Apple's Safari Browser for the PC (Beta) Review

Last night I decided to see what Apple had to offer with their new Safari Browser. From what I've heard from Mac users, Safari is less of a resource hog than Mozilla Firefox on the Mac, and it also seems to load pages a lot quicker. The download took no time at all, nor did the installation. However, like all Apple products for the PC, it simply has to install at least one other piece of software on your machine that you didn't ask for. In this case, it was the "Apple Product Update" and "Bonjour". I believe that these pieces were optional, but still, the point is that you get nagged to install them anyways.

To apple's credit, the browser certainly was fast. I felt like my internet connection increased significantly as pages rendered and loaded quite well. The interface was weird. Apple certainly went to great pains in making the Safari Browser look a lot like OSX's platinum theme. Using their browser in full-screen view made you think that you were on a Mac, with the buttons and animated features working seamlessly as you surfed. I found it quite annoying for some of its functions with tabs and configurations, but that's probably stemming from years of Firefox and IE. It was something that was going to take some getting used to. At least I had tabbed browsing.

Installing plug-ins was not that difficult to do, but unless you scoured the download page or did some decent Google searching, you were out of luck. Also, a lot of pages weren't ready to distinguish between Safari Plug-ins for the Mac and ones for the PC. What's more, some of the so-called "plug-ins" were actually full versions of the software.. This left me with stuff I didn't want, like Adobe Acrobat Reader 8, which is one of the chunkiest pieces of software out there (The install was about 123 MB once installed).

My favorite remote PC access site Logmein.com didn't work so well. For some reason, after installing the Java Plugin, restarting, and various other attempts didn't fix the issue. I was forced each time to use the HTML implementation which is way too annoying for anyone.

Then came the killer. I was browsing randomly and ready other forums and reviews on Safari when I noted that one article mentioned something about memory usage. I had known that Firefox has had issues with memory management, but these days, things were much better than originally. The article prompted me to check out my memory usage from Safari. After spitting out my drink in a spray all over my desk and picking myself up off of the floor, I looked again at what the memory monitor said: 131MB of memory used (and counting). That was rediculous. More than 10 percent of my system memory (1024MB) was being used up by Safari with just one tab opened. Despite its speediness, that's enough to take a toll on any system. I feel bad for the poor chap who has 512 or even 256MB on their system trying to run this thing.

With that revelation, I quickly uninstalled the browser from my machine. It was clear that the glaring issue was the system memory usage. And with LogMeIn not working so well, I could find little to justify using it in day-to-day use for my job.

In conclusion, the Apple Safari browser is a slick and snappy program. It has available plug-ins for the typical browsing needs such as Flash and Java and even Media Player. However, the interface is not too configurable, the tabbed browsing can be tiring when compared with Firefox or even IE7. Lastly, the fact that it eats system resources for lunch make it not too great of a browser for less-equipped PCs with less than a gig of memory. Thankfully, Apple can punt to "Beta" as a good excuse for these things. It is noticeable, however, that anything that Apple tries port over to the PC (such as iTunes) proves to be less than stellar. Nice try Apple, but it's not ready quite yet.

The Linux Dilemna

Besides the obvious factor of being a computer geek, there is some mysterious appeal to learn and use an operating system other than Microsoft Windows. Am I against using Microsoft Windows? Not really. Most of what I know and understand about computers has come from learning it in a Windows environment. I guess I'm curious to know how the other half lives. Recently, we've been toying with the idea of possibly running Ubuntu Linux on the computers in the elementary lab. This idea is mainly motivated by the idea of saving a lot of money, as well as giving a chance to an open source alternative.

So what is the dilemma? The dilemma has a lot to do with the support and maintenance of Linux. As well as the unpredictability of what could go wrong. What if the printer stops working? What if certain well-used programs don't work? What if our web-filtering software is not compatible? What if I die in a tragic blimp accident and they don't have anyone else who even remotely can figure out the mess I've made using Linux? These questions keep me away. Admittedly, I've been using Ubuntu Linux on my home desktop and my work laptop for about 2 weeks now and I'm really content with it. Only rarely do I find any need to boot into Windows for the use of Internet Explorer or Picasa2 (it runs so slowly in linux for me). Would I recommend Ubuntu Linux to others? Sure. Would I use it in my school's elementary lab this coming year...probably not. Not yet, at least.

