My first public speaking gig...

I was happy, and a little nervous, to be on the panel for The Web Association presentation today - State of the Web:The Year Ahead. Julie was very patient with my worrying about this all week and going over and over the slides.  This was the first time I had spoken publicly and despite the bad weather it was a great turnout.

My section was about Web Standards and I touched upon the rise of microformats. For those interested the two Firefox extensions mentioned were Tails and Operator.

I hope people got something out of it and I'm looking forward to the follow-up sessions from my fellow panelists.

technorati tags:microformats, web standards, presentation

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My top Firefox add ons...

I use Firefox as my browser of choice (Flock comes a close second when blogging etc.) and with it I make use of quite a few of the extensions (now renamed add on's) written for it. As I am a web developer some of these skew to that but there are still enough below that I find useful in my day-to-day surfing.

Web Development

• Web Developer Tool bar
• Operator Tool bar
• Tails
  
• Search Status
• MeasureIt
• Mozilla Accessibility Extension
• Professor X
• SEO For Firefox
• Table Inspector
• User Agent Switcher
• About This Site
• ColorZilla
• Firebug
• FireFTP
• Fangs

General Surfing

• Adblock Plus + dutchblock
• FlashGot
• Free Download Manager plug in
• IE Tab
• MinimizeToTray
• Tabbrowser Preferences
• Update Notifier
• Colorful Tabs
• DNSStuff Tool bar

Organization

• Gmail Notifier
• Bloglines Toolkit
• Google Notebook
• Greasemonkey

technorati tags:firefox, flock, add ons

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I have a thing for electronic music...

So I have a thing for electronic music. Anything from the ambient works of Brian Eno through some, but not all, of Jean-Michel Jarre to the latest crop who release their work through the Internet. I find it nicer listening to this genre whilst spending time on the PC (which I do too much of) over songs and podcasts.

It's these Internet artists that I have been listening to most recently.

Saul Stokes has been around for a while now and creates his own instruments. I recently purchased his Outfolding album from his site, after it being on my Amazon wish list for some time to no avail, and received a nice signed photo in the email from him the next day.

Another place for good electronic music (and it's FREE) is The Kahvi Collective. The have a huge back catalog of people, including Saul Stokes, to download in both .ogg and .mp3 formats.

Latest one I grabbed from there is octopus city by url - it's very good but I recommend digging around to find other stuff. Some personal favorites are by MINT, Alexey V and 4t Thieves.

I use ma.gnolia as my online bookmarks and you find more on my electronic music list there.

technorati tags:electronic music, free

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Take down the decorations and start decorating...

So now all the Chrimbo decorations are down and packed away in the basement, it's time to start thinking about painting the new abode.

With moving in so near to Xmas neither of us felt we've really looked at our new home without boxes, clutter or decorations in the way.  Now all the furniture is in place and "most" of the stuff has found a home (I still have a few boxes to unpack) it's time to start putting our mark on the place - that means paint.

That and a trip to IKEA for shelving and some organizational stuff.  There's a future blog post right there.

technorati tags:decorating

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Day 3. Post #2 - The Weather...

So it's now Jan 03, 2007 and I've yet to see serious snow. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wishing for it! It just seems slightly unnerving that I'm in NE Ohio, in January, and can walk around in shirt sleeves. I can play Football (Soccer) with Josh outside and we don't both resemble the Michelin Man.

Since moving here I've had to break out "The Winter Box" every November and don two or three (I'm fairly warm-blooded) layers of cotton and wool to fend off the ever dropping temperature. One of my favorite games was switching the in-car thermometer between °C & °F as we pulled out of my in-laws garage and watch it plummet to -10°! That kind of cold hurts when you breath.

This year nothing. 2006 we got two days at best.

I'm glad that global warming stuff Al Gore spoke about was just propaganda.

technorati tags:weather, snow, ohio

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To start 2007...

So I have already let one of my resolutions slip:

* blog at least one post every day in 2007

this is the first post and it's the second day so bang goes that one.

Anyway. Our year started with two new things which can't be bad. First I experienced the joy of an American breakfast at IHOP. Now if your as unfamiliar as I was, IHOP is open 24hours-a-day, everyday, and is known for its pancakes (it is the International House Of Pancakes after all). Nice big portions of pancakes, hash browns, two crispy strips of the King of Meats and a couple of poached eggs - lovely!

The other new thing was actually what I poured over the aforementioned pancakes. Now on each table IHOP has four different flavored syrups and my flavor to welcome in 2007 - Boysenberry! Man that was good. All that tends to be on offer over here is traditional Maple which is okay if you like liquid sugar.

Now don't get me wrong, the breakfast was good, one of the best I've had but nothing beats a Full English. One of the few things I miss about Blighty.

Catch you tomorrow.

technorati tags:breakfast, new years resolutions, ihop

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