Account bugs in ThunderBird 0.5

ThunderBird 0.5
has a bug / missing feature regarding passwords beyond the primary POP account.
TB 0.5 worked fine with one account. Today I wanted to use another email address
with it, and there’s no place to enter the password. Anywhere. It also broke
the Get Mail button. Frustrating to see this in an otherwise very nice program.

Oscar night: Freedom fries are from Belgium

Finally world recognition. Robin Williams just said it in
front of the whole world: Freedom Fries are from Belgium.
Thank you! Thank
you! Thank you!

From the first time I visited the US I couldn’t quite
understand how the French were associated with them. Since Belgians are modest
people, the French must have taken credit at some point in history.

Too bad it’s still often a toss whether the fries served in an
American establishment will be good.

Loved the opening of the Oscar
night with Billy Crystal!

Digital visit at the Snow Show in Rovaniemi, Finland

While browsing online Finland a little bit, I stumbled onto an international snow & ice exhibit in Rovaniemi; near the Arctic circle. You have to love the internet for such a nice find on a Saturday morning while you are having your cup of coffee. Navigation between the different exhibits is a little bit of a back & forth, but it’s certainly worth it when you see some the amazing creations & photos.

 

100 million free songs -1

I just purchased a song from the iTunes Music Store
(iTMS) using one of the winning promo caps from the Pepsi iTunes Music
Giveaway. I rarely ever drink Pepsi, but wanted to give it shot &
picked a winning bottle at WalMart last week.

I will admit that I
have been out of touch with music a little bit the past years. I’ve cruised the
iTMS a few times, but didn’t feel compelled to buy anything. Not surprisingly I
couldn’t think of anything to buy for a whole week. I was leaning towards
something New Age, but couldn’t decide on. Luminous idea: why not see if the
happy energetic theme song from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is available?
Tada! Widelife - All Things (Just Keep Getting Better) now has a place in our
digital music library. (Url
to access this song in iTunes)

OS X Jaguar & Panther security update

Time to visit System Preferences - Update Software. Many
fixes (5 MB) to “stuff under the hood”

Operation Times Tower - Get the solder

We got a scale Dept 56 Times Tower building which
features a motorized lighted dropping ball. Well, it wasn’t moving &
lighting properly, so I had to take things apart, which turned into a little
adventure.

How do you open things that aren’t meant to be opened?

How do you fix a circuit board half the size of a postage stamp?

(read more).

Straight Eye for the Queer Guy

If you like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, then here’s a
fun video clip: Straight Eye For The
Queer Guy hosted at iFilm.com. There are many good clips
there, so only start cruising around when you have a spare hour - WINK.

TV time

Finally!! After what seems a really long wait Bravo is back with the best show of
2003: Queer Eye for
the Straight Guy. I can’t way to see & hear Carson. He made us
laugh so many times! If you’ve never seen the show, you may want to tune in at
least once. They’re quite a team & have pulled off some amazing transforms
in the past.

The only downside is that we can’t watch the new
episodes of Ground
Force on BBC
America at the same time. But, since Alan Titchmarsh is no longer on
the show we don’t view it so often any more. It’s just not the same without him.

The new gallery is online + December photos uploaded

I switched to another JAlbum skin / theme called
Showoff (rather than further modifying the Exhibit theme I was using). Key ideas
were lighter code & pages, quick(er) browsing, neutral background, intuitive
navigation, a few extra details similar to the exhibit mod I did and good
rendering as low as 800×600. You’ll notice the thumbnails are a bit smaller
while the images are a little (1/4) bigger. It looks nicer with the bit larger
photos. The gallery renders fine in Mac IE 52 - Safari 1 - Firefox 0.8 and
Windows IE 6; so one should be set to view it

We added December
photos to the gallery. “mid December” has some general winter images and
“Christmas” will take you to Canada, Quebec City & snowmobiling through the
woods & countryside. Click here to jump there

Happy Valentine’s Day

While I’m used to Valentine’s Day being the celebration
of love for your most beloved, in the U.S. it’s a little bit broader, with
Valentine’s wishes for the friends, family & colleagues as well. It still
feels a bit odd to me, that one buys Valentine’s cards & gifts for someone
other than the person most dear to your heart, but it’s nice to show other
people your appreciation.

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

BBC Valentine’s around the
world - Annie’s Valentine
History Page

Mozilla FireFox 0.8

An update (0. with a new name for the Mozilla cross
platform open source browser. Welcome FireFox

Those of us using Safari (under Mac OS X) are pretty accustomed to
tabbed browsing. If you are running any flavor of Windows with Internet
Explorer, you may want to download FireFox because of the tabbed browsing, built
in security and other new features you
don’t find in IE. That, and the lack of IE flaws & vulnerabilities.

Top eight morons of the year?

