Part of my new toolkit includes the handy “Express” iPhone app by the good folks who create Woothemes (which are pretty neat). This is my first (non-test) post using that app and the new theme. Let’s see how this all goes.

My friend phil lives on pretty much the opposite side of the planet. I talk to him a lot more (like daily) than I speak to most people who live in the same city. This is one of the reasons I really love the internet.

Update: I made coffee.

You may think you speak “Standard English straight out of the dictionary” but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like “Are you from Wisconsin?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks “pop.”

Rob and I just got back from a two week vacation in the south of France where we drank wine, ate cheese, and spent a bunch of time hanging out with Zab and Alice. Being the photo nerds we are, of course, we took a bunch of pictures. You can see Rob’s at his Flickr set, and mine are in my Flickr set.

Part of my vacation was getting away from the computers as much as I could (seriously, I was offline for 14 days, more on that later when I’ve had a chance to reflect), so I took a decidedly minimalist stance regarding what gadgetry I packed. I had to take a camera, of course, but I took a very, very stripped down kit that included only:

• Nikon D80 body
• Nikon 20mm f2.8 prime lens
• Nikon 35mm f2.0 prime lens
• 2 8gb memory cards (of which I used one)
• An extra battery, a lens brush, and a microfiber cloth

This all fit nicely into my de-badged Domke F-5x shoulder bag, which is about 1/3rd the size of my regular camera bag. The kit was a little limiting, but the limitations were challenging in a fun way. (More than once I did find myself very much wishing I had 85mm and 135mm lenses with me, a few instances where a tripod would have been good, and I really should have included a polarizer filter.) I ended up taking around 650 pictures over the course of two weeks, of which I’ve posted around 190. I’ll write more about the trip later on sometime, but it should be said that a good time was had by all, although I may be ruined for cheap wines and not-French butter now.

From John and Ben and Rob…:

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

Friday

Pictures from Friday’s adventures are over on Flickr: Escaping Whistler.

• 7:30a Pacific – Wake up, shower, pack.
• 8:30a – Hotel restaurant for a buffet breakfast. I’ve long since learned that traveling is a lot more pleasant if you have a full stomach. Schlepping luggage through airports does actually require calories.
• 9:30a – Meet fellow hooligans in hotel lobby. Floatplane dispatcher is contacted because weather is looking…questionable. He says, “Yeah, so the weather is looking questionable, but we’ll try.” Taxis are called.
• 9:45a – Our taxis arrive and promptly get poached by other hotel guests (wtf?). More taxis are called. We pile in.
• 10:00a or so – Get to floatplane dock at Green Lake. The weather is looking increasingly iffy. We wait. We wait some more.
• 10:30a or so – It begins to rain. More phonecalls. Travel plans are looking dire.
• 11:00a or so – Whistler Air guy says “I have a plane leaving at 1:00p, but it’s in Squamish. You want to take that?” We confer. We agree to do that if first floatplane can’t make it.
• 11:15a or so (standing on a dock in the rain, your sense of time sort of goes weird) – Floatplane guy calls back. Pilot tried to make it in to Green Lake but waved off due to weather. The floatplane is not coming. Travel plans are looking dire, indeed. We book and pay for Whistler Air flights, then continue standing around in the rain on the dock at Green Lake waiting for a bus to Squamish at noon. Air Canada is called many, many times. Travel arrangements are rescheduled since we’re now missing all our original flights. I rearrange my flight to be for Saturday since there’s no possible way to make the final connection from Toronto to Moncton at this point.
• 12:00p – Whistler Air-provided shuttle bus to Squamish arrives. Huzzah. We pile in with our luggage and sundries and several other passengers.
• 12:45p – We arrive in Squamish. Whistler Air guy there says, “Erm, planes are late,” (or something to that effect) “You have an hour to kill.” Already-rearranged travel plans for many are already beginning to look dire-ish. Awesome bus driver guy says, “I’ll take you all back into town to use the facilities and get lunch.” There is great rejoicing.
• 1:15p – Back on bus heading back to the Greater Squamish Floatplane Airport after using facilities and wolfing down Wendy burgers, coffees, and donuts.
• 1:45p or so – Group splits up. We can’t all fit on one plane. Big plane is ready to take folks who have earlier flights to catch today or who otherwise just want to get the hell to Vancouver. Mconnor, Lucy, Robcee and I valiantly stay behind.
• 2:15p or so – Small plane arrives but fills up with a family of 6. No big deal, we have time to spare.
• 2:45p or so – Finally get a plane. Pile on in, get the shortest and most to the point airplane security briefing ever, which is roughly: “If you need to open the door, pull the handle towards you then up. Buckle up.” Vroom. Flight is scheduled to last a whole 12 mins, but possibly slightly longer since they have to route around blasting (at the rockslide site). Many pictures are taken. Best flight ever. I seriously want a floatplane.
• 3:15p or so – We arrive in downtown Vancouver at the floatplane dock. I’m giddy and take a million pictures of floatplanes because it turns out they’re frakking awesome.
• 3:45p or so – Standing on a corner in Vancouver with Mconnor, Lucy, and Robcee trying to find cabs. Mconnor and Lucy get the first. Robcee and I get the second and head to the Radisson near YVR since both of our flights are on Saturday.
• 7:30p or so – Dinner is obtained (and is surprisingly awesome). Darkness falls. Time passes. Two episodes of Weeds are watched. Exhaustion sets in.
• 11:30p – Sleep.

