Firefox Extensions

One of the best things about Firefox is that it installs pretty much as a minimal browser. It is then up to individuals to install the extra features they want. There are a couple which I’ve found invaluable:

• Adblock - which allows you to block adverts, pop-ups and other annoying elements and scripts on any page. Very easy to use and makes a huge positive difference to browsing.

• SessionSaver - so that you can quit Firefox and have all your open tabs reload on the next start-up. It also allows you to re-open recently closed tabs, which is handy if you close one by mistake.

I’ve been using others too:

• Tabbrowser preferences - which adds more options to do with the browser tabs, unsurprisingly

• Greasemonkey - which I’ve not had a lot of time to investigate, but has provided a couple of useful scripts to change the way some of my more frequently visited sites behave.

• delicious - very handy plugin to add and view links to your del.icio.us account. Has both right-click and sidebar tools.

Google Maps - High Resolution images worldwide

Despite the fact Google maps are only available for the US and UK, the satellite images now cover a large proportion of the globe. High resolution aerial photographs are also available for certain major cities and other random areas. The UK, for example, has central London coverage but only the south-east of Birmingham.

More spectacularly Beijing is covered, here is Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Not having the maps (or even place names beyond countries) makes finding places difficult. It’s easier to find the longitude and latitude of a place via a normal google search and then plug that straight into the Google Maps URL.

Kimya Dawson

Saw Kimya Dawson play last night at Chop Suey, a cosy venue over by the university. It was a great gig, and the varied warm-ups were pretty good too. The first bunch I saw were a little odd, but they had some good titles like “No More Animal Shit in Modern Art.”

The Pharmacy played a few pogo-inducing numbers before settling down to share the main set with Kimya. I was at the back, and a bit miffed to find Ms. Dawson seated below the shoulder level of the crowd. Thankfully she invited everyone to sit on the floor, which we all did. Everyone got great views and the whole set felt like some kind of infant school story-time… with swearing. It reminded me of a Kathryn Williams gig, but faster.

She closed the set with the rather marvellous “The Beer,” have a listen.

Gallery RSS Feed

I have been using the rather powerful Gallery for a while but only recently activated the RSS feeds on my gallery pages. The main reason was so that I can have any updates to the gallery appear on this front page sidebar. Again, this is done using my little RSS plugin.

Strange Cloud Formations

Got talking about strange cloud formations recently, having been sent this link, then remembered these spectacular images from a while back.

I’m not sure about the first link, but the second are definately mammatus formations. They’re formed by cold, saturated air dropping back down from a cloud. We’re not used to seeing clouds without flat bottoms, and this, added with some lighting from the side at sunset, it combined to produce such spectacular effects.

A quick image search for mammatus brings in some more examples of varying extremes.

The Sound of Enceladus

Cassini is still busily collecting data around Saturn; lots of pictures and this audio snippet, an audible representation of electro-magnetic field measurements taken during a flyby of Enceladus.

There are plenty more examples on the University of Iowa “Space Audio” page. Of particular note is this “AKR” recording from the Earth’s magnetosphere, which sounds rather like the jungle at night.

Amateur Mapping in the Guardian

Interesting to see how the press is picking up the idea of free maps. This article in the Guardian is the latest I’ve seen, following the New Scientist mention a few weeks back. Its good to see the issues of mapping copyrights being aired in the national press like this.