Exit Safari – Firefox okaeri

Been a longtime Firefox user since version 1, there’s is no perfect webbrowser. But anything was better than adwareking called IE.  Firefox quickly became my preferred browser, above IE (I rarely rarely use it, if I could I’d uninstall it, but for the occasional site and sharepoint, I need to fire up IE7)

So winter last year my Firefox (ver. 2.5?) started crashing my profile constantly, losing my saved login info. Which is quite annoying when you’re subscribed to many forums. Then you have to dig up your account etc.. I reinstalled in vain.

Why I don’t keep one pass, the same login to every forum? Baka ga omae wa? I’d go too far saying it’s like using the same pass/pin number as your bankcard, I always try to be ‘secure’ somehow with passwords. Not to mention trying to be incognito on some forums heh. I am not logged in to MSN automatically (I so hate that when people have MSN autostart when Windows boots up. Yet complain that their comp is so slow. Not noticing the few dozen tray icons – read useless crap – Windows has to start up before the computer is ready to be used)

Anyway, before this turns into an endless rant about baka users, back on topic: I tried other browsers like the new Google Chrome and Safari: Safari (3.x) looked just like iTunes (doh) clean and crisp and was fast. I decided that Safari was my new default browser. It only suffers from one huge problem, make that two: lag out of nowhere (annoying) and crashes (lot more annoying). When Safari 4-beta was released I hoped for better days, but sadly it wasn’t meant to be. Not one day passes without Safari crashing on me.  I tried various things like deleting cache, reset and what not. After a love hate relationship of 7 months,  I decided that Safari had to go:  I’m back to my old flame Firefox (3.5.1), it’s rock stable and speedy. I nearly forgot about all the handy add-ons what makes Firefox standout from other browsers. So what is your default browser?

USB cardreader

My best purchase of the year, heck in many years: a $5 USB cardreader!

I never trusted these 150-in-one cardreaders, they look/feel flimsy,
made in China, etc etc.. actually I never needed one, I always transfered pictures
and videos through USB directly from my camera(s) the old fashioned way. 

But ever since I started shooting with my Canon 450D, 
(in RAW format) the sizes are around 15mb/pic, so it adds up.
when I come home from a walk with say like 70-100 pictures,
uploading them to my PC = time to make coffee. (or Xmen vs SF loading times on PS1 if you will)

It takes minutes, and we all hate waiting right?
I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that uploading through a cardreader
is so much faster, I was skeptical, especially about those cheap ones on Ebay.
Well I am a believer now.

Transfer speeds are around 20mb/sec, its almost as fast as copying from an
internal drive to another! I’m definitely impressed, the difference is night/day! 
even if you have fast Class 4/Class 6 memory cards (SDHC in my case), uploading 
from the camera directly is just too slow, unless you shoot in jpeg..

The only annoying thing is the blue blinking led when it’s in reading mode, 
But hey, for US$5 I can’t really complain can I?

and oh, I’m finally getting ready to paint my GP03, but only because my buddy
Maddog told me was about to prime his Strike. Can’t get too much behind ;p
(no I’m not racing you dude, but it keeps me on schedule somehow)
Bah, so many hobbies and things to do, so little time… 

Here you can see both arms, 38 pieces each.

Tachikoma: fix my HD T_T

Few days ago, suddenly my partitions were gone on my 1TB Samsung HD103UJ (which I bought for my bday 6months ago)
It will boot up but it’s not accessible anymore, my system now recognizes it as a 8gb drive.
I only used it for storage, but what I lost exactly? I have no idea…
I do know I had a partition of 500gb worth of asian DVD’s, but titles? I couldn’t name them.
the other 350gb were anime shows, j-drama shows, american tv-shows and stuff I don’t remember now.

I tried anything, placed it in my other rig – no go
I tried to format it – no go
even Tachikoma couldn’t fix it…

then I tried several data recovery utilities, the only thing I could salvage from the drive were (don’t laugh) a few JAV-movies XD

In total I think I lost around 850gb of data. But for some reason I don’t feel too sad about it. (maybe because I got other things on my mind?)
Once I said: I’d rather buy 2x500gb drives instead of 1 larger drive, cos if it dies, the loss will be less painful.
That’s so true, my main rig has/had 2x500gb+1x1TB.  The other 2 drives have been working flawlessly for 2-3 years now.

Oh, don’t you just love Tachikoma? ^_^
I’m a huge GITS fanatic, it’s definitely my alltime favorite anime. (not to mention, Motoko is like the only female character I worship hehe)

-Tequila

Update: I got my HD back from RMA, well not the drive that went bad ofcourse, I got a brand new one. Now to find time to set it up… Not sure if I will put an OS on it this time.