Been away, going away…

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I’ve been away from this blog for some time – 2 weeks almost – which is mostly due to being busy at work and having very little free time at home. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft a bit more than usual lately, but now have a second level 70 character as a result.

So what’s happened over the past 2 weeks? Well, based on my recent Twitters, here’s what I’ve been up to:

  • Been testing out Firefox 3 RC1 and Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1. Firefox 3 is looking really good now, especially on Macs where the improved performance and native theme make it even more of a joy to use. Thunderbird is obviously an early alpha build but it too is much faster, as it inherits many of the optimisations that were undertaken for Firefox. Unfortunately, it’s not yet very stable, but it is at least usable.
  • Now that I have more than a smidgen of free space on my MacBook, I installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron in Parallels. Unfortunately, despite updating to the latest Parallels release, the Parallels Tools for Linux package doesn’t work with this release of Ubuntu so there’s no adaptive window sizes, cursor integration and clock synchronising. It’s a shame as apparently VMWare Fusion does support the latest Ubuntu release. I haven’t played around with Ubuntu much but it looks good, and including Firefox 3 is a bold but welcome move.
  • Speaking of Twitter, I would recommend the TwitterFox extension if you use Twitter and Firefox, as it’s quite a handy little extension which lets you read and interact with your Twitter friends. It doesn’t have masses of features, but it’s intuitive and it works with Firefox 3 already.
  • Google Reader’s ‘Trends’ feature has an unexpected use as a way of digging out feeds which haven’t updated in a long time. I found one that had gone dead in October 2005 that I was still subscribing to. I also found a few sites which had changed their feed URLs without redirects so I wasn’t receiving updates any more.

This, unfortunately, isn’t the return to regularly scheduled blogging, as on Saturday I’m going away for five nights in camping barn in the Lake District with some friends. It’s really in the back-end of nowhere – it doesn’t even have a connection to the electricity grid so all power comes from a hydro-electric generator, and it’s highly unlikely that there will be any mobile phone reception there either. So until I return on Thursday, you may not hear a peep from me, either on here or on Twitter.

Firefox, Performance, and You

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I’ve been blogging quite a bit about the beta versions of Firefox 3, which can be downloaded here, and how much better it is than Firefox 2. If anything, I’m as excited about this version as I was when version 1 came out, as it feels like the browser I have been using for 5 years has now grown up and many of the issues it has had in the past have been ironed out.

In this entry, I am going to go through the various changes that have been made in Firefox which improve the performance of the browser – the startup times, the time it takes to render web pages, and the general responsiveness of the program. Improving performance has been a major focus of the Firefox developers for this release, and the changes are notable.

Memory usage

Do a search for ‘firefox bloated‘ and you’ll get over 500 000 results, many of which complaining that Firefox is big and slow. Many put this down to the amount of memory it uses, which, in Firefox 2, appears to be more than its main competitors – Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari. (Note that, unless you’re using Windows Vista, it is difficult to measure memory usage of individual programs on Windows successfully)

For Firefox 3, reduces Firefox’s ‘memory footprint’ (the amount of memory it needs to run) was one of the main priorities. Improvements have been made both in reducing ‘memory leaks‘ – memory taken by Firefox that isn’t released back to the operating system when it is no longer needed – and memory fragmentation, which means that the memory it does have allocated is used more efficiently. The culmination of this is that, on Windows, Firefox 3 uses less memory while running than any other current web browser. It also released more memory back to the operating system after a period of inactivity, meaning that it’s no longer needed to close and restart the browser because it’s eaten half of your RAM.

How does this improve performance? If you have 16 GB of RAM, then, not much really. But if like most computers your machine has just enough RAM to perform, then it means more of Firefox can fit into RAM and less of it has to use ‘virtual memory’ – essentially a big file on your hard disk which acts as an overflow when all of your RAM is used up, but that is much slower than RAM. It will also allow more space for other programs in RAM, so you’ll be able to run more programs at the same time as your web browser.

Code optimisation

Several parts of Firefox have been re-written to fix bugs and simplify code, and in some cases, improve performance. There have been performance improvements in:

  • Page rendering – a marked performance increase that also means that Firefox 3 will pass the Acid2 test
  • Image drawing – a bug fix sorted out problems with image caching and a new JPEG decoding routine also means that images will render faster

Mac-specific improvements

Firefox 3 finally moves away from the really old QuickDraw API to the newer Cocoa API. As well as giving nicer widgets (scrollbars, buttons etc) on web pages, this also means the whole program should feel more snappy. This, combined with the new theme, means that Firefox 3 is the most Mac-friendly version to date.

