I just installed a really great Addon called CyberSearch for Firefox 3. Firefox 3 has what they call the “AwesomeBar” where you type an address and it searches your history for the most relevant pages in a dropdown menu. CyberSearch adds on to this ‘awesome’ functionality by adding real time search results as well. By typing a simple keyword followed by a search term, your awesome bar is populated with the results from that search. It’s very customizable and seems to work very well. I’m one to keep my FireFox installation pretty clean and don’t install a lot of Addons, but this one is here to stay.

P.S. CyberSearch is an experimental addon, which means you’ll need to create/login to a free account at the mozilla addons page to install it.

I just found the hidden preference for Safari 3.1 that enables Single Window Mode!! This is the first step Apple has taken to actually making Safari my main browser. Before 3.1, there was no way to make links that opened up in new windows open up in a new tab instead (Firefox has had this type of option for a loooonnnggg time). Apple has added a hidden option to Safari as of version 3.1 that lets you do away with the 100 windows you’d normally have open while browsing with Safari and keep it all in nice and clean tabs. Try this in your terminal…

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

After that, you should notice all links that would normally pop a new window up, now open in a new tab instead. I actually found this while I was bored and going through the Secrets preference pane. If you haven’t tried this out yet and are a little ballsy (i.e. know what your doing) give it a go. It gives you a VERY long list of hidden features in various Apple and 3rd party apps on your system. Sometimes you even find a gem you weren’t expecting. x=)

I’ve had my mac for almost a full year now. I honestly don’t remember exactly when I got it but I think it was near the end of June or the beginning of July last year. Coming from Linux and Windows meant I had some choices to make about certain applications I was going to use. One of those choices was Colloquy for IRC. One feature I missed from mIRC and XChat was the ability to accept ctcp SOUND requests to play a sound. My friends and I use this in our own channel as an alert system. A trigger is typed that makes a bot send a ctcp SOUND request to the channel with a filename. We each have these sounds locally installed on our computers so we hear the sound after the request is made.

Today I decided to do something about Colloquy’s lack of sound so I started researching some scripting languages supports by the IRC client. I came across F-Script as a cocoa scripting language based on SmallTalk. Since I’ve always wanted to learn SmallTalk, I gave it a go. After a little bit of time, I was able to figure something out to enable sound requests to play sounds from Colloquy!

You can grab the plugin here (right click and save) and throw it in your ~/Library/Application Support/Colloquy/PlugIns directory. Type /fscript load sounds and it should be ready to roll! When a ctcp SOUND request is received, this script will try and find the file in your Sounds folder (i.e. ~/Library/Sounds) and play it automatically for you.

Firefox 3 is being released today. It’s technically ‘out’, but the getfirefox.com servers are being brutalized so I thought I’d take this moment to pimp my plurk page and share download links that you should be able to nab it from…

P.S. Don’t forget, just in case downloads from those links don’t count towards the Guiness Book of World Records, head to getfirefox.com later when the servers relax a little and download it again.

With twitter’s very simple UI and constant downtime, it was only a matter of time before a new micro-blogging service came to fruition. I know there’s Jaiku and Pownce and probably a dozen other sites that do almost the same thing but Plurk’s simple, but fun UI as well as their quirky and weird sense of humor has led me to start ‘plurking’ some more. It just feels more fun to play and ‘plurk’ than it ever did to tweet. Go check it out. Signup it super quick so there’s very little time between you and some plurking fun! x=)

I might add a few more Mini Reviews if I come across something interesting while playing and remember to blog about it, but for now, I’d like to do my ‘wish list’ for the future. I’ve beaten the story but I’m by no means done with GTA IV. I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in about what I’d love to see in the next few iterations of GTA. One of the things I’ve been most excited about GTA IV is that when looking back at GTA III, each successor (Vice City and San Andreas) out did GTA III in size and features and I’m pretty certain that the successors to GTA IV will do the same.

Number One. Chicago! Maybe I’m a little biased, but I’d LOVE to see a game set in a Chicago-esque city. Although I list this as ‘number one’, my list is really in no specific order. I just think Chicago should be in the running for city’s remade for GTA. It’s big. It’s got history. It’s got diversity. It’s got everything you need for a good game. If they could pull out and maybe expand into Chicago’s suburbs a little bit too, that would be great!

