I've been wondering for a while about this problem. I used to use Firefox as my full-time browser but ever since the upgrade to Firefox 3 I've noticed that many pages are loading ever so slowly. Excruciatingly slooooowww... Even IE8 loads them faster. Rightly or wrongly, this drove me to check out Google Chrome and it surprisingly loads them pages in no time at all! There's a lot to like with Google Chrome, but the one thing that is most obvious is how fast the browser itself loads. With the slew of updates and plugins that are becoming available it was an easy decision.

Then I started becoming really curious as I noticed that the slow loading time also affects this website. A few minutes of searching plus a second to disable the module in my blog later, I found the answer.

It's Google Adsense! Google Adsense caused my site (and others that have it on) to load very, very slowly especially on Firefox. WTH?

So yeah, no more Google Adsense on this site. Only Nuffnang Ads. But I still like Google Chrome though

Phew! What a relief...

I just upgraded this blog to b2evo 3.3.1, the latest version of the b2evolution weblog application. I was running v2.4.2 and have been ignoring the slew of upgrades available ever since. I was actually dreading the prospect of fixing stuff that might/can go wrong but man am I glad to be wrong. The upgrade was actually painless. Seriously easy.

It was as easy as uploading the new one to the server, unzip, copy the config file from the existing blog, copy a few other things (skin, plugin, media), and run the install/upgrade script and that's it! There were one or two styles that needed updating but heck, the whole thing took me no more than 15 minutes. Ok, plus a few more minutes deleting/tidying up old stuff after that and one or two things that needed updating. But nothing too tedious.

I'm a happy camper

I sometimes take a lot of photos during events and have been looking for ways to effectively share them with others (friends, colleagues, contacts etc.). Flickr and Picasa are two of the better options out there, but then both have its limits in terms of storage capacity but most importantly, not too many people are on them. These days most of the people I know that are active online mostly use Facebook. I guess it makes sense as Facebook is more of a general social site, whereas Flickr and Picasa are geared for more specific stuff i.e. photos.

However, Facebook photo app is rather lousy if you're thinking of sharing a slightly higher resolution photos, so that the viewers can download and print them. So far that I can tell from the photos I've downloaded, the maximum dimension is only 604 x 405 (though some say it's 604 x 402). I guess I just have to live with that, and have decided that for now my solution is to use both Picasa and Facebook.

This is actually easy to do because with Picasa3, you can upload the photos to both Picasa Web (the online version of Picasa) and Facebook. To upload to Picasa Web, just use the big Upload button at the bottom of the Library. As with Facebook, there are several steps to do first as it involves a separate plugin to Picasa3.

• First, go to Facebook and do a search on Picasa or just click this link: Picasa Plugin for Facebook.
• Follow the instruction from the plugin page. This will install a plugin into your Picasa application, i.e. another button for Facebook will be addded into the Picasa library.

That's it really. You can now easily upload up to 60 photos at a time from your Picasa3 application into your Facebook account. By the way, if you've been uploading a lot of photos to Facebook you probably already know that each Facebook album has a limit of 60 pictures. Don't know why but that's just the way it is for now.

alias sex "updatedb; locate; talk; date; cd; strip; look; touch; finger; unzip; mount; fsck; umount; sleep;"

What did you make of that?

Inspired from a thread on Reddit.

I finally received the split focusing screen for my Pentax K10D tonight. That's about 20 days after clicking the button on Ebay but whatever, I'm very satisfied with the purchase.

I got it from an Ebay seller based in Shanghai who goes by the name cowy07. He sells all sorts of photography accessories, even some obscure stuff like this one. The price was very reasonable - C $20.99 or about RM92, including shipping. Am I recommending him? I suppose I do...

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The image gallery developed some problems recently when all the thumbnails went missing. I managed to rectify the problem, and at the same time re-visited PicLens, a really cool browser plugin for image galleries such as Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, and of course, Gallery2. If you're not familiar with this browser plugin, visit the PicLens website and try out the demo - it's really nice for image browsing.

To my surprise, the mod to my Gallery2 installation to enable PicLens was rather painless, except for the reading part. For those of you running Gallery2, PicLens will be natively supported in Gallery 2.3. This simple mod is for those that prefer to run the latest stable version of Gallery2 instead of doing nightly Subversions and all that - like me.

To install it, you have to review this thread at the Gallery Forum. I went for the simplest route, i.e. uploaded the picLensRss.php to gallery root directory and added the mod lines for my theme's theme.tpl and that's it. Of course, you must remember to change both files a bit to reflect your site's configurations.

For others... well, make sure you have the PicLens plugin installed in your browser, visit my image gallery and enjoy!

In my quest for the latest and greatest, a few more gallons of midnight oil have been sacrificed, not counting the environmental damage it must have caused as I stayed up late and losing sleep upgrading the image gallery. Well, this blog is quite done so I gotta do something? Not to mention, it's been raining daily in KL...

The image gallery was a part of the site that I hated the most in terms of how it looked. I've decided to just tear it apart totally and start anew with the latest version of Gallery 2. And thank spaghetti for blessing the world with this fella - Pedro Gilberto, who came up with the x_treme theme for Gallery. He did such a wonderful job with the theme and it really makes me wonder what do these people do? They've got like, what, 30 hours in a day? But man, if you're Gallery 2 user you'd better check this theme out.

So go ahead and check out my humble gallery - hope you like the format. There are not too many pics yet as I'd like to be more selective on what to put up there. I'll put up more in the next few days, now it's sleep payback time!

I've just updated this blog's engine to the latest and greatest version. Fuyoo... despite the consternation while waiting for the upgrading process to complete, all went really well actually. We're talking about upgrading from v0.9x to v2.4.1 Nevada here folks... Yeah, I know... should've done it earlier...

Now that's done, I need to customise the skin and well, I really wish there's an easier way to deal with all this web apps. Me being a bit of an old-school, hand-coding guy doesn't help either.

I think I'll settle with the current skin, and just mod it to my heart's content when I can find the time

This is an update to my previous post on the Motorola E680i (this one). I got myself a new mobile recently i.e. the SonyEricsson K770i, mainly because I needed something slim, something that fits nicely in my pocket and not bulging like a misplaced hard-on especially when I'm wearing a suit So I got the SE - a real nice 3G Cybershot phone that's slim to boot. But that's another story. This post is about the little cell wonder that I love so much - the Motorola E680i.

I've been aware of the phone's open, Linux-based architecture and have been following Motorolafans.com since I got it in 2005. I've installed a few apps and games but that's about it. I never went all the way, which means replacing (flashing) the firmware with hacked ones and at the same time replacing major components of the firmware with de-branded and enhanced codegroups (or CGs) - all made available on the net by fellow Motolovers the world over. Now that I've got myself a new phone, it was time to check it out and risk bricking my Moto.

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I'm not sure how many people actually use one of those notebook coolers available in the market. There are quite a few brands available at you-know-where here in KL, from the pricier ones such as Cooler Master, Zalman, Belkin, etc and to the cheapies that cost you as low as RM20. Well, some of them starts at RM1 at Lelong... I've got both - a nice Cooler Master Notepal and a cheap RM30 with 3 fans.

The point of this entry is simply to share my experience with those who are wondering whether these things worth the money they cost. Debates are aplenty on the net on whether they actually help or are just a waste of money. You can have a look at this thread at Lowyat's forum for example.

See the end of this article for my results

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