Jamas

Themeing Firefox and Thunderbird

In past posts I have covered add-ons for both Firefox and Thunderbird, here I want to tell you about themes.  Now themes may not seem as useful as add-ons to you but they do have an important purpose. They do more then just change colours and icons within the program. They allow you to blend the program into the rest of your computer environment.  For most spending any time selecting a theme may seem like a waste of time, but for me it is as important as making changes in my physical environment around me.

Let me explain by giving you the example of what I use for a Firefox and Thunderbird theme.  The theme I use for both is called PitchDark.  As the name would suggest the theme is dark, in other words instead of being brightly coloured with lots of white areas the theme changes most of the colours to darkgreys, browns and black.  Now as it turns out this is not an easy thing to do.  There are many dark themes that fail to maintain readability when recasting the colours.

So why would I choose a dark theme? Well I spend too much time in front of a computer, 8+ hours at work and then a few hours each evening at home.  For me staring all day at a computer screen is pretty painful on the eyes.  Over the years I have found that if I make the background of most my programs black then my eye strain seems to be greatly reduced.  For my most often used programs I try find a theme that is dark or some settings that allow me to adjust the colours to reduce the glaring white areas.

Another reason to theme and make that theme match the rest of your environment is a bit more subversive. I imagine most users of Thunderbird or Firefox could identify them running on a computer screen from some distance. What they recognize is the standard theme.  Change the theme and this will trick a few people.  Select a theme that will make the program look like most of the other programs you are running and it becomes a bit of a challenge.  Maybe this is desirable in a work environment where they really are not paying you to surf the web or read personal emails.

So if you spend a fair amount of time in front of a computer I suggest spending the time at getting themes that you like to look at.  For Firefox and Thunderbird you can start at the Mozilla theme site.

Ottawa Photography Show – 2008

Back for another year is Henry’s Photographic, Video and Digital Imaging Show on November 14th to 16th.  I think the title covers pretty much everything you could want out of the show.   Entrance again is $15 for a whole weekend, I usually try to go two days to get into as many seminars as possible.

At the show there is the trade floor area. Every major vendor of equipment will be well represented.  It is a great opportunity to drool over the latest offerings and ask some technical questions of the reps. On my list this year of things to check out: Nikon’s new full frame D700;  the new compact HD video cameras – I really liked the Panasonic from last years show that records to SD cards; neutral density filters – I saw a few photos from a friend with one of these, the results were amazing.  As always you can expect some good deals at the show.  It will be interesting to see if the state of the economy brings out some extra specials!

Last year saw the introduction of the on site lab, along with the seminars from past years.  The lab was a great chance to sit in front of a computer and follow along with a presentation.  I for one always learn best from actually doing something myself.  The seminars are also a great chance to pick up some free tips.  Last year the What You See Is What You Get Colour Management was very interesting.  I also picked up a good tip in one seminar about quickly inverting your selection area in Photoshop.  This year I think the Scanning & Restoration lab will be worth checking out and Choosing The Right Filter for Your DSLR which is sure to help me in my neutral density filter quest.

Google Finance

I was complaining to a coworker the other day about stock sites. They seem to have not caught on to what the web is good at, giving data to people in useful ways.  For example stock charts.  Most sites have the standard 3 month, 6 month and year charts.  They are pretty static and down right old school. Not much different then what gets printed in a paper.  While complaining I said this is an area the Google would probably do right.  They have in the past changed how users interface with maps, email and calendars. Well my wish has been granted in Google Finance which features the very slick interfaces you would expect form a Google product.

Tandoori Beaver Tails

Tandoori Beaver Tails is a great blog written by one of my colleague at work.  Kulpreet definitely writes a lot better then I do and he also tends to ramble on a lot more, which in his case is a good thing.  He has expanded on my Google Trends post with a really interesting set of searches that you should take a peek at, Canada: According to Google Trends.  There is also some fun commentary on politics.  So go give it a read.

Google Trends: Election 2008

Polls have become the addiction of the election world and I am hooked. After last nights debate I found myself scouring the web looking to see if there was any change. A few points shift here or there but nothing yet that indicates the debates had a major impact on the election.

So with polls not showing much I went looking for something else.  If you have yet to see Google Trends let me explain.  It allows you see graphs of what people are searching for on Google.  You can chart search terms against others, for example cat vs dog, and see the trend of searching over a period of time. You can even narrow it down to a specific country or region.  The amazing thing is the sample size compared to polls that usually only ask a few hundred people.

What can Google Trends tell us about the election?  Well take a look at the data that compares the 4 main national parties.  Interesting to see NDP and Greens well above Liberal and Conservative. Not really sure what it indicates.  Maybe people no less about the two smaller parties. The parties attract more young people then the other two, I figure more young people get there news via the internet then traditional sources.  It won’t probably help predict the winners but I find it interesting.

Google Trends: “Conservative Party”, “Liberal Party”, NDP, “Green Party”.

Google Trends: Harper, Dion, Layton, May.