Staring Blankly at My Keyboard

I just spent twenty minutes writing a detailed profile of Mike Miller for the new Memphis Grizzlies blog I'm starting, only to have Blogger cough up blood as I tried to submit it and delete it forever. Thanks, Blogger. That felt really good.

Anyway. I'm starting this offshoot blog because I have endless rants about the Griz and the state of pro basketball in general bubbling away in my head, and I have to get rid of it somehow. Also, as far as I can tell, there's not a single unofficial Griz blog on the internet, and I'd like to continue focusing this blog on Mozilla, the coming browser wars, and tech stuff in general. For example: I saw on Slashdot that there's a new Doom 3 Boardgame. Can anyone tell me why? Didn't fucking think so.

Anyway, I picked up Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery on widescreen VHS at Rite-Aid, of all places, this afternoon, because it was four bucks, and I alread have the other two Austin Powers movies on DVD. I'm going to go watch it now. Blogger, and all of you, can kiss my ass.

By the way, Avant Browser has yet to cause me even the slightest bit of grief, though I must admit I'm writing this update in Firefox.

Maxthon, NetCaptor, and Avant

There are a couple of non-standards-compliant web sites I need regular access to that won't display correctly in a Mozilla browser. Not willing to pay for Opera, or put up with its gargantuan banner ads, I spent a day trying out what are considered the three major IE shell replacement browsers in an attempt to drop that big blue E from my desktop permanently. I'd also like to get away from ever needing Internet Explorer again after the adventures in spyware I experienced in October. Anyway, all three of these browsers feature tabs, skins, and nice security features, including the ability to disable ActiveX entirely.

First I installed Maxthon 1.1.120 Combo, formerly MyIE2. Maxthon seems to be aimed directly at power users, possibly being the most customizable browser I've ever seen. The options window is so crowded it's almost unusable unless you already know what you're looking for and where to find it. Unfortunately, no one at Mysoft Technology seems to have realized that what power users actually want in a browser is transparency of use, so to speak: a browser that does what it does quickly and easily, without calling attention to itself. With all the Maxthon toolbars and sidebars active, there's more browser on screen than web page. But the real deal-killer for me was the way it deals with Java applets. In every one I tried, the right mouse button was either inoperable or doubled as a left button. What? Thanks, anyway.

So I moved on to NetCaptor 7.5.3. Having adjusted to the way Maxthon handles itself as an app, I found NetCaptor easy to get into, as the two browsers are very, very similar, although NetCaptor is clearly intended for a much less experienced user. This is actually a good thing. The free version is not full-featured, and has a fairly unobtrusive rotating text bar just above the browser window. For whatever reason, tabs are stuck at the bottom of the window, and tab controls are not as intuitive as those in Firefox or Opera. Still, it's a quick, easy browser that makes IE completely irrelevant.

But Avant Browser 10 makes NetCaptor look quaint and outdated. Avant is freeware, like Maxthon, but is so feature-rich, so stable, so user-friendly, and just so... professional, that it makes the $40 Opera look like a complete waste of money. Yes, Avant uses IE's rendering engine, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it plugs up at least 90% of the security holes that make IE such a horrible application to begin with. Avant also seems to have the smallest memory and processor footprint of the three browsers I tested, and is quicker than any I've used, aside from the Gecko-based K-Meleon. I made only one or two quick changes to the default toolbar layout, and decided that I actually prefer the tab bar on the bottom of the window, above the status bar. It even has an integrated RSS/Atom feed aggregator that works very well, much better than K-Meleon's aggreg8, though not as slick as Firefox's Live Bookmarks. Still, I've yet to find a major fault with this app, it's just a beautiful piece of software. It still can't stand up to Mozilla Firefox as the world-class browser. But the question must be asked: given Avant Force's resources, how is it that they can turn Internet Explorer into such an outstanding browser, and Microsoft cannot?

Updates

Asa has posted a new Gecko roadmap that shows a February 9 completion date for Gecko 1.8b, with Firefox/Thunderbird 1.1 released shortly thereafter. So that's cool.

I'm still fiddling with this Blogger theme. Added a tag or two to get rid of link underlines and updated my list of external links. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but it's just a damn blog, after all...

A new version of Winamp was released yesterday. Does anyone care?