1. WILL THE REAL DUMMY PLEASE STAND UP?
AT&T
fired President John Walter after nine months, saying he lacked intellectual
leadership. He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it’s not Walter
who’s lacking intelligence.

2. WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR
FRIENDS:
Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue
a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas
canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them in the
police line, shouting, “Please come out and give yourself up.”

(read
more)

Busy weekend

We had a busy but fun weekend. The weather was a bit
uncooperative for our friend’s flights on Friday (de-icing queue in Boston &
Portland International Jetport (PWM) started plowing snow 1 hour late) causing a
2 hour delay.

We toured the area on Friday evening. Saturday morning
we went dogsledding 2 hours North of here, near Moosehead lake, with our guide
Ed Mathieu from moosecountrysafaris.com.

It was a great experience. So quiet & peaceful. I can certainly
recommend it.
We had lunch at The Black Frog and
drove into Canada to see a few sights and visit the ice hotel
near Quebec.

Truly a unique place. I doubt we’ll stay overnight any
time soon though. It is too cold for my taste.

There was a very
frustrating dinner delay at the Auberge Benedict Arnold.
Those with reservations who arrived at 8PM had dinner close to 10PM. Not enough
staff, and they really didn’t do anything to handle such situation (greet the
customers, give them an aperitif with a snack, explain the delay, … rather
than keeping them waiting, then waiting in the hallway, sitting at an empty
table while staff runs around ignoring you for 20 minutes, etc) Add a chain
smoker in the non smoking section … and you understand we were a little
frustrated - and HUNGRY. If we hadn’t been recommended this auberge and hadn’t
had a good stay there in the past, we certainly would have walked away. Anyway.
Once we had some food & a glass of wine the atmosphere improved … and we
slept really well.

On the way back we did some sightseeing between
Notre Dame des Pins & the border, where I got caught in a little bit of
drifting snow …


While taking
a few photos the wind suddenly picked up. I don’t recall ever feeling so cold so
quickly in my hands & face. The snow dust really deep chills any exposed
skin in a matter of seconds. It sure increases your appreciation for
mountaineers, arctic adventurers, etc.

The rest of the trip back was
uneventful, and before dark we still got to visit our favorite little park.

A gallery update with photos from late December through January is
in the works

Don’t forget to put a stamp on your email!

I have always been a proponent to tax spammers for their
bandwith & email usage to the point they can no longer stay in business.
But! Now the big heads such as Bill Gates are proposing
that every sender would pay x cents for every email?!

Give me a
break. Spam & viruses have already caused people to like their computer
& the internet far less. Now we need digital stamps?! ISPs will be saving
tons with all the saved bandwith by not having to deliver spam, so why should we
have to pay more?

Ggggrrrr. That’ll be $5 for that 1 MB email you
are sending to 5 friends.

Superbowl Nudity Investigation

Do we really need an investigation into this? [Photo for those that missed
it] They crossed the line. She “forgot” to wear a bra. True, it should
not have occurred, but it has now been on TV every hour for 48 hours! Double
standards, don’t show it, don’t show it - but hey, every TV network repeats it
endlessly! And, why waste tax dollars on it? Oh, law suits? Right, it’s all
about the money.

Personally, I am more concerned about kids being
exposed day after day to certain language, behavior & violence on radio
& TV, having easy access to illegal drugs & firearms; than an uncovered
breast. Depending on where you live you don’t have to drive far to see what I am
talking about.

Oh well.

Must see: How to tow a car out of the snow

If you’re having a bad day, you must see this video:
Clip

(14 MB Windows Media Video file)

Aaahhh commercials

It’s that one day of the year we enjoy a commercial break

We’re not quite the superbowl fans, but we keep the TV on, just
to catch who’s paid for the most expensive advertisement spots of the year.
Budweiser sure is pulling some laughs! I had already seen the leaked preview of
the Pepsi iTunes ad. Nice bit of attention for the iTunes Music store.

The G5 arrived yesterday. It’s quite nice. Lots of controls and
options. Pretty easy to step into for me, having used other Canon cameras. But,
you may hear that I am not super enthusiastic. Is this a good camera? Sure. A
winner? No. I certainly don’t give it a 5-star rating as it has a few rough
edges. In the first 25 test shots I probably already hit all the issues this
camera has. I’ll hold my verdict till I shot another 100 photos with it. I
haven’t decided yet if this is going to be a keeper. This thing may need to go
back, till they come out with a G6 that does away with these
problems.

Other short news?
- We joined the gym on Monday and
both enjoy our daily workouts.
- No snow. Only about 1 cm early January
and then nothing Today it went for the first time above freezing in two
months. It felt really warm in the sun for the first time in several weeks.

- For the site I will likely abandon the dynamic menu. It’s unbelievable,
but the menu does not support the positioning & sizing I need for the
updated design. I don’t want it to work half and half … so out it’ll go.