AMR's Joint: blog? what blog?

restoring rss icon to firefox 4 location bar

2011-04-14T23:28:00.007-04:00

I recently upgraded to firefox 4, and while I'm loving the increased speed, it has required some customization, most of which I learned about from this lifehacker post. Today I was linked to a friend's blog, and sought to add it to my google reader feeds. lo and behold, when I looked to the location bar for the rss icon, I found it wasn't there. further investigation showed that the blog did indeed have feeds enabled, but it turns out that they've changed the behavior in the switch from FF 3.x to 4.

img credit: technophilia

Apparently, not enough people used it the behavior was removed and the built in solution is disabled by default.

Alexander Limi of the Firefox user experience team writes:

The RSS feed icon wasn't removed, it was moved into the bookmarks menu. Even among our very advanced users, this button has the lowest percentage use of all our buttons, and is not used anywhere near enough to justify being in the main UI.

It's annoying to have to do it, but fortunately there are ways around the matter:

One solution involves using the built in customization tools (right-click on tool bar, choose customize, drag icon to desired location and click done). While this works, it's unsatisfactory because unlike the old icon/behavior, it is always present and taking up space, even on sites without feeds.

A better solution that restores the 3.x functionality involves installing an extension -- RSS Icon. I'm using it myself currently and it works as expected. Note that per the dev,
This addon DOES NOT look for links to rss/atom files in the body of a document.

Good luck and happy browsing!

clean install of xp on dell mini 9 from usb drive

2011-03-29T01:46:00.005-04:00

A few months ago I started experiencing problems with my Dell Mini 9 such that it eventually wouldn't boot at all. I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I do have a bag of troubleshooting tricks up my sleeve. I tried a few things but then decided the best course of action would be to do a clean install. The mini is my night time and travel computer...anything of value I do when using it gets saved to the cloud so the only thing I had to lose was time. CDs with the ultraportable version of XP and drivers came shipped with the machine, and I had a usb CD/DVD drive so I figured I was good to go.

The install proceeded as expected until the GUI setup phase. I received an error message: "Please insert Windows XP disc because the file ASMS cant be found." Some research revealed that I was not the first to experience this problem; it seems that after the initial text install phase that the system loses the ability to communicate with the external drive, as the appropriate driver is not yet installed. Unfortunately the easiest suggested fix (changing the path manually) did not work, and there was no other convenient way to transfer the files.

One solution would have been to use a linux live cd to copy the files, but I decided that any fix involving the CD/DVD drive was probably not the best plan of action. Instead I chose to install from a flash drive, based on the instructions found here. In brief, this required that I create a bootable flash drive, copy the Windows XP install files to it and boot from that. There are alternative methods, but WinSetupFromUSB is much more user friendly software, with a convenient GUI.

Once Windows was installed, I needed to install the drivers, but once again my external CD drive let me down. I ended up downloading them on another computer and copying them to the mini via my trusty flash drive. The list of drivers I needed and recommended install order were found in this thread. I did not need all the files for my particular build, just the following, which I installed in this order:

I realize this is the first generation of Dell's line of minis but it seems like a pretty major oversight to require this much effort just to do a clean install. The average customer would have just become frustrated and sent it in for repair, needlessly increasing the workload of Dell Technicians. Hopefully the problem has been resolved in the newer generations of hardware.

offline google calendar for thunderbird users

2010-03-01T13:43:00.003-05:00

like many, i've been sucked into the google bubble and regularly use gmail, google calendar, google reader and blogger. unfortunately i do not have a smart phone so my big issue is what do i do when i have my computer, but no internet access? i do still have a paper calendar, but it's pretty time consuming to put in every single event, so i generally use it to record things when i'm away from a computer, and then add to my google calendar when i get back into the cloud.

to resolve this problem, i looked into ways of accessing my google calendar data while offline. the official fix (using google gears) was unsatisfactory, as it only provides read only access. ideally i would be able to add events while offline, to be sync'd automatically once back online.

a little digging came up with a solution which hopefully has been around long enough for me not to run into any problems. i already use thunderbird to manage my work and offline gmail email, so it did not involve too much extra effort. the details were reported in a comment by Mike on March 26, 2009 on this post at bfish.xaedalus.net. it seems to be working well so far, so we'll see how it goes!

You NO LONGER need to have the Provider addon installed in Thunderbird to have bidirectional Google calendar support. Just the Lightning addon. Google Calendar now supports CalDAV and it’s very easy to enable bidirectional updating of your Google Calendar from within Thunderbird. Follow these instructions, remembering that Sunbird is the actual name of the Thunderbird calender.

