smart computer use?

What the hell is Page’s Law? Guys at Google can make their own laws. This one makes sense though:

Put really simply, what this means in the real world is that the performance of a PC and other devices constantly increases. So why do PCs never really seem to get faster?

Well, call it Page’s Law. Page’s Law was actually coined by Sergey Brin, who dropped in at the tail end of a Google press conference, and was asked about the pace of software and Web development.

“Page’s Law is sort of the opposite of Moore’s Law,” Brin said. “Page’s Law says that every 18 months software becomes twice as slow.”

Yeah.

Interesting. I leave my computer for just a few minutes and all of the sudden gmail grew some buttons.

I had to check some other themes just to make sure it wasn’t the theme I was using only. It does seem to be all themes. I also see some search inputs in the drop down boxes for “Move To” and “Labels”. Good stuff.

I haven’t noticed any updates to Gmail recently that visually grabbed me like this one. Maybe it’s just cause it’s such a commonly used interface component that has been given the new looks.

Ok. I’ve been wanting to set up dual monitors on my main home PC for a long time. I never did until now, mainly because of the financial reasons.

Well, I had some tech money to spare in my business budget this year, and decided it was time to get two monitors.

The Benefits

Why do I want to monitors? The benefits of a dual monitor setup are quite profound. From PCWorld:

Stefan Thibeault, a programmer at a clothing manufacturer in Montreal, is convinced of the value of using dual PC monitors. Doing so has given him a much larger electronic workspace, eliminated such annoyances as the need to frequently alt-tab between applications and cut down on his trips to the printer.

Hmm, “Less alt-tabbing and less trips to printer”, you say?

Those are the exact top 2 reasons why I wanted dual monitors. It’s great. I used to have to print of simple text documents just so I could put them on a document clip next to my monitor for reference when typing. No longer. Dual monitors eliminated that.

I also used to have to to a lot of alt-tabbing between browsers, editors and other windows during complex web development projects (and even simple ones). All the tabbing and such was non-productive, I’d often tab away from a screen and then forget what I was even working on. Being able to keep more windows visible at all times helps keep me on task quite well, it’s much tougher to mentally wander.

The Initial Setup

I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on dual monitors, here’s what I ended up spending (I thought I got by pretty cheap):

• Two 24 inch Westinghouse LCD monitors for $220 each(on sale at Best Buy)
• A Geforce 9600 GT with dual monitor outputs for $120
• Two 10 foot VGA extension cables for $20
• Two DVI to VGA adapters for $20

So, basically all this hardware cost me about $700. Not bad considering that I would be upgrading from a single 19 inch LCD to two 24 inch LCD monitors, all for $700. Not bad at all.

The Catch

Well, once I got everything set up, I noticed that one of the Westinghouse LCD’s was broken. It had a stuck red pixel and the native resolution did not center at all on the monitor. Too bad, the other one worked perfectly.

After I found out that the one LCD monitor was bad (it took me a week to figure out it was the monitor and not my video card or drivers), I brought it back to Best Buy to get a replacement. They were out of that model though, nuts. I did get it for a great price, and that’s cause it was a discontinued model. So, now I wasn’t going to be able to have matching 24 inch LCD’s no matter what I did.

So I just returned the one broken one and got no replacement. I wish I coulda figured out that it was broken more quickly, I might have been able to get a replacement. Oh well.

Now I’m basically running a 24 inch and a 19 inch LCD side by side as dual monitors. That is still pretty slick and I really like it.

What the hell is Fmail?

I’ve a got a story for you.

Recently, I tried to punch in “gmail” in the Firefox address bar, thinking that since Firefox is smart it’ll just automatically take me over to my Gmail account.

Well… I typed Gmail wrong and instead typed in “fmail” and hit the Enter key.

Nuts. After watching the screen trying to load some web page, and watching in awe realizing that I had typed in “fmail” instead of “gmail”, I figured “What the heck. I’m just gonna sit and see what happens”.

Loading continues…

Fmail has a home page. There is a good ol’ landing page for Fmail.

It’s a Facebook email app. Nice. Alright, I guess I’m not really interested in email apps at this current time. After 8+ years of battling with trying to find the ultimate email app, I’ve ended up using a free web app provided by Google. Yeah, good times. I’m not going to even think about trying out Fmail, even though I ended up their by accident.

Cripes. I gotta be more careful when just entering simple keywords in the Firefox address bar.

Back to the World Series. Go Rays!

Alright. Maybe I was too harsh. I’ve quickly noticed that Fmail appears to interface with Gmail in Facebook. Props. That is a good platform to work from for Facebook, bringing in Gmail and all. I was too harsh. Yeah I like Fmail. I should maybe log into Facebook more often.

Lately I have been noticing a strange glitch in trying to access Godaddy.com. It seems like pretty much any time that I try to view Godaddy.com in Firefox I will get this Connection Interrupted message on the screen:

I try to clear my browser cache and other settings just to see if maybe there is a hiccup that is causing this, but it never really seems to work.

Also, I usually check to see if I can also get to Godaddy.com in Internet Explorer 7 just for kicks, even though I don’t use IE7 much. Any time that I get this Connection Interrupted message in FireFox, I also cannot get Godaddy.com to load in IE7.

Hmm….

I am not really sure what could be causing this glitch, but it’s pretty annoying. It seems like any time that I need to hop onto Godaddy.com to do some quick domain configuration operations that I end up not being able to get to the site at all.

After a couple weeks of dealing with this random error on the Godaddy.com site, I tried to view the site in the new Google Chrome browser.

Viewing the site in Google Chrome seems to “bring it back”, so to speak, when I cannot view it in FireFox. For example, when I get the Connection Interrupted error in FireFox, I open up Chrome and go to Godaddy.com. The site loads, and then afterwards I can view Godaddy in FireFox again.

Weird.

Any input on this error would be appreciated. I can’t seem to find much info about how to resolve this issue when searching the web, even though I find many comments about people with similar issues.