The official 1.0 release of Firebug is now available. If you are a web developer, be sure to pick up this super-ultra-mega-cool extension. You'll thank me later.

Some time ago, my family tried out digital cable. We were thoroughly unimpressed at the 'digital quality' and subsequently dropped the service. But strangely enough, the digital artifacts that annoyed us so greatly are now showing up in the analog signal. We routinely see compression issues and dropped areas in the picture, and it only seems to be getting worse. Is Time Warner digitally encoding the signal before they send it out on the analog line? It sure seems like they are, but I don't see the benefit in doing that. Maybe it's cheaper on their end? Does anyone else with cable see this problem?

The new networking card that I ordered came in yesterday, and I installed it last night. I now get excellent signal strength in my room, compared to the 'poor' rating I was seeing before. Hopefully the slow down issues I've been seeing will disappear as a result. My computer boots way faster now, which seems encouraging (boot time had slowed to a crawl, and I correctly suspected that the wireless card was to blame).

An expansion pack for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been announced, which means bad things for my productivity later this year. After having not played the game for some time, I've gotten hooked again, thanks to the Knights of the Nine expansion that I recently picked up. A few screenshots are available over at 3D Gamers, and though there are only a few of them, they look awfully interesting. The environments appear to be quite different from the game's current locales, which should be refreshing. I can't wait!

While working on my rewrite of Monkey Album, I ran into an interesting programming dilemma. In the past week or so, I've been introduced to the MySQLi extension in PHP. The current Monkey Album implementation makes use of the PHP 4 mysql_*() calls, so I thought I'd try out the MySQLi interface to see how it works.

MySQLi includes support for what are known as "prepared statements" (only available in MySQL 4.1 and later). A prepared statement basically gives you three advantages: (1) SQL logic is separated from the data being supplied, (2) incoming data is sanitized for you which increases security, and (3) performance is increased, since a given statement only needs to be parsed a single time.

It seems to me that the performance benefit can only be seen in situations where the query is executed multiple times (in a loop, for example). In fact, an article on prepared statements confirms this suspicion; the author in fact mentions that prepared statements can be slower for queries executed only once.

So here's the problem I face: the queries that get executed in Monkey Album are, for the most part, only ever executed once. So, do I make use of prepared statements just to get the security benefit? It doesn't seem worth it to me, since I can get the same security by escaping all user input (something I already do today). Does someone with more knowledge of this stuff have an opinion? If so, please share it.

A coworker and I were recently reminiscing about our elementary school days, and we brought up something that I hadn't thought about in years. Does anyone here remember "Swish Day" at their school? You know, the day when the teacher would bring out the big bottle of mouthwash, dispense it into little plastic cups, and make you swish it around in your mouth? They said it was "bubble gum" flavored, but in actuality, it tasted nothing like anything you've ever had before.

Searching the web doesn't yield many hits on swish, but I know it's something we did. Does anyone else remember this? If so, feel free to share your memories.

Over the holidays I had the chance to finally beat Yoshi's Island DS. I also got Meteos for Christmas, and have had a substantial amount of time with it. As such, here are my two short reviews of both games.

Yoshi’s Island DS (A-) This 'sequel' to Yoshi's Island for the Super Nintendo is faithful to the original, while adding enough new features to feel fresh. Introducing multiple babies for Yoshi to carry around (subsequently giving him new abilities) was an interesting idea that works well. My only real problem with this game was that a number of the later levels are ridiculously difficult. I don't recall the original Yoshi's Island being so tough, but I played it a long time ago, so I only have the vaguest recollection. I had to play through several levels 20 or 30 times to get past them. Needless to say, this quickly got frustrating. Sounds, graphics, and gameplay are all top-notch, however, so this gripe pales in comparison. Overall a great game, and worth your time. I only wish one could trade their extra lives for red coins, stars, or flowers in each level; getting 100% in some of the levels is nearly impossible!

Meteos (A-) This puzzle game is reminiscent of Tetris (as are most puzzle games), but it's use of the stylus is incredible. In fact, I consider this a 'stylus-only' game, even though you can play with the D-pad and buttons. The goal of the game is to launch falling Meteos back into space by lining them up in groups of three, either vertically or horizontally. Each planet that you play through has different gravity and so varying strategies must be employed to succeed. For example, some planets require that you create secondary ignitions of launched Meteos by lining up another set of three or more in the air. This game is fast paced, fun, and highly addictive. For a few days after I got it, I actually spent time thinking about ways I could line up items in the real world in groups of three or more. It's been a long time since a game has affected me in such a way, which should be a testament to how addicting this game is.