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99358#sunbird

Remember, you’ll want to make sure you have the Google calendar box checked in left hand column of the calendar view in Thunderbird to have the Google calendar show. Also, very important. When adding an event from Thunderbird, you must specify which calendar you want the event to show up on. By default, this is set to the “home” calender. Click the drop down to select your Google calendar. This must be done or the event will not sync back to Google Calendar. Also, I set my Lightning calendar refresh to 5 minutes, which allows for faster updating of the calendars.

Fix for IE8 corrupt search provider bug

2009-08-01T04:01:00.002-04:00

I experienced this bug from the time I first downloaded the IE8 beta in Nov 2008, but it wasn't a huge problem as I don't use IE for anything except the Windows Update site and the now defunct yahoo launchcast. I waited in vain as the production version failed to fix the bug, as did an uninstall/reinstall. What DID work for my XP Pro SP3 machine is the fix described here:

http://blog.kirb.us/2009/03/20/a-program-on-your-computer-has-corrupted-your-default-search-provider-setting-for-internet-explorer/

1.Make sure IE 8 is closed then navigate to registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

2.Add a new “Expandable String value” inside the above mentioned key with a value name of “AppData” and a value data of “%USERPROFILE%\Application Data”.

3.Reopen IE 8 and see if you still get the error message.

Note that this is also the fix suggested by Michael Agens in post #8 (who as you will see is NOT the MS employee in the thread).

I hope this helps someone!

and you call yourself a football team

2007-09-30T04:43:00.001-04:00

i was reading the paper the other day, after yet another abismal start to the season only to notice that Duke had put an ad in the paper for a kicker. i knew they were bad, but this is a new low. Scrapper Nation has documented this occasion, complete with a pic of the actual ad that was placed.

2007 AL EAST CHAMPS!

2007-09-29T23:09:00.001-04:00

For the first time since 1995, the Boston Red Sox are the division champs. Unfortunately the Yanks had an amazing second half to resurrect their season and have claimed the wild card, so they are still a threat. I guess no one told Papelbon it was okay to wear shorts!

ESPN - Mosley acknowledges using steroids from BALCO - Boxing

2007-09-29T23:05:00.001-04:00

ESPN - Mosley acknowledges using steroids from BALCO - Boxing

It's unconscionable that in this day and age professional athletes think they can get away with claiming that they are not at fault because "[they] didn't know what the hell it was". These guys train hard and pay good money to push the boundaries and get whatever edge they can. There's no way they let anyone give them anything or put anything on them without knowing exactly what it was....

if the brits can do it

2007-05-22T00:15:00.003-04:00

...why can't we?

img credit: Phil Noble/Press Association

Gay Britons Serve in Military With Little Fuss, as Predicted Discord Does Not Occur
By Sarah Lyall, for the New York Times

Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears — about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness — have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue.
full article

i've started perusing the nytimes more frequently to augment the horribly inadequate hourly cnn trawls. to be honest, although i am greatly concerned about our involvement in iraq, i've never really thought about more than the troops in combat. Don't Ask, Don't Tell became public policy when i was but a wee middle schooler (1993), more concerned with winning games and doing well in school than anything else.

With the extended tours of duty it is impossible for us to maintain troop levels for too much longer without putting everyone at (even more) risk. Why is it that in 2007 we're more concerned with what a soldier does in the bedroom on their own time than their ability to fight for our country?

...the guy's only doing it for some doll

2007-05-16T04:11:00.000-04:00

this weekend, we finally had our last run of performances for the spring hoof n' horn show @ duke -- guys & dolls. the graduation weekend shows were really different from the april ones, and not just because the pit was huge and full of new people. the orchestra director was great, but much less laid back than the original one, so it the atmosphere wasn't quite as chill. here are a few clips from our production. can you hear the clarinet? :-p

Bushel and A Peck

Adelaide's Lament - feat. Haley Swindal

Take Back Your Mink

Sue Me - feat. Haley Swindal and Matthew Colabrese

back again (or am i?)

2007-05-14T04:46:00.001-04:00

i don't think anyone bothers coming here anymore (can't say i blame you), but, for what it's worth, i'm back. i couldn't let an entire baseball season go by without some sort of comment, esp given that as of may 13, 2007 the bosox were 8 games up on the not-so-mighty yankees. if the sox are up by 12+ in june when clemens returns i don't see the yanks catching them, barring multiple major injuries.

