Firefox 1.0

If you've been living in a cave with a "dial" telephone, analog clock and "rabbit ears" antenna on your Zenith TV, you may not have heard yet about the Firefox browser (download it now and start using it--don't be a ninny). Recently thousands of people just like you and me donated $25.00 each to get a full page ad into the New York Times advertising the release of the open-source, Mozilla-based Firefox browser. Previously called "Firebird" in the last couple of years, Firefox is a truly fast browser that is very extensible and has become the browser of choice for those "in the know".

Here is a great "hack" to speed up Firefox, as provided by my good friend Jerry. Not that Firefox needs to be sped up any more than its current speed, this "hack" only applies if you're using a broadband connection. It tells Firefox to do more pageloads at once and sort of "thread" them into itself. Here's the link.

Help victims of the tsunami in southeast Asia

Click here to donate to a fund to benefit disaster victims in Sri Lanka. As of 29-Dec 2004, Americans have donated US$18 Million to the American Red Cross for relief in the countries affected by the tsunami the other day. To add your donation, click here. You can also donate to the Red Cross disaster fund by clicking here to go to Amazon.com. 74,000 people have donated a total of US$4.5 Million via Amazon.com. Here is some information on how to donate money to the Radio Amateur Society of Thailand, which is collecting donations for disaster relieve in Thailand. To donate to the Salvation Army, which is providing water, food, medical and spiritual relief, click here. Consider giving some amount of money, however small it may be, as this is one of the worst disasters in recorded history, and a great deal of aid will be needed.

RoboSapien, Part Uno

Here begins the saga of the RoboSapien, a gift from my sister and brother-in-law. RoboSapien is my new electronic companion. He is really much more than a toy as he is fully operational in his multiple arm and leg movements and controls. In addition, he can pick up light objects, throw, dance, grunt in international "caveman" language and can be programmed to do any number of operations in any order. I'm told that he can be programmed to dance the "Macarena".

I am still playing around with RoboSapien and testing out different things that he can do. I think the kids are really going to enjoy him, too. Go to the end of this document to find a bunch of links for RoboSapien. I will be posting "RoboSapien, Part Deux" in a few days when I have some photos of this little guy in action.

Setting up an iPaq to work with Bluetooth on a T-Mobile phone

I'm writing this post because there are so many variations out there describing how to make an iPaq work with a Bluetooth T-Mobile phone. First, I have an HP 2215 iPaq Pocket PC and a Nokia 3650 cell phone. Both the Pocket PC and the cell phone both have Bluetooth capabilities. There are other fine sources on the Web that will describe how to pair these two devices using Bluetooth. Second, I live in the Chicagoland area and these settings work for me. In the iPaq, open up Settings-->Connections-->Connections. Now select "Add a New Modem Connection". Call it The Internet and select "Bluetooth Dialup Modem" as the modem. Click "Next" and enter the following as a phone number: *99# that's *99# Click "Next" and leave "username" and "password" blank. Click the "Advanced" button, and then leave everything as is except for the "extra dial-string modem commands" add the following: +cgdcont=1,,"internet3.voicestream.com" that's +cgdcont=1,,"internet3.voicestream.com"

Here are a couple of notes about the extra string: if internet3 doesn't work, try internet2. If voicestream doesn't work, try tmobile. I have also read some folks who need to include "IP" inside of the two commas. It's worth noting that only the newest iPaq's allow for the required number of characters to include "IP" (that includes the quotation marks, incidentally). It may be that "IP" is the default and that is why leaving it out is okay (as in my string in the first paragraph).

One note on the phone number: *99# refers to the first service listed in the phone. I have seen posts on the Internet referring to *99##2 for the second service listed, *99##3 etc. I don't use this notation so it is outside the scope of this posting.

It's The Day Before The Night Before Christmas

When I was a kid, I had a record (on the purple Diplomat label...33 rpm LP for the uninitiated) which had a song on it called "It's the Day Before the Night Before Christmas". It had a number of other Christmas songs on it, too. I used to make a point of listening to that song every year on December 23rd, and my mom would always call to wish me "Happy Day Before the Night Before Christmas", even when I was away at college and afterwards. Somewhere along the way that record was lost. And somewhere around 1998 or so my turntable sat collecting dust--a relic, a musical war horse with no one to ride it.

My sister, Patti, tracked down an LP called "Christmas is for Kids" on the Diplomat label, and lo and behold it contains "It's the Day Before the Night Before Christmas". I got to hear the song again on 12/12/2004 for the first time in many years. I'm looking forward to her fiancé Mike converting the song to an MP3 for me, as my kids would probably prefer to hear the professional singers instead of Dad singing it, as I have for them for these past few years.

About the record: I've researched the record, and it turns out that the singers were known as The Caroleers (correct spelling). Diplomat issued this LP, as a well as several others around 1970, and the records were sold at Sears & Roebuck. There was a lot of cross over of songs from one album to the next. There are many postings in newgroups and discussion threads on the Internet telling various fuzzy memories concerning favorite songs from these albums.

Happy Day Before the Night Before Christmas!