Saturday

• 8:00a Pacific – Wake up, shower, pack. Use the internet while it’s available.
• 9:45a – Head downstairs for a buffet breakfast. See above re: traveling on a full stomach.
• 10:15a – Check out. Get on shuttle to airport.
• 10:45a – I get off shuttle at Domestic terminal. Robcee heads on to International.
• 11:00a – Find myself at the end of a ridiculously long line of people checking in. I’m checked in but still have to print boarding passes and check luggage. Apparently Saturday is Cruise Day at YVR. There are eighty billion people.
• 11:30a or so – Checked luggage, have boarding passes. Flight is scheduled for 1:45p so I make my leisurely way to my gate.
• 12:00p – At gate, clinging to the outer fringes of the free wifi at YVR. Tired, but content.
• 12:35p – Notice sign at my gate now says “Departure: 13:45. DELAYED: 15:45″. No longer content. 2 hour delay means I miss the last connection from Toronto to Moncton. Despair sets in. I suddenly stop having fun.
• 12:50p – Gate agents are dealing with people who are going to miss their connections as best they can. Some non-connection-requiring passengers are being…jerks. I finally get to speak to an agent who informs me that an earlier flight has available seats. He prints me a boarding pass and says, “Um, you better hustle.” It’s already boarding and is a fair hike away. I hustle.
• 1:00p or so – I arrive at the gate and am immediately able to board. Huzzah. Better still, I have seat 12H (bulkhead row, tons of legroom). Better still, 12K (window seat) is empty. When the doors close I shift over. Window seat, bulkhead row. I am no longer despairing.
• 8:20p Eastern time – Land at YYZ. Connection doesn’t board for an hour so I take the time to get dinner (chicken ceasar salad + a smirnoff ice). Pay $6 for an hour’s worth of wifi so I can update folks on my whereabouts. It is at this precise moment that I realize I may actually need a cell phone. May have to look into blackberries again.
• 9:00p – At gate using up the last of my wifi hour downloading free stuff on my iPod from the Apps Store. Turns out free stuff mostly sucks except the Sodoku.
• 9:20p – Board. End up in wrong seat. Move to correct seat. No one’s beside me, yay. Attendant asks me if I would be so kind as to move to the Exit row since there are currently kids in it. I oblige and get extra leg room again. Pwn.
• 12:50a Atlantic – Land at YQM.
• 1:00a – Luggage obtained.
• 1:10a – In cab on way home. Chat with driver about the Eagles concert (which was tonight), the upcoming Elton John concert, and the Casino. Find out his niece is in her fourth year at Acadia and the names of a few of the other folks who live on our street. Further chat about kids these days and whatnot. I’m definitely back in the Maritimes.
• 1:30a or so – Home. Finally.