Profile guided optimisation

Firefox is now, essentially, compiled twice – the first compile runs as usual, and then the compiler runs a series of tests which optimises the code by looking at what parts of the browser will be most used in a working environment. This has lead to performance improvements of at least 10%.

Because we’re now approaching the ‘release candidate’ stage, ahead of a final release probably some time in June, most of the performance changes have now been made, so if you want to see if it is an improvement for you, now is as good a time as any to try; any further changes will be to fix any major bugs and stability issues. All in all, the massive strides made in performance make Firefox a much bigger competitor in the web browser arena and may win back some of its earlier detractors.

Fixing a broken iPod

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I was going to make one of two posts today:

  1. How I fixed my broken iPod
  2. What iPod to buy in place of my broken iPod

Thankfully, this post is the first one.

I have an iPod Mini, bought in August 2004, which has hit a spot of bother. Well, okay, I dropped it, and afterwards it kept crashing or giving me the dreaded ‘unhappy iPod’ screen (which is like the Blue Screen of Death for iPods) when playing music, especially when skipping tracks. So here’s how I fixed it:

  1. Because my iPod was formatted in Windows (a conscious choice, see rant below), I plugged it into Hari’s computer and ran ScanDisk, and opted to do a full surface scan to fix any bad sectors.
  2. Next, I opened iTunes on the Windows PC and did a restore on the iPod, wiping the existing firmware and files and replacing it with the most recent firmware.
  3. Then, I reloaded my music.

And now it works fine. Quite what went wrong originally, I am unsure. However, by running ScanDisk it may have marked any damaged parts of the disk as bad. If I had more money, I would have bought a copy of SpinRite which is apparently very good at getting hard disks back into working order (or at least letting you know that your disk is fubar‘d).

I may still consider buying a new iPod eventually but I’m torn between which model to buy, so that blog post may still come. At least now it’s not so much of a priority as my current iPod now seems to work fine.

And now for my rant about iPod formatting. If you format your iPod on Windows, it will be formatted with the FAT32 file system, readable by Windows and OS X (and pretty much every other modern operating system). Format it on OS X, however, and it’ll be formatted with the HFS+ file system which only OS X can read. Since Apple now ships Boot Camp with Macs and has been promoting the ability to run Windows if needed, why not let Mac users change the file system used when formatting? If needed it can be some option hidden away in an obscure corner of iTunes where your average Joe User who has no idea what FAT32 or HFS+ are can safely ignore it. But it would be nice to have the option, rather than having to use a Windows computer.

Leaping to the Coast

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I’m making sure I post something here today, since I can only do it once every 4 years. No marriage proposals yet, though.

I’m off to spend a weekend at the seaside in the vicinity of Scarborough, which will be nice provided that the weather is better than the wind and rain we have in Bradford right now.

Mildly interesting things that I have learned about recently

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  1. There is a phobia of bridges, known as Gephyrophobia – and there’s a New York Times article about it, via Kottke.
  2. The platforms at St Pancras International Thameslink railway station are labelled ‘A’ and ‘B’, to avoid confusion with the main national and international platforms. This was also used at the recently-closed King’s Cross Thameslink station (which St. Pancras replaced) and at Waterloo East station.
  3. Though all Mac Pros now come with two quad-core Intel processors as standard, you can opt to have just the one processor, saving around £320 (to a total of £1442.99). You can also spend over £17 000 if you want every build option, unlimited server license and all the professional software packages bundled with it.
  4. In the past year, thieves have stolen at least two bridges in Russia for scrap metal.
  5. ‘Akbar’ is Arabic for ‘great’ or ‘greatest’. I’d be tempted to post a picture of Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars and say it is a trap, but I’ll refrain.
  6. Frederick Lorz, an American athlete, cheated in the marathon in the 1904 Summer Olympics by travelling by car for 11 miles. He was first across the finishing line but another athlete, Thomas J Hicks was declared the winner, despite him too cheating as he had run the race under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
  7. In China, ‘Dan’ is a girl’s name.
  8. VLC can use many Winamp skins – see this guide.
  9. ‘Blighty’, a slang word for ‘Great Britain’, derives from the Hindustani Urdu word ‘vilāyatī’, which variously means ‘foreign’ or ‘homeland’. It originates from the days of the British Empire when Britain controlled India.
  10. Inner Mongolia is a region in northern China, ‘Outer Mongolia’ roughly corresponds with the independent nation of Mongolia.

