My dad has just posted some details on how he's reducing the humidity under his house. It's a pretty cool solution that utilizes 'SmartVents' (essentially a vent with some muffin fans and the appropriate sensors). Head on over to the article to get the full details.

Is anyone else seeing a slow startup issue with Firefox 3.5? I'm talking about the initial load (after turning on your computer, for example). For me, startup times have increased dramatically with 3.5, and I've even tried creating a new profile. On my machine at home, cold startup takes between 30 and 60 seconds. On my laptop, it's between 15 and 30 seconds. Firefox 3.0.11 took on the order of 5 or 10 seconds on both machines.

I've got to believe something is wrong with 3.5. Maybe a 3.5.1 is on the horizon...

Update: According to commenter Dean, cleaning out your temporary directory should help things (and it worked for me). To locate the temp folder, open a command prompt and type echo %TEMP%. For me, the folder was under "Documents and Settings\Jonah\Local Settings\Temp." I cleaned this out using the Disk Cleanup utility (mine was 750 MB in size!) and startup was much faster (10 seconds or so).

Update 2: I've found the requisite bug about this problem on Bugzilla: bug 501605. If I read this correctly, NSS uses files in the temporary folder to seed its random number generator. If you have tons of files, this operation takes a long time (the file scan operation isn't as efficient as it should be). There may also be other factors (as commenters in the bug report suggest), but this is at least one of the problem areas.

The latest and greatest version of Firefox is now available. There are a lot of new features and fixes in this release, including HTML 5 support, the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, Private Browsing, and lots more.

Both CoLT and Googlebar Lite are compatible with the new release, so make sure you're up to date with both.

I've bitten the proverbial bullet and joined twitter. You can follow me (if you're so inclined) at my oh-so-clever username: jonahbishop. I'll be using the service for small things that aren't quite worth a blog post (it will not take the place of this site). We'll see how it goes over time.

Frustratingly enough, when I signed up for twitter, the site was having major problems. Thankfully, things seem to be back to normal now. I've noticed a strange thing with the service, however. After climbing into the twitter pool, I noticed a number of leeches attaching themselves to my account. In other words, a number of random people started following me for no apparent reason (I recognize none of them). Does anyone else here who uses twitter see the same thing? Is there a way to stop it? Are these people simply spammers out to get "trackback" style web-cred?

The 30th annual Festival for the Eno is coming up next weekend, July 3-5. If you're in the Triangle area in North Carolina, be sure to check it out. Tickets are $15 at the gate, and most (if not all) of the money goes to conserving the Eno River. The event is "trash free" (over 90% of trash is either recycled or composted) and a great way to spend a day. Over 80 musical and dance groups will be performing on 4 stages during the 3 days. Add to this great food, art vendors, and the beautiful West Point on the Eno setting, and you have a recipe for a great time.

I'll most likely be out there on Friday; if you see me, be sure to say hello!

Recently, I've been doing a lot of thinking about backup strategies for my data. I'm bad about not backing things up on a regular basis, and I'm hoping to change that. There are a number of routes one can take, and I've been looking at several.

The easiest solution is to backup data onto removable media (CD, DVD, or an external hard drive). This method is cheapest, but it also has some serious drawbacks. CDs and DVDs have relatively small data footprints, which means you have to use many discs to backup sizable data stores. Writable discs also don't last forever. The most serious flaw with this strategy, however, is that the backups are not off site. If someone breaks in and steals my computer, they are almost certain to also take the external hard drive sitting next to it. The same can be said for a fire; if the machine burns, so does the hard drive.

A number of online services are available for doing data backup. Carbonite and Mozy are two of the bigger ones I've heard about. These services give you off site backups, but they too have drawbacks. Often, these services have software that runs all the time on your machine, incrementally backing up as you go (which may be something you don't want). In some cases, you also have limited control over exactly what gets backed up. The services cost money, and you're giving your data to a third party. And, with lousy broadband in the US, initial upload times for large data can be painfully slow.

What does everyone here do to backup their data? Can anyone recommend a service or strategy that works well for them?

