I recently decided to block ads as well, but for different reasons. For the most part, advertising on the web is something I don’t mind. The deciding factor for me is whether or not it prevents me from seeing the content I want to see. This is what made pop-ups so annoying. They got in the way, and you had to close the pop-up just to see the page you came to see.

Unfortunately advertisers have been using Flash ads to provide the same experience.

It’s the same user experience, but different implementation. (In terms of Firefox development, this is bad because users are told that Firefox has a pop-up blocker, but it doesn’t block these pop-up ads.)

There are also cases where ads push the content out of the view area, forcing you to scroll down.

Sometimes just mousing over the content area of an ad will cause it to expand and prevent you from reading what you want.

Unfortunately, this has become way too common lately, and I finally decided to install Adblock Plus. I understand that many websites rely on ads for revenue, but so did netscape.com. That’s why the Mozilla pop-up blocker was disabled and hidden in Netscape 7. I’m sure something can be worked out, where advertisers are forced to use a technology that cannot get in the way of viewing other website content. If that were to happen, I would bet that a lot less users would have adblockers installed.

I use Dreamhost to host ilias.ca. I have many ilias.ca email aliases. Most relay messages to a gmail account (for spam filtering, and a searchable web archive), which then forwards them to an IMAP account hosted on ilias.ca.

On Friday, Dreamhost decided to move some email accounts to new hardware. Here’s the blog post:

A small number of accounts had mail that was unable to be moved over to new hardware before we had to power down the last of our servers and move them out of the old data center. For now we are setting up those users (without the data) on the new system so they should still be functional and we’ll be working on restoring the data once we have moved the servers (the data is not lost, just not currently available). We apologize for this – we understand how important mail is and wanted to reassure those effected that we’re aware of the matter and are working to correct it.

So on Saturday morning, I woke up to find that all of my previous messages and user-created folders are missing – 0r other hosted ilias.ca addresses for that matter. In fact, I couldn’t even connect to my mail server until a DNS server update. It’s Monday now, and Dreamhost still has not fixed the issue.

Let’s add some extra weirdness to the matter. Today, my IMAP account stopped receiving messages, and started sending my Gmail account bounce messages. I contacted Dreamhost about this, and it appears the configuration was changed from being fully-hosted to a forward-only address with no destination. What this means: dataloss!

I put up with the occasional downtime because of the price, but dataloss? My previous messages being missing for over two days? Buh-bye.

Does anyone have suggestions for a hosting service?

If you’re using Firefox 3.0.x, just open the Help menu and select Check for Updates…

If you’re using anything else, download Firefox 3.5 from http://www.getfirefox.com.

Just set your home page to the following URL:

chrome://browser/content/bookmarks/bookmarksPanel.xul

That’s it! It doesn’t require you having to find your profile folder, and bookmark folders can be collapsed or expanded individually. Plus the search box at the top of the page will work.

I got an iPhone as soon as it was available in Canada, and since then, it is very rare for me not to be using it while driving. But I agree with this law. Very soon after getting an iPhone I noticed a degradation in my driving, because I wasn’t concentrating on the road. I’ve had two instances in which the driver behind me honked, because I didn’t move when the traffic light turned green.

Going back to driving without using my iPhone will be like trying to kill a drug addiction, but I understand why it has to be done. Luckily the law probably won’t take affect until autumn, so I have some time to adjust.

Rules:

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Things:

1. I used to work as an audio engineer at a major Toronto recording studio. I’ve worked with Big Sugar, Wide Mouth Mason, Kardinal Offishall (w/ Saukrates and Solitair), Jane Sibbery, Universal Honey; and I’ve produced a song for Pilot Speed.
2. Before that, I played guitar and wrote songs in a band. We had a production deal, but our singer decided he’d had enough.
3. On weekends, I play bass and bouzouki in a Greek and Macedonian traditional dance band for weddings and dances.
4. I’m allergic to chocolate. More specifically, I sneeze whenever eating dark chocolate, but not as much with milk chocolate.
5. I still live with my parents.
6. Both of my parents came from the same village in northern Greece, which was part of Macedonia. My last name was given to my dad by the Greek government, when the Greeks took over.
7. I’ve taken the Mega-Memory home study course.

Tags:

This madness must end.

Canada vs Russia 2009 WJHC last seconds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqfWzXbqOHM

Speaking of iPhone apps, it looks like Opera developed a version of Opera Mini for the iPhone and submitted it to the App Store. According to Opera Software CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Apple blocked it due its competition with the built-in Safari browser. Shame on Apple. I hate monoplies.