• Total door-to-door (Whistler-Moncton) travel time: 40 hours.
• Vehicles involved: Taxi, Bus, Floatplane, Taxi, Shuttle, Airplane, Airplane, Taxi.
• Meals eaten: Breakfast (Whistler), Lunch (Squamish), Dinner (Vancouver), Breakfast (Vancouver), Dinner (Toronto), journey-ending beverage (Moncton).
• Cats who met me at the door: Two.

Update! Rob has posted some pictures, too.

In Firefox 2 browser history was saved, by default, for nine days. I’m not really sure where that number came from (Why 9? Why not 7 or 10?), but I never found it to be a big deal. All I ever got out of history were links drawn a different color if I had visited them recently, and I don’t recall thinking about, never mind going through the process of, increasing the number of days my history was saved. I rarely looked at it, and never really cared about it much one way or another.

All of this has changed in Firefox 3. Browser history is now incredibly, phenomenally, astonishingly useful.

Smart Location Bar

The primary value of history is now as a key source of data for the Smart Location Bar (affectionately nicknamed the “Awesomebar”) which I talked about in an earlier post, “Awesome bar is awesome“. The Smart Location Bar, in my opinion, is one of the game-changing new features in Firefox 3. Check out my other post for more details, or watch Mike Beltzner demo it (along with a handful of other new Firefox features) in this short screencast.

In addition to the Smart Location Bar, Firefox 3 History has been upgraded and made much more useful in a number of other ways.

History Sidebar

The History sidebar has been updated to match the new look and feel of Firefox 3, taking full advantage of the favicon storage that is part of the new Places back-end technology. You can still search history via the History sidebar, or sort entries by Date + Site, Date, Site, Most Visited, and Last Visited. The entries are much easier to scan and identify, however, because they now display the site’s favicon (a small identifying graphical icon) where those are available.

History Menu

Favicons are also used in the History menu, making it easier to identify items of interest in both lists of currently open and recently closed tabs.

History Library

Most significant, however, is the inclusion of History in the new Firefox Library. The Library is the renamed and expanded Bookmark Organizer, fully revamped for Firefox 3. You open the History section of the Library by going to the History menu, selecting “Show all History”, then clicking on the “History” entry in the top of the left sidebar.

You can do all kinds of stuff in the History Library. You can search all the available entry data with one or more words, and also save your search as a smart folder.

You can view and sort history entries by Name, Tags, Location, Visit Date, Visit Count, Keyword, Description, Added date, or Last Modified date.

History Tagging

You can even tag history entries right in the Library, effectively bookmarking them and adding them to the full bookmarking system.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve already used a tag or not, you can expand the UI to show a full list of all the tags you’ve already used in your bookmarks, and just check off the ones you want to use for the item being tagged.

Once bookmarked, you can add Keywords and a Description right in the Library interface.

Taking advantage of the new and much more efficient Places back-end, the default number of days to save history data has been increased from nine to 90.

I used to clear my browser history as a matter of course, not really caring about that information, and I would create new Firefox profiles all willy-nilly, happy enough to just import my bookmarks and start fresh. With Firefox 3, however, my browser History is suddenly extremely valuable, and incredibly useful in a variety of ways. Clearing history or starting a new profile is now remarkably painful, and not something to be done lightly.

This collection of private, locally-stored, personal, and searchable data has changed how I use the Web, and I can’t imagine ever going back to the old way of doing things. I’ve gone so far as to increase my history storage to a full year. It’s absolutely worth it.

For developers…

If you want to learn more about the new Places back-end and how to develop add-ons for it, start by reading the Places documentation at the Mozilla Developer Center.

