Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Flight Patterns
posted by GJ on June 12, 2007 @ 4:55PM

Apple's Safari Now Available on Windows
posted by Marc on June 11, 2007 @ 2:54PM

I know there's only two lucky members of this family to be running Mac OS X, but now you too can join the Apple family and realize what it's like to use excellent software.

Today, Apple announced they will be releasing Apple's Safari web browser for Windows. In fact, you can go grab yourself a copy at http://www.apple.com/safari.

So you're saying to yourself, why? Well it's twice as fast as Internet Explorer 7 to start. But ok, you're on the geek wave and already use Mozilla Firefox. Good for you, now get a real browser. Safari for Windows (Which is in beta right now) is 1.6 times faster than Firefox. That's still impressive.

I'm writing this post right now in Safari for Windows, I suggest you go get yourself a copy.

10 comments | Tags: apple, browser, microsoft

GJ said 3 minutes later

So, what are the tradeoffs? Anybody who uses Mozilla will tell you that not EVERY site supports it--I expect to see more of the same with Safari. Any other blemishes?

I'm also interested in memory usage--how does it compare? IE is a hog, but even Firefox can get bloaty at times.
Geoff said 34 minutes later

If a website cannot support FireFox and/or Safari, then you shouldn't be viewing it. Obviously it was designed by idiots, for idiots.

-Your fellow website genius
Marc said 34 minutes later

Safari and Firefox appear to be sharing similar memory footprints. I have three tabs open in both. The three tabs are Pandora playing a radio station, a small HTML local page, and the Baumblog. Safari appears to use a bit more memory (100mb vs 80mb).

The one thing Apple software tends to do is use memory very efficiently. Often times applications try to keep memory usage down, which is good when there's a lot of applications in need of it. Apple's software will give up memory if it's low on the system, but when there is plenty of memory, it will use as much as possible. This is good, because memory is WAY faster than swapping on the hard drive. (Please note, as I'm typing this in Safari, the memory usage has peaked at 100mb, Firefox for some reason has decided to use 10mb more and I don't have it in the foregroud).

You'll still need to keep IE7 around since some people like to make their websites IE only, or god forbid, require ActiveX. In terms of websites that Safari supports, it's very much the same as Firefox. When I'm on my Mac, everything works but the IE7 only sites, where even Firefox won't help me out.

Keep in mind, this is a public beta, just released literally 30 minutes ago. It's going to have quirks here and there, so any silly issues will be worked out in the next couple months, but just give the browser a try. You can put it down until it's officially released, but try it now and see how fast and nice it is.
GJ said about 1 hour later

Dude, I use Opera. :) Default browser on the Wii.
GJ said about 5 hours later

Safari doesn't work with Yahoo Mail Beta.
Marc said about 6 hours later

Nope, but Yahoo Mail beta is probably the second worst web application written in the history of time. Second only to MySpace. It is the slowest AJAX mail client I've seen so far, especially since they integrated the chat system into it now. Use Gmail :)
Kristen said 1 day later

I have to say, Gmail sucks Marc. It may have a lot of space, but you can't create folders, and when you write back and forth with someone it doesn't come in as a new email, it goes into the same email link. that makes it so easy to miss a response! If you try to put a message into the saved file, and delete it from your regular inbox, it erases both. That's crap.
We use Gmail with our company, and we all hate it. I don't think it's user friendly. The only thing I like about it is the star feature. I wish we had picked something else. I hope they update it.
Marc said 1 day later

Do you know about Labels Kristen? Labels are the exact same thing as a folder, except they act more like the tags feature on this blog. You can associate an e-mail with multiple labels. So for instance, your company could assign a label of "New Orders" and "Orders" to a brand new order that came in through the website. Then you could log into Gmail and click on the New Orders label and see which orders are new and in progress. Once that order has shipped, you could then delete the label New Orders on that e-mail and bam, it's out of the "New Orders" queue. That's pretty neat.

Once you have tagged/labeled things the way you like in your Inbox, you should "Archive" them. That hides them from the inbox but makes them visible from the Labels associated with it.

As for missing responses, you shouldn't have that problem. When a new message comes in, it stays with its "conversation", which is basically just the history of e-mails going back and forth. But it is also bold, so you should be able to see new e-mails. Also, if you want, check out Gmail Notifier. That will install an application on your computer that will popup a notification whenever new e-mails come in.

If you want, I can write up a blog post about using GMail in detail and some of its power. I agree, some of the terms are new and not quite obvious (Google isn't the best at usability, they're all about minimalist approach while keeping a high degree of functionality), but once you get the hang of it, you'll be begging for some of these features in other applications.

Also, in case you still hate it, GMail offers pop access, which means virtually any other e-mail reader could be used to read your e-mail sent to GMail. That way you don't have to change your e-mail address and you can use whatever e-mail client you want.
Marc said 1 day later

And if you still hate GMail AND your mail client doesn't offer pop access (I don't think Yahoo does or Hotmail...not sure, both suck), you can setup GMail to forward your e-mail to another e-mail address.
GJ said 1 day later

A Gmail walkthrough might be cool. I don't use it much today, but I think that's more because no spambots have discovered it yet. A demo of the features might not only convince several of us to cut over to it (for crying out loud, I still use mail.com which really, really SUX!), but it will probably land the blog yet another Google Alert.

