geekery updates

Y’know, at times it’s really hard keeping up with all this social stuff on the internet. This is because of the separated nature of the way this crap works. However, after some trial and error, I think I finally found a way that works for me.

Posting to Facebook and Twitter

For this I’m using AIM. I went all ICQ-happy for a while, and I still use it, but the AIM client is more clean and posts status updates to Facebook and Twitter easily. I’m happy with the way it works, save for one thing – it doesn’t notify you (or at least not well enough) when you get an @reply in Twitter.

Getting notified of Twitter @replies

I’m using echofon (formerly TwitterFox) for this. The way it works is great. It’s a tiny little icon at bottom right of the Firefox browser. If you have an @reply, a number shows next to the icon. For two @replies, it shows a 2. Simple and easy. And I can reply right from within the browser which is even better.

The best part is that I’ve finally been able to dump twhirl. That client is old, hasn’t been updated in forever and isn’t worth using, so I was happy to switch to echofon.

Meebo Bar

The bar thing on the bottom of my site is Meebo Bar. I don’t know if I’ll be keeping it or not. I dig it because it has a WordPress plugin, so there’s no theme modding required. It also supports custom menus and you can even add in your own custom icons to it as well. I like the fact I can have my YouTube and Twitter stuff directly in the bar instead of having to shove it in a sidebar.

My only real issue with it is that it’s a chunky piece of code and slows down my site a bit. I don’t like that. But we’ll see.

Thunderbird 2

I’m waiting for Windows Live Mail Wave 4 to come out so I can try it. The current Wave 3 is good but not good enough. It’s supposed to be released soon, but until then I’m still using TB 2. I gave it a new look by using OxyBird, and it makes the client look so much better. Much more modernized. Very clean.

Wave 4 is supposed to bring in new features that I can actually use, such as tagging and the ribbon interface which I actually like.

TB 2 unfortunately is probably the last TB I’ll ever use, because 3 was such a disappointment. Actually, I’m sugar-coating that. TB 3 is a piece of shit. Unstable, crash-prone, ridiculous interface.. the list goes on and on. If this is the best Mozilla can do, then no wonder more and more people stick with webmail.

still of the skies

Last night the air was very still. This usually happens a day before we get doused with a few thundershowers which is precisely what’s going to occur. Either the wind gets really still or really, well.. windy. This time it chose to be still.

Here’s something I consider to be a Florida weather oddity:

There are times when you walk outside and it feels like you didn’t. I’ll try to explain what I mean by that. Imagine it’s late afternoon, you walk outside, the air is still and there’s no breeze. Because it’s late afternoon, the sun isn’t beating on you. The temperature is 72 on the nose.

The oddity is that the outdoors feels like indoors. I’ve lived here almost four years and I’m still not used to the instances where the weather gets like that.

I get weirded out by this because that never happens in New England. Up in those parts, when you walk outside, you know it instantly. It just feels distinctively different.

Why do I get weirded out when the indoors and outdoors environments are exactly the same? The answer is a bit funny.

There’s enough of that pessimistic New Englander lingering in me that believes for every good weather day comes a full week’s worth of bad ones – even though that doesn’t happen here.

It’ll probably take me a few more years before I can shake those red flags out of my head. :-)

old vs. new license plates

In yet another instance that the older I get, the more retro I’m becoming, I prefer old license plates (sometimes called tags) compared to new ones.

When living in CT I knew of three types of license plates.

CT very-old school:

As a kid I saw a few of these here and there. Blue field, white letters, CONNECTICUT on bottom, a registration sticker at bottom right and nothing else. Simple, effective and it worked.

CT old school:

When I registered my first vehicle, this is the style of plate I had. It was taller, had a small image of the state in the top left, followed by CONNECTICUT, and CONSTITUTION STATE on bottom. The sticker location moved from the bottom right to the top right.

My plate in particular was unique because I drove a truck at the time, so it said COMBINATION on the plate, replacing the CONSTITUTION STATE portion of it.

CT current:

This is the current CT plate, and it sucks. The embossed letters were replaced with printed, and the distinctive blue field was changed to a gradient. Sky blue on the top, white on the bottom. The all-caps was changed for Connecticut and Constitution State as well.

I remember when I first got one of these and thinking how utterly boring it was. Sure, it looks classier.. I guess.. but it lost all the character the old plate had.

MA old school:

I always considered this a boring-ass plate. It was very similar to CT very-old school design. White field, green letters, MASSACHUSETTS on top, reg sticker on top right.

MA current:

This is an improvement over the old design as it does look more distinctive. What’s interesting about this one is the addition of embossed letters at top left for the month. Why this is there I have no idea. Printed on top is Massachusetts with The Spirit of America on the bottom.

FL old school:

I’m on the fence to whether I like this plate or not. White field, orange letters, FLORIDA on top, county name on bottom, image of state in center, reg sticker on top right.

