Besides that one delicate procedure, it was smooth sailing the whole way. Check out the pictures below or check them out in our picasa web album.
Almost a Compliment
10 years ago
My blog is indexed by Google, so links I put on my site make other sites more likely to be included by Google. Anybody who wants to join me is more than welcome.
And if you want an insurance quote, there are forms you can fill out on the site. Unfortunately he can only quote people in NC, but he can usually beat the larger national companies.
Before I spill an enormous trade secret here, I want to give a midget lesson, because such things are fascinating to me. Hopefully, your next question would be 'How do I decipher a URL, and what meaning does it have for me?'
If that indeed is your next question, then you are in luck.
The '?' mark in a URL signifies that information is being passed in the URL itself. For example, imagine you have three kids named Bill, John, and Sam. You want to tell your neighbor publicly how old your three kids are. You would say that Bill is 3, John is 6, and Sam is 7. If you wanted to tell your neighbor all this information in a URL, you would do it like this.
http://www.example.com/? bill=3 & john=6 & sam=7
(spaces have been included to make the URL easier to read)
The question mark means information is being sent. Bill, John, and Sam are variables (easy to remember names to use and access the data). The data in this case are the ages of the three kids. The variables (the kids names) make this information easier to access. The '&' sign means more information is being passed strings everything together.
Here comes the fun part. I was wondering if it was possible to sign into Gmail without activating chat. I didn't want to have to disable the chat setting everytime I signed in, etc.
Anyway, I wondered if Gmail chat could be manipulated through URL variables. So I typed this into the URL bar.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?chat=0
The variable here is 'chat' and the data is the number 0. If you are still with me, then you may be wondering why I used a 0 there. In coding, 0 is equivalent with 'false' and 'false' is equivalent with disabling features, etc. So by guessing 'chat' was a valid variable and setting it to 'false' (0), you can sign into gmail without enabling chat. If you use the regular URL (http://mail.google.com) then chat will be enabled like always. Cool huh?
So try it right now, click on the link below and watch as your Gmail loads with no chat box at all. Amazing!
Its been a long journey, but we've had some good times along the way. (Click on the image for a full-size)
By the way, if you haven't checked out Google's new browser, you should give it a spin. Download Google Chrome
So make my stats look good and visit www.ethanadam.com.
Feedback is always appreciated!
Today's topic is more of an addendum to last week's post. So I've been designing (actually programming) websites recently, trying to turn this into a career, or at the very least, a profitable summer job.
Ethan, my brother, had been helping me with the designing some of the web graphics. His work is quite groundbreaking. Sometimes its hard to even know how to properly implement some of the stuff its so cool.
Anyway, one unfortunate job of being a web programmer is making sure your site works with every browser known to man. Well, here is a quick little list of the browsers and browser versions one should check to make sure your website is fine in all of them.
Internet Explorer (IE for short)
Version 7.0
Version 6.0
Version 5.5
Version 5.0 (Optional, sites are beginning to discontinue support for IE 5.0)
FireFox
Version 3.0
Version 2.0
Version 1.5 (Again, this could be optional)
Opera
Latest Version
Safari
Latest Version
Flock
Latest version (Unnecessary, because Flock is essentially firefox under the hood)
You get the picture. Counting all the different versions of browsers, I currently have 9 different browsers installed on my computer. And I sure do love checking every page of a website 9 different times making sure everything looks the same.
Anyway, I would encourage everyone to try out some of the new browsers. My personal favorites are Flock and Opera.
Flock is a social web browser made primarily for viewing sites like facebook and blogger.com. And opera is awesome purely because of one feature. When you open a new tab, it opens a page with 9 thumbnail images of sites you have set which you can visit very easily and rapidly.
Lastly, with all the energy I have in me, if you are viewing this webpage in anything but the most current version of your browser (go to "Help -> about" to view your browser version), use the links above to download the most up to date browser of your choosing.
And if you happen to be using IE 6 or earlier, PLEASE DOWNLOAD IE 7 or FireFox NOW! As a web developer, I have learned from personal experience that even if a site looks perfect and crisp in IE 7, FireFox, Safari, and Opera, it will look like a happy meal (toy and all) stuffed into a blender and left on high for 30 minutes in IE 6.
