Software updates

Two minor updates:

• OpenOffice 2.0 beta (m104)
• WinAMP 5.091

Star Wars: ep3 (no spoilers)

Last night, Chris, my cousin Eric and I were playing Settlers. It was getting late.

"You guys wanna see Star Wars?"
"Sure."
"Do you think we can still get tickets?"
"Um, we wouldn't get home until 3..."
"That's ok with me."

It was 11:26 when we called the theater and asked if they had any tickets for Star Wars left. Sure enough, they had 61 tickets.

We jumped in the car and got to the theater at 11:40. As you might expect, we didn't get great seats, but it wasn't bad for not arriving ahead of time. We even found three seats together.

The movie was ok (nothing spectacular). Having seen ep2 and 4, there's a lot of questions about what happened inbetween. Well, watch it and you'll get to see the answers. Some things were pretty cheezy (sorry to be vague, but it's still openning day so I don't want to post any spoilers) and the movements of the CG characters were very un-natural so it looked pretty fake at times.

Anyone else going on openning day? There's still time...

Software updates

This week's updates are all minor fixes, no major updates.

• Firefox 1.0.4
• Paint.NET 2.1b
• GIMP 2.2.7
• SecureCRT 5.0 beta 5
• SecureFX 3.0 beta 5

Romania: day 1

Some friends of the family are from Bucharest. They've been in New York for about 15 years. We've known them just as long. Several months ago, they asked my parents and I if we'd like to join them on a trip back home to Romania. We said yes!

Jeff and Adriana went a day early, but the rest of us didn't leave until Friday. With Radu, Nineta and Mike in NY, my parents in DC and me in Chicago, we all made our own flight arrangements. The goal was to arrive at Otopeni airport as close to the same time as possible. Radu had given me their flight info and it turned out that our layovers in Amsterdam overlapped. When I checked in at O'Hare, I tried to switch the second leg of my flight to match theirs, but since that would have left me with only a 50 minute layover coming off of a 7+ hour int'l flight, the agent said I should wait and see what time I arrived in Amsterdam. If my flight made good time, I could switch to the earlier flight in Amsterdam.

The flight was uneventful. I tried to sleep (as it would be a short night and that was my only chance for sleep. I doubt I got more than about 30 minutes sleep... I just can't seem to sleep well while sitting up in a chair :(

Arriving in Amsterdam, I was surprised how much English I heard. Walking past shops, I could hear customers with Dutch accents conducting transactions in English with cashiers who were also speaking English with Dutch accents. Having arrived early, I made my way to the ticket counter. I asked about catching the earlier flight to Bucharest. The agent explained that since my bags were already checked through to Bucharest, I'd have to wait for the same plane. Had the agent in Chicago only sent my bags to Amsterdam, I could have moved my bags and myself onto the earlier flight. (a security measure) Thanks to the same Chicago agent who suggested I change flights in Amsterdam, I couldn't.

As long as I had the time, I went on to the gate for that earlier flight. I wouldn't be able to board, but I could wait with my friends. Sure enough, I met up with them on the way there. There was me from Chicago meeting friends from New York on our way to Bucharest, crossing paths in Amsterdam. It was strange and cool. Having only a short time to talk, they boarded their plane and I had two more hours to kill.

Passing the shops again, I stopped in to look for The Matrix. I've started collecting it in various languages (so far, only from places I've been). I found a copy in Dutch, but reading the details on the back (it wasn't too hard to figure out), the audio was only in English and French, but the subtitles were available in Dutch. Didn't seem worth it, just for the subtitles. Besides, I already have the French version.

Relatively speaking, it was a short flight to Bucharest. Arriving there, I met Radu, Nineta and Mike (for the second time that day). They had already met up with some of their relatives: Lorica and Mihai. We're all sitting at a cafe in the airport waiting for my parents (the rest of them had already been the for a while waiting for me). My parents are due to arrive in about 2 hours. As we talk, Nineta is doing most of the translating.

