out of the blue

I just took a ride in a dryer. Yes, the kind you put wet clothes in. And yes, I fit. (Aaron fit too, but he didn't take a RIDE, like I did.) Aaron turned the dryer on for me, and I rode in it for a couple seconds. Quite a dizzying sensation, especially when gravity twists, space-warping your original comfortable position into standing on your head. I ended up upside down when Aaron stopped it, and a bit more disoriented, making it more difficult to get out than it was to get in.

It's amazing the things you'll try to procrastinate for just a few minutes longer.

When I Am an Old Guy

"…When I am old guy, I will eat things that are bad for me. When I am asked the secret of my longevity, I will mention eating things that are bad for me. When I am an old guy, I will lie a lot…."

Jon Carroll just became even more my hero.

This is a follow-up post to the announcement that Internet Explorer Beta 2 was released to the public for previewing and testing and such jollity. You may or may not be interested in it.

REVIEW

I just perused through the new Internet Explorer. My overall opinion is that, at this state, there is no reason to switch back to IE from Firefox, and no reason not to switch to Firefox (from ie) if you're not already using it. That said, it's certainly an improvement to the old browser, so you might as well download it and use it (as long as you've got a valid windows installation. They have some sort of security validation. If you want it, just ask me. [I think it will work just transferring the file.] )

Test it out, see what you think. You've got nothing to lose, as after 5 long years of a major lack of development for Internet Explorer, it can't have gotten worse than it had already sunk due to obsolescence.

This review may be updated multiple times throughout the next few days.

FEATURES / CHANGES:

Tabbed Browsing
Seems to work as expected. Besides the new tab button, and the close tab button on each tab, it's fine. There is a weird tab-switching interface, where you can see a thumbnail of each of the open tabs and choose based on that, but I can't actually imagine myself ever finding that useful.

New User Interface
The layout of the browser is a bit weird: having toolbars above the "File | Edit | View" toolbar. Besides that, it seems like they're wasting a bit of space: the tabs toolbar is the one that should be the largest, and it's the one that's sharing most of its space with other buttons.

Favorites Center
Simple enough. Has an "open links in a tab group" for folders, and a delete button for links. The favorites center has a feeds tab and a history tab. Pretty simple, good integration.

BUGS / Problems:

Interface Bug
There is a weird gap between the tab bar and the browser display that I'm certain isn't meant to be there. It disappears when I close the "Favorites Center."

CSS Issues
As of now, it seems it needs some CSS adjustment. The most blatantly disgusting bit: it doesn't support fixed positioning. It doesn't even seem to have changed its support of positioning at all. It had BETTER improve in later betas. Or I'm going to murder something.

That said, I haven't tested it thoroughly. I don't really know how much css has improved or not, I just tested a page that I've been working on lately and saw almost no changes. Expect me to complain/rejoice about it in the next few days.

By the way, hover states now work on all elements. (At least they work on LI's, and they used to only work on anchors. This is a beautiful thing.)

User Interface
Biggest annoyance: lack of customizability of user interface. I can't seem to remove the "new tab" button, nor can I get rid of a particularly useless toolbar. I can only remove all of its buttons so that it takes up the least amount of space.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 has just been released to the public. Glory hallelujah!

Go see a tour of the new features.

(Let's hope it lives up to our expectations, eh, web designers out there?)

UPDATE: My preliminary review of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

I haven't made an entry in quite a while, it seems. Not since my two word pansity from Christmas morning. So, here's what happened to me since:

First of all, I got in an argument with my parents. It wasn't a particularly important disagreement, but it encompassed frustrations from many of those previous, so it ended up being more intense than actually made sense. To make a long story short, I ended up leaving the house for a good long time. I stayed at friends' houses in the area for a while, then I went to Everett with Nathan and Yoshiko.

New Year's at Nathan's apartment was quite awesome, even though Soren deserted us for Alice, but we forgave him because he's twitterpated. The three of us who didn't desert made sushi and got fun drinks like sparkling spiced apple cider. Nathan got some Mike's Hard Lemonade, but it wasn't very good. I just don't like alcohol, I think, and I always think "Man, this might taste good without it." You can look at the other New Year's pictures if you want to see documentation.

I stayed at Nathan's for a few more days, then went to visit Becky's family. They are funny. We went downtown to look at galleries and stuff like that, but aside from that there wasn't much interesting going on.

