NathanDrew.org

Firefox 3.5 4gb addons

Anyone else see this odd one when upgrading from Firefox 3.0 to 3.5? Everything went smoothly despite the description of 4gb addons and they were all updated but thought this was an odd one…

My first impression of Firefox 3.5 is that it is still a bloated beast when compared to Google Chrome or Safari 4. The load times for the application itself seems sluggish still, Chrome opens in an instant and I think Safari is a mid ground between the two. It’s all a bit speculative as I’ve not done a proper test but they’re my impressions anyway.

I’ve become very fickle with browsers and use whatever suits my mood but when it comes to work I use Chrome and Firefox if I have to because of some compatibility issues on a few sites for Chrome. For home use I tend to use Safari 4 at the moment but I have Firefox 3.5 and even Flock installed, though I don’t even remember the last time that was fired up!

I look forward to when XMarks is available for Safari 4 as it will help maintain my favourites across systems and browsers, its a shame Chrome isn’t even on the list yet though!

Up until now, you might notice I’ve left out a certain (pointless) browser out of the picture but I feel I have to mention it purely because of the rediculously comical PR stunt as shown at lifehacker! Hilariously they believe that IE8 is more secure, private and reliable than Firefox or Chrome, all I can say is HAHAHA Microsoft are branching out as global comedians. Thanks for the laughs lol

If like me, you use Safari and had the Safari 4 beta installed before the actual release came out, you may have found that its a bit slow after the update.

Well, I remembered that the beta stored a ridiculous amount of cache for the top sites previews and thought, hrm I wonder if thats the cause… turns out it was (at least for me anyway!). You can clear out the cache in the official release by going to the Safari menu > Reset Safari and selecting the options below.

Safari 4 Reset Top Sites and Clear the preview cache

Of course you can select more if you want to.

Facebook loaded much faster, as did iGoogle. Not sure how efficient the public release will be at maintaining a tidy web page preview cache but the above steps not only made the pages load faster, it stopped the errors I was getting for some reason – I can only guess that Safari was having a hard time trawling through the cache and gave up the ghost and pretended it didn’t have a connection by timing out… that’s just my guess obviously.

Anyway hope this helps anyone else who has a similar problem.

I hate the term ‘budding’ but it seemed the most appropriate for someone who’s enthusiastic about something but also not a professional or expert so in M&S style… here’s the idea…

Got a new camera recently? Upgraded to a new DSLR or just got a great new compact camera? Flickr is a great place to share your photos, get feedback, advice, ask questions etc and I’ve recently become the only Admin for a group called Striving Amateurs and have decided its a good time to give the group a bit of a new direction.

The group is all about amateur and professional or experienced photographers to help one another out by sharing how they achieved an effect or sharing ideas and web resources etc. At the moment the group is still growing but if you’re looking for a friendly place where you can ask for advice and feel free to post your pictures and learn from the others then please join the group at the link above ). Most people on Flickr will tell you how they achieved an effect if you post a comment on their photo and this group also aims to encourage this. Check it out.

Here’s a sample of some of the photographs in the pool…

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

For a long time I’ve had a bit of an interest with photography, given half a chance to use my Dad’s SLR, whether it was his old film one or his newer DLSR I was always keen on having a go! So, it comes as no surprise that I ended up getting my own!

While getting used to my shiny Canon 450d, I have been using flickr a whole lot more and have found inspiration within the realms of light painting!

For those of you that don’t know, ‘Light painting’ usually involves fairly long exposures and a light source. From what you generally see on flickr, there’s 2 main types – static lighting that lights up a scene with funky colours or ‘drawing’ with a light source.

Here’s an example of painting a scene with a light source and ‘gels’.

The Throne Room by JohnnyBlough

Generally these sort of photos are done with a flash or ’strobe’ and using different colour ‘gels’ in front of the flash. You use a long exposure and light up different parts of your subject to build up the end result.

I’ve experimented a bit with a few different light sources and here are some of the results… 

These first two are of a lightning bulb, one with me touching the side of the bulb to attract the strands of lightning to one spot and one with a bit of foil on the top to keep the strand in one place constantly.

Blue Touch by me

Match Stick Lightning by me

This one below is using a light intended to sit in the bath and light it up! Random I know but I was going through firebox.com looking for interesting light sources.

Technicolour Spiral by me

Now I’m usually a bit anti Sony stuff, probably because I’ve always preferred Nintendo consoles etc. I did once have a MD player/recorder however so I’m not completely against them. My sister showed me a clip of a new mp3 player that looks pretty awesome – and very original. I’ll let the video speak for itself…