End of Year Quiz 2007

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It’s time once again to do the end of year quiz – you can also read answers from 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?

The one that sticks out in my mind is that I DJ’d in a nightclub for the first time this year. There’s other things, such as take my driving test (which happened twice and I failed both times, go me…) but DJ’ing was a happier memory.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Last year’s resolutions were:

  1. Eat more healthily. Though I had a bad start to the year in this regard, my food consumption has improved over the past six months, with Hari mostly to thank for that.
  2. Do more work. I did do some more work, could have probably done more, but I’ve finished the course anyway now so it doesn’t matter.
  3. Do more exercise. Managed to go walking more often this year so that’s something, but as per usual there’s room for improvement.
  4. Keep my room tidy. Erm, yeah… less said about this the better really. I blame all the decorating.

One of the resolutions I took off for 2007 was ‘don’t binge drink’ and you’ll be pleased to know I didn’t binge at all last year. That might sound boring but neither Hari nor my friends go out to get blathered anymore.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Nobody close to me, although a work colleague did.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully no, not this year.

5. What countries did you visit?

I managed almost a week in Wales in May, but other than that I’ve once again been rooted in England. Hopefully next year we’ll have the money for a weekend in Paris or somewhere.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

A permanent job and a car. I managed the ‘proper job’ bit that I wanted last year, albeit on a temporary basis, and Hari and I are now living together as just the two of us.

7. What date(s) from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Our great weekend in London in February.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Getting to our second anniversary of being together (Hari and I). After that, blogging for 5 years straight.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Failing my driving test. Twice.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No physical injuries, just one hell of an asthma attack. Thankfully I’m now on new medication that works like a dream.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I didn’t buy any new Apple products this year, other than Leopard, and though it’s nice it’s not the best thing. Technically we’re renting it, but having our own house has been the best thing we’ve ‘bought’ this year.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Again Hari for sticking with me, and my friends for being there. I know it’s basically the same as last year, but meh.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, annoyed me yet again, as did Robert Mugabe (surprised I haven’t mentioned him before actually…)

14. Where did most of your money go?

Mostly on driving lessons and rent. It’s a nice house but it’s not as cheap as where I was living last year, unfortunately.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Going to see Avenue Q in London.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?

“Through the Fire and the Flames” by Dragonforce (aka the really hard song from Guitar Hero). It’s one of my most-played songs of the past few months.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

  • happier or sadder? Almost certainly happier.
  • thinner or fatter? About the same.
  • richer or poorer? About the same, still.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Work on my dissertation…

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Arguing over nothing of any particular importance.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

At home with my parents. Will also be spending some time with Hari’s parents and my friends at New Year.

21. Who deleted question 21?

The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe

22. Did you fall in love in 2007?

I’m already in love with Hari and intend for it to stay that way.

23. How many one-night stands?

None.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?

Again, another good series of Doctor Who, but I’ve also enjoyed Top Gear this year too.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Not really. There’s a few people that I don’t really get on with but hate is too strong an emotion.

26. What was the best book you read?

The Guardian Book of April Fool’s Day. But other than that I didn’t read much, other than Wikipedia.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Dragonforce and Paramore are both bands that I want to hear a lot more of.

28. What did you want and get?

A better-paid, proper job.

29. What did you want and not get?

I’m still waiting for that pony…

30. What was your favourite film of this year?

The Simpsons Movie was very good, as was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Haven’t seen The Golden Compass yet.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 23 – “nobody likes you when you’re 23…” – and we sat out in the sunshine and had a barbecue.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Money.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?

Same as usual, but a little bit smarter for work.

34. What kept you sane?

Hari and my friends. They also kept me sufficiently insane too.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Had a bit of a thing for Sophia Myles, David Tennant’s ex, and Kate Winslet.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Probably the state of emergency in Pakistan. When the head of the organisation you work for is incarcerated purely for political reasons, it does stir you a bit.

37. Who did you miss?

Some of my friends who have moved away after finishing university.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Some of the new members of the university Hiking club are good, though I wouldn’t really count any of them as close friends unfortunately.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007.

Never take a driving test in the late afternoon.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“Through the Fire and the Flames we carry on”, I suppose. No matter what life has thrown at me I’ve carried on.

Hospital visit

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I had my first ever emergency admission and overnight stay in hospital on Monday night. Basically it was an asthma attack, but one that was so serious that my own medication couldn’t tame it, so Hari and I took a taxi to the A & E department at Bradford Royal Infirmary, where I was nebulised and stabilised.