I wish I were joking. And the next time you see a message telling to update your browser, do not click ignore. Those thirty seconds for a quick install will give me more piece of mind than you could know.
It is under construction, so some links may lead to placeholder pages, but for the most part, you can get an idea of the website, its design ideas, and the flow.
Anyway, any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
All you use are the left and right arrow keys to steer through a 3-d maze of sorts.
Anyway, if you can beat the third level, let me know, thats as far as I've gotten.
http://js.pp.sohu.com/ppp/blog/widgets_0914/game/3dcube.swf
Much worse. Click the link for the full story. This guy is 32, owns all 247 North American Xbox 360 games, plus 3 Xbox 360 consoles (the "Pro" "Elite" and "Halo 3" editions) and he has a wife and 8 year old daughter (and a full time job).
The Past
Cars manufactured before the 1970s were purely mechanical animals. The combination of advanced manufacturing processes and a deeper understanding of simple machines gave way to cars in the steam age. The idea was refined and redeveloped, eventually leading to the model-T: the first affordable and mass produced car ever. Technology changed and cars switched from steam to internal combustion. Manufacturing precision and speed increased with time, allowing for higher quality cars to be mass produced.
Coming to the 1970s, computers were placed in cars. At first, these were simple computers that monitored simple things, like oxygen to gas ratio and temperature. Even these simple computers helped engines run more efficiently.
The Present
Today, computers are an integral and inseparable part of any car. Cars now perform diagnostics and monitor most---if not all---working components. From air pressure in the tires to rain-sensing wind shield wipers, cars today do it all. GPS navigation systems are becoming increasingly common standard components in cars. In fact, desktop computers are even built into some high end models with internet capability, just like a regular computer at home. So with computers becoming increasingly common in todays cars, some might ask, what's next?The Future
So here is my idea for where cars are headed next. Instead of making separate displays (GPS screens, etc), make the windshield itself the display. Instead of having to look away from the road to see where your going on a small 3"x3" screen with a map on it, the map would be overlaid on your windshield.Manipulation of the screen would be handled by motion sensing gloves. If there was a high amount of glare on your hood, you could draw (using your gloves) to block the glare with a small box drawn on the windshield/computer display.
When driving at night, you could open up a night-vision box so you could see both via normal headlights and with night vision right beside it on the windshield.
Plus, some amount of normal computerness would be available, like opening a youtube window to entertain your guests, or checking weather reports. Traffic reports would be built into the GPS system.
Alerts (like your air pressure is low in the right front tire), would pop up directly on your windshield. Alerts telling you its time for an oil change would also display on the screen along with options to schedule an oil change, a map box showing you nearby locations for oil changes, and the functionality to call ahead and see if one is busy or not.
Lastly, the all-to-familiar "Distance to empty" feature would be much cooler. Instead of showing you a rough estimate of how many miles you've got left to drive, on the GPS screen, you could overlay a Distance To Empty map, showing the farthest gas station you can reach along your current route. Now, if you're running on empty and on a long trip, you can see exactly how far you can push it before running out of gas.
So if I could make a car, this would be it. You've gotta admit, it'd be hard to top!
So for this blog post after the long, cold, winter, I wanted to do something kinda funny. Anyway, I remember hearing some hype about Windows Vista and its revolutionary speech recognition. Having had other things to occupy my mind, testing of this particular feature escaped me. A few weeks ago though, I broke down and gave the speech recognition a whirl. At first things were a little rocky, so I tinkered with some settings in an attempt to optimize this tool to my speaking style. I even spent time training the darn thing! By now, I’m sure you’re curious as to what my final opinion is on Vista’s speech recognition. Well, I won’t spoil anything for you. Below is what Vista thought I said when I dictated this blog post to it in MS Word. Below that is a link to the sound recording of me dictating. Enjoy!
Color Paper
About
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My name is Adam. I have been blogging sporadically since 2005 and have always enjoyed the connectedness of it. I'm preparing to serve a full time, 2 year mission for my Church. I work at a Real Estate company as a catch-all IT guy. I love watching movies, I don't read a ton of books but when I start one I can't put it down until I finish. More to come!
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