Does anyone have any recommendations for games I should get next? Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime is currently on my list. What else should I get?

I have recently been seeing some very strange networking issues on my home computer, and I'm not certain I understand where the problems are coming from. Because my computer is a long way from our cable modem, I make use of a wireless networking adapter (a Netgear WG311 v3, to be exact). The signal strength I receive is somewhat low, due to the adapter's tiny antenna and its lousy location at the back of my computer.

The actual problem I'm seeing is a severe degradation in performance over time. When I run the speed test at Speakeasy right after a reboot (or when I initially turn on my machine), I can consistently get ~4500 kbps down and ~300 kbps up. After an hour or two of usage, running the same test consistently gives me ~750 kbps down and ~50 kbps up (sometimes slightly higher; the numbers vary). None of the other computers in my house see this issue, and all are wireless.

Last night I flashed the latest firmware onto our DLink DI-624 wireless router (the one that was installed was really old), but I saw the issue again after I made the update. Seeing that this issue is limited to my machine, it makes me think of two possibilities:

1. It's a problem with my wireless card (though another computer in my house has the exact same type of card, and doesn't see the problem).
2. It's a software issue (something is screwing over the network settings system wide).

Does anyone have an idea of what might be going on here? I'm thinking about buying a new networking card with a better external antenna (this one at NewEgg is what I'm currently looking at), with the hopes that better signal strength will make this problem disappear. But I'm grasping at straws; this is driving me nuts and I want it fixed!

Welcome to the newly redesigned Born Geek website! We have shed our old clothes as well as our old habits. No longer are the pages at this site crafted by hand; we now use Movable Type instead. For those interested in how I was able to get Movable Type to run everything, a detailed article is available.

There are a number of new features to introduce:

Site Search

You'll note a new website search box at the top of each page. Want to quickly locate something here at Born Geek? Just enter your search terms and let us do the rest.

Breadcrumb Trail

A breadcrumb trail is now available on every web page (just below the navigation bar), making it much clearer where you are in the site hierarchy. Moving up the site tree is now just a click away.

Comment on News Postings

Make yourself heard on Born Geek news postings by submitting your comments. Do you have feedback for me concerning a particular news item? Just let me know about it by posting to the appropriate entry. Moderation is turned off for now; depending on how nicely everyone plays, I may or may not have to turn it on.

RSS Feed

An RSS feed is now available for news stories. Subscribe to it and stay up to date with everything that goes on here at Born Geek.

Since this is my first foray into the world of Movable Type, I do not doubt that there may be a bug or two still lurking around. The print style sheet is not yet ready, and Internet Explorer users may run into the odd CSS anomaly. The overall style sheet will definitely be tweaked over the next several days, so some settling may occur. As always, please alert me to any problems that you may encounter.

Note also that some content has been permanently removed. The Firefox 1.0 toolbar tutorial has finally been replaced with the tutorial for Firefox 1.5 and later. All of the old news archives have also been removed. Other goodies (such as my wish list) have not yet been posted; these will appear in the near future.

Several new software releases are on the horizon here at Born Geek, so stay tuned. Happy New Year!

A new build of Firefox is now available, so make sure you update. There are tons of fixes and improvements in this release; watered down release notes are also available.

I just recently picked up the Knights of the Nine downloadable content collection for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. In fact, it has sucked me back into the Oblivion world, so most of my free time is now spent questing with a brand new character (a Breton I named Tristram). Included in the collection is the brand new Knights of the Nine quest line, which supposedly adds an additional 9 to 10 hours of game play. Also included are a number of add-ons that were previously only available for purchase online: the Wizard's Tower, Vile Lair, Thieves Den, Mehrunes' Razor, Horse Armor pack, The Orrery, and a collection of spell tomes (my favorite add-on so far). I was lucky enough to pick it up for only $9.95 at Circuit City (the same day I wrecked my car), but it normally retails at $19.95. If you're a fan of Oblivion (and who's not?), I highly recommend the collection. So far, it's been a blast.