A Very Dark Graduation

Friday June 1, was Hershey Christian School's first high school graduation. They graduated 8 seniors. It was a momentous occasion for the school. However, it was probably like no other graduation. About 10 minutes before the ceremony began, a strong storm knocked out power to the area and the entire ceremony was done in the dark. I commend our headmaster for sticking it out, but there's just a little less magic in a room where you can barely see anybody. I kind of felt bad for the people that put so much hard work and planning with the assumption that there would be electricity readily available. There was no slideshow, video address, microphones, speakers, video recordings, air conditioning, etc. In any event, the kids still got their diplomas and will be able to look back on it and say that they got to graduate in the dark, I guess.

The Blue Angels

This year we were able to travel down to Annapolis, MD to watch the Blue Angels perform their practice run at the United States Naval Academy. We joined up with some friends from the area for the event. It was quite a fun event, with plenty of room for the kids to run around as well as an outstanding day weather-wise. To view some pictures from the event, check out the link: Blue Angels

Photography Ethics?

I was just reading an article out of a special edition of National Geographic that I found kind of interesting. The author was talking about digital photography and emphasizing with great effort, the issue of trust. His point was that with digital photography is it very easy to "manipulate" color, contrast, lighting, and other parts of a photo which can "deceive" the viewer. The idea, he says, is to develop a trust with the viewer of your photo. If you attempt to digitally manipulate a photo with an intent to deceive the viewer, then you are entering "treacherous waters". The author then went on to assure that the photographs in National Geographic are in no way enhanced for this reason.

Personally, as a hobbyist in the field, I'd have to say that anything I want to do with my photos to improve them for my own enjoyment is valid. I also think that if I want to enhance a photo in a way that will make my intentions of the shot more clearer to the viewer, there is nothing wrong with that either. Some people are purists in this field. Anybody else have opinions on that? Feel free to leave some comments.

My First Trip to the Big Apple

This past weekend I was able to go on a two-day trip to New York City with the high school choir. It was a really fun trip. Our itinerary included a concert in St. Paul's Chapel, shopping in Chinatown, dinner in Little Italy, a Broadway show (Phantom of the Opera), a 4 hour tour of the city which included excursions through Central Park and Rockefeller Square, a trip on the Staten Island Ferry (with a view of the Statue of Liberty), lunch and shopping in Times Square, and a visit to the Metropolitan Museum. This was the first time I've ever been to New York City, so I was able to snap some photos. I've only put about 1/6 of those on our photo page. Feel free to check them out.

The scary thing about computers.

Have you ever seen those "end of the world" movies where the computers crash and pandemonium breaks out and people start raiding stores, etc.? Yesterday I was going through the self-checkout of the local grocery store when the kiosk I was using crashed on me. Suddenly, I noticed that other people had concerned looks on their faces. As I scanned the faces of the cashiers, I realized that their machines had crashed. It was then that the manager called all of the store staff to the front of the building and was giving them frantic instructions. This was going on, of course while the lines were beginning to build with confused customers with huge piles of groceries.

There was an announcement made that they were experiencing a computer issue and it would be fixed momentarily. Well, 10 minutes later it was still not fixed. I overhead one employee tell another that not only had the store's computers gone offline, but the entire chain of grocery stores in the area were experiencing the exact same problem at the exact same time. Needless to say, I had to get back to work, so I left my stuff and walked out.

This experience kind of woke me up to the reality of how much of what we do everyday is relied upon the use of computers. If ever a Y2K situation ever occurred, I think we'd be seeing a major catastrophe. Humans have been too conditioned and dependent on machines for operating in every day life. Kind of scary.

Embarassment

If anyone feels like an idiot for blogging, its me. My new job has made blogging very difficult to do regularly. This is the reason for the lack of posts. Oh, and my evaluation of Vista? Nevermind. It lasted about two weeks, and then I realized that Windows Vista had nothing to offer me that I couldn't already get elsewhere.

So lets move on. I've been attempting to try and find a lazy man's way of posting photos on the internet without really dealing with managing a website and such. I found that Google has a nice offering with Picasa's web pages. I get to easily select the photos and upload them in a matter of a few clicks. I love this. Its so easy. So what's the url for our pictures? Here you go:

http://picasaweb.google.com/abjurina/

You can go there to see our pictures from time to time. Now that the weather is nice, we'll be taking shots pretty often, and I'll try to keep it updates much more often than my blog. In any case, if you read this blog, you've now got a way to check out pictures now and again. I'll try and get the blogging going more often once the school year calms down a bit. Its going to be a busy summer, but I want to continue the writing as much as possible. Also, if you are into technology at all, you can keep up with my other blog at http://hersheychristiantech.wordpress.com. I mainly write on topics of technology that are relevant to the parents and school community, but there might be some good jewels there for somebody.