The next event was a drive to Spokane to drop Beth and her stuff off, but we didn't end up staying more than that day. The following morning we drove off towards Portland. Here occurred one of the more exciting things: driving through the Gorge. Becky hadn't really been through it much, and we did one of the old scenic highway drives just as night was falling. I have to say it was beautiful. We also stopped at Multnomah Falls after it was completely dark, which was nice. I told Becky I'd have to take her there in the daytime someday. She agreed :)

Anyway, for the past few days we've been hanging around Portland, going to random gatherings of my friends, visiting with particular people, and generally relaxing. Yesterday we took the Max to Portland, and spent some time in the Starbucks in Pioneer Courthouse Square. It was a lot of fun showing Becky the funny little amphitheater, and the guy with the umbrella, and then we came home and had a fire in the fireplace. Aaron joined us for an evening of talking about art, and listening to music, and letting Becky drowse off into the glow of the fire, next to it wrapped in a cozy fleece blanket. Then Aaron went away, and we slept.

Today we went to Helvetia, a tavern to the west, outside the metropolis with my Aunt Susan and Uncle Doug. A bit later, we visited my other pair, Uncle James and Aunt Lori. I was glad for Becky to meet a bit more of my family, because we missed seeing them last time she came down. Becky leaves tomorrow to let me do some important things before school starts. (She's rather a distracting person, you see.)

So, there you have it. A long epic about the last two weeks. Woo.

Merry Christmas

So, my family insists on listening to Christmas songs. However, having the radio on to the Christian station, you get pretty much the same mix of songs every hour or so. And they're not particularly impressive versions!

Does anyone have any good versions of Christmas songs? Choral versions? Unusual carols that are awesome (or at least passable)? Foreign languages! Anything, just let the pain end…

Grade | Class
W = Withdraw (dropped the class, essentially)

Calculus, I am surprised by. I'm not sure whether to be surprised by Philosophy of Human Nature (I just didn't turn in the final essay). I should have done better in Digital Computer Programming, because I know the stuff better than most people in the class. So easy… Anyway, I did pretty bad (by my standards) with a 2.91 overall GPA. Woohoo…

I just thought I'd say a word about friends-only posts: I don't like them. I think they are entirely valid, and I won't think less of you if you use them, but I still don't like them. The thing is, the rss feeds on LiveJournal can be accessed by anyone, so if there's a friends-only post, then it doesn't show up on the feed, and I can't read it from a feedreader. That bothers me because it's the major way I access blogs (since I have livejournals I read, bloggers I read, random other feeds from things like textpattern, etc). Partially for that reason, I've never used a friends-only post.

Just an interesting tidbit.

Soren is back! Nathan is back! Aaron and I are back! There is much rejoicing.

Aside from Soren, Nathan, and Aaron, this last weekend I went to the beach with my family and seeing my little cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents. That was a lot of fun. I think the highlight of the beach trip was going out past midnight onto the beach and singing at the top of my lungs to the night. (Don't Stop Me Now, Nature Boy, Come What May, maybe a few others)

Now back to friends:

Last night, I went to Nathan's house and sung carols with his family around some advent candles. Then his little brother and I went to Shari's to visit, and afterwards Nathan and I came back and plotted programming stuff. Lots of fun, resulting in me returning home at 3:30. Final sleep time: 5:30 ish.

Tonight, I went ice skating (which was awesome, thanks Mark), and then directly to Aaron's house. We talked about random stuff like programming for a while, and then Soren called, saying he was back. So, we went to visit him, ended up staying at his house for a while, then we went to Shari's. Two nights in a row! But I got something different, so it's okay. The thing is, after coming back to my house with Aaron from Soren's, we decided to stop somewhere and talk for a while. Good stuff. I live with Aaron, and this is one of the best conversations we've had in a while. Maybe the absense of school did it. Topics included: absurdity, girls (related to the former), friends, loneliness, etc.

The gems of the conversation came during the topic of comparisons. As in wording things. There are a few types of hilarious comparisons that we talked about, but I can only remember these two.

Absurdity
To compare a quality to something that has nothing to do with that quality. (i.e. sharp as a chicken on roller skates)

Denying association
My favorite of the night. This has to do with comparing a quality to something else that, while having that quality too, has another quality associated with it that is MUCH more powerful. (i.e. blunt as the sun, round as a hurricane)

All in all, a very satisfying couple of days.