Don't cry Bobby, you can try for a hit again tomorrow (photo: Ted S. Warren/AP)

p.s. as much as i like the originality of the look, realistically, i'm never gonna invest the time to upgrade it to new blogger standards so i guess i'll be going back to a not so original look if i decide to start posting regularly again. boo.

i demand a recount!

2007-01-21T00:59:00.000-05:00

can someone explain to me why Tony Romo's going to the 2007 Pro Bowl while deserving guys like Tom Brady sits at home? (yes, i do realize they play in different conferences so he's not directly taking brady's spot, but the point is that a player shouldn't be picked based on a few flashy games). and yes, i do realize i'm biased but it's my blog so there :-p

a-hacking we will go

2006-12-20T00:38:00.000-05:00

just switched to the new blogger and finding yourself lost trying to figure out how to apply some advanced features to your blog? check out the blogger beta hack feed. it's awesome, i promise :-). now, if only i could find some free time....

success

2006-12-19T15:48:00.000-05:00

i guess the ease with which i was able to migrate the church blog piqued my interest enough to take the plunge. so much for "waiting things out for awhile :-p". thankfully, it all went through without a hitch. i'm not looking forward to trying to upgrade this template, however. it just might be time for a complete redesign.

i still echo chuck, however, and leave you with a word of caution: take every precaution prior to migration to reduce the chance of disaster!

please excuse the dust

2006-12-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

EDITOR'S NOTE:

this blog has been (and remains) a work in progress. ~~the legibility of the links is the next order of business.~~

12/16 update: success, courtesy of echoecho.com. thanks!
not sure yet what's next. but i'm thinking migration may be in order soon....

beta blogger: not for everyone

2006-12-09T02:08:00.000-05:00

Wikipedia describes a beta as:

A beta version or beta release usually represents the first version of a computer program that implements all features in the initial software requirements specification. It is likely to be useful for internal demonstrations and previews to select customers, but unstable and not yet ready for release. Some developers refer to this stage as a preview, as a technical preview (TP) or as an early access. As the second major stage in the release lifecycle, following the alpha stage, it is named after the Greek letter beta, the second letter in the Greek alphabet. read more...

it applies well for the pending version of blogger (version 3.0, currently called blogger beta). unfortunately, they don't point users to wikipedia (or anywhere), when offering the choice of an upgrade. given the level of activity in the blogger help forum, and the types of problems being reported, combined with the part where account migration is irreversible, i'm content to wait things out for awhile until the dust settles.

i love google and use many google-branded products (gmail, calendar, reader, etc), but i think they've really slipped up with the way they're handling things in this case.

shame on you google!

so what's a blogger to do? hang tight and plan ahead!

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doing my best, to do my duty

2006-11-20T23:26:00.000-05:00

while i don't think google-bombing should be used haphazardly, in this case i think it's justified. here's my (albeit meager) contribution. Want to know what's going on? Check out Tom Hoffman's blog. I think he explains it very well.

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

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this is what's wrong with today's america

2006-11-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

i know i don't usually post this sort of stuff, but it's ridiculous that this still happens in 2006.

Firehouse [dog] chow served to firefighter costs city $2.7M
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The city of Los Angeles is paying $2.7 million to settle a lawsuit from a black firefighter who claims he suffered racial discrimination after co-workers served him spaghetti laced with dog food.
The Los Angeles City Council approved the award Wednesday, 11 to 1.
In his lawsuit, firefighter Tennie Pierce, 51, said after he took a bite of the meal two years ago, he noticed other firefighters laughing. He demanded to know what was in the food after a second bite but nobody answered.
Pierce said he suffered retaliation for reporting the incident and verbal slurs, insults and derogatory remarks, including taunting by firefighters "barking like dogs [and] asking him how dog food tasted," the lawsuit said.
David Wellman, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz hired by Pierce's attorney, said the association of a black man and dog food "resonates with the deep historical roots of slavery and the corresponding dehumanization."
"It's not just silly stuff. It's racially motivated," he said.
As part of the settlement, the two captains involved were given one month off without pay, and a firefighter was ordered off work for three days without pay.
"I truly hope that my case will make a difference for African-Americans in the Los Angeles Fire Department," Pierce said in a statement. -cnn.com story

one month without pay? how about getting fired? you can be sure that if the situation had been reversed that it wouldn't have taken a lawsuit for Mr. Pierce to be punished (and fired). money can't buy dignity.

pick your pony

2006-11-06T12:21:00.000-05:00

There are many who think otherwise, but it's right about now that I'm thinking that the I-AA Columbia Lions would have more than a simple fighting chance against the I-A Duke Blue Devils. Sure they both suck at football, but it will be a few months until the good hoops games get going so humor me, why don't you...