I ended up spending the night, and most of the following day, at the hospital, and for a lot of the time I was on oxygen. But thankfully by yesterday afternoon I was good to go home and was discharged in the evening. I’m now feeling much, much better and my asthma symptoms have subsided dramatically, so I’m all well again.

As this was my first hospital visit, here’s the good and bad things about my visit:

Good:

  • A lot has been said about hygiene in NHS hospitals. All the rooms I was in looked very clean, and there were anti-bacterial handwash dispensers quite literally everywhere you looked. Hygiene is obviously taken seriously here.
  • The staff were, for the most, part very friendly and helpful – the A & E staff especially.
  • Food wasn’t bad – better than I expected at least.
  • All the beds had Patientline terminals, so a payment of £5 for the day got me my own personal phone number, about 20 Sky TV channels plus some radio channels, and internet access. It certainly helped to pass the time and let me update my friends via Facebook.
  • And this is the NHS so all of my treatment was free. When you’re hyperventilating and waiting to be seen, at least you only have to worry about getting better and not whether you can afford the treatment, or whether your insurance will cover your treatment. We’re very fortunate to have the NHS in this country and I don’t think everyone appreciates just how lucky we are to have it.

Bad

  • There was a shortage of beds, so when the decision was made to keep me in at about 1am, it wasn’t until 3am that I was on a ward. And then I got woken up by the ward doctor at 4:30am to go through my symptoms, and with all the beeping machinery and people being moved around I didn’t get an awful lot of sleep while I was there.
  • There were about 25 people on my ward, all in the same room, and it was a mixed ward. I’m not too worried about this but there was a patient who was being quite loud and abusive, which isn’t quite what I wanted. But hey, it’s free treatment – can’t have everything.
  • It took about 3 hours from the doctor saying I could be discharged to me actually being able to get my coat on and leave. Admittedly the staff were busy, but it would have been nicer to be back home at 5pm, not 8pm.

Still, on the whole I had a good first hospital experience, and I’d like to thank all the staff there who helped me get better. Especially the A & E staff who were very friendly and helpful. And thanks to Hari who was very supporting during my time of need.

Not quite there

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Last week, I said:

So, with a bit of luck, within the next couple of weeks I could have a full driving license and a proper, decently-paid full-time job on the cards. We’ll see.

Unfortunately, I failed my driving test (although I dispute my score) and came ‘a close second’ in the job interview. Which isn’t much when there’s only one job position available. So I’m still a learner driver with part-time casual work.

Missing .vxd files

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I mentioned back in June that Hari and I inherited a spare computer, which until now has been sat in our house serving no purpose. However, I now have a reason to use it – I joined a new guild in World of Warcraft and need to run Ventrilo 2.1 to be able to take part in raids, and I can’t for the life of me get it to work properly on my Mac using Crossover.

I mentioned that the computer lacked a network card so I bought one today, and fitted it. Alas this machine is not running a nice operating system like Windows 2000 or XP, but Windows 98SE which doesn’t ship with the relevant drivers. Worse, as this machine had never been used on a network before, it was missing all of the Windows network components. Worse still, I didn’t have the Windows 98 CD, and even worse than that, the relevant files were not saved somewhere on the hard disk. Big problem.

Of course I was busy installing the network card drivers by this point and so upon rebooting I received a series of errors to do with missing .vxd files, namely vnetsup.vxd, vredir.vxd and dfs.vxd, the latter of which gives me a mental image of a double discount sofa sales. Anyway, I found a forum post on some site which I can’t seem to find again which pointed to these technical support files, namely ‘Directory Services client for Windows 95/98’ which includes these files and will happily install them for you. You can then get rid of the program through Add/Remove Programs and it’ll be nice and leave the .vxd files there for you.

Alas, these were only some of the missing files needed for networking, so while they did remove the horrible errors I was getting they didn’t actually get me on the network, so I’ve had to resort to downloading some files from a shady torrent site in the hope that I can get things going.

Ideally I would have liked to have been able to wipe the hard drive and stick Linux on this machine, but unfortunately its primary role as a Ventrilo machine means that it’s Windows or nuthin.

Interesting 2 weeks ahead

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Well it’s October now (already…) and the first 2 weeks of it look to be quite interesting. On Wednesday this week I have my driving test – my second attempt, after narrowly failing my first attempt back in May – and then next Monday I have a job interview.

So, with a bit of luck, within the next couple of weeks I could have a full driving license and a proper, decently-paid full-time job on the cards. We’ll see.