OS X Firefox 1.0PR

Mozilla’s latest version of Firefox lives up to the promotion it’s been getting. While mozilla’s marketing has been targeting Internet Explorer users, its preview release web browser compares favorably to Apple’s own Safari on Mac OS X, beating it in speed of loading pages. As for state-of-the-art features: Firefox blocks pop-ups, has tabs and usable bookmark management. One area in which it bests the Cupertino wizards’ app, oddly, is in the clean operation of its bookmark toolbar, which when it has menus works like a standard menu bar, showing each menu in turn as the mouse is moved after clicking on one menu. The only bad news is that animated graphics, found in so many embedded ads, suck up CPU cycles even when they’re not displayed, for example on an unselected tab page. Oh well, nothing is perfect.

It’s great to see the revival of an independent web browser that is good enough to win over users of the default browsers and thereby get the attention of website designers. The result will be improved compliance with standards, restoring and preserving the web’s platform neutrality.

posted @ 01:03 PM EDT

PMC Auction

The Pan-Mass Challenge auction is open now until the end of September. Nothing quite as cool as a Lance Armstrong autographed yellow jersey or a bike trip to the Tour de France, but still a chance to get a deal and contribute to the Jimmy Fund at the same time.

posted @ 11:16 PM EDT

Version 2.0 of BlueJ Was Released Yesterday

BlueJ is an integrated development environment designed for learning Object Oriented Programming with Java at the introductory level.

posted @ 01:54 AM EDT

Wallis-Pawtuckaway Metric Century

Here’s a 100 km New Hampshire seacoast loop between Wallis Sands State Beach and Pawtuckaway State Park including flat, rolling, and a little hilly terrain good for biking. The following is just an outline, not a cue sheet, starting at the intersection of NH 1A and Marsh Rd. in Rye.

• Marsh Rd.
• straight on Parsons Rd.
• left on Brackett Rd.
• right on Wallis Rd.
• straight on Washington Rd.
• straight on Breakfast Hill Rd. (Greenland)
• right on NH 151
• left on Portsmouth Ave.
• left on NH 33 (Stratham)
• right on Squampscott Rd.
• right on NH 108 (Newfields, Newmarket)
• left on Old Route 108
• right on Ash Swamp Rd.
• left on NH 152 (Lee, Nottingham)
• left on Church St.
• left on NH 156 (Raymond)
• left on NH 107 (Fremont, Brentwood)
• left on NH 111A (Exeter)
• right on NH 27
• left on NH 111 (North Hampton)
• left on NH 1A (Rye)

The towns are indicated by the road on which they are entered.

posted @ 07:52 PM EDT

PMC Auctions Lance Armstrong Yellow Jersey

The Pan-Mass Challenge has one of Lance Armstrong’s autographed 2004 yellow jerseys up for auction starting Monday.

posted @ 08:59 PM EDT

Go Internet

The Internet Go Server mainly provides a service for people to play games of Go remotely, but not insignificantly has some beautifully illustrated pages that introduce the service as well as the game itself. Nevertheless, the website is somewhat disorganized — perhaps due to different administrators for its various languages — and has some broken links that result in presumed error pages in Japanese. Nothing is perfect.

Users of Mac OS X are well advised to use Goban, which is a graphical IGS client as well as an interface to playing against a built-in version of GNU Go. Of course, there are other clients, including the platform independent gGo written in Java™.

posted @ 04:36 PM EDT

Wallis-Pawtuckaway Metric Century Cues

I’ve created a brief description and [perhaps overly] detailed cue sheet of the aforementioned 100k cycling loop through seacoast New Hampshire.

posted @ 03:07 PM EDT