Blue Devils fall flat after fast start - Duke Chronicle

It may have been a different first verse, but it was the same old song for Duke Saturday.

The Blue Devils (0-9) extended the nation's longest losing streak to 17 with a 38-13 drubbing at the hands of Navy (6-3) in Wallace Wade Stadium.

Duke's defense gave up 435 yards on the ground to the second-best rushing offense in the nation. Navy quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada attempted just four passes in his second career start but rushed for 119 yards and a touchdown on only 14 carries. more

You know you're in trouble when the other team's QUARTERBACK puts up those kinds of numbers on the ground.

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feeling safe?

2006-09-14T05:59:00.000-04:00

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

I am all for rules, airline and otherwise, that protect our safety. But last Wednesday, after walking through a security line at LaGuardia, I saw the total fruitlessness of this you-can't-take-gels-or-liquids-on-airplanes rule, designed to protect us from those who would take explosive liquids or gels on planes. A fortyish man, traveling in business togs, put his briefcase, laptop and shoes on the security belt and walked through the X-ray machine. No beep. He collected his stuff, walked a few steps down the line, put his laptop back in his case, and then took a tube of toothpaste out of one pocket and a bottle of contact-lens solution out of another, then put both in his briefcase. That sort of defeats the purpose of the anti-liquid rule and pretty much makes a mockery of it all. --SI.com Monday Morning QB

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it's on cnn so it must be okay

2006-04-25T04:20:00.000-04:00

Judge: Employee Web surfing not unreasonable
NEW YORK (AP) -- Surfing the Web at work is equivalent to reading a newspaper or talking on the phone, an administrative law judge said in recommending the lightest possible punishment for a city worker accused of disregarding warnings to stay off the Internet. full story via cnn.com

i suggest you print this article to whip out the next time your boss catches you surfing on company time...

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mohawk

2006-04-22T23:32:00.000-04:00

Pap (ie 25 yr old Red Sox closer, Jonathan Papelbon) doesn't look too happy, does he. no matter, maybe he'll learn not to make stupid bets.

it's okay...as long as he keeps on "losing" he'll make us all happy campers!

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that's what friends are for

2006-04-19T03:00:00.000-04:00

Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Reed Johnson is a good friend to have.

Johnson paid for [old friend sergeant Jim] Diaz and his wife and son to fly to Toronto to take in the two-game series against the Yankees. Johnson put up Diaz and his family in a hotel and persuaded the team to issue Diaz everything from a Blue Jays hat down to a pair of baseball spikes.[more] via mlb.com

Not a bad way to spend your 15 day leave. Reed Johnson, you're all right.

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are some lives worth more than others?

2006-04-15T04:21:00.000-04:00

He Qingzhi's teenage daughter, Yuan, and her two friends lived on the same street near the Yangtze River, attended the same middle school and were crushed to death in the same traffic accident late last year.

After that, the symmetry ended: Under Chinese law, Yuan's life was worth less than the others. more, int'l herald tribune

if the death of your child is not bad enough, could you imagine having to fight for equal compensation in the midst of your grief? forgive me, but i thought this was the 21st century...

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retirement, please

2006-04-14T16:28:00.000-04:00

After an abismal rehab start in AAA-Pawtucket, David Wells finally made his first start of the season this past wednesday [recap]. I feel like deja vu, or something, because this is not much better than how he started out last year. Seems to me he's 42 now, and clearly not improving. This past offseason he asked for a trade to the Padres, to be closer to home...maybe it's time to think about retirement? then he could spend all the time he wants in SD.

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living above the rim

2006-04-14T03:10:00.000-04:00

Redick beats out Young, Bush for Sullivan Award
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Duke star J.J. Redick won the Sullivan Award on Wednesday night, becoming the first men's basketball player since Bill Walton in 1973 to be honored as the nation's top amateur athlete. Redick beat out Texas quarterback Vince Young, who led the Longhorns to a national title with a win in the Rose Bowl over Southern California and its two Sullivan Award finalists -- Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. [espn.com]

How often does a skinny white kid who's not even considered a top 5 draft prospect win out over Heisman trophy winners and olympic gold medalists? Maybe this will help ease the pain of never winning the big one. you go boy.

ed. note: yes, i am aware of the fact that young mr. redick only dunked twice in his entire career, but you've gotta love this pic, with sheldon williams ("the landlord)" looking on in the background).

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