I'm back (2-1-07 post)

Not that anyone is paying that much attention, but I'm finally taking the time to write more. I've been caught up with work and holidays and work and, did I mention work? Well, needless to say, I found a sliver of time to write.
I decided to recently become an early adopter of Windows Vista. I can't say that I've found anything to do back-flips about over it. It certainly has a nice interface and some neat eye-candy (if you are using the Aero features). However, when you've become used to so much not changing for 6 years in Windows XP, its a bit intimidating. I certainly applaud the fact that Microsoft has updated the operating system with some better and more useful applications. The Windows Calendar is quite useful, and well-integrated with Microsoft Mail. However it turns out that Microsoft Mail is little more than Outlook Express with some small changes. Another really cool application is the windows snipping tool. It allows you to take great screenshot clips anywhere. No more annoying pastes of a yucky bmp file into a Word or Mail document. Its actually quite handy. Well, I'll not make any more comments until I play with it more, but this is my impression as of one weeks use. There's plenty more to say about it, so stay tuned.

Entry for 12/20/06

I saw this article today which stated that Firefox's share in the browser market slipped slightly from last quarter. To be honest, I'm not surprised. I've been using IE7 occasionally, and I'd have to say, other than the annoying ads it seems to still allow, it seems to be quite a nice browser in comparison to IE6.



In other news, with windows Vista now on the horizon and scheduled for launch on January 30th of 2007, I will be soon ordering a copy for evaluation. Our school is building a new facility which will have two computer labs. We'll be equipping each lab with new machines and, if Vista turns out to be decent, new operating systems as well. It should be quite an interesting adventure this summer, as we try and take partial occupancy of the new building with our high school.

Entry for 11/28/06

I used to feel kind of weird about thanksgiving, feeling that it is just a celebration of American gluttony with more food than one needs to eat. However, over the years I've come to see other facets of this holiday. Sadly, I confess that this year I felt no thankfulness or even a pause of acknowledgment to God for these things. I know its wrong, and I certainly owe God an apology. I've found a great quote in our weekly faculty newsletter that needs to be shared. I know its past the thanksgiving holiday, but its still worth sharing:



“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” –Abraham Lincoln

So here I am at this conference... (Entry for 11/10/06)

...and I'm so loving my job. Our school sends us each year to the Mid-Atlantic Christian School Association (MACSA) Educator's conference, which consists of two days of workshops for teachers. The workshops are usually various subjects ranging from apologetics courses to get credits in Bible, to computer classes aimed at keeping people informed. The school not only pays for our way to the two-day conference, but it also provides us with 10 dollars a day for lunch. I find that quite astounding and benevolent.

Right now I'm taking advantage of the free wireless access here at the hotel where the conference is to write this blog. Its very encouraging to see that there are so many Christian School teachers out there with a desire to learn and enhance their teaching skills. Sometimes I think that Christian Schools get a reputation for having teachers that are too under-qualified to be a public school teacher. While that might be the case in some schools (even public), its good to see that these teachers have not only a passion for what they do as teachers, but also a passion and sacrificial desire to serve God as well.

Entry for 11-6-06

Well, its official: The Pittsburgh Steelers have now tied up the noose real tight and kicked out the chair from underneath. The scary fact is that the past two games were really lost when they defeated themselves. It makes no sense why a football team would consistently gain over 400 yards of offense and somehow manage to lose a game. I do believe that as of this writing, Big Ben leads the league in interceptions. Oh well, at least I have a fantasy league to be excited about.

I've decided to try out a few services I've been meaning to look at. One of them is Xdrive, which is a service of AOL. Despite my loathing of AOL in general, I'm really curious as to how useful it will be having 5 Gigs of online storage space at my fingertips. We'll see I guess. If you are curious, check out the service for yourself ( http://www.xdrive.com).

My job is getting kind of interesting as of late. We've finally gotten internet access down at this building (as you can see), and now I'm into the challenge of investigating some good content filtering software, as well as learning to how service and administer a windows 2003 server (of which I stink at). Needless to say, if it weren't for good friends 'In the know', I'd be really in bad shape.

Well, enough blabbing.

Latest update

Okay okay, so this time I've not made an entry is a very very long time. This is because my life has been turned upside down in a trillion different ways. To start we've sold our house and moved into the city. I started a new job teaching and doing IT admin work at Hershey Christian. On top of it, the new house we bought wasn't ready for 6 weeks (Due to some serious electrical work and fixes that needed done) so we ended up living with Meg's mom in one bedroom. This was quite an ordeal for starting a new career for me with limited e-mail and internet access.

