Okay, so I don’t exactly need a little yellow fish in my ear for this … perhaps a version that gives my eyes the ability to see and comprehend in the way the fish does for speaking!

Are you wondering what I’m babbling on about?

It’s to do with a Google ad I noticed tonight in my Google Mail — reading an email about Adobe InDesign magazine, this ad below somewhat caught my eye!

Now, I’m “guessing” it is in Arabic or similar — my visual recognition of languages gives me a hint — but I’m willing to admit I could be wrong here!

Why place an ad this way? Is there a setting that controls the ad for the language of the recipient? Because if there is, in this case, it’s way off the mark.

Curiosity got the better of me and I clicked through — it’s a firm that does design and web hosting (99% of the site is not in English, but the source code is and a couple of graphics), so they obviously had keywords relevant to my Google mail message … but I can’t image how this gets them a good response.

Unusual, but I don’t think profitable!

I find the MileWideBack add-on handy when using the mouse for web surfing: simply slam the cursor up against the left edge of the maximized window and use the scroll button to quickly navigate between open tabs.

As a surfer who often has several tabs open at once, this is indispensable.

Firefox 3 has just been launched: I’m not patient enough to wait for 3.0.1, so I’ve downloaded and installed it today. Most add-ons will be compatible in the next few days, however I didn’t want to wait for MileWideBack, as it hasn’t been updated for a long time.

So … my “quick fix” worked and I’m sharing it (I’m using Windows XP). Total time to fix: about 5 minutes (including waiting for a 3Mb download).

1. Download the official mozilla MileWideBack 0.2.9 xpi file and saved it to my desktop
2. Download the freeware PeaZip archive manager sourceforge project. Install and Run.
3. Within PeaZip’s interface, navigate to where you saved the xpi file
4. Extract all. Delete the extracted “chrome” and “defaults” folders, you don’t need them
5. Open install.rdf in a text editor like Notepad or UltraEdit
6. First, change the version to a new number — I used 0.2.9a:

   <em:version>0.2.9a</em:version>

7. Second, change the max Firefox version — I used 3.0.*:

   <em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>

8. Save the file and drag-n-drop back into the xpi archive
9. In Firefox, open the new xpi file using File > Open File… — it will install as a normal add-on
10. Restart Firefox … MileWideBack is now working again!

It may have already been updated by the time you read this post: if not, I hope it helps!

These were also the steps I basically followed to “update” All-in-One Gestures to be FF3 compatible (I found this solution in the feedback for All-in-One Gestures).

Should be interesting to see the changes in this major milestone — WordPress, the content management system used to run this website, has just been upgraded to version 2.5.

As mentioned in the official WordPress blog, it now natively includes:

multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

Some of those features aren’t necessarily new — as they were previously available through plug-ins — but it certainly helps to have them a central component of WordPress and part of the full development cycle. That’s especially so knowing that over 110 people contributed over 6 months to the 2.5 version. That’s one of the upsides to a choice like WordPress: a very active development and user community helps ensure a robust/stable application to use.

Usually, even though we’ve been through to “release candidate” versions, there are still things to iron out — especially as the plugin authors for plugins in use adjust their coding to be compatible. So I’m still inclined to wait for 2.5.1 until I put it into action on one of the several blogs that I use WordPress on. I remember the same kind of issues when we went to 1.5 and 2.0!

My love/hate relationship with technology continues.

On the love side, technology helps me make money. I use a computer to write, to design, to create output that I get paid for. I also get to easily keep in touch too with clients and friends. I can write an email blast and make it look one-on-one (and I love it when I get back personal replies to an email campaign). And today, installing our new A3 mono laser printer (to replace our retired A3) — well, I used the power of Google to enable us to reset settings and get it working again.

On the hate side, technology is frustrating and invasive. I’ll illustrate “frustrating” with this example: my 3-month old PC with high powered configuration and graphics card cannot play video without a FULL crash — I don’t even get a “blue screen of death” — just an instant shutdown/restart. Terrible. So much for that multi-threaded 32-bit operating system. Despite upgrades/uninstalls/reinstalls and many HOURS of time, nothing helps. No reset button here to assist.

And “invasive” — the expectation of email and online communication (along with mobile/cell phones) can be very interruptive. An email doesn’t REQUIRE instant response. My emails arrive silently and sometimes I’ll take hours (or days) to download them. I’ve seen drivers and pedestrians nearly get killed using their mobile phones: forgetting completely about their surroundings. Or even people leaving a movie theatre with their head down, buried in their mobile. What’s so important that at 9pm Sunday it needs instant attention? I love NOT having a mobile phone turned on (only when I’m away, or away from Mel — I’ll carry it with me but I’m lucky to turn it on more than once every few months). Some people mention they envy not having to be a slave to their phone. I’m pretty damn sure they could turn it off more often. No-one really needs to answer their phone when they’re taking a leak!

The video crash is a real pain. It IS like beating your head against a brick wall: every attempt to fix it fails (driver updates for windows, driver updates for the card, drivers for the monitor, re-install DirectX, update media player, turn off hardware acceleration). The problem wasn’t there a month ago. Then it was. Too late to try a System Restore point. Too much time wasted on fixing something that should be more robust!

Grrrrrrr, technology. Is it no wonder I fantasise about flinging my PC out the window at least once per day?!? At least my friends/clients with little experience feel some relief that even someone who has been using computers for over 20 years feels the same way they do.