No programming tips here tonight. Just a few great stories I've recently found:

First Look at Firefox 3.0

Lots of love coming in 3.0. I simply cannot wait.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Beta 1

Firefox's little brother is moving forward.

Clinton in Action

This man is super great.

DS Buttons

A very cool marketing idea. I heart my DS too.

Amazon Sales From Recommendations: 35%

Can you believe that 35% of sales come from the recommender? I'm shocked.

If the list above looks a little funny, do a browser refresh; I've updated the site style sheet to make this type of list a little nicer to look at.

I had the great fortune of being rear-ended tonight while coming home from work. What a wonderful Christmas present, delivered early for my enjoyment! I wanted more than anything to spend the next several days dealing with insurance, collision shops, and going without a car. Whee!

I recently stumbled upon what might be the greatest Firefox extension of all time: Firebug. This extension is aimed squarely at web developers and includes a number of mind-blowing features. And I mean mind blowing. Before reading any further, take a look at this short screencast of Firebug in action. Just make sure that you hold on to your socks.

How did I survive this long without this tool? And why haven't we had something like this all along? Firebug single-handedly obsoletes the DOM Inspector extension that ships with Firefox, and nearly obsoletes the mighty fine Web Developer extension that I have relied on for so long. I can now view exactly what my CSS is doing. I can peruse through my page's DOM without opening up the DOM Inspector and switching between windows. I can even edit the CSS and HTML for a page in real time; no reloading necessary! Want to watch your AJAX code in action? Firebug makes it easy.

This tool feels so incredibly polished, and the user interface is so streamlined, that I barely even notice that I have it installed. And it weighs in at an extraordinarily small 288 KB (as of this writing). I cannot say enough good things about this extension; just download it and give it a try. You will not be disappointed.

It looks as if Yahoo! will be undergoing a reorganization effort in the future. Both Matt Cutts and Greg Linden provide some interesting commentary, and there's plenty of other news on the subject.

I am not an expert on the search industry, but it seems to me that this was the only way for Yahoo to stay alive. If their recent TV listings overhaul is any sign of their current state of affairs, then I am ready to declare the company in shambles. The old TV listings page was light weight and usable; the new one is bloated, confusing, and very ugly. Although their primary competition (Google) doesn't have a TV listing service, I can assure you that if they did, it would be light weight and responsive. Google knows what users want; Yahoo appears to only know what they want for their users. That kind of direction can only lead to collapse. Hopefully Yahoo can turn things around. As much as I love Google, we need some semblance of competition.

Dan Cederholm has rebranded SimpleBits, and the results are very nice. If I had 1% of this man's creative genius, I would be quite pleased with myself.

I'm going to go ahead and call this one: Ctrl+Alt+Del has jumped the shark. What used to be a mildly amusing online comic has devolved into something so far out in left field, so detached from reality, that I'm not going to bother reading it anymore. The current story line is just a joke. Each character is a mindless, empty shell of what they used to be. It's sad to see the comic take this turn, but I can't say I'm surprised. In some way, I sort of saw this coming.

In a recent interview, Scott Miller of 3D Realms stated his apparent dislikes over the Steam content delivery system (owned by rival company Valve). And within 24 hours, the 3D Realms game Prey was announced as going on sale over the Steam network. How's that for a hypocritical statement? Interestingly enough, the game is being sold for a whopping $49.95; a full $30 more than it's being offered for over at Amazon.com.

It seems to me that Scott's main problem with Steam is that he simply isn't the one making money. Valve clearly had a good idea in Steam, and now they are the ones profiting off of it. Some of his points are valid (having a competitor know your revenue totals does seem a tad creepy), but I think he's mostly whining. 3D Realms hasn't had a truly successful release in quite some time, last I checked. Could that fact, coupled with Valve's success, be what's making Scott so fussy?

Surprisingly, the occasional downtime from computers and the internet is a good thing. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I spent time down in Georgia at my grandmother's house, apart from the world wide web. I came back refreshed. More importantly, I had a new perspective on some of my ongoing projects. Not that I spent any time thinking about said projects; not thinking about them is what helped me the most.

I've nearly flip-flopped again on my decision to use WordPress for my planned overhaul of Born Geek. Two particular articles have nearly persuaded me to give Movable Type another chance. Site performance is still a large concern for me (though I'm not entirely certain it should be), and this is where Movable Type really delivers.