Watch this court ruling closely
posted by GJ on June 11, 2007 @ 10:03AM

The court ruling I'm referring to is reported here. You may think that religion is my favorite target of scorn (or second-favorite, since it's obvious the disdain I have for all things related to mediums, astrology, talking with the dead, etc.). Nope...it's medicinal woo that drives me insane. Why? Because ignorence is a killer.

A little background. Autism appears to be a growing phenomenom, although whether it is because we recognize it more now, or that it's actually occuring more is a hotly debated. Of course, the loonies are certain that it's on the rise, I mean, after all, THEIR kid got it, for crying out loud. This leads into the next realm of disaster:

What causes autism? Truth: not known. Theories: lots of them, none even remotely proven yet. Falsehoods: thermisol (contained in the MMR vaccine until recently as a preservative) causes autism.

Mercury, as you probably know, is a poison. Some doctors with the surname of Geier have taken on a life mission of trying to prove that there is a link between mercury poisoning and autism. Never mind that....the amount of mercury in a vaccine is very small; that there has been no proof to date that this level of mercury causes *any* harm, let alone autism; and that the Geiers have shown themselves to be less than reputable scientists (I use that term loosely). Their priorities are likely different than they appear, if you catch my drift. Now go reread that article, and notice the details about the large fund at stake. This starting to make some sense now?

Much like a medium, the Geier's (father and son) play to what their audience wants to hear. Parents of autistic children have a strong need to understand why their child has the disease: they (rightly) figure that if we can find out what causes it, we can both figure out how to prevent it, and possible correct the disease in affected children.

Now, of course, is where this gets dangerous. A lot of these parents came away from the Geier's research with two nuggest of info: any mercury in a child's body is bad, and that vaccines are bad. Believe it or not, even though thermisol is no longer in the MMR vaccine (it's still in flu vaccines), they are still being discouraged from getting vaccines. As a result, things like POLIO are making a comeback. Read up on herd vaccination theory to see why lettting a few knuckleheads that decide vaccines are a bad thing can muck everything up for the rest of us.

Then, we get to removing this nasty mercury from the child. They recommend chelation therapy: this is a method to cleanse heavy metals (like mercury) from the body with the use of chemical like DMSA. As you'd guess, this is a legit method to remove heavy metals from someone who has heavy contamination. As such, it has risks and must be done by qualified personnel. Well, surprise, a lot of altie clinics will do this for you. Never mind it has never been shown to have a demonstratable effect on a child's autism. Worse...in August 2005, a boy died due to improperly applied chelation therapy. He may have been the first, but he won't be the last. Like I said, it's a risky procedure and does have significant side effects...with no demonstrated benefit.

So what's my point in all this? First, the court case. The anti-vaccine crowd has realized they can't win in the science world, where facts rule supreme. Instead, they're trying to win in court, which is often only partially based on fact--much like the antivax crowd's science.

Second, some or all of us will have children, or already do. There is a lot of antivax literature out there that *sounds* good. If you are at all considering not getting your kids vaccinated, I urge you to research that with the utmost diligence and base your decision on fact, not emotion. Word to the wise--anything that references Big Pharma is a red herring. I'll point you to one of my favorite bloggers, Orac, who has frequent columns on this whole autism - vaccine controversy.

3 comments | Tags: woo, politics, science

GJ said about 4 hours later

Remember me mentioning that the rate of Autism has climbed supposedly, but we're not sure if it's a measurement thing or a actual increase? Well, this group has and they came to the conclusion that it's OBVIOUSLY due to all the wireless signals now floating around the world today. But of course! I mean, it's not like anything else has changed in the world during this time, right? How have our diets changed? How about the amount of sunlight we get? Geez, louise...there are a zillion variables, and not a one can be linked just based on "hey, this wasn't here back in the 1970s, but is now, so it must be responsible for the upswing in autism....never mind there might not even BE a trigger, and instead we find that this disease is actually GENETIC. Duh.
Steve said 1 day later

I think it's because most people think they know more about things these days than anyone ever did. Unfortunately, I think we know a little bit of a lot of things these days, instead of a lot about fewer things. And it's not knowing the whole story that is causing all this stupid controversy.

On a somewhat similar topic, Have you ever heard Bucky Covington's song "Different World?" It's a great song about how we all grew up just fine with all the things people wouldn't think of these days.

Well, to save you rock and roll only guys from having to listen to some dreaded country, here are the lyrics:

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank
Our cribs were covered in lead-based paint
No childproof lids
No seatbelts in cars
Rode bikes with no helmets
and still here we are
Still here we are

We got daddy's belt when we misbehaved
Had three TV channels you got up to change
No video games and no satellite
All we had were friends and they were outside
Playin' outside

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

School always started the same everyday
the pledge of allegience
not every kid made the team when they tried
We got disappointed but that was alright
We turned out alright

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

GJ said 2 days later

This song might as well be called "Nostalgia". If conservatives have but one thing in common, it's that they positively hate change, and romanticize the heck out of the years gone by. Not meant as a dig...mostly just an observation.

But yes, all too often people are quick to jump on the latest study, treat it as proof, and demand changes to combat this new "threat." Same problem exists with the healthy food of the week, dangerous chemical of the week, etc. That's not to say every warning is bogus, but oh how we like new warnings.

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