Right now things are beginning to work out. We've finally gotten into our new home, which we love. I'm learning a routine at home and feeling pretty confident about the one at work. I've getting time to be online more often (although I don't think I'll ever be online like I was for the past two years). This basically means that I have no interesting links to blog about right now, however I will continue to try and find items of interest to share with you all. There may only be one or two readers of this thing, but that's enough to keep me writing either way.

Where have I been?

Wow. I've thought that I knew what busy was until I took this job. There is just so much to do. I'm way too busy to write to this blog as much as I used to. I'm also really enjoying this job a whole lot and I haven't even started teaching yet! Anyways, here's some summary as to the past month of activity:

-Started working with Hershey Christian School on July 17th. Process began with taking inventory and evaluating the hardware situation. I'm still in the proccess of analysis, but things are improving.

-Tried out Ubuntu Linux on my compaq laptop for two weeks. I would have to say that it was quite an initial learning curve, but it ended up being very nice to work with. However, having lived in a windows environment for pretty much all of my post-college life, I could not find ways to avoid using Microsoft software. In fact, the issues with wireless networking, printer compatibility, and other things just led me to give it up. I'd have to say that if I had lots of time, I'd probably still be running Linux right now. I just don't have the time nor the energy to invest into it.

-I've acquired a new laptop computer through my job. Being the IT Director gives me some priveleges of having a laptop. The machine is really cool. Its an HP Compaq nx7400 15.4" widescreen with 1 GB of RAM, an 80GB HD, and an Intel  1.83 Core Duo processor. This laptop has made things so easy for me in terms of managing all the 1 billion tasks I now have to do.

-We're moving. We sold our house and settle on it at the end of August. We found an old fixer-upper in the city with more square footage, and some charm. We'll be moving into that sometime in September, if all goes well. Between the new job and the move, there's plenty to keep me busy...lol.

On my way out (goodby programming, hello teaching!)

BAMM!!!! In just one phone call I was spared from spending the next two working weeks of my life surfing the internet with nothing to do for 8 hours to actually preparing myself for my renewal in the halls of teachings once again.

I get the opportunity to start work at Hershey Christian School on Monday (July 17th) rather than waiting any longer. This is great news considering I need to not only learn the setup of computers at the school, order equipment and set it up for a 3rd computer lab, but also orient myself with new curriculum and staff and also have my lesson plans in order. Yes, I'd say that getting started right away will be a good thing.

As for Weidenhammer. Can't say it wasn't a blast...yes I can...and it wasn't.

Just Bloggin' Nonsense

Ok, so I just got back from a WONDERFUL week with my family. The weather turned out perfectly, we got a ton done, and I feel well-rested and ready to...oh wait, I'm going to be leaving this job in a few weeks..so I guess I'm ready to do nothing...either way, I'll have plenty of spare time on my hands (Yes, at work) to write, so you may find an entry or two to peruse. In any case, don't come looking for much insight. I've got none to share...at least not right now.

Deactivated and loving it

Today I've been unofficially "deactivated" as a programmer at my job. I am kind of content about this, because I've decided a while back that I don't want to be programming for this company anymore. In fact, aside from the simple web-programming that I already do, I don't think I want to program ever again.

The GOOD news is that I have been accepted to be the computer and technology teacher at Hershey Christian School. I get to be a teacher again! I can't even express my happiness with this. The fact that God has given me the opportunity to get back into the job I  feel most confident in, and love the most. Its not Spanish, however i would think that my passion for technology currently exceeds my passion for Spanish. However, what really matters is what my greatest passion is, and that is teaching.

Why did I leave teaching? I didn't hate it. I chose to change careers as an opportunity to move back to PA and start a family. I also wanted to somehow use my computer degree before it became obselete. Now I'm able to use both my teaching AND computer degree. This is gonna be good...:-)

One of the best articles I've read in a while

I've just finished reading a very long, but very elightening article discussing the role of evangelical Protestantism in American culture. If you associate yourself in any way with Christianity, this article is a very very good read,

http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i42/42b00601.htm

PS: Please allot yourself about 10 minutes to read it as it is lenghty. Feel free to leave your comments on this blog, or e-mail me with what you think.

Here's one for T-Dawg

So I watched the last 15 minutes of last night's NBA finals game, in which the Miami Heat won. My assessment: Despite not watching a single regular season game or playoff game, I feel perfectly content saying that I've missed absolutely nothing all season, and last night was a waste of time as well.   Despite what Mark Cuban says, I don't agree with him: The NBA isn't rigged. Nothing so mediocre on the entertainment scale is worth rigging. :-)

Our Stupid Citizens

Report: Mother sues MySpace for $30 Million

What is our world coming to? When does a mother has the right to sue a website because her child  posted personal information about herself on the internet which eventually led to her meeting up with the guy and being sexually assulted? Her case? She claims that MySpace lacks security measures to protect teenagers from predators. That's like suing the city because I walk into a known crime area and get mugged. It makes no sense. I think that people these days expect their children to be immune from dangers without their help. I've got a better solution for this mother:  START BEING A RESPONSIBLE PARENT!!!!

