AutoPager is great

A lot of content on the web is split into numbered pages. AutoPager is a Firefox extension which concatenates pages, so instead of clicking "next page" links I can simply scroll down. This is great, and it makes me realize how obsolete pages are on the web.

In the past, I've used CustomizeGoogle to "stream search result pages". That was pretty good, but it sometimes got stuck in a loop when I was logged in and it only supports this feature for Google. AutoPager supports it on many web sites, and I have not had any problems with it.

A few suggestions: The simple modal prompt is annoying, so turn that off. A green rectangle in the bottom right corner of the screen is much nicer than a "yes/no" popup. I generally set AutoPager to only autoload one page. Page loading is so fast, that by the time I'm done with that page, the next page will be loaded and so on.

Yaari is like a virus

I got an invite for Yaari, a social networking site which is being marketed to Indian youth. A google.ca search for Yaari has a very interesting blog post as its second result. Apparently, the registration procedure requires a Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail address, and you have to give them your password so they can send invites to everybody in your address book! Then those invites are sent as if they are coming from the address you gave. If you continue reading that post, you'll see there's Yaari has more downsides. So, I'll be telling Gmail that Yaari invites are spam.

The Vista shutdown screen (ie. Why is Microsoft insane?)

A friend who installed the Windows 7 beta was complaining about the shutdown screen. It tells you that an application is preventing shutdown, but it prevents you from interacting with the application to do something about it. Instead, you can either kill the application or cancel the shutdown, interact with the application, and then shutdown again. What idiot added this feature?

Vista does the same thing. Fortunately, I'm not too familiar with it because due to standby to RAM and hibernate I rarely shutdown or restart.

The magic of psychill/psybient and psytrance

Some parts of psytrance and psychill/psybient tracks have patterns which seem to musically express fundamental patterns in reality. The music makes me imagine vague generic and/or stereotypical patterns of events in reality. It's practically never something specific. It feels meaningful yet meaningless.

When I listen to that, I start seeing the world more like music or dancing. I start thinking less about the meanings of what I observe, and I start simply appreciating things more.

A good example is an experience I had at a mall while listening to Sirius Sounds by Children of the Bong. I came into the Santa's palace area, where there were many chains of Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. Ordinarily I would see those as cables with small light bulbs on them at regular intervals and with plugs at the ends, and I might think about their context. Then I just saw a wonderful arrangement of countless points of light. It felt truly magical.

I guess classical music can probably do the same thing. I should probably try to get into it more. However, I find psychill and psytrance holds my attention better and is more fun.

Associating .vbs files with Notepad++ breaks VBScript

I associated .vbs files with Notepad++ 5.1, thinking that will make editing them more convenient and prevent accidentally running some nasty script. Actually, it totally disabled VBScript. When I tried to install a new driver for my network card, I was told "There is no script engine for file extension VBS". Re-registering vbscript.dll and other DLLs didn't help. Running Notepad++ as administrator and removing the file association fixed the problem.

Apple is evil

It's well known that Apple uses DRM, and DRM is bad. However, many other companies also use DRM, so this doesn't make them seem exceptionally evil. What makes Apple evil is that they go far beyond just trying to protect copyrighted works. What seems worst to me is that they're preventing 3rd party software from putting content on iPods and requiring an authentication chip in iPod docks. They've also added protection to newer iPods which has so far prevented Rockbox and iPodLinux from supporting them. The firmware is encrypted with AES and digitally signed, like on the iPhone. Apple even wants it to be illegal to find a way around that and run your own software on their devices. (Post updated in February because I learnt more terrible things about Apple.)

Finding properly ripe peaches

Sometimes, peaches sold at supermarkets seem totally ripe from the outside but are not ripe inside. For example, they may be mostly red outside but green inside. It's possible to check for this by looking into the indentation where the stem is. Unripe peaches tend to have some green there and ripe peaches don't. I suppose some chemical ripening agent (ethylene?) is used to ripen the skin, and that agent doesn't make it deeper into the fruit or into the stem indentation.

Archos V2 Jukebox Recorder input current measurement

I was just investigating the "external voltage" measurement on my Archos V2 Jukebox Recorder. I already knew it was actually current, and I was wondering if it is could be displayed at the charging screen. When charging via the charger input, it is an accurate measure of input current; just divide by 10 and you have the current in amps. When charging via USB, it still measures current, but the scale factor is different, with 7 V equalling 0.5 A.