31 July 2007
Categorised as Web-Related & tagged with firefox, lists.
I dislike messy environments, and yet my personal “environment” is almost always messy. It’s just a matter of hypocrisy. I complain about messy and dirty things, but I admit I’m fully surrounded by mess and dirt too. I know I have heaps of junk I can chuck away easily, but I just can’t. It’s fine if I didn’t have them to start off with, but since they’re already there it’s hard to let go of them.
To be more specific in this sense, I’ve been cluttering up my Firefox browser with loads and loads of extensions. I actually do regular pruning! Except while I prune I also visit Firefox Add-Ons at the same time, which completely defeats the purpose of regularly pruning such things.
These things cheer me up. But they crash my computer down. It’s a trade-off between my happiness or my computer’s running. And I’ve decided that I’m more important.
Essential tools
- Answers: one-click definitions for people whose vocabulary suck as much as I do.
- ColorZilla: a color-picker, my essential tool for designing.
- Firebug: edit, debug and monitor CSS, HTML, JavaScript of any web page.
- FireFTP: my FTP client because well, opening extra FTP program means extra crashing.
- StumbleUpon: actually need it to Stumble! websites.
- Tab Mix Plus: enhance tab-browsing utilities and session saver/manager.
- United States English Dictionary: I use British English and I can spell well, but typos are a part of my daily life.
- Web Developer: godly functions in a godly toolbar that everyone interested in web developing should have.
Useful for the lazy bum-bums
- Dummy Lipsum: generate “Lorem Ipsum” dummy text.
- FoxyTunes: control a media player from Firefox, saves the time to slowly load up my WMP.
- HTML Validator: instantly know if a page is valid or not.
- IE Tab: switch a page to IE in a click, easy and instantaneous.
- LiveClick: monitor my RSS subscriptions.
- Restarter: to restart Firefox in certain situations?
- Screen grab!: save a web page as an image, screenshots without Photoshop, yes!
For the sake of it
If I haven’t had what I would call a decent level of self-control, this list would be doubled the length. And this problem occurs over my computer as whole, with loads and loads of programs that are redundant but I can’t let go. I can’t resist having pretty themes and icons and five spyware and adware removers because I feel like it. It’s bad for my crap laptop, but too lovable to drop once they’ve already been there. Yeah, it’s a part of who I am. 
I really need to throw out my junk.
But at the end of the day, I know I can’t.
25 July 2007
Categorised as Literature, School & tagged with funny, uni.
I am absolutely hopeless. As a follow-up from the major trip I had before which gave me two serious bruises, I had another bad trip and now I have four huge bruises on my legs. It’s reasonably funny now from retrospective view. But it hurt like mad right after I fell and my right leg was wobbly-wobbly all day.
Anyhow, at the start of my Economics lecture today in school, we were given a feedback form to ask about what we think of the lecture and the lecturer. This lecturer is great. He made boring economics lectures fun and engaging with his sense of humour and most, if not all, students love his classes. But the funniest of today’s lecture was not something he said, but a particular feedback comment my friend’s friend had written:
Which parts about the teacher’s lecturing are good?
He reminds me of a very intellectual and well-informed Hobbit. I happen to like Hobbits. They are playful creatures. Mr G. J. is a playful Hobbit, but he seems like he may be a bit [far] away from the Shire. I think we should put him in a cage and send him back to the Shire after this Economics 111 semester. But other than being a Hobbit, he’s super awesome!
What suggestions do you have for improvement?
Bring Gandalf to class.
So it was a bit of fun for the first 15 minutes or so laughing over the feedback comment in economics. I “remembered” the comment word-by-word because I flipped out my cellphone camera and took a few shots, claiming to throw this into my blog. My friend said I have no life. Maybe I really don’t. If I was the lecturer I would hold on to this feedback sheet and match its handwriting to an exam paper I would receive a few more weeks down the track.
That gave us a good crack-up but um… “Racist” against hobbits? Personally, I think any book that manages to rouse major international attention is successful writing, whether it be actual great writing or not. J.R.R. Tolkien is a genius for being able to construct such a complete and persuasive fictional world. I think he also wrote 12 books just on the history of Middle Earth. My sister and I have discussed about the high possibility of him being an alien from another world which he based Middle Earth on.
Another top fiction? I’m thinking of Harry Potter. I heard that USA managed to sold 5000 of the newest Harry Potter book in the first minute they were officially released in bookstores. Apparently, that’s the best book-selling record so far in the US. From this point of view, it’s a successful book. Over-obsession may be a bit too over-the-top for my liking, but there’s no reason to hate it so much either just because there’s a large number of fans all over the world. My dad calls the book childish, but everywhere I walk on campus, someone would be holding the last Harry Potter book. I wonder what J. K. Rowling might be up to now. Counting cash or writing another magical series?
22 July 2007
Categorised as Personal, Rants & tagged with love, money.
At the beginning of the month, I started off with $200 cash on hand and around $300 in my bank cheque account. I had always been more of a saver than a spender but what with eating-out entirely too much this month and buying new books for the new semester, I went broke.
On Friday, I went to the school cafeteria and was swiping my bank card for a $5 breakfast and it came up with “DECLINED”. I knew those eight letters put together really just means insufficient money in the account but I did not want to even consider the possibility that I could have less than $5 in my account. This had never happened before. Reluctantly, I handed over $5 coins. The original $6.50 coins was all I had left of my $200 cash and that was meant for the bus ride home. Confused, I stomped over to the ATM machine on campus and checked my account balance. 26 cents. I had to borrow $10 from my friend for the bus home. How embarrassing.
Fortunately, I managed to knock $129 off dad for all the amount I spent on my new books. I wonder where all the rest went. Checking my statement, apart from books, it was just food. It feels heartbreaking to think that I swallowed and digested all that money, which meant it literally went down the (toilet) drain eventually.
I recently had that cliché debate with my friend on the topic of Money vs Love. Whoever still believes that love prevails completely over money needs to be stop being an impractical dreamer (i.e. my friend). In order for the so-called “true love” to win against money, the first condition that needs to be met is sufficient money. True, a woman in love could choose a poorer man over a rich man, but if the woman and the poorer man together could not even afford the basic living requirements for themselves, love necessarily becomes redundant.
So I asked my friend, if he does not have a job with sufficient income to feed his girl, what could he offer her in the end? And he replied, “my soul.” Right. Another stubborn dreamer hopelessly stuck to his romantic impracticalities. I have my romantic dreams, but I need to live too. What is love without the life to love? In the end, money makes the world go ’round. I need food, and I need my bus rides home. But more importantly, I need to cut down on my consumption until I start working again or become a professional beggar. I need to swear too. Shit.