Helment laws and other stuff

This week Big Ben gets into a motorcycle accident and smashes his face off of a car windshield. This results in 7 hours of surgery to his face. However, people still have the nerve to argue against wearing a helmet. Are people stupid? How is it that its a law to wear your seatbelt to protect yourself from crashes, yet its not a law to wear a helment? Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!

I suffered through my first experience with a pipe this past weekend. I have never smoked anything in my life, and really had no curiosity to until recently. The good news about smoking pipes and cigars is that you don't inhale the smoke and so, unless you would do it reguarlly, its not harmful. I've always thought that pipe tobacco smells okay, but let me alert those of you who have never smoked a pipe that it definitely doesn't taste like it smells. Particuarlly the stuff I tried..I think that it was called, Marijuana...haha...just kidding. Needless to say, despite the new experience, i don't see myself buying a pipe and tobacco anytime soon. Its just not my thing.

I bought a bb/pellet gun the other day as well. I bought it mainly to take out the bunnies in my back yard. However, I'm finding it hard to kill what I would consider a harmless little creature. I shot one the other day with a bb and a few pumps of the gun, just to make it run away. However, after watching it limp away in confusion and pain, I've decided to just use the gun for recreational target practice, which harms nothing but my pride of being able to shoot straight.

Work has been pretty busy for me lately. I hate it. I want to quit. I'm hoping to get back into teaching, where I feel my gifts and abilities are better used. I'm just not cut out to live the life of a programmer. I'm too much of a social person. I also enjoy helping and working with others. I just can't do that in an environment where I sit all day and type into a computer for 8 hours. Like the pipe smoking experience: Its just not for me.

Post for 5/23/06

So I've flip-flopped once again to Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3. I was enjoying using Maxthon as my browser of choice. However, the ever-growing list of extensions for firefox has wooed me back as usual. One of those extensions, in fact, is how I write this blog entry. A very convenient integrated blogging utility called Performancing.

Anyways, here's a link to a cool piece of software called visual task tips. It allows you to enjoy a future feature of Windows vista, where you can hover your mouse over the open program buttons in your taskbar and get a small thumbnail of what the program looks like. This becomes really useful when you have a lot of windows open at once: Visual Task Tips Web Site

If you are into photography, particuarly digital photography, and would like to learn more about some neat tips and suggestions to bring out your camera's ability, as well as your own. Check out this blog: Digital Photography School

Anybody looking for some great tools for organization that are available online, I've been finding my life to be extremely productive with the following tools:

Gmail: an online e-mail client thats quick, easy, well-organized, and holds 2 Gigs of e-mails.

Google Calendar (GCal): Possibly the best online calendar application I've ever seen. It allows additons of multiple calendars, e-mail, sms, and popup notifications, daily agenda e-mails, etc.

Tada list: this is a recent application I've found useful in helping me to manage my work projects. Its as simple as it gets for a ToDo list, and its free (just like the above applications).

There are other online applications that I've found either useful or beneficial to me. I'll share more about them later in another posting. What about you? Are there any online (web-based) applications that you rely on for productivity and organization? Feel free to share.

Entry for 5-11-06

So this is what the Chinese do when then become successful? Good thing there is communism then, or there'd be fighter jets flying all over the place: Check out the article here.

Personal thoughts:

-(for Tim): The NBA playoffs are in full swing right now. As of this year, I've not watched a single game and I still feel great!!!

- I think that success can be measured by the satisfaction one gets from his work alone. Despite the pay or perks of the job. If you only love your job for the pay and the perks alone, then you don't really love your job.

-Making yourself vulnerable and asking for help is the quickest way to acheivement in anything. Doing neither can be the quickest way to failure.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!!!

Just some info for y'all:  Cinco de Mayo is the celebration of a victory war fought between the the Mexicans and the French, after the French attempted to invade Mexico over a debt dispute that it claimed the mexicans owed them for aiding them in their war for independence against Spain. The victory for the mexicans demonstrated that the newly founded country of Mexico wasn't going to be bullied by anybody. (Until later, when the country was overtaken by drugs, political corruption, poverty, and pollution.)  Contrary to popular belief, it is NOT a celebration of Mexico's indepedence from Spain.