For the most part, browsers have always been the gateway to Internet. They were traditionally used as a reader for the web as it helps users to search for information. Modern browsers continue to hold the fundamental approaches in using the web, but they are also becoming more complex especially through standards and technologies supporting the world wide web, as well as consideration to provide good security.

For many years, Mozilla Firefox has been my primary web browser. It began with pre-version 1.0 release where I remembered admiring the browser so much for its simplicity and extensibility. Over the years, I collected a list of add-ons that I couldn’t live without. I continued to use Firefox until lately with version 8 when I discovered that it was eating up a lot more memory and becoming slower. I downgraded to v3.26.x release upon hearing it being the last version without memory leak. That only lasted for a few weeks because of its slow rendering of most javascript-intensive websites. I began searching for alternatives and was very pleased to discover how grown up Google Chrome has become since its early release.

The experience in switching web browser is similar to the time when I first made the transition from PC to Mac. It took time to find alternatives to what I’ve gotten used to with the new platform. From the first look, Google Chrome has met two out of three requirements I set, speed and simplicity. I consider availability of extensions to be a highly crucial ingredient, just as comparable to third-party apps for mobile platforms, or various software for different operating systems. Surprised to see a huge list of extensions available in Chrome Web Store, I’m also very pleased to find most of the alternative add-ons that were on Firefox.

NoScript in Firefox is to ScriptNo in Chrome.
AdBlock Plus in Firefox is AdBlock Plus (Beta) in Chrome.
HTTPS Everywhere in Firefox is HTTPS Enforcer in Chrome.
LastPass in Firefox is available for Chrome.
Xmarks in Firefox is available for Chrome.
NoSquint in Firefox has no similar extension for Chrome, but go to Preferences -> Under the Hood and set “Page zoom” to 120%.

Back when Google Chrome browser was first announced, I thought there was no way it could gain as much market share as Firefox. Turned out I was dead wrong as Chrome has since gathered more usage than Firefox. As technology improves, existing platform has to play well around it, and the product that can best adapt the current landscape will win.

I hate to live in the past, but bear with me because I happened to discover many photos from “back-in-the-days.” I hope to do this piece-by-piece (which explain the multiple parts).

When I first moved to California in May of 2005, I had literally nothing. After graduating from Western Michigan University, I packed as little things as I could into two big boxes for Fedex ground shipping. Then I disassembled the motherboard from the PC, unplug the DDR, hard disks, DVD writer, VGA card, power supply, monitor, keyboard, mouse and even the front-panel of the casing for the power on/off switch. I packed them into my baggage so that I have instant access to computer as soon as I got there.

The pictures below show the first week or so after my arrival. I didn’t have a casing yet. All the computer parts were assembled on the carpet. I also didn’t have mattress, but thankfully I carried a blanket which I used as a cushion. At the time, I was renting a cheap 500-square-feet studio apartment located near my work place.

I was young. I was energetic. I was naive. But it was fun.

Before smartphones came along, we had physical notebooks for taking notes, schedules and reminders, computer for browsing the web, CD player for listening to music, books/magazine/newspapers to read, DVDs to watch, etc.

Today, many of these capabilities are being integrated into handheld devices, replacing the physical items we used to depend on into digital format. Content providers such as Netflix and Hulu, are integrated into set-up boxes (Roku, Boxee Box, Apple TV, etc). There is no doubt that more and more televisions in the near future will have these functionalities built-in. Cars on the market today sometimes have GPS, voice activation and MP3 players. Integrating technologies into daily life is a wonderful thing. It saves us time and money, and improve the quality of life.

Life itself is more or less the same deal. Couple are brought together to bring better lives and happiness. A community consists of a group of people interacting with one another. A family is like a successful startup in life. Bringing people together is another form of integration.

It is clear that when it comes to convenience, there is no better way than to combine all into one. Successful unification proves that each of the functionalities have reached its own point of maturity.

The idea of social networking stems from individuals getting together to exchange information. In fact, this is what Internet is all about. However these information are scattered all around and we see tools arise from it trying to sort these information in a more organized way. What happens when one company has all the information from everyone who uses the web, and is able to control these data? As much as it is more convenient to input all information for one entity, one can certainly become dependent upon it. There will be severe consequences should that entity lose or misuse those information.

