{ Thought of the moment }: “Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.” - Michael Pollan from Unhappy Meals

{ Pimpin' }: I'm playing around at Literary Hack, an experiment in the quick and dirty. It's powered by tumblr.

¶ I've started posting more nerdly stuff over at O'Reilly - here's my author page and entries.

Hooray for spring

Dans "photographica", dimache, le 11 mai , à 10:25 AM CST.

Optimized Firefox 2.0.0.14 for G5 & Intel Macs

Dans "mozilla and firefox", mercredi, le 23 avril , à 12:29 PM CST.

Firefox 2.0.0.14 is now available and I have put together Intel Mac optimized builds, available below.

Unless Mozilla releases a major update I’ll probably skip every other maintenance / bug release as they seem to be monthly, and I just don’t have the extra time to build new releases every month. Just so you know.

I know I promised G4 builds last time and I still plan to get to these for the 2.0.0.14 release. The main issue is the only G4 machine I have is a Powerbook and it takes forever to build Firefox on it… but I’ll do my best to build for this platform when I have a spare moment.

Here’s what’s new in 2.0.0.14 according to the Mozilla change notes:

• Security fixes.

That’s it!

Download

Intel Mac-optimized Firefox 2.0.0.14

• w/ Firefoxy form widgets
• w/ aqua form widgets

G5-optimized Firefox 2.0.0.14

• w/ Firefoxy form widgets
• w/ aqua form widgets

As I mentioned about, G4 builds should be when I have some time to actually get to them.

Why is the name / icon different?

I really shouldn’t have to keep repeating this, but every time I post a new Firefox release I still seem to get people annoyed / pissed off / confused as to why these builds are missing the Firefox name and icon. So here comes the strong emphasis:

The Firefox name and icon are trademarked and cannot be used with non-official builds. These are non-official builds, so they cannot have the official branding. Pretty straight-forward. Please don’t ask me to build versions with the official branding.

As always, feel free to post your thoughts / experiences / etc. in the comments. Enjoy!

Good Eats, Good Grief

Dans "it's all about me", vendredi, le 21 mars , à 10:55 PM CST.

The truth is, I’m obsessed with being healthy.

Okay, maybe “obsessed” is a bit strong — If I was truly serious about my health, I probably wouldn’t be living in a smog|noise|light|stress-polluted major city like Toronto, really — but my interest in maintaining my physical well-being has definitely increased exponentially as each year goes by.

Y.A.G.D.A.M.¹

I suppose this is par for the course. Taking care of your body could be like owning your first car in some ways. At the beginning you’re all in awe of this thing you have and what it can do, and before you know it you’re taking it for granted as you’re flying down the highway 50 kilometres over the speed limit with the stereo blasting Deep Purple’s Highway Star and the back seat filled with empty Doritos bags, slurpee cups, and cigarette butts.

After a while, though, you’re sitting on cracked upholstery begging it to “please, just start, I’m already late for work” as it’s drooling oil and antifreeze and god knows what else all over your driveway.

So before I start prematurely leaking fluids I’m getting more serious about what I do with my body as well as what I put into it.

Winning the Genetic Lottery

Being Asian, I’m totally aware that I won the youthfulness lottery. My body has basically maintained the same shape it was when I was in my earlier twenties, and for the most part I look younger than I really am. In the past, this made me complacent. If I wasn’t a vegetarian for most of my twenties I probably would have spent my days gulping back mugs of pure lard while eating twinkies sprinkled with chocolate-flavoured trans fats. Delish!

Even then I still did a lot of damage to myself, including maintaining a nearly pack-a-day habit for fifteen years as well as ingesting a lot of things I definitely would not want the Googlebot to index.

Now, I’m all mostly trying to be about the healthy.

Not Screwing With My Shit (not to be taking literally)

A big part of this commitment to not screwing with my shit involves eating better. I’ve been trying to spend more time eating cuisines that are considered healthy such as Japanese, Greek, and Italian. Heck, if nutritional scientists discovered that a diet consisting of twigs and leaves and steaming mugs of your own urine guaranteed you would live to be 150 in perfect health, I’d probably consider it.

No bathing in the blood of virgins like crafty old Elizabeth Bathory, however — one has to draw the line somewhere.

The point of this obscenely rambling post is to kick start a series of thoughts I’ve wanted to explore about eating healthy in the 21st century. I’m interested to talk about decisions I’ve made and experiments I’m trying out and I’m interested in what you’ve done (or are doing) to keep the gas in your tank sugar-free and high-octane.

And I vow that’s the last of the automobile metaphors you’ll see on this site.

1. Yet Another God Damn Automobile Metaphor ↩

Rannie Turingan's 20x2: What's the Difference?

Dans "it's all about me", mardi, le 11 mars , à 10:10 AM CST.

Everyone’s favourite photographer Rannie Turingan presented his two minute video piece at last night’s annual 20x2. The question participants had to work with was “What’s the Difference?” and Rannie’s piece is just awesome.

It doesn’t hurt that my gorgeous family is one of the 20 couples that Rannie asked to participate. Thanks, Rannie!

Where it's at

Dans "it's all about me", mardi, le 11 decembre , à 08:53 PM CST.

Five posts since April. It’s not as though I haven’t been busy, though the cobwebs and ne’er-do-wells sleeping in the doorway of this joint might make you think otherwise.

This isn’t one of those grandiose “return to form” posts that some people do after an incredibly long absence. I’m not going to dazzle you with months of pent up brilliance and wisdom, nor am I going to pontificate on some wildly personal jibber-jabber (thanks Frank, for bringing the jibber back).

This is more of a virtual clearing of the throat.

«ahem»

For those of you who have been patiently waiting for optimized Firefox builds, some good and bad news. The good news is I’m still planning to build and release some optimized builds, and I now have access to a G4 machine so hopefully G4 builds should make a reappearance around these parts soon.

The bad news is I upgraded all of my home machines to OS X 10.5, and wouldn’t you know it, the Firefox 2.x branch doesn’t build on OS X 10.5 without patching. I’ve managed to successfully build Firefox 2.0.11 but it crashes on launch. So it may be a little while before updated builds are available.

In the meantime, I’m working on writing down a step-by-step “how to build optimized versions of Firefox” for your incredibly geeky enjoyment. It should be up before the holidays are completely upon us, assuming I manage to eke out enough sleep to remain semi-human.

Speaking of which, if anyone has any tips on getting a six-month old baby to stop waking up every two hours at night I’d sure be thankful.

C’est tout.