It would only match the start of the domain, however, so typing “mozi” would only list URLs that started with “http://www.mozi…”, which doesn’t include things like “http://developer.mozi…”. Those would only be listed if you started typing “developer” in the URL bar:

This is OK behaviour. If you happen to know the URLs of the pages you’re looking for, the Firefox 2 URL bar will help you out by giving you a list of URLs whose starting bits match what you’re typing. Saves a little time, and becomes a quick way to get back to sites whose URLs you have at least partially memorized. If you were hoping to revisit a site but you didn’t know how the domain started, you’d be out of luck and would have to resort to using one of the major search engines to look for it.

Enter AwesomeBar

In Firefox 3, however, the staid and plain URL bar has been transformed into a much, much more powerful and useful tool. Dubbed the “AwesomeBar”, it lets you use the URL field of your browser to do a keyword search of your history and bookmarks. No longer do you have to know the domain of the page you’re looking for — the AwesomeBar will match what you’re typing (even multiple words!) against the URLs, page titles, and tags in your bookmarks and history, returning results sorted by “frecency” (an algorithm combining frequency + recency).

Not only that, but the drop-list results show you the page’s favicon, the full title, the URL, and whether you have bookmarked and/or tagged the page in a richly formatted two-line display.

Here are some screenshots illustrating the magic. I tend to look up a lot of recipes on the internet, and the other day I wanted to find the recipe for a spicy ginger carrot cake I’d seen somewhere in my surfing. Here’s how the new AwesomeBar makes this unbelievably simple:

I start by typing “ginger”, and AwesomeBar searches through my history and bookmarks to return everything that matches that keyword, showing the first six and letting me scroll through the rest. You’ll notice here that several of the results are bookmarked (blue star icon on the right), and tagged (tag icon). The sites’ favicons are displayed on the left, making it really easy to scan through the results if you know what site you’re looking for in particular:

Instead of scanning and scrolling, however, I just add another keyword, “carrot”. AwesomeBar updates the list to show only the three results that match both these keywords:

Adding one more keyword, “cake”, narrows the list to just a single option:

Et voila. Out of thousands of entries in my bookmarks and history, AwesomeBar has found the single “ginger carrot cake” recipe I had read somewhere online in the past year. I had no idea which site it was on, so wouldn’t have been able to search by the site’s domain. Even Google wouldn’t have helped me here since this recipe doesn’t appear until the 8th page of results when searching for “ginger carrot cake”. AwesomeBar searches only my personal, local bookmarks and history, making it an incredibly powerful tool for finding pages that I’ve visited before and want to find again.

I’ve been using the Firefox 3 nightly releases for some time now, and I can honestly say that the new AwesomeBar behaviour has absolutely changed how I use the Web. Not having to remember URLs or resort to global web searches to find pages I’ve visited before has made using the Web a whole lot easier and more efficient.

So, yeah. AwesomeBar? Awesome. If you’re willing to play with not-quite-fully-baked software (by which I mean “beta”), you can experience the awesome yourself by grabbing the Firefox 3 Beta 5 download and testing it out.

Want to read more?
Edward Lee, the primary AwesomeBar developer, has written a bunch of blog posts over the course of AwesomeBar’s development:

• SmartBar to AwesomeBar – Nov 4, 2007
• Not Just Awesome – Jan 6, 2008
• Another Way to Awesome – Jan 19, 2008
• Beyond Awesome – Mar 3, 2008
• Using the AwesomeBar – Mar 11, 2008
• Awesomeness in Beta 5 – Apr 8, 2008

At this point I’m fairly convinced that all residential moving companies are crooks. Not only did they (the company in question will currently remain nameless) attempt to jack the price of our move by 50% after they had all our stuff (essentially holding it hostage), they’re now trying to tell us that the computer damage isn’t their responsibility. By “not exactly thrilled” I actually mean “seethingly infuriated”, of course. On the bright side, the driver and guys who actually showed up and moved our stuff on and off the truck were great. Everyone else? Not so great.