I'm fighting very hard against my brain's preinstalled WinInstinct package, which is telling me I need to format my hard drive and reinstall Windows now, before things get any worse. It's been less than six months, but odd things are starting to happen with this computer that I can't fix. I think it really comes down to the fact that this is a pretty old box, with no major hardware changes, and it's only a matter of time before components start arbitrarily failing.

I rented The Forgotten and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this week. The Forgotten was about what I expected. A little too fast-paced for the kind of atmosphere it was going for, but not bad overall. The theatrical version makes no sense at all compared to the extended edition included on the DVD. Sky Captain, on the other hand, was much better than I'd hoped. I wanted to see it because I dig movies that try new stuff visually, but this really is a modern, consciously over-the-top version of the old sci-fi serial shorts from the thirties and forties, which I'm a huge fan of. At first, you're acutely aware that the entire movie is blue-screened in behind the actors, but once you get used to this, you can kind of lose yourself in it. In fact, I'm going to go watch it again right now, and tomorrow I'll consider adding it to my favorite films list in my profile.

More on Battier and Google "Defections"

The Memphis Flyer's Chris Herrington has written a nice little piece on Shane Battier for this week's issue. I didn't know about Shane's plus/minus rating, though I can't say it's surprising at all.

Darin Fisher, another full-time Mozilla developer, has left to work for Google. Like Ben Goodger, he'll still be working on Mozilla projects. Personally, I don't see any point to a Google-branded Firefox-based (or Gecko-based) browser. Branded browsers are always crap. What, it'll have integration with Google Desktop Search and Picasa? Isn't that just feature-creep? Doesn't it defeat the whole point of Firefox, and isn't that the reason Mozilla Application Suite and Netscape Communicator are nowhere near as popular as Firefox?

Sunbird, Mac mini, etc.

I installed the second release candidate for Sunbird 0.2 a couple days ago. As far as I can tell, I really don't have any use for it, but I'm keeping it around for a bit longer, because, like all Mozilla projects, it's just so damn slick, even as a pre-beta.

Like everyone else on earth, I really want a Mac mini. It's clearly a bare-bones system, particularly in terms of video performance, and it's essentially non-upgradable. But I happen to be in the market for a new $500 computer, and I already have a spare monitor, keyboard, and mouse...

Tech-Blog.org has posted a feature on a new standard keyboard that just might be the dumbest thing I've seen online so far in 2005. If Dvorak can't catch on, what chance does a 53-key, Lego-esque POS like this have?

Finally, Mark Stein continues to be my favorite ESPN NBA analyst, as he has kept the Memphis Grizzlies at number 9 in his NBA Power Rankings for the third consecutive week. That, and because Rick Bucher is a walking tabloid and Stephen A. Smith can't stop yelling long enough to make a fucking point.

The Browser Waters Get Murkier

Suprising news from Firefox lead engineer Ben Goodger this morning, as he says he's taken a job with Google and left the Mozilla Foundation payroll. He'll be staying on the Mozilla staff and continuing to work towards the future major releases of Firefox, but Neowin.net raises some interesting questions about how this new information may tie into the long-rumored Google web browser. Given that Google has been branching out in every conceivable direction since going public last year, and their existing loose ties to Mozilla, a Gecko-based browser seems entirely likely...

The Underdogs

It's taken less than three months for Firefox to reach 20 million downloads. In that time, Internet Explorer's share of the browser market has dropped below 90% for the first time since Communicator 4 was released and everyone just gave up on it. Meanwhile, Slashdot finally got around to mentioning the release of K-Meleon 0.9, which I still think will have a nice little niche for itself once Firefox becomes ubiquitous and the geekiest of us start looking for a less-mainstream, but just as good, alternative.

In another underdog development, Kelly Dwyer at SI.com seems to have noticed that the Memphis Grizzlies have quietly become one of the better teams in the NBA. But even after winning fifty games last season, it's staggering how little respect they get from NBA officials. It's not a secret to anyone that the league office would much rather see its marquee teams make the playoffs and get the nationally televised wins, but is that really a valid excuse to turn the referees into hired cronies? Even against bad teams like Utah and the Clippers, if the Griz are winning by ten or more, calls start going against them almost immediately. And in the fourth quarter, they don't get any calls at all. I've seen it again and again and again. I can count on one hand the number of games Memphis has played in the last two seasons with balanced officiating. There was even a game earlier this season, at home against Houston, where the refs made seven consecutive bad calls in the third quarter, all against the Griz. I saw the replays: they were all bad calls.

