoon is looking to be at an end.

But, before you hang yourself from the shower curtain rod, there’s a way around this issue. Pour a stiff drink, sit down, tear up the suicide notes (you really aren’t sorry for all the trouble you’ve caused anyway, c’mon) and prepare to do some fixing!

How to stop pop-ups from Flash in Firefox

1. Open a window in Firefox (…duh) and type about:config in the address bar.
2. Right-click (CTRL + click for Mac users) on the page and select New and then Integer.
3. Name it privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins
   
4. Set the value to 2.

That’s it motherfucker! You’re a man now. Have a cigar or something. Buck the fuck up, you did it yourself. Stop slouching. It’s okay to smile, but ain’t a damn thing funny…yadda, yadda, yadda.

To take it further, you can adjust the value of the integer (we’d set it at 2) to customize how strong the pop-up spanking should be:

• 0: Allow all popups from plugins.
• 1: Allow popups, but limit them to dom.popup_maximum.
• 2: Block popups from plugins.
• 3: Block popups from plugins, even on whitelisted sites.

Just thought I’d spread the word. Thanks Pete Bevin for figuring it out and thanks StumbleUpon for bringing it to my attention.