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04/02/2011 14:56 #53963

Energy and Advertisments
Category: web
It seems like there is this never ending race for more bandwidth. Some of it is necessary to facilitate things like HD video, immersion gaming technology, etc. At the same time so much of it is totally wasted on web ads. Think about all of the news sites you visit. How much of the downloaded data is actually content and how much is simply bandwidth wasted, click the dancing monkey, buy this new software bullshit.

I feel like they are getting so much worse. What starts out generally as a header or footer ad, slowly turns into a third column of ads, then ads between each article and worst of all, ads that float down on top of the content and force you to close them in order to read the actual content.

Its not just bandwidth, it is energy being wasted. Its sick when you consider how much of it is not ever recognized by the user and then how much energy it takes. I would love to see a study of the energy used to produce web ads seen by a user for a year in terms of coal usage, etc. Not only is it bad for the environment and its very bad for your laptops battery life.

Having a browser with a flash blocking plugin helps, but with the move to HTML5 this is going to be increasingly difficult to block.
tinypliny - 04/03/11 18:38
Nevermind. Seems to be some other problem. As soon as I removed firefox, chrome has started dragging as well.
tinypliny - 04/03/11 18:19
Yes, FF04. I installed it using this ppa ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
Its not on my fastest laptop. This laptop has just 512 megs ram and is from 2005 and is running WattOS (with LXDE).
paul - 04/03/11 17:38
Firefox 4? I don't believe you. It loads for me in under 1 second.
tinypliny - 04/03/11 17:24
I just ran it head to head with chrome loading (e:strip). Sorry to say, it took a whole 46 seconds more to load (e:strip). I went a brewed a cup of tea and it was still loading.

sudo aptitude purge firefox it is.
tinypliny - 04/03/11 16:04
Trying it out now... (you have great persuasive powers ;-)
paul - 04/03/11 14:10
Firefox 4 is awesome. You should trying it again.
metalpeter - 04/03/11 13:52
Firefox used to be awesome and then at some point not sure why it seems to take forever on everything..........
tinypliny - 04/03/11 13:16
Sadly I do. Chrome is a resource-hogger. I prefer Opera 11.01 on Windows platforms and Chrome on linux. Somewhere around firefox's 2.0 release it started taking AGES to startup and I hated it and never got back to it.
paul - 04/03/11 13:13
Did you know IE9 and Firefox 4 are more efficient than chrome/safari.
tinypliny - 04/03/11 13:05
You need Chromelite!! :::link:::
tinypliny - 04/02/11 15:40
I hate those ads that keep coming on top of everything else. I use readability to cut down on junk a lot, but sometimes readability does not function well. Stripping down to text is another way to get rid of these annoyances. Some browsers like Opera allow you to script your own CSS and apply it on top of every webpage. It makes all uniqueness and colour go away but I am more productive and able to learn about things and read things much more quickly than without a readability or CSS filter.

04/01/2011 19:14 #53958

Gnome-shell minus black panel
Category: linux
I like that the new gnome-shell is created with js and css. It means a lot more people will be able to play with and add stuff to the desktop once its released. It just makes it way easy to tweak the interface.

Here I took the panel and made it tiny font size and transparent, giving me almost my entire screen as screen real estate with barely any UI until I am in the activity screen.

Normal
image

Activity Panel
image
paul - 04/02/11 20:16
(e:tinypliny) - you might get is faster than I thought, the delay really was an April Fools joke, so Fedora 15 is still on schedule for May. :::link:::

I am so glad because I was really starting to finally enjoy gnome-shell.
paul - 04/02/11 15:04
I can't decide if the delay is an april fools joke or not :::link:::
uncutsaniflush - 04/01/11 22:20
I can see how using CSS would be an advantage. I think of the strengths and weaknesses of e17 is that uses efl. Using EFL isn't particularly complicated (at least to my eyes), works on just about any device (including toasters) and it works across platforms but CSS is much more universal.
paul - 04/01/11 22:08
You can do that in gnome 2 already. The difference with new gnome shell is the styling is all done with CSS, the same style markup language used for web sites.
tinypliny - 04/01/11 20:53
I think you can make the panel transparent even now in gnome....
uncutsaniflush - 04/01/11 20:52
Is it configurable at a gui userland level?

Or like all sorts of other gnome2 stuffs that I've experienced in Ubuntu, did you have to edit conf files and/or write scripts? One of the things that annoys the hell out of me that gnomescreensaver doesn't have a gui for setting even though it is based on xscreensaver (which does have a settings gui).

I like the ability to resize a panel and to make it "invisible". Since I've been able to do both in KDE and e17, I would have thought you would have been able to do that in gnome as well.
tinypliny - 04/01/11 19:41
Oh well, it's pretty. :)
paul - 04/01/11 19:32
It make me question how the Fedora team thought they were 99% done and ready for release :::link:::

"Targeted release: Fedora 15
Last updated: 2010-03-25
Percentage of completion: 99%"

Under contingency plan they have "If gnome-shell is not complete or stable enough, keep it experimental and use the 'fallback mode'. If there are problems with certain combinations of graphics hardware and drivers, use gnome-shell only on known good combinations, and use fallback mode everywhere else." Maybe they will do just that.
paul - 04/01/11 19:29
Unfortunately, I can't easily share it with you as there was a lot of compiling involved to get this to work and gnome-shell is not ready for prime time yet. Gnome-shell and Gnome 3 were slated for Fedora 15 in May but today the Gnome release team met in Bangalore and pushed Gnome 3 back to September - so I don't know what that means for Fedora 15 :::link:::
tinypliny - 04/01/11 19:20
OOOHHH... Can you share this configuration maybe? What is that floaty search you are using?