The next release of Googlebar Lite will also have a little more tender loving care than I previously had imagined. Much better localized search results are in the works, thanks to my decision to drop all the awkward top-level domain options currently used. In place of all of that will come a simple drop-down menu, allowing the user to select the Google site they wish to use across all search types (just like the official Google Toolbar). I think this will be a real improvement over the current scheme. Hopefully, users will agree.

For my birthday this year, I got a Nintendo DS Lite. Now that I've had some time to play with it, I'd like to give you my thoughts on the system, along with the various games that I have picked up so far. I've given each a letter grade, for whatever that's worth.

The DS Lite System (A+) What first wowed me with the DS Lite was the screen brightness. Having never seen an original DS, I can't make a comparison between the two generations. However, I can say that my Gameboy Advance SP doesn't touch the DS Lite brightness levels. It's literally like night and day. However, the brighter you run the screen, the faster the battery drains. I use brightness level 2 (out of 4, if I remember correctly, where 4 is the brightest). I have been very pleased with the battery life at this level; I charge the system after several hours of play (I haven't timed it, but I'm guessing somewhere between 6 to 10 hours between charges). And the sound in the DS Lite is incredible. I don't know how they packed such awesome speakers into a tiny package, but they are really crisp. The added bonus that there are two speakers, and that they utilize stereo to great effect, is even better!

The touch screen is a novel idea and works well, though I find it a little hard to use the stylus in a game that also uses the buttons. And while I'm on that topic, let me say that I am glad that Nintendo included the X and Y buttons. The lack of X and Y on the Gameboy Advance SP really hurt the SNES game ports. Hopefully the DS will help fill that gap. It's also nice that Gameboy Advance games can be played in the DS (though the X and Y buttons still aren't useful for those older games). It's nice to only carry one system around but have support for games from multiple platforms.

Since I'm the only one I know with a DS Lite, I haven't tried the multiplayer stuff (with built-in wireless). I hear it works pretty well, but I can't comment since I haven't used that aspect of it.

There isn't much negative to say about the DS Lite. Each time you start it up, you get a weird "Health and Safety Warning" that requires a tap of the touch screen to bypass. I find this odd, and a minor annoyance, but I guess Nintendo is trying to get people to be mindful of what they do. Also, the shiny casing is nice, but it shows fingerprints very easily (at least on my black model).

Overall, I nothing but good things to say. I highly recommend the DS Lite as a gaming platform.

The New Super Mario Bros. (B) This being my first game, I was highly excited about it initially. It evokes classic gaming memories from the NES days, and the game's action is as fun as ever. But, sadly, Mario's adventure is a little short. The levels are surprisingly small, and are rather easy (to say the least). New power-ups help ease that pain a little; the giant mushroom and tiny mushrooms are a blast to use. I dislike how worlds 4 and 7 are completely optional (and a little difficult to access; they are only available through secret boss-level exits). The included mini-games are cute, but they don't draw me back to them again and again. Final verdict? This is a fun game, and a must have for Mario fans, even if it is indeed a short endeavor.

Tetris DS (B) Six game types are available in Tetris DS, and most of them are decent enough. The only two game types that don't really excite me are the catch mode and mission mode. The other four (touch, push, puzzle, and standard) are really fun, and I would imagine are a blast with multiple players.

Kirby Canvas Curse (A) I've never played a Kirby game before this one, but I must say that this one is highly entertaining. It uses the touch screen and stylus entirely; you never make use of the game pad buttons. By drawing "rainbow bridges" for Kirby to roll on, you must defeat an evil witch who has turned the world into a painting. Artwork in the game is phenomenal, and the action is pretty intense in some places. The stylus is used to great effect, and was a great twist on gaming. I highly recommend this title.

Yoshi's Island DS (???) I haven't assigned this game a grade yet, because I only yesterday received it from Amazon. The original Yoshi's Island for the Super Nintendo was a blast, and this one looks like it will follow in its predecessor's footsteps. It uses both screens to show the game world, which is mildly annoying; there is a physical gap between the screens on the DS Lite, and so there's a "gap" in what the game shows you at any one time. Hopefully this "feature" won't be too much of a burden as I go forward. Time will tell.

It appears that I have written a lot on the subject, but hopefully you'll find this information to be of use. I'll be taking time off from my posting duties over the holiday weekend so until then, Happy Thanksgiving!