What's especially aggravating is that the Griz players, for the most part, have stopped complaining to the refs entirely, while certain teams (OK, the San Antonio Spurs) clearly get the benefit of the doubt every night and yet whine and bitch like spoiled little girls after every call that goes against them. Tim Duncan and coach Greg Poppovich are particularly guilty of this. The other night in a game on national television, I watched Coach Pop scream for five minutes about how the net on one of the baskets was different from the other, and therefore the Spurs were at a disadvantage. Excuse me? It was different because it had to be replaced mid-game after one of your players hung on the original net and broke it. So shut the fuck up and play the game.

Representing a Niche

In my efforts to help the Web community as a whole in testing various beta-level applications on a lower-end but still quite usable machine, I've run into a few hurdles. But Netscape is reaching for a whole new level of suck.

After reading about several limited beta releases of a new, Firefox-based Netscape browser, I finally found a public download of one at Softpedia. So I started the download and, with the freedom of a dial-up connection, I took advantage of the wait time by carefully orchestrating some exercise time for my two dogs. In other words, I put them in the backyard and threw a tennis ball around for twenty minutes. When I came back inside, I navigated my way to my application installers folder and double-clicked on the new Netscape setup file. And boy, was I surprised when I was treated to a dialog that said that since I had less than 64MB of RAM (this old box has 56MB, for some reason), Netscape can't install itself. I was given a cheerful "OK" button, and that was that.

So let's all give a nice round of applause to AOL's software team, who once again have proven that you don't actually have to please the actual user as long as you've pleased the average user.

Don Poier: The End of an Era

The Memphis Grizzlies released a statement today saying that Don Poier, the voice of the Grizzlies since their inception in 1995, died today in his hotel room in Denver before the game tonight against the Nuggets. He was just 53.

I only found out about this two and a half hours ago, and honestly, I just don't know what to think. Don Poier was the best play-by-play man I've ever heard. He left a high-paying gig broadcasting football games in the PAC-10 to join the Vancouver Grizzlies radio team ten years ago, knowing this would be a struggling franchise for years, simply because he loved the game. There's no way to quantify how many fans he won single-handedly in Memphis through his obvious love for his Grizzlies. Not only was he enthusiastic and genuine, and a lot of fun to listen to, Poier was also a damned good play-man. He knew the game of basketball inside-out, to such an extent that you got the feeling listening to him that he really didn't even need a color man.

Earlier this evening, on a local news station, the Griz VP of communications compared him to Chick Hearn. "He was that good," he said. And he was right, Don Poier is in that category of legendary broadcasters. He wasn't just the voice of the Grizzlies, he was the Grizzlies. He loved the players, he loved his job, he loved the fans, he loved the cities of Vancouver and Memphis. And we loved Don Poier.

Amiga OS4 and Navigator 3.0

Ars Technica has posted a ridiculously detailed review of the Micro-AmigaOne and Amiga OS4 Developer Prerelease. While I don't think I've ever actually used an Amiga, and I'm probably never going to, it's still a really cool article. It's nice to know that someone besides Microsoft and Apple is still working on simple, user-oriented operating systems (various non-developer Linux builds notwithstanding).

Someone called Pikachu90000 (I know) has been posting mediocre Firefox themes at deviantART almost continually since the end of December, and he finally got to me with this Netscape Navigator 3.0-based theme. I don't know why, but I just can't get enough of it.

K-Meleon 0.9

So I did play around with Mozilla Suite 1.8 Alpha 6 for about a week, and I quite like it. Composer is more usable than I expected, and the browser has some nice features if you don't ever want to have to tweak it. I ended up uninstalling it because it kept fucking up my RSS bookmarks in Firefox.

But tonight I saw on mozillaZine that the Gecko-based but awkwardly-named K-Meleon 0.9 was released yesterday, so I had to try that, too. Apparently it's been around for just over four years, but this is the first I've heard of it. And I really like it so far. It's very simple, but extremely customizable, even compared to Firefox and Opera. It doesn't integrate RSS and Atom feeds as smoothly as Firefox, but at least it does have a nice little RSS reader, which can be viewed in a tab (K-M calls them "layers"), which is more than can be said for Netscape. There are some very nice, elegant themes available as well, but K-M's best asset is its speed. It's just a really, really fast program in all respects, much faster than any other browser I've run on this admittedly slow machine, including IE. Without extension support, it doesn't offer the kind of range you get with Firefox and Mozilla Suite (I really miss Adblock), but I can't imagine not using this browser on a regular basis, at least as much as I use Firefox now. I'm sure I'll find more faults, but this is the best first-impression I've gotten from a piece of software since Thunderbird.

