And Boredom Ensues

So, here I am counting down the minutes in my last day of work here.  There really hasn't been anything to do today, but I've managed to keep myself busy getting everything in order for the opening position.  Anyways, about the site, I'd expect a few reviews to start popping up.  I've been consumed with some old favorites (TF2, LFD) and a new one I picked up recenetly (Burnout Paradise) in my free time, and figured I should add in some content while I'm thinking about it.

Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is a firefox addon, that allows the user to customize the way any webpage looks, through some simple tweaks to the HTML actually running the website. Brought up in the news under negative press, most recently for the illegal "purchase" of items from Amazon, this is far from the norm. Currently, I'm using Greasemonkey for some simple interface tweaks/features for Google Reader, in order to give me some keyboard shortcuts and the ability to click the title of a post to open up an iFrame to see the original webpage, Google tweaks (to have my homepage include a link to this blog and some interface lifts), and a few other random websites. The addon has a pretty large following of user-created scripts, and is well worth a look if you've ever hated the way a website looked.

Rockbox & Last.fm

Well, for those of you out there who still have more than one mobile device to perform actions such as playing music, I give you Rockbox. Rockbox is simply a replacement firmware for your mp3 player, so long as it is in the following list (Copy Pasta'd from their homepage)

• Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
  (not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd/4th gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
• Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
• Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
• iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
• Olympus: M:Robe 100
• SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the AMS models)
• Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)

Not limited to iPods this simple to run/install/use firmware is richer than the default Apple firmware on my iPod video, while maintaining the old firmware's integrity. The ability to switch between firmwares is a definate plus, but the advantages Rockbox brings are numerous.

Beyond the interface lift, that it's given my device, it's also added a number of audiophile features, such as an equalizer, crossfade, playback gain, and scrobbling. That's right, the Rockbox firmware keeps a log of tracks played, allowing the user to upload this log to last.fm, for a more accurate protrayal of their listening habits. Linked here is the site that I most commonly use to upload.

Overall, it's an improvement over the Apple software, but you may run into issues with some devices, like my FM transmitter, which refuses to transmit in Rockbox. But, since my Apple firmware is still intact and I only use the transmitter in my car, the firmware works excellently for what I need. Give it a look if you're at all curious.

Things to Ban in Lieu of Video Games

An interesting list of things which details the list of deaths in relation to several other legal substances, such as soccer, religion and alcohol. Personally, I'd like to see tobacco in relation to these other topics, but contains a number of very good points. Alcohol is one item which has been banned and gone south before; however, it does make an interesting point regarding the hysteria in relation to video games in general. It is well, worth a read just to consider dangers with video games.

Internet Censorship

The title link to this post leads to a very detailed, and targeted, video regarding internet censorship. The video contains many details and tid-bits regarding internet censorship around the world, and provides them all with a very negative connotation.

I'm not stating that I'm for Internet Censorship, nothing could be farther from the truth, but the video goes so far to imply that it is a group of American companies which are enabling them to do this, which, itself, is false. Although companies like Google and Microsoft are acquiescing to requests from governments (such as China) their choices are down to 2. They can either do as they ask and get some of their potential income from the mass population of China or whatever the country in question, or they can deny them and themselves be censored from their country's internet access. From a business standpoint, it only makes sense to listen to these governments. These companies are not doing as China asks for no good reason, it is very clear as to why they are doing these things, to ensure financial gain, and, honestly, what more could you ask of a company?