Amethyst's Shiny Pebbles

You may remember a little over a month ago I tried out Android's movie store and player and came to the conclusion that watching a movie on a laptop would probably work better. For our recent trip to Boston I decided to give Apple's Itunes movie rental service a go.

( Thumbs up! )

Courtesy of digitalemur :

This post is public for a reason. Go ahead and pass on the info if you like!

So you've locked down your journal as much as you can in your user settings, and you've asked your friends not to repost comments they make on your LJ.

Maybe you've also installed some of the anti-Facebook Firefox add-ons while you were at it.

Can you make those damn twitter and Facebook boxes at the bottom of posts and comments go away?

Well yes, it appears maybe you can, in Firefox.

First, you install Greasemonkey, a scripting add-on for Firefox.

Then, you install DisConnect, a script that runs in Greasemonkey.

Then you restart your browser, and I think you may have to reload some entry pages, or maybe I started this post before I was done installing so those boxes still showed up.

This is also reportedly handy if you use a screenreader, or if you're one of those people who liked hitting tab-enter to post a comment, a behavior that changed for the worse with this particular LJ update.

Enjoy!

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And, joining the crowd of 'please do not cross-post me to FB and Twitter'... this little jobbie will make that MUCH EASIER.  Just Do It.  Thank you!

First, the Android app Google Sky is several kinds of awesome.  You point it at the sky - or anywhere, actually, though it's most useful at night pointing up - and it tells you what stars and planets you're looking at!  It's also searchable; you put in a star, planet, or constellation, and an arrow appears on the screen telling you what direction to move your phone, until you reach the area of the feature.  Then it circles the feature with an orange circle.  Apparently there are Hubble images of several things too, but we haven't fiddled around with that part yet.  The only downside is that you can't zoom in and out in the standard sky view; I'd like to see a little more sky on the screen at once.  Other than that, very cool app!

Second, my subconscious is telling me that I'm focusing waaaaay too much on Mom's memorial service.  I dreamed last night that I was at the church where the service will be held, a day or two before the actual service to review stuff.  The choir was singing something pretty and pleasant, but I did kind of notice that it wasn't either of the pieces I'd asked for.  Then I took a look at the program, which for some reason had an obituary in it.  Thing is, it was (of course!) not Mom's, it was for some guy named Penny who'd been a mountain climber.  The title had something to do with "... On the Wire."*  As it was only a couple of days beforehand, we couldn't get new programs printed in time.  I commented rather acidly that it was somehow absolutely typical of Mom that she would end up with someone else's obit, though I'm not certain now why I thought so at the time.  (Perhaps I thought it was related to her remarkable ability to lose really important things?)

Anyway.  I have a draft of my eulogy bit.  It's not very good, but I'll leave it alone for a day or two and edit it later.  And "Dad's" portion is starting to come along too.  Today's business: emailing the funeral home about delivery of ashes to the church, and emailing the person in charge of Sunday flowers to see what could be done in terms of special flowers so that we could use them the next day for the service.

*The wire bit I attribute to the bit of Broken Sword Director's Cut that we played last night.   There was a puzzle involving some wire.  The people who wrote the Ireland section of the game designed lousy puzzles that are either solvable by accidentally clicking on something without a clear idea of what would happen, or you have to go through a completely silly rigmarole to get the key component you need for another puzzle.  In the latter case, the background of a nearby location seems to indicate that said key component is RIGHT THERE, but you can't interact with it in any way.

Huz has released his first full application for Android!  It's called Etherophone, and it's a theramin simulator.  It's completely free, and it's pretty neat!  (Headphones are recommended - the built-in speakers of the N1, at any rate, do not do the synthesizer justice; their range is lousy.)

You may remember my recent entry about the Huz's adventures with Apple.  Today, they've finally come to an acceptable conclusion.  After a great deal of rigmarole (and incidentally making his name familiar to the staff of the local Apple store!) we have in hand an (apparently) fully functional spiffy new iMac, with fancy graphics card and all.

It's fast!  It's nice!  It loaded the Coraline site flawlessy and rapidly!  And because it has a camera embedded in it, I buttoned my eyes:
We look forward to much spiffiness.  :)

No, I don't need a new computer.  My now-somewhat-old iMac is still working fine, and it can still access OS 9 (useful if I ever intend to finish Xenogears -- really, I will, sometime!).  I don't even need a new toy - the DS fills that slot quite happily, and will for some time.

But oh, isn't the Macbook Air pretty???

So - does this outdo the iPhone?  My guess is no, but it's still pretty nice-looking.  Comments welcome.