By the way, after I installed Netscape 7.2, I had four Windows hard-locks in less than a week. When I uninstalled it, they stopped.

Indie Goodness

I bought Pieces of April on a whim a couple weeks ago. I saw it standing in a huge rack of ten-dollar DVDs and remotely remembered seeing it reviewed, positively, by Ebert and Roeper, so I grabbed it. And it was a good decision. This is a wonderful example of indie moviemaking. Katie Holmes stars, with Oliver Platt, Patricia Clarkson, Derek Luke, and Alice Drummond. It's filmed entirely in hand-held DV, and it's brilliant. What's more, this DVD has the best commentary track I've ever heard, consisting solely of writer/director Peter Hedges.

Also, I borrowed my dad's copy of One Hour Photo. This movie was so fucking creepy that I had to pause it to watch some random TV several times just to break the tension. It was written and directed by Mark Romanek, who created the genious Nine Inch Nails videos for Closer and The Perfect Drug. The big draw for One Hour Photo is, of course, Robin Williams, in the role of a tightly-wound, button-downed, seriously eerie photo-mat clerk stalking Connie Nielsen's family. Eriq LaSalle also shows up with a confidently vanilla, but important part. I really liked this movie, so I stayed away from most of the DVD's special features, to keep Williams in check, but the Sundance Channel "Anatomy of a Scene" was quite interesting.

The Coming Domination of Gecko

I spent a lot of time this week using Netscape 7.2 and Opera 7.54, and I've come to the conclusion that there's just no reason to use anything but Firefox and Thunderbird anymore. Tomorrow I'm going to download and install Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6, but it really is academic at this point, even if there are 400+ bug fixes. There's just no denying it anymore: Firefox and Thunderbird are the state-of-the-art browser and mail client, and there's no reason to use anything else now.

This is especially significant to those of us who remember when the upcoming release of Netscape 2.0 was a huge deal, because there was no longer any reason to stick with Mosaic, and Lynx was suddenly irrelevant. We also remember when Netscape announced that Communicator Gold (4.0) would not be free, while Internet Explorer 4.0 was gratis. That ended up being the end of the browser wars. The next version of IE was integrated into the new version of Windows (Win98), and though Microsoft paid billions for that little marketing ploy, IE ended up with more than 90% of the browser market. But today, from the ashes of Netscape, comes Firefox, and it's so good it makes IE not only irrelevant, but backwards and downright dangerous. That's a little something called karma, and Bill Gates should probably watch his ass, because more cosmic retribution is coming his way.

In more me-centric news, I had the battery terminal connectors replaced on the Explorer, and disconnected the useless alarm system. Next week I'll try to take the alarm out of the car entirely. At any rate, it's nice to have a quick-firing truck around, even if it's still running a bit too hot for me to be entirely comfortable.

By the way, here are some Google blogs I found this week that I thought you'd be interested in:

Sails That Carry Me Home
While I Was Smoking...
Mental Hopskotch
Hugh-Morris

Underrated

When are the sports reporters of the world going to wake up and take a hard look at Shane Battier? We've been screaming about this kid in Memphis for three and a half seasons now, and nobody in the national media seems to have noticed. In 2001, Pau Gasol was the runaway Rookie of the Year, but who was second in the voting? Pau's teammate, Shane Battier, who, I'd like to point out, was the consensus NCAA player of the year in his senior season on the national championship-winning Duke Blue Devils. I suppose you have to watch three or four Grizzlies games in a row to realize just how good this guy is, and nobody outside of Memphis actually does that. So I'll summarize.

Battier is a 6'8" small forward, not the most athletic guy, (though he swears he won a slam-dunk contest in high school), but a guy who knows his limits, and who knows the game. And by "knows the game," I mean that this kid has started an NBA game at all five positions in less than three years, and with no more than a day's warning. What's more, he's a guaranteed winner. I've never seen a professional baller hit the ground more that Battier. If the ball is loose and he's within ten feet of it, it's his ball; that's just the way he thinks. Battier really comes into his own in the closing minutes of tight, hard-fought games, when guys start to dog it, and fatigue becomes tangible. He subconsciously ups the ante, and suddenly, he's got that crucial offensive rebound, he's stolen that crucial pass, he's made that crucial, impossible basket. He's the definition of a game-breaker, the guy who comes out of nowhere to seal a victory with a single play. I've seen him do it again and again and again. So why does his name keep coming up in trade rumors?