If you use WordPress, I advise against upgrading to version 2.8. I attempted to do so to this site this evening (via Subversion), and everything appeared to go smoothly. Unfortunately, upon logging in to my admin panel, I noted that everything was broken. The external site still performed as expected, but I couldn't get around in the admin area.

Zero steps forward, twenty steps back.

Maybe others will have better luck than I did. I have since reverted back to 2.7.1 for the time being, though my database may now be corrupt. If you notice anything funky around this site, please, please, please let me know.

A recent trend among websites for games that have a "M for Mature" (or similar) rating is the use of age gates. These gates require the user to enter their birth date before they can view information on the subject in question. Usually, the user is presented with three pull down menus: one for the month, one for the day, and one for the year. From a legal perspective, I can understand why companies want to use this feature. But who are these gates really keeping out? Every kid should know that by providing an old enough date, they can gain access to the site. After all, this isn't rocket science.

Every time I visit a website with one of these gates, I enter the most ridiculous date possible by selecting the oldest year offered (usually 1900). Maybe if enough people enter ridiculous dates every time, this annoying website 'feature' will go away.

Way back when I signed up for Netflix, I added a bunch of movies I had never seen to my queue. Several of these movies fall into what I call my "list of shame" (I'm borrowing the term from Dan Trachtenberg of the The Totally Rad Show). These are movies that everyone but me had already seen, and are fairly seminal. Yesterday, Dustin and I were discussing what qualifies a movie for the "list of shame" and I'm not sure I have a steadfast rule. For the most part, it's a movie that, if I told most anyone I hadn't seen it, they would say incredulously, "You haven't seen that?!?"

Anyways, I thought it would be fun to share a few movies from my list, along with the rating I ultimately gave it at Netflix (using their 5 star rating scheme):

• Beverly Hills Cop (5)
• Big Trouble in Little China (4)
• Billy Madison (4)
• The Birds (4)
• The Blues Brothers (4)
• Caddyshack (3)
• The Dirty Dozen (4)
• Doctor Strangelove (5)
• The Godfather (5)
• The Godfather: Part II (4)
• The Goonies (4)
• Groundhog Day (4)
• Happy Gilmore (4)
• It's a Wonderful Life (4)
• Jaws (4)
• Saturday Night Fever (4)
• Scarface (4)
• Smokey and the Bandit (4)
• Spaceballs (3)
• Tron (4)

For the most part, I really enjoyed every movie on this list. And I can now say "yes, I've seen that" when asked by someone about these movies. There are still a few upcoming movies on my queue that fit this bill (including Citizen Kane, The Godfather: Part III, and Blazing Saddles). Do you have movies on your "list of shame?" If so, what are they?

Hate on the Nintendo Wii all you want, but it has clearly made Sony and Microsoft nervous (especially since the Wii has made money since day one, while the 360 and PS3 are still losing money on each sale). This week, Sony announced a PS3 motion controller, and Microsoft announced the Project Natal motion controller. For those not already in the know, the Nintendo Wii has had this capability for over 2 years now (though, granted, the Microsoft approach is a new twist).

I agree that the Nintendo Wii has, at some levels, been a relatively 'weak' platform compared to the others. It lacks HD support, has a fairly thin library of games, and has clunky online support. As a result, the Wii has been given the cold-shoulder by the "hard-core gaming community." The two recently announced, upcoming Mario titles (Super Mario Galaxy 2 and The New Super Mario Bros.) probably aren't enough to improve its reputation.

All that aside, it looks like the "big boys" are playing catch-up to Nintendo's "little engine that could." Maybe Nintendo knows the future more than we think they do...

I've whipped up a quick logo to dress up this site a bit. The previous plain-text heading was a bit boring (as one reader rightly pointed out), so hopefully this is a step in a better direction. Other minor style changes have also been made (sidebar headings should now look a little better, for example).

Thoughts? Constructive criticism? Comment away!