Number Two. More indoors! There’s a lot to do in Liberty City this time around. I won’t be done ‘doing’ everything for quite some time, but I’d still love to see more. The problem is, there’s so much to do, that GTA IV makes you feel like you can do everything. So your experience is slapped in the face when you run into a doorway that doesn’t open. It’s great that I can go to Burger Shot or Cluck’n’Bell to get some health and a gross sandwich, but why can’t I go inside the restaurants I take my dates and have a meal that advances the clock 30 minutes and costs a little more? I think it would be asking a lot to have the ability to go inside EVERY building, especially since building are locked in real life. But it sure would be cool. x=P

Number Three. More clothes! I need to break the More category into a few numbers. More clothes would be awesome. There are only 4 places to buy clothes in Liberty City. That’s kinda cheap considering the size of the city.

Number Four. More Attractions! Rockstar wet my appetite with comedy and cabaret shows but i would have LOVED to see more. I’m not totally certain how the schedules worked but I’m pretty sure that after you saw a comedy show, the next comic would appear there the next day. I think it would be cool to have a real schedule. Maybe check show times online. And definitely more acts. And maybe throw in some plays or even some longer content. I’d sit and watch a 20-30 minute play if it was as humorous and well put together as the rest of the city.

Number Five. More weapons. I don’t know if it was just me, but it seemed like the weapons were limited this time around. Maybe I just never saw/found one (very possible) but a silenced handgun would have been awesome! Trying to kill pigeons is really hard when every time you shoot one, you have cops on your ass because they heard the gun. Not a HUGE amount of new weapons is needed, just a couple.

Number Six. Date visible? Besides the mini-games and shows, your dates involve you entering and then exiting the place you want to go. Maybe offering a ‘skip’ button but showing the date would be cool. Sitting at the bar where you overhear more conversation. Dancing or drinking at the club (BTW, more clubs?!). Those types of things. The dialog that happened on dates and hangouts with your friends were great but it would have been cool if there was a little more and it was combined with the actual date. Again, a ‘skip’ button would be required cause I don’t want to sit through EVERY date.

Number Seven. Speaking of Mini-Games. What’s up with not being able to play a game of pool with your buddy in multiplayer mode?? I figured this was a no-brainer until I tried to get to any of the activities I liked to do in single player during multiplayer. The whole city is open to you in multiplayer to fight in, but what if you don’t want to fight? I like cruising around with my friend and if we had the opportunity, going to the comedy club or playing some pool sometimes.

If you haven’t noticed a trend here, it’s MORE! You did everything so great this time around the only way to go is to add MORE of what you’ve already perfected! With a game as great as GTA IV, it’s going to be hard to top but if anyone can do it, I know Rockstar North can! /me counts down till 2010 when I’ll probably have to wait till for this game to come..

I (almost) exclusively use Firefox on my Mac and I think I’ve been pretty much using the 3.0 beta for almost the whole time I’ve had my macbook. What I found odd, is when in a web form, tab always skipped over things like check boxes and dropdowns. I had always thought this was a problem with Firefox 3 but could never find a solution until now. So anyone else who uses a Mac and has been confused about why your tab key only stops at text boxes and buttons in a form, do this. Go to your System Preferences and select Keyboard and Mouse. In the Keyboard Shortcuts tab, switch the option on the bottom to All Controls and you should have ‘normal’ functionality out of your tab key again. I’m not exactly sure why this is defaulted like this in OSX. shrug Seems kind of silly.

Not 100% yet, but I’ve finished the story with both endings. Wonderfully done. I laughed. I cried (almost!). I actually FELT things while playing the game. There’s not much I can say about it without giving away anything so I’ll just say that 35 hours later, I still want to play more GTA IV.

Since I started my GTA IV Mini Review’s, all my AdSense ad’s have changed to thing like “Police Ringtones!” and “Become a Police Officer”.. or other various non-related ads. I’ve seen some AAA ad’s, some ads for car safety. Even a Honda ad or two. Way to target, google! Way to target!

I’ve really started to get into the story. My stats say I’m at about 45% right now and I’m not sure how much it will be when I complete the story this time (There are supposed to be 2 different endings, plus all the random side missions and stuff) but I really don’t care how long I have left right now. Each mission I do makes me want to start a new one to see the next piece of the puzzle. The characters have been built so well. I love some of them. Hate others. Don’t really care about others. Some people I tolerate because I need their friendship to hold up so I can use their ‘special gift’ but would just as soon shoot them in the head if I was in a weird mood. Everything was so well thought out. I also finally got far enough that the story has taken over and I’m not as inclined to get side tracked doing some other random shit. I’m loving it. That is all. I can’t say much else about it without giving stuff away so I’ll just say that I love it.