Before I know it, my parents have arrived and we're all heading into the city. Radu, Nineta, Jeff and Adriana are staying at Radu's mother's house (or "grandma's house" as I'll refer to it). The rest of us (Mike, my parents and I) will be staying at an apartment a short walk from there. For now, it's off to grandma's house. She lives in the second floor of a rectory and has a beautiful view from the balcony.

We're all quite tired. Most of the group got more sleep than I did, but not much. As it gets to be evening, it's now Saturday night and we left the US on Friday afternoon. No alarm clocks tonight :) Four of them will be staying here with grandma, but they walk with us to the apartment to see what it's like and help translate as we check in. It's about a 10 minute walk from grandma's house and I'm very happy to have luggage with wheels (thanks mom!).

We arrive at the apt building and the elevator's a bit small (three can fit, four can squish, but only if you don't have any bags). We've got eight people and lots of luggage. Our apt is only the 4th floor so we take the stairs. After walking up three flights of stairs, we look for a sign, expecting to be on the fourth floor. Well, we didn't count on the numbering being different :) We're now on the 1st floor! Turns out the ground level doesn't count. Ok, but what about the other two floors we passed? Those were mezzanine 1 and mezzanine 2. So our "4th" floor apartment that we're walking up the stairs to is really what an American would call the 7th floor.

We're all too tired to complain. We make our way in, steak out our territory and settle in for some sleep.

sleep, yes. I should get some now too. I'll pick up with day 2 soon. In the meantime, check out the pictures. Sorry they're not inlined with the text, but hopefully I've described things well enough so you can tell which pictures match with which parts of the story.

Software updates

After being gone a week and spending a week catching up on everything, there've been quite a lot of updates.

• Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3
• WinAMP 5.09
• SecureCRT 4.1.11
• SecureFX 2.2.10
• SecureCRT 5.0 beta 4
• SecureFX 3.0 beta 4
• OpenOffice 2.0 beta m100
• Skype 1.2.0.48
• Ethereal 0.10.11
• Paint.NET 2.1a

Stopping inlined video

Call me a control freak, but I want my computer to work for me, not against me. I don't want popups ad, blinking text or inlined video on web pages. I love Firefox because it lets me view the web the way I want.

Tabbed browsing is one of those features that I never really thought was interesting until I started using it. Now I can't live without it. (how did people ever survive without microwave ovens?)

It happens on occation that I middle-click several links and open them all in new tabs. Then as they're loading, I hear music playing. Grrr.... I'm already listening to music, and having a web page play a different song is really annoying. I shouldn't have to be subjected to someone else's music. Which tab is that? I don't want to close them all, just want the music to stop.

Video is worse. I run dual monitors and have my video drivers set so that if I'm playing a video, it goes full screen on the other monitor. I often watch TV on one monitor while browsing/coding/chatting on the other. Well, when a web page has inlined video, it starts playing full screen on my other monitor -- not what I want.

Time to do something about it. I had a long plane flight on my trip to Romania last week (vacation report coming soon) so I started tinkering with local files and figured out how to make it stop.

So if you want to block inlined videos (or anything else) from playing in web pages, here's how:

• If you don't already have a userContent.css file, start a new one, if you already have one, just add to it.
• userContent.css is located in your Firefox profile directory (click for help finding it). Inside your profile directory, open the Chrome folder. There's a file called "userContent-example.css" and it can be ignored (or if you're adventerous, you can read it for more tips).
• Add the following lines to userContent.css:

embed[type="application/asx"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-asf-plugin"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="application/x-mplayer2"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-asf"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-wm"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="audio/x-ms-wma"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="audio/x-ms-wax"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-wmv"] { display: none !important;}
embed[type="video/x-ms-wvx"] { display: none !important;}

• Quit Firefox.
• Save the file (if you save it while FF is open, your changes will be lost when you quit).
• Restart Firefox.

Any of the above mime types will not be shown on web pages. If you find something that still plays (e.g. real player), you can use View -> Source to find the content type and add another line to block it as well.