Please, browse responsibly: Drop Internet Explorer!

This isn't me, but I certainly made this face today...

This is a service announcement from your local webmaster. I have been fighting browser wars today, and must take a moment to make an earnest plea.

Do you use Internet Explorer? Many people still do. Web statistics show that more than 40% of people on the internet use some version of IE. The primary reason is that Internet Explorer comes pre-installed on your Windows PC. This is how the sneaky bandit named Bill Gates tricks unsuspecting people into using poorly made, truly frustrating software.

This is my plea:
Stop using Internet Explorer and, please, download anything else! 

Nowadays, there are a plethora of better options.

Mozilla Firefox has been around for a while now, and just released Firefox 4 this past week. It's great. I love it. It's my primary browser. It offers thousands of add-ons to make your browser into a superhero of the internet.
Download it here.

Google Chrome is also a good one. It's faster than Firefox, and insanely faster than Internet Explorer... Chrome is solid and blissfully simple. The latest version, Chrome 10, is great, fast, and fun.
Download it here.

Safari is another solid choice. It's an Apple product. It's not as fast as Chrome, but like Firefox, Safari has thousands of add-ons to make your browser do whatever you want. It's reliable, clean, and speedy.
Download it here.

Opera is less well-known, but it is built on a similar engine to Chrome. It offers all the speed and user-friendliness of Chrome.
Download it here.

You might be asking by now, "Why all this fuss?" Well, it's very simple:

Modern browsers follow web standards, but Internet Explorer does not.

 The internet is very young. It's only been around since the mid-80's. In the past 20 years or so, the internet has matured very quickly. We use web standards now in the construction of websites. These standards are very important because if every browser follows the standards, then the internet stays a happy, properly structured, safe, and pretty place to play.

The reason why I'm cyber-bullying Internet Explorer is because it refuses to follow web standards (HTML5/CSS3). Try as they might, Microsoft just can't put a decent version together. Even the latest version, Internet Explorer 9, fails miserably. Sure, it picks up on a few things that earlier versions didn't, but it is still a horrible browser, and a bad waste of your harddrive space (and sanity).

The only way that Microsoft will change its evil ways is if upstanding citizens, such as yourself, choose to throw off the IE chains that bind you, and embrace a much better way to view the web. (And you'll be making my job easier.)

Please, browse responsibly.

Notepad++ inactive tab-color fix

If you use Notepad++ as your primary source code editor, you might share my annoyance with the background color of inactive tabs. (The default color makes the inactive tab titles very hard to read.) Even more annoying is that when a person tries to edit the colors by going to Settings / Style Configurator, the changes don't stick. Here's a handy fix:

The file you need to alter is stylers.xml, which in Windows 7 is found in: C:\\Users\[your user file]\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\stylers.xml.

Right at the bottom of the document, the very last WidgetStyle, is the following:

WidgetStyle name="Inactive tabs" styleID="0" fgColor="555555" bgColor="f0f0f0"

I've already changed the hex colors to what I like. The fgColor controls the text color ("foreground"), and the bgColor controls the background color. Set those however you like, restart your code editor, and you should be in business!

via: Sourceforge bug support

Mot and an Overreading of "Starship Mine"

Exegesis is a funny thing. To misquote the apostle Paul, exegesis infiltrates the mind like "a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough" (1 Cor 5:6). My life, and television-viewing for that matter, has never been the same since I've become a student of biblical exegesis. For the most part, as it pertains to TV, an interest in interpretation and narratology has been very fruitful, resulting in greater engagement with plots and character development.

Sometimes, however, I "find" things the writers didn't intend...

I was recently inspired by a friend to stroll again through the memorable seasons of Star Trek: the Next Generation. In the episode "Starship Mine" the Enterprise is taken over by a group of bandits who are after some of the ship's propulsion components, which they attempt to steal while the ship's crew is on "shore leave", on a starbase. Only Cpt. Picard remains on board, unnoticed by the bandits.

When Picard is discovered, they demand to know his name, and he answers, "Mot. My name is Mot. I'm the barber." It makes sense for Picard to give a false name, because it's fairly evident that, should the bandits learn he is the captain, they will kill him. But what comes next caused my exegetical ears to perk up.

As the episode proceeds, Picard kills most of the bandit crew. Picard uses an uncharacteristic amount of lethal force in this episode. Picard is a diplomat, usually relying on his ace negotiating skills to to diffuse a tense situation.

The combination of his stated name, "Mot," and the great amount of death Picard causes got me thinking, "Do the writers of Star Trek know Ancient Near Eastern mythology?!"

In ANE mythology (which includes the Old Testament), "death" or מות (mōt) is personified, and often functions in stories and poetry as a character. Since Picard took the name of "Mot", or "Death," I naturally became very intrigued with the writers' apparent mythological prowess. Since Star Trek: the Next Generation already makes frequent reference to Greek mythology, and since Picard is always telling Commander Riker, "You should really read more history," a further reference to Ancient Near Eastern mythology didn't seem like too far of a stretch.

Mot the Barber

That is... until I watched through several more episodes and found out that there actually is a barber on the Enterprise named Mot...

So, rather than expertly perceiving a subtle allusion to מות, I had rather unintentionally performed a classic case of 'eisegesis'; I had read an obscure mythological reference into the story. Sorry, Mr. Mot. I had you all wrong.