Because the people who write up trade rumors don't know anything about his game. They only look at the numbers, and Battier's stats are underwhelming. Fortunately, Grizzlies president of basketball operations Jerry West knows a thing or two about clutch, because he, too was that guy. Granted, he was also a superstar, one of the greatest players ever. But he sees every minute of every game, and he knows he can't trade Shane Battier for anything less than a future Hall of Famer.

And something else about Battier: he's a media darling. He never, ever turns away an interview, and he will give anyone, press badge or not, some of the most candid, lucid insight you will get out of an NBA player. I remember seeing a Cribs-style look at his home on a local news program midway through his first season here, and despite his maximum rookie contract, he eagerly showed the cameras around his tiny, cheaply furnished downtown apartment. He took more than adequate time to show off his small DVD collection, which included such masterpieces as Spaceballs and Austin Powers.

I've been an NBA fan since I was old enough to sink a basket on our nine-foot backyard hoop, and Shane Battier is by far my favorite player. It may be my inherent desire to root for the underdog, the unheralded player. If so, I don't think I'll change my mind even when the world wakes up and realizes what an all-star really is.

The Age of Fratello

So the Grizzlies won a fifth straight game tonight by blowing the defending NBA champion Pistons out of their own building, 101 to 79. The Griz are now 12-6 under Mike Fratello, getting easy road wins over Minnesota and Detroit after finally getting a couple of full practices in under their third head coach of the season. I have to tell you, I love this guy's fire. You can tell he's a disciple of Hubie Brown, I mean the guy just wants to win, and he'll do whatever he thinks he has to do to get his team to fight.

Firefox 1.1 is just over the horizon now. I'm particularly looking forward to the Gecko update that will bring it in line with the Mozilla trunk. It'll give me a reason to uninstall Mozilla, which I've noticed is a bit more stable and compliant than Firefox 1.0, but is a bit bloated for my needs, and doesn't have the endless toolbar configuration Firefox has spoiled me with. I'm also hooked on a Firefox theme called Bluemonkey, which is not the most user-friendly or compatible theme, and not the easiest to find, but it's just so damned slick.

Bleedy

Got a nice cut across the back of my right hand the other day, and it doesn't seem to want to heal. I was trying to duct-tape up the plexiglass inserts to the double steel storm back doors, when I accidentally dragged my hand across a jagged shard of safety glass (irony implied) sticking out of the interior sliding door. The glass in said sliding door was shattered like ten years ago, but the shards are still there. Maggie the lovable but ridiculously destructive rottweiler popped the plexi out for about the fifth time trying to get into the house. See, my deadbeat neighbors stopped paying rent and got kicked out of their house, and they abandoned about 7 cats and Maggie. As for the cats, I think most of them have wandered completely out of the neighborhood by now.

So screw my bleeding, doesn't matter. I've seen so many movies lately I can't possibly get into detailed reviews, because I got three hours of sleep last night and I've been up for 20 hours now. So here's the gist:

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: Funny, at times very funny, but only if you can immediately browse through all the DVD extras. Also, I still have "Afternoon Delight" running through my head.

Shaun of the Dead: Not only is this the funniest movie of the year, it's also up there with Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as both hilarious and meticulously well-crafted. Plus, it's got zombies, motherfucker!

Dreamcatcher: Extremely well acted, particularly Damian Lewis and Donnie Walberg, and at times nice and scary, but the pacing is all wrong, and it just gets tedious. Beautiful cinematography, though.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story: Unlike Anchorman, a great party movie, as it is gratuitously and immediately funny due to all the shots of people getting whomped in the face with shit. The deleted scenes consist mostly of character development, which is useless in this kind of movie. My suggestion? Buy the VHS. It's cheaper, and more the the point.

Stuck On You: Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon are conjoined twins, and wackiness ensues! Or not. Stupid and unfunny and predictable and I haven't looked at the extra features yet, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended DVD Edition: Nearly an hour of additional footage, scattered evenly throughout the already epic-length film, but it really is only for total Tolkien geeks like myself. I just bought the thing this afternoon, so I haven't gone through the two DVDs of bonus material yet, but if it's anything like the quality of the extended editions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, it's well worth just thirty bucks.