Thankfully, the benefit of the current state of social networking is that for every mature feature integrated, there usually tends to be an alternative. I, for one, prefer to use multiple services that place importance on one particular area. For instance, Flickr for photos, Twitter for status updates and Octopress for blogging. Putting everything in one basket maybe convenient for me and my intended audience, but it greatly reduces control over my own data.

Sleep

I’m a big believer in sleep. I need to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep. Any less will affect my mood and productivity. So, how do I feel at work if I get only 5 hours of sleep? One word: Crap. I don’t feel like doing actual work. Absorbing information will be 10 times harder.

Exercise

These days, combined with daily 30 minutes exercise on treadmill and swimming during the weekends, I’m starting to feel better. The one thing I’m struggling to take control over with is diet. Sometimes I imagine that I can be healthier if I’m a vegan. But that’s a little too much to ask.

Working Environment

At work, I have one area in my cubicle where I stacked up boxes and placed the monitor, keyboard, mouse, laptop so that I can actually stand while working. I don’t think that it’s a good idea to stand for long when working on something that requires a lot of thinking and brain power. So, I have another area in the cube with Macbook Air, where I can sit down to write code and brainstorm ideas.

While I believe that I’m physically fine, I’m starting to feel mentally burn out. But that’s another story for another day to write about.

Synergy made it convenient to use a keyboard and a mouse across multiple machines. My setup involved using Mac OS X Lion as the server, and Windows 7 (64-bit) as the client. One of the most annoying and noticeable bugs of Synergy involved the inability to use SHIFT key on the client machines. Current version of Synergy as of this writing is v1.3.8 stable and v1.4.5 beta. Both these versions exhibit this symptom.

The temporary solution is to downgrade the server’s Synergy to v1.3.4 Mac OS X Intel 32-bit and the client to v1.3.4 Windows 32-bit. On Mac, I also used QSynergy as the front-end UI and set it to automatically start after login.

I spent this year’s Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin’s place with her friends. While I had fun listening to their conversation, it began to slowly dawn on me that I have been way too quiet. I’m not sure if I was more shy or uninteresting.

Not long after I got home from gym earlier, I came across an article on How to be Interesting. I’m not sure if I have too much time on hand during this Thanksgiving weekend, but I’m presently inspired and looking forward to try some of the recommendations, starting with blogging at least every week.

Over on Mac, I’m starting to prefer Safari 5.0.x over Firefox 3.6.x for its performance. Having installed a bunch of extensions on Safari, I was unable to access my computers via LogMeIn. Turned out both AdBlock and Ghostery were the culprits. At least, for AdBlock, LogMeIn works fine after adding its domain to “Excluded sites” list.

Nemesis is a command-line network packet crafting and injection utility. Ubuntu 10.04 does not provide easy installation of the package through apt-get command. Here are the instructions to successfully install Nemesis on Ubuntu 10.04:

1. Remove any previous libnet (sudo apt-get remove libnet1).
2. Download the source for libnet-1.0.2a (Google it out).
3. Install gcc-4.1 (sudo apt-get install gcc-4.1).
4. Change the CC line in the Makefile of libnet-1.0.2a to be “CC = gcc-4.1” and compile.
5. Download nemesis-1.4 source code (Google it out).
6. Perform “./configure –with-libnet-includes=/usr/include/ –with-libnet-libraries=/usr/lib/ –enable-debug” and compile.

With prepaid SIM card, calls are charged per minute. I paid $100 for 1000 minutes every year, which is equivalent to 10 cents a minute. Or 10 cents per text message. Although my phone usage is considered insignificant at all compared with other average household, I’m still determined to find ways to reduce my phone expenses.

Watching a streaming YouTube video on iPad can be quite annoying when it occasionally pauses halfway. So, before I even intend to watch any YouTube videos, I did a little preparation by downloading them into a local machine, and have the machine stream to my device via wifi, which is significantly faster without any hiccups.

For downloading the YouTube video, Firefox has a really nice plugin called Video DownloadHelper. For streaming to iOS devices, I look for no other than Air Video app. Air Video helps to perform live conversion of flash video (flv) file downloaded by Video DownloadHelper so that it can be played on any iOS devices.

Sure it takes extra time and effort, but that’s the trade-off for convenience vs quality of experience.