Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Camp Time!!!

Starting Saturday, I will be leaving  for Scout Camp! It's going to be fun this year (I hope!)!!!! When I get back, I will blog a moment-by-moment* account of camp. They will all be posted on one day, but there will be one post for every day. Well, I have to get ready to go out of town for a few hours, I have a church youth meeting thing! Blog more tomorrow!
 
*I may be exaggerating when I say "moment-by-moment," it will be more like a general overview of my Scout Camp experience.

Monday, July 19, 2004

MY HIGH SCORE


This is a screenshot of my TyperShark high score. BEAT THAT!!! To beat it: send a screenshot in JPEG format to bloggertemplates@yahoo.com. You MUST play the WEB GAME (not the deluxe) from popcap.com NOT Yahoo! Games or another games site that hosts the game. Posted by Hello

Saturday, July 17, 2004

Hello!

Hello from BloggerBot! I'm coming to you from a P2P IM app. called Hello from Google's sister company Picasa. This is great! Posted by Hello

Friday, July 16, 2004

Leave IE FOREVER

With all the security holes in Internet Explorer, you must be getting worried about people taking your personal information. And all these viruses, they seem to collect the e-mail addresses to send themselves to from your Outlook Express address book. Well, THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES! Below are the major non-IE browsers avaliable (all are free)

Now, let's talk about each one individually.

 

Netscape - www.netscape.com

Netscape used to be a huge company, but then they bottomed out and went bankrupt. However, AOL purchased them and you can still get the Netscape browser. It has: popup blocking, tabbed browsing, images fit to screen (like IE), automatic highlighting, and download manager. It also has an integrated mail client with the following features: free email account, junk mail controls, handheld sync, custom views of email, search of email, mail alerts, labels, and import from other programs. It also includes AOL Instant Messenger integrated in the program.

Current Version at post time: 7.1

Mozilla- www.mozilla.org

This one has an interesting history. When Netscape went under, they created Mozilla to keep the legacy going, and it has gone! Their flagship browser suite "Mozilla" is similar to Netscape in features, only it is Open Source, meaning there anyone in the world can look at the inner workings of the browser and make it better. I would rather use Mozilla than Netscape, simply because it is Open Source, not backed by a company out to make money. (The Mozilla Foundation is non-profit).

Current Version at post time: 1.7.1

 

Firefox - www.getfirefox.com

It's Mozilla's new browser, and it is almost ready for the primetime! This browser has it all, but it is just a browser. Nothing more. If you want email with it use their companion program Thunderbird. Firefox is amazing. Just read about it!

Current Version: Firefox 0.9.2 (BETA VERSION) and Thunderbird 0.7.2 (BETA VERSION)

These are still beta programs, and may be unstable, USE WITH CAUTION!

 

Opera - www.opera.com

Another one similar to Netscape, only better. However, it costs money. There is a free version, but you have to see their banner ads.

Current Version: 7.52

 

My reccomendation: Use Mozilla, but only until Firefox and Thunderbird come out with 1.0 versions, then switch to them.

 

All these browsers are avaliable for Windows and many other operating systems.


Exciting times at Blogger!

Wow! Blogger has just introduced a new rich text editor for creating new blog posts! This is great! I am writing this using the new editor. It has keyboard shortcuts, much like their Gmail interface does (wonder where Blogger got the idea!). They even make it easy to change the text color! Wow! I am impressed! It is about time they did this! However, for those who like the old fashioned way, you can still do it by clicking the "Edit HTML" tab.

Well, that is all I have to say about that subject, NOT! They also have list buttons (ordered and unordered), a "remove formatting" button, a great and powerful hyperlink generator with many protocols available, and a button to automatically upload and insert pictures to you blog (but only if you use FTP, which leaves us Blog*Spot Free members out). Now, read my post "Leave IE FOREVER!" NOW!

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Fun, fun Stuff! (And great time wasters)

If you have a lot of time on your hands and are the intellectual type (that has initiative) then head on over to sodaplay.com and mess around with their SodaConductor. Basically, you place some masses, connect them using "springs" and you see if they move. It is hard, and sometimes confusing, but it's fun to see some models OTHER PEOPLE have made. There are some really cool ones.

Then there are the amazing people at PopCap, the people behind the popular Bejeweled, and many other games seen at Zone.com and Yahoo! Games (both great places to waste LOTS of time). Their latest game AstroPop has good graphics and addictive gameplay.

That's all I have for now. But first, a word of warning:

Sodaplay's Sodaconductor and most PopCap games require Java, which you can download from Java.com. Only PopCap's more recent games use Macromedia's Flash plugin.

Now I'm off to see other people's creations in SodaConductor and try to beat my own high score on AstroPop!

Monday, July 12, 2004

Changes

Well, I found out the Squarespace's URL mappings is a premium feature, and I don't plan on paying for it (I might if I could), so I have had to change all the links on this blog. I have put notes where I have changed things. You can now access the new site at

bloggertemplates.bravehost.com

This will just lead you to the villageidiot.squarespace.com site, but I have moved the structure of the URL mappings.

Also, as I have mentioned in a previous post, I will no longer host the images. I don't want the hastle. USE YOUR OWN BANDWIDTH!!! I shall begin work on the Dark themes this week. It will be easier (I have already got the sidebar working), but harder (I need to figure out what color codes effect what, what colors to use, and I have to modify some images). Hopefully the templates will be done by the end of July. Then I can work endlessly on the RPG (or, at least, a "Trial Version" of it).

Also, I take back what I said about Squarespace being great. They are going to put ads on the pages. (If only I had a credit card and about $10 a month...)

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

[sad tone of voice] I'm a bad Blogger!

Why can't I be dedicated to this blog? Oh well, I don't care right now. This is the first blog post NOT written on the laptop! Also, I am a fan of the comic strip "Dilbert". Today, I discovered what could have become the spin-off to Dilbert, made by the author of the aforementioned comic strip. It is called "The Hairless Elbonian", and there are 28 comic strips you can read. (Elbonia is the 4th world country featured sometimes in Dilbert, where they all have tons of body hair and live in mud.) It's kind of funny. See for yourself by clicking here.

That's all for today!

Thursday, July 01, 2004

By the way...

I forgot to mention that over the weekend I got a

GMAIL ACCOUNT!!!!

But don't contact me by every means possible, begging me for one. The invites I will be able to give sometime already have owners!

Not again...

Well, I have been falling behind again. This last weekend and Monday-Tuesday I went camping. Mon. we went in the motorhome, and we brought along the laptop (the ONLY computer I use for writing this blog, I'm sitting on the floor and writing this :) ). So, to try to catch up, I did the Custom Yahoo! Light template. Find out more at

bloggertemplates.bravehost.com/templates/customlight

I will post it on the website shortly. Now to some bad news. First, I will no longer host the images for the templates. You must do it yourself. But that's OK! Second, I found out that when I get braces in September, I will be in for "no longer than 18 months," unless of course, my mouth starts acting strange. Then I will have to be in longer. There were a few problems, but so many solutions and combinations of solutions, I couldn't keep up. I'll just let my parents decide all this stuff!!!