Cameron's Thoughts

Everytime I hear more info on the PSP, I just want to have it more and more. It just sounds so good. And the looks, wow, it's a beautiful machine. I just got done reading some good info over at Gear Live.

The Top Ten Things You Need to Know About Sony’s PSP

Some things are just too funny. Seen this at MetaFilter.

Buy it now from Wal-Mart, save $3.40 off the list price : How Walmart Is Destroying America And The World: And What You Can Do About It

Just tried out this trick to speed up Firefox and it works great. It actually does work real well and I think is the same thing that makes Opera feel so quick. If you have a high-speed connection, you should try it out.

The trick can be found here:
http://forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_faster.php

Good news for Opera fans, Opera 8 will have a new license. From Haavard on the Opera forums:

Add to this that the upgrade from Opera 7 to Opera 8 is actually completely free, and I think you will see that this was not a move to squeeze more money out of our customers. In fact, we've just given all Opera 7 customers a free upgrade, and added to this, we've changed our license terms so that there is only one license for all desktop platforms, which means that you can install Opera on any number of computers in your own home, regardless of the (desktop) operating system used. Yes, that's right. You can install the registered version of Opera as many times as you like with just a single license.

This is a very smart move. At $39 a license, it seems pretty silly to pay for multiple copies for different machines around the house and for different OS's. Nothing technically prevented using the same key on another copy of the same OS, which is nice since I have gone through three computers since first buying Opera. But, now I can install it on other machines in my house, including my Linux machine. That is a pretty good deal. Too bad they specifically say desktop OS though, since it would really rock if my current license key could also work on my Series 60 smartphone.

Tommorrow morning, I am having my first ever surgical procedure performed on me. Yes, I am 23 and have never needed any type of surgury. I guess I should be happy that I have been so healthy. Actually, I am not in need if surgury still. This is just a want. I am having a vasectomy performed.  Not that I don't love my kids, I just can't be taking care of a whole load of them.  I want to be able to focus on giving them a good life, and since I have both a girl and a boy, what else could I want.  So, wish me good luck.  I will be online all weekend since I have been told to sit and do nothing.  So, I will be taking full advantage of my laptop and Tivo over the next few days.

Much like the Livesearch feature I am using on this website, Google has now setup this same feature. This only makes sense since the Livesearch was based on Google's Gmail address search. Not only that, Google has a better reason to have this feature, since search is it's main job. Presenting, Google Suggest.

This works like a dream.

I have been using the Cablespeed "Lite" service for Internet for a while now as my cable provider is basically a rip off. I'm paying about $45 a month for this and the lite service only offers 128k down and 64k up. It's nothing great, but somewhat better than dialup and is always on. I am switching to DSL soon, but I need a new phone jack installing in the office, and since I am no electrician, I will be hiring someone to do this. I am going to wait until after Christmas once the finances are more stable.
But, yesterday, or maybe the day before, all of a sudden, downloads seemed so much faster. I just downloaded some podcasts, such as the new 1src podcast, and that 5MB file just zipped down to my computer. So I decided to run some speed tests. MDM has a speed test on their site, so I figured that would provide me with the highest possible speed. I ran that a couple months ago and got a reading of 140k. Today I got 377k. Awesome. So, I then went to DSL Reports to get a more 'real life' reading since their test servers are located across the country in California. Before I got a reading of 122k down and 60k up from there. Today I got 354k down and 116k up.
Not sure what happened, I never got any word from MDM about increasing the speed, and their website doesn't mention anything. I actually even called them up and asked if they had any chance of increasing the speed anytime soon, and they said they did not.
Whatever is up, I am very happy. Hope this is not just a fluke and will stay this way.

In case you haven't looked at Hailey or Brett's photo albums recently, they both have some up-to-date pictures.

Hailey's Album

Brett's Album

I have really been slacking on posting recently. I have not really been motivated to post anything worthwhile. Nothing has really been going on in my life other than the same 'ol, same 'ol. Family is doing well.
But, today was my day off from work, and among other things, I have a couple of new website upgrades to mention. The first, I got setup a couple of days ago, but haven't really tested yet, so I can't say for sure if it works or not. That is the comment subscription service. When posting a comment on any post, you will now receive an email when anyone replies to that comment. This is a nice feature as normally there is no way to know if someone responds back to a comment unless the site is visited again. This does require that an actual email address is provided (email addresses are not displayed on this site and are not distributed in any way, only used so I am able to contact you back personally, and for the subscription to work.) This feature can also be turned off if you don't want to receive these emails by unchecking the "Subscribe to comments" box.
The next big feature is what I was working on today. Though there is not really much need for this, like many features on this site, I set it up to learn how it works and so I can use this in future projects. Now, every post is available in Adobe PDF format. If you are at the posts individual page (if you are not there, you can click the title of a post to go to it's individual page. Here you will find a PDF download link. Like I said, not to useful here, but a more professional site could really take advantage of this since I can easily add a post to this website, and without any coding, it is now posted in a number of formats including PDF. I can't think of an easier way to create PDF files. Plus, at Six Apart ProNet there is a tutorial on how to auto generate MSWord DOC files in the latest WordML format. So, it would be very easy to use Movable Type and instantly publish not only to a website, but also auto generate MSWord files and Adobe PDF files.
Anyhow, maybe I will write up a quick tutorial on how I did the PDF setup. It's fairly simple, only requires Movable Type and PHP.

The other day, I discovered a pretty cool open source program called DOSBox. This program allows those old DOS games to played flawlessly on Windows XP. So, I have been spending a lot of time playing an old favorite, SimEarth, and will probably bust of the original Civilization soon. This program does require a fairly powerful machine since it needs to emulate all the hardware. But, I have been playing on a 2.8 GHz P4 and everything has been working just like it did 15 years ago. With he exception of everything being really small.