Why I don’t care about Google Chrome

For quite some time, I’ve been a Google fan. Years ago I tossed aside other search engines in favor of Google for it’s clean look and respectable competence for web searches. I was not disappointed. It wasn’t long before I, like many others, began to favor Gmail over the popular email providers of the time. Again, great product, and no disappointments. Even more recently, I find that Google Docs and Google Earth are also great products from what I would generally consider a fine company. Let’s face it, Google has made serious efforts to offer services that people want, and to present them in a way that is fresh in new.

But here is Chrome, Google’s newest product, a shiny new browser. With their previous offerings, Google has always been the Knight in shining armor, saving the general public from the hells we were normally forced into accepting. Google.com made web browsing efficient and gave it a clean face by way of superior search algorithms and refusal to use banner ads on result pages. Gmail smashed Yahoo mail and Hotmail with it’s usability, clean look, and immense storage space. Google Docs has even made a positive mark, and giving hope to calloborators across the web. In each of these cases, Google took an old idea and innovated. They made something that, once used, we could look at and forget how we ever managed to get by without it. But where is the innovation here? A web browser?

Well, quite obviously, this is a ground-breaking mother-fucker. Google made it. Naturally, I grunted with excitment the moment I heard about it. There was no fucking way I was going to let the greatest browser ever pass me by. No fucking way.

But then it hit me. I already have the greatest browser ever. I absolutely had to see the features. Chrome was going to be so fly.

I have to admit, there are some sweet features. Incognito mode, dragging tabs to a new window, the new tab page. All nice stuff. But then there are the filler features which are already available to Firefox, or as addons, such as Simpler downloads, Imported settings, and Safe browsing. But where is the real innovation? Where is this freshness that I have come to expect from Google? It simply wasn’t there.

I had to ask myself why I thought Firefox was so good. And really, why do I like it so much? Well, that was easy. It isn’t that Firefox itself is so revolutionary, because it isn’t. Sure, they popularized tabbed browsing, and Firefox 3 has added many new features that I consider must-haves, but the real beauty of the program are the addons. Even now, i’m using ScribFire to write to my blog. Slowly, I realized that the little things that made Chrome “neat” were easily extended into Firefox as addons, and I’m certain we’ll be seing those new addons within days.

So, I closed the Chrome browser, and uninstalled it. It was going to take more than a few well-thought gimmicks to make me piss on the people that saved me from IE. Where was Chrome then? I’ll stick to Old Faithful for now. Besides, Chrome doesn’t have Adblock Plus.

“Black Hole” is a racist term

Seriously, do we really need to play a race card on the term “black hole”? Mission accomplished, he got his 5 minutes.

Online TV is getting better…

For some time now my television consumption has been minimal. I just didn’t feel that the time I spent watching television was well spent on the trash that passes for entertainment. So, like many others, my general entertainment has come from the internet.

But then there was Lost. A show I actually liked! So, for a few weeks, I watched it the good old fashioned way, the boob tube. And then I discovered that Lost was available for viewing online via ABC.com (and starting now with Season 4, in HD!!!). Much fewer commercials than you would catch in a standard broadcast, and the best part is the convenient viewing. Many of ABC’s more popular shows are available for viewing online, but not all. Sadly, most networks didn’t offer ANY full episodes online.

Today, I stumbled upon Hulu.com. It seems that these guys were savvy enough to start working with the show providers to do much of what ABC has done, but without the limitations of a network. While all shows are not available on this site, many are. So far, the site isn’t whored out with advertisement. While I can agree that advertisement will be necessary to generate revenue, we all know it will at some point become obsessive. For now, its the good stuff, and I’m living it up.

TV executives, take note: Today’s viewer wants content NOW. Full episodes online is the only way to go, so start making it happen.

Mary Evelyn McMillan Award for Undergraduate Writing

I submitted my essay “Gooney Birds” to the McMillan competition, and somehow managed to win.  I spent February 8th and 9th in Auburn, Alabama attending the ACETA conference.  It was good fun, and I look forward to attending again some day.

Gooney Birds

The most influential person in my life is my grandfather.   When I was a child, he tried to teach me many things without actually coming out and saying what I should be learning.  Perhaps he wanted me to find the truth for myself in most things and to avoid the tendency to make broad assumptions; I believe my early education about “gooney birds” is evidence of this.

Hellgate: London – Patch!

One of my biggest complaints of HG:L was the nightmare difficulty. It was just too hard. It seemed like nothing you could do would get you over the immense hurdle of trying to tackle these mobs without getting completely owned.

Well, thankfully, the latest patch solves that. Among numerous other improvements, the difficulty of nightmare skill has been rebalanced. I gave it a try yesterday, and I have to say I’m impressed.

So, if you tossed HG:L to the side of the road recently, pick it back up for a few minutes. Its definitely playable now.

Hellgate: London – Actually coming along nicely now

Sure, I made a post before about the launch being a total ripoff (and I stand by that), but after a few patches, the instability and performance issues seem to be cleared up. Overall, I have to say its a good game.

Christian or Not

In Susan Pace Hamill’s article, “Alabama’s not truly pro-life”, she makes the argument that being pro-life is more than just passing a law to ban abortion, but extends to legislation to support the child throughout his/her childhood as well, ensuring a genuinely positive quality of life. I feel that the morality of this cause is not in question, but instead that perhaps the method of implementation itself is flawed, and without authentic religious foundation.

What I Know of Blenders

It has been suggested that it is a child’s method of learning to ‘explore first, and understand later’. This is to infer that children go about the things that interest them without much knowledge of what they are doing, and observe the results through trial and error. Eventually, by invoking cause, and observing the effect, the child can make deductions about those observations, which are then stored away as experience. I might not be so inclined to believe this theory if I weren’t able to recall this kind of behavior from my own childhood.

Mac OS X 10.4.8 – WTF Mouse problems

My room mate has recently lost his mind, and decided he’d like to try out Mac OS X. Since the newer Mac installations work on x86 based systems, the idea is that it shouldn’t be hard to get a few things running just to check it out. Who wants to actually pay for a Mac anyhow?

There have been hits and misses, but it has successfully installed on a system. That is to say, it has installed, but is not functioning properly.

For some strange, Mac-reason, the mouse remains stuck in the upper left hand corner. You can move it away, but after a moment, it will snap right back into its original position. The mouse is known to work properly on multiple other systems, and is supported by Mac OS X 10.4.8. It even worked properly. Once.

We are terribly confused. We’ve tried connecting the mouse via PS2 ports, alternate USB ports. No good. We have removed all non-essential peripherals from the machine. No good. 3 other mice exhibit the same problem, but only when booting to OS X.

On the one hand, it serves us right. I mean, we aren’t really supposed to get this to work on non-Mac hardware. But, I can’t help but wonder why this, such a simple and fundamental aspect of computing is failing while other more complicated functions are working fine.

Please, feel free to give some input, anyone.