Patent Issued

July 28th, 2004 • 1 comment General

By the way, I forgot to mention this a few weeks ago when it happened, but we finally got our first patent issued. You can read our press release about it too. Check that item off the to-do list.

Bring back the floatation buoys, life boats, and the ship!

July 19th, 2004 • Comments Off Technology

Sometimes I hate technology. I’ve been struggling with my laptop this entire last weekend. Now, normally I would say I hate computers because I thought I had experienced another hard drive crash. This time though, the fault lies squarely on software. Apparently my OS decided to eat itself. I’m sure I unknowingly did some things to exacerbate the situation. I’m hoping to get a new laptop but for now, I’m rebuilding the one I’ve got so that it is somewhat usable. Amazing how fast an OS is when you do a clean install and have no application bloat in it.

Man the floatation buoys because I’m abandoning the life boat…

July 12th, 2004 • Comments Off Technology

So this is part two of my software revolution. Okay, this one is much more minor than the first part where I abandoned Eudora.

I’ve been reading some reviews of Firefox which is essentially the Mozilla browser without all the other fanciness. Since I only use Mozilla as a browser and since Firefox is supposed to be a faster and more robust browser (but still from the Mozilla folks), I decided to take the plunge. There are a few things I don’t like about it but overall, I’m a fan. So au revoir Mozilla, hello Firefox.

I don’t think there is anything else, software wise, that I’m going to abandon anytime soon, but you never know…

Man the life boats because I’m abandoning the ship…

July 5th, 2004 • Comments Off Technology

So after over a decade (actually, almost 12 years) of being an ardent and vocal supporter of Eudora, I’ve finally thrown in the towel and given up on it. Eudora once was the most widely used piece of email software and had the most cutting edge technology available. After struggling with Eudora and how it dealt with SSL IMAP (read: it kept crashing because of some memory leak I think) I decided to give Thunderbird (the email component of Mozilla) a try.

Given Thunderbird’s origins (actually Mozilla’s origins), I assumed they wouldn’t use the same Microsoft libraries that have some hand in Eudora’s SSL IMAP not working properly. Not only have I been pleasantly surprised by how well Thunderbird works, there are features in the client that I never knew I needed until I got them. Thunderbird is missing some nice features of Eudora and other programs but the client is so extensible that it should be easy to write some add-ins for it. I’m contemplating doing this at some point in the near future.

By the way, the conversion from Eudora to Thunderbird was not as straightforward as one would hope. During my investigation I discovered that this was mainly the fault of Eudora than of Thunderbird. Yet another reason why I’m no longer a Eudora user.

So it is time to reset the fan clock and say that I am now a Thunderbird fan. Goodbye twelve years of cheerleading, hello Thunderbird fans!

Back From Europe

July 2nd, 2004 • Comments Off Marshall Memorial Fellowship

So I am finally back from Europe. Actually I have been for a few days. As I wrapped up the fellowship I got to do some neat things.

In Paris, we had a tour of Matignon, the French Prime Minister’s residence and office. This isn’t something that a regular tourist can do. We got lucky because a MMF alumnus works there. I also had a picnic with some other fellows in front of the Eiffel Tower while watching the Olympic torch relay and a France vs. Greece Eurocup 2004 game (Greece won 1-0). Finally, we did play some foosball in Paris. The hotel guy directed us to the bar “The Long Hop”. Pretty nice place with a weird underground cavern place. They were playing good music but the foos table sucked. When we got to the table, it had liquid spilt on it and cigarette ash on the field. Go figure.

My ankle is healing but it isn’t 100% yet. The doctor has prescribed some physical therapy so I think I’ll start that next week.