These are some of our books, temporarily staged in the basement ’til we can figure out a proper shelving solution. They are not organized in any sensible fashion.

We’ve been in the house for about three weeks now, and it’s all good. The worst of the wallpaper has been stripped and the upstairs is all painted. For the first time in over six years we have unpacked all our books, which is satisfying in a pretty fundamental way. I’ve got my little workshop more or less set up, so I should be able to start mucking about with stained glass again soon. And, in spite of the 2.5 feet of hard-packed snow, I’ve ordered herb and tomato seeds. Yes, there are huge piles of snow on everything still, but it’s spring, dammit, and I want my herb garden. I’ll start the seeds inside around mid-April in hopes for a mid-May last frost, but given how lousy this winter has been that may be ambitious.

We’ve also been cooking a lot, including a prime-rib roast, pan-seared sirloin steak, guacamole, tzatziki sauce (on sauted pork tenderloin), a full roast chicken, chicken soup, baked halibut, sausage pasta (one simple tomato sauce, one arrabiata sauce), apple-cinnamon coffee cake, buttermilk biscuits, buttermilk pancakes, french toast, a red curry on rice, a somewhat bland spice cake, various salads and sandwiches, and lots of miniwheats. I really need to start keeping track more carefully, because pretty much everything we’ve had (with exception of the spice cake and the not-curry-enough curry) has been really very good. Today is steak and mushroom quesadilla day, I think, and I might make a mango chutney for later in the week.

Reading-wise, I’ve recently finished Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food which is his follow-up to Omnivore’s Dilemma, both of which are worth reading. I’m partway through Roberton Davies’ Fifth Business, and about 1/3rd of the way through Anthony Everitt’s non-fiction history about Cicero (which is excellent). I’m reading Cicero because I recently finished Robert Harris’ Imperium which is a novel centred around Cicero. I think after I’m finished this Everitt book I’ll crack Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States as my non-fiction selection, and Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth for fiction. We’ll see.

Things are generally winding back down into a more regular routine, which is good — everything has been basically haywire since the week before Christmas (when we put the offer on the house), and I’m pretty sure this is the most extensive bout of stress I’ve dealt with in my life. Very, very much looking forward to the snow melting and getting a bbq and some patio furniture. It’s going to be a great summer.

The folks over at Lifehacker like it a lot, too, and have written a great introduction to getting organized with RTM.

Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

Link.

Anyhow. If you’re interested in my link stream, I’m back to using delicious for now (although currently evaluating magnolia as a possible alternative), and the page is over here.

Tara’s reaction.

Aaron Schwartz (Scroll down to the “On misogyny” section).

If you’re wondering, I’m posting these because they have clearly struck some sort of nerve for me, I’m just not exactly sure what that nerve is at the moment, or what it means. These are just interesting to me. Thought provoking, if nothing else.

I seriously need a Foxkeh t-shirt. It’s imperative.

I’m still not sure what this all will mean in the long-term, but I sure like where it’s going. Three cheers for anyone who has ever left a useful review for no other reason than to help other people. You rock.

PS: I’m looking to buy a mortar and pestle. Any suggestions?

This looks like a really interesting local initiative. I think I might check it out.

Hells yeah.

Linking to this because I want to re-read and think about it more later.

Creator: Gina Trapani, using scripts by Mihai Parparita and others, compiled using Anthony Lieuallen’s Greasemonkey Compiler.

Not only is the add-on indescribably cool, it also demonstrates the power of open standards, open development, and collaboration. As O’Reilly puts it, “The users themselves are evolving the browser.”

This is why I love Mozilla. This is why I love what I do². Everything Mozilla does is focused on doing what’s right, what’s best for the Web, and what’s best for users. And sometimes something like this happens and just blows my mind because it’s working and we can see it and we’re actually making a difference. It sure makes the insanity worthwhile.

¹ – Pretty much the most useful site ever.
² – Yes, it can get gnarly and frustrating and crazy and exhausting, but it’s worth every second.