The new Spy and Sniper class updates are coming today, with the following goodies:

• A bow and arrow for the Sniper
• The Razorback shield for the Sniper
• Jars of urine for the Sniper (can you believe they actually made this a real weapon?!?)
• Two brand new watches for the Spy
• The Ambassador pistol for the Spy
• Payload Race game type and two new Arena maps
• Meet the Spy video

To top it all off, Valve is opening Team Fortress 2 to everyone for free this weekend. So download Steam, pre-load the files, and join in the fun!

I have squashed some bugs from yesterday's theme unveiling:

• The primary page container now renders properly in IE 6
• Recent comments show up again in the sidebar
• The PayPal donate button had somehow disappeared from the donation information page. It has now been restored.
• DreamHost discount information has been updated (it was woefully out of date)

Born Geek has been given a new set of clothes! The old design was, quite frankly, an eyesore. This new layout is simpler, cleaner, and much easier on the eyes. Gravatar support has been added. And visitors using Firefox 3+ get extra eye candy (so switch today)! Not everything is complete in this new theme, so expect to see minor tweaks and fixes over the next few days. It's been tested in Firefox and IE 7. Your mileage may vary in anything else. As always, let me know what you think and if you stumble upon any bugs.

Also note that you may have to force a refresh if you visited the site recently, so as to pick up the new style sheet!

Not only are we getting a Sniper class update (with a bow and arrow and the Razorback shield), but it looks like Valve is shipping the Spy class update as well (with two new watches)! Let it be known that I officially love Valve and Team Fortress 2.

Coming along with these updates is a new game play type, Payload Race, which looks super fun, and two new arena maps (which I'm not too wild about). This massive update doesn't drop until next Thursday, so there are still some goodies to be unveiled. New hats are also going to be available in this update, which should provide some fun.

I'm really looking forward to this update, even though Spy and Sniper are my two least-played classes. Perhaps this will motivate me to spend more time in those roles.

Tonight's season finale for The Office was pretty weak, in my opinion. To begin with, I was a little miffed that it wasn't an hour long, but after the show was over, I was glad it hadn't been. I'm not sure I could have stood another half hour of boredom. The only redeeming part of the episode was the tension between Michael and Holly. Here's hoping that things get back on track next season!

What did you guys think?

An article entitled A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages offers a very humorous glimpse into the world of programming. My absolute favorite snippet from the article:

1987 - Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall's forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall's monitor isn't random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born.

It's funny because it's true. (Hat tip to Dustin for the pointer to this article.)

You've no doubt seen the commercials for the "free" triple credit score reports, or the "learn to work at home" packages on TV. In most of these cases, a URL is provided in the ad for you to visit. For the observant among us, note that the URL changes. Most often, a number appears at the end. For example, workathome.yes.you.can might become workathome58.yes.you.can and then workathome132.yes.you.can. This observation leads us to our Internet Safety Tip of the Day:

If the URL in an advertisement changes on a regular basis, you should stay away!

Especially since those "free" reports will actually cost you $30 a month.

This tip brought to you by the Internet Safety Council, the letter D, and support from viewers like you. Thank you.

The rather humorously titled Slashdot article Duke Nukem For Never, reports that 3D Realms, once among the brightest computer game developers, has closed for good. This is pretty sad for me, as I was once a major fan of the company's games. So big a fan, in fact, that I maintained a little Map Editing FAQ for the Build game engine. In essence, that document and those games are what got me publishing on the web in the first place. It's hard to believe that was 13 years ago.

I can't say I'm surprised that the company has gone out of business, however. They've made a bunch of poor choices over the past few years, and have essentially released no new self-developed titles since 1997's Shadow Warrior (which was a great game). It will be interesting to see what happens to whatever actually exists of Duke Nukem Forever.

I have lots of music that I like to listen to, and I sometimes want to listen to it while lounging around my living room. The most convenient (and obvious) way to access my music is through my iPod, which houses my entire collection. At the moment, I don't have a way to play my music in the living room (besides busting out my headphones, which I don't always feel like doing).

Does anyone have recommendations for how I might go about doing this? I don't want the music to play through the TV (I'm willing to buy external speakers). A user friendly interface would be beneficial as well (maybe a way to change tracks, volume, etc from the couch?).

What does everyone else do?