It is interesting that Florida allows the use of the letter I on plates. Most states don’t do that because it can be too easily confused with a 1.

FL semi-old school:

This plate is slowly but surely disappearing from cars, as per state law. White field, green letters, printed FLORIDA in top middle, SUNSHINE STATE (or county name) on bottom, image of orange in the middle.

FL current:

A simpler plate, however it has an extremely irritating dot-com on it. I’m the type that feels that web site URLs have absolutely no place on a license plate, because the state isn’t MYFLORIDA.COM, it’s FLORIDA, you idiots.

Anyway.. white field, green letters, MYFLORIDA.COM on top, image in the center changed to a pair of oranges, SUNSHINE STATE at bottom, or county name or the recently introduced IN GOD WE TRUST.

I chose to have SUNSHINE STATE on mine.

The saving grace of this plate is at least the bottom logo is still embossed rather than printed. But that MYFLORIDA.COM crap has to go.

States need to introduce a “retro” specialty plate option

I really wish states would wise up and offer a specialty plate that looked like plates did years ago. I guarantee they would sell like crazy and probably be the most sought after.

This is FL’s antique plate:

Specialty plates normally run for $25 to $50 a year that you have to pay extra for. I would happily put down the money for this if one of these were available for non-vintage passenger vehicles. Instead of ANTIQUE it could simply say RETRO, and believe me, scores of people would want them.

If anybody that reads this has any say-so in the design of specialty plates, please offer a retro option.

today’s kids don’t know anything about cars

Watch this video and I’ll tell you some interesting factoids.

The car in the vid above is a 1983 Buick LeSabre, and watching somebody actually having to learn this car definitely reminded me that 1983 was a long, long time ago.

In the beginning of the vid you’ll notice the guy asks “which drive” he’s supposed to use. That’s because someone today has never seen the overdrive selection as it once was, commonly known as “Circle-D”. It’s a D that literally has a circle around it. I’m guessing the circle is supposed to mean O for Overdrive. And while that sounds fancy, it isn’t. It’s just a gearing selection that saves gas at cruising speeds.

Later on in the vid he can’t figure out how to adjust the power seat. It’s not that power seats aren’t common (I had a power driver’s seat on my 2000 Alero), it’s that GM for as long as I can remember has always had the controls on the left side of the driver’s seat. As such, they’re completely hidden.

After that, he can’t figure out how to use the turn signal, however, I understand why. GM cars and trucks for the longest time had two levers left of the steering wheel, one in front of the other. The front one was for turn signals, wiper control, cruise and high-beam selection. The rear one was to adjust the steering wheel tilt.

Then he notices the highlighted “55″ on the speedometer. USA car manufacturers did this during the Carter administration when the vast majority of interstate speeds was the double-nickel. Carmakers fortunately stopped making speedometers like that in the mid-’80s.

~ ~ ~

1983 was 27 years ago. I was 8 years old then.

This month in 2010 I’ll be turning 35.

With autos in particular, I’m noticing the older I get, the more I can’t stand new cars. I’ve actually felt this way for quite some time.

Older GM vehicles to me feel a lot better than new ones do. I totally admit I’m a GM fan through and through, but there’s not a single car they’ve made since the mid-90s that I’d actually want.

Even with the shamefully low gas mileage an ‘83 LeSabre gets, which is about 14 city/20 highway, I’d happily drive it. Why? Because the truth is that I’d actually save cash by using it as a daily driver. When you take into account car payments, insurance, and the RIDICULOUS list of crap just to get a car’s computer to run right (fuel injector cleaning services, sensors galore, blah blah blah), the gas guzzler vintage Buick is actually cheaper to own and maintain.

That’s just plain sad.

Because of this, the chance of me ever buying another new car is very, very slim.

opera 10.50 on a netbook

If there’s one thing that’s ticked me off about using my Dell mini 10v netbook (which I do use often) is that modern web browsers suck on them. Why? Because they’re so frickin’ bloated and dog-ass slow. However, Opera 10.50 was just released, and I’m using it to type up this bloggo.

Verdict? It’s good. Better than good. Great, in fact. The reason? Speed. This thing is just as fast as Google Chrome without having to use that craptastic browser. I’m actually really happy with it, particularly when using the WordPress interface, which is a nightmare to work with in Firefox or IE8.

Opera 10.50 gets my thumbs up. I’ll be writing a work article on this later in more detail.  If your browser has turned into a slow piece of crap, install Opera. You might like it so much that you use it all the time.

Copyright ©1975-2010 menga - Today is Sunday, March 14 2010; the time when you loaded this web page was 1:05pm UTC. This blog is authored from Tampa Florida - a place where all the cool people are :-) If this web site has not been updated in the past 30 days, you can safely assume I'm sick, dead or finally got a life interesting enough to get away from the computer. On a final note, remember to save your shit.