04/01/2011 13:30 #53954

Downtown Buffalo is So Foggy
Category: buffalo
It looks so grey. I am ready for the sun.

image

image

image
metalpeter - 04/02/11 09:53
sometimes it can be scary like at ground level..................
flacidness - 04/02/11 02:37
Oh wow that looks really cool. I don't blame you though. Come on sun!!! I will bring some sunshine with him.
tinypliny - 04/01/11 19:21
I really liked the fog. It was exactly like that chrome theme: "Hedgehog in the fog". It's so noir-movie. :)

03/31/2011 17:00 #53950

Orange Tongue
Category: body
My tongue drama continues. Ever since I got this new fake tooth ny ears have been ringing, my nose has been burning, my throat is sore and my tongue turned orange.

You can see that the porcelain tooth replacement is really just a cheap nickel tooth covered in porcelain and not covered very well.

image

Its hard to tell just how orange it is based on the pic with flash.

I guess other people have had similar issues.

I am so tired of this tongue freakshow in my mouth. I wonder what causes it. Do I have some underlying fungal infection.? Am I allergic to the cheap metal in my tooth?

I wish I could just start my life over and ate no candy from the beginning.

image

JakeBoston - 06/29/13 21:04
I know this post is a couple of years old LoL I'm not sure if you ever solved your "orange tongue" problem, but I felt I should share my advice... This is actually Xerostomia, or severe dry mouth. I have the same problem from a medication I take so I never sweat. If you had your tooth replaced rather recently from this photo then it is more than likely caused from the procedure and since the metal is more exposed it has drying properties. The location of the tooth can't be replaced with only a porcelain tooth because it would break too easily since you always would chew with it. I do not think it to be a good job of the dentist having the metal center exposed, this seems to only be a fitting issue though, so it could be easily remedied with one return visit that should be free. If the Xerostomia continues then your solution would be drinking more water, sugar free hard candy or gum, or what I use and is a Godsend is a product that the company Biotene makes called Dry Mouth Gel. It is a minty gel you place on your tongue and apply to your gums evenly. It is amazing. Also, never use any mouth wash with alcohol and use a fluoride rinse such as Act. And buy a tongue scrapper. All of these can be found at any drugstore or grocery shop and are all less than $5. Hope you solved this issue already man I know how terrible it can be.
flacidness - 04/02/11 02:34
My goodness paul. Can you feel it on your tounge?
tinypliny - 04/01/11 19:25
What were you eating? Maybe its not fungal infection... maybe its cheetos...
tinypliny - 04/01/11 19:24
Maybe it's an allergy to the metal. It looks like allergy compounded by a fungal infection. Fungi are usually vivid crazy shades... but I am stumped on why you are getting the infection in the first place. Maybe it's an allergy -> inflammation -> loss of function -> infection -> orange tongue cycle.

Have you ever had this orange tongue or geographic tongue symptoms BEFORE you got that nickel plated tooth?
paul - 04/01/11 13:38
I had all the metal ones removed in 1998. There were 11 of them. I had them replaced with the resin. They lasted a good 10+ years and some need to be refilled. Our insurance only covers metal fillings in back teeth according the my dentist. I said I would just pay the $300 to get the resin ones. Anyways, this was a different problem. I was told the cavity could not be filled and the tooth needed to be sawn off and replaced by a porcelain crown. What I thought was a porcelain crown turned out to be filled with metal. I can see the nickel colored metal at the gumline and it has a nasty metal taste. I think at this point it might be impossible to remove it without loosing the roots.
fing - 04/01/11 12:04
Did you get the poly-resin filling? I had several cavities as a kid and sometimes they get bad again. I have them filled with poly-resin which takes a while to harden but I don't think it uses any metal. From what I understand it bonds better with your tooth too.
uncutsaniflush - 03/31/11 17:49
I hope your mouth/tongue/teeth get better fast. Stuff that would drive me crazy.

03/31/2011 16:54 #53949

Broken Tree On Linwood
Category: linwood
Its been several weeks since the tree fell down on the property down the street from us. The property is the back of the fairfaxes parking lot. Its annoying because no one ever shovels it, or cleans the garbage piles from it and now the tree. I wonder how long it will take.

image
tinypliny - 04/01/11 19:27
I see that tree all the time... and I wonder about the same thing. It's amazing that the resin on that tree stump must keep it from rotting.
uncutsaniflush - 03/31/11 17:48
I'm just as surprised you are about that tree still being there after all this time. I reckon the property owner doesn't give a shit. I wonder if the city would do anything about it.