Firefox 3 Broke Flash Sites

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Firefox 3 got over its beta and announced an official release. Every software has its buggy day. Which hasn't? I went ahead to install Firefox 3. First issue encountered was that there weren't any firefox.exe in my program files folder. What?! The recommended step was to re-run it and so I did. The next complain from the system was that I have a missing .dll file. What the?! Yet again, I double clicked the installation file for the third time and when I started up Firefox 3, it complained about some xml error. Thanks. Fallback plan. I uninstalled Firefox 3, which the system claimed that it had no entry in the install / uninstall program files. *faint* I had to remove files and delete registries. Finally installing back Firefox 2.0.x, I started up firefox and to my amazement (or should I say, I'm not amazed) to find out that my web surfing experience is back to those days of a 28.8kbps modem. Strange enough, it only affected websites that contained flash. What's worse? It's intermittent. I closed my Firefox 2.0.x and thought - oh well, back to the old IE days, I guess. Thank you, but no thank you, my IE suffered from the same slow, dying, painful dial-up Internet experience. After a couple of googling (took me like hours to view pages), I still had no clue. I tried installing other browsers which didn't work as well. I tried uninstalling and re-installing flash plug-in for Firefox and IE - nope, didn't work. Eventually, I thought of this. Why don't I run in safe mode for Firefox? Viola! It did work. I moved from website to website for close to 30mins and there weren't any issues at all. I restarted Firefox and disabled all add-ons and themes. It was back to the normal state, where everything works fine. All I can say is this line of work is not for the weak minds.

Posted by Muggs at 2:10 PM 4 comments  

Compressed Air Weekend

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Meant to be a refresher to diving, BeauQi, Kit-Kat and I went up north for a weekend of sun, sand and sea. I remembered all the necessary and do not think I require the refresher. I took it as a short trip / getaway.

Unable to reach Woodlands at 6.30am using the subway, I took a cab to our meeting point. BeauQi was already there and Kit-Kat arrived within 10mins. We took a bus to immigration and had to walk a distance to the checkpoint. Clearing both checkpoint was pretty easy without much delay. We took a cab to Larkin bus terminal where we were suppose to board our coach to Mersing. After oiur breakfast, we bought some doughnuts as tea time snacks just in case we got hungry along the way. We slept on the coach during most part of the journey to Mersing. It took us probably 2-3 hrs to reach there. Upon arrival and much to our horror, the return seats for the coach were sold out - completely. Seems like we have only one way out - public buses back to home. Think about that later. We bought our ferry tickets to Pulau Tioman and packed some Ramly burgers to fill our stomachs. The air-conditioning in the ferry was powerful! We were curling up like moth balls. But, we were amused by an English family, with two little boys running around in the ferry. Oh.. the English family alighted at the same jetty and we stayed at the same resort.

We settled down in our room and started our first dive at 3.30pm. BeauQi had to do a refresher with the dive instructor and all of us moved out for our first dive. Kit-Kat was my buddy and I went through with her on the back flip / roll entry. She did pretty well for a first timer and I followed next. Once all of us were in the waters, we descended. However, my buddy was "stuck" on the surface. When I turned back to fin towards her. The DM was already with her. Once at 6metres, we proceeded with our planned dive. Now, my buddy is really cute. She wrote on my slate board "lOOking for what?". I scratched my head. She meant, looking for what. Well, her Os looked like they had CAPS on. Carrying on, I pointed out on a few occasions to her where udibranches were. She echoed with an OK sign. Slowly, but surely, she made me laugh. All of us surrounded a cuttlefish which was flashing its colours to confuse us, thinking we are predators. My buddy said that was a jellyfish. LOL. I pointed out to her a couple of barracudas. She stared at me in blank space and shrugged her shoulders. ROTFLMAO. Hey.. not too bad. At least she saw those nudibranches and two batfishes that I pointed to her. I do have to say her buoyancy is good for a n00b. Thumbs up! We ended our dive, headed back to land. Not a minute to lose, we went to the beach to hang out and played with the English family's kids. We chatted with their mum, watched the sunset before we shower and get changed for dinner. Before we can step out, it was pouring like madness. We had dinner with some new acquaintance and chatted about cultural differences till 11pm. My sleep weren't that great. I had a miserable towel to cover just my legs and I got stung all over my mosquitoes. Only at around 2am in the morning, I realized and remembered that I have my hammock with me. I used it as a blanket and wrapped myself up. Bingo. No more mozzies harassment.

The girls woke up early and had their breakfast. With just a couple hours of sleep, I could definitely use more rest. I asked BeauQi to buddy Kit-Kat for this dive. They went out to sea where I had my tea and started reading my book. Half way through, the little English boy came and talked to me. I started to chat with him. Soon, I found myself talking to his family with him sitting on my lap. One hour passed and I headed back to the beach to find the girls back from their dive. We cleared the stuff and checked out from the resort before returning to the jetty for our ferry. This time round, the ferry had no air-conditioning - probably faulty. We were baked. Immediately after docking, we dashed to the terminal to check if there is any chance we can get tickets back home. :( Nope. We took our lunch before heading to a local bus terminal for public transport. We took a public bus to Kota Tinggi. They are still using those old skool tickets in the 80s!! The interesting part was that the driver detoured to pick up some keropok to be transported to Kota Tinggi. Sideline?! LOL. It was enjoyable to experience a local bus ride through their estates. We transferred to another bus to Larkin, once we reach Kota Tinggi. By the time we reached Larkin, we had to battle our way back to home through customs and crowd. Madness. But, I enjoyed this trip tremendously despite that it was a short one.

Posted by Muggs at 11:10 PM 0 comments  

Getting It Back

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Engulfed in fire fights for countless days, I was able to swim again last night. I missed last week's session due to - what else, but work again. As the earliest person there, I did mainly strokes. No stamina! At least, the feel in water is coming back. That is one thing I try not to miss. Monday swim sessions.

In today's climb session, there were plenty of surprises. I tried several new routes, which I previously stayed away. There were still some residual aches from my previous night's swim. Hence, I made sure I had plenty of shake-outs. That was nice. Someone did a 6B+ grey route that was total workout with sweat include - definitely! I think I can sleep pretty well tonight.

Posted by Muggs at 11:21 PM 2 comments