Browser Simplification

So today Slashdot has turned the hoards of the internet loose on Mozilla's discussion about removing the URL bar from the browser window design.

My thoughts on the matter are Chrome-driven. As an administrator I frequently enter URLs into the URL bar to get to where I am going. I also like that Chrome uses the URL bar as an input to Google Search, meaning I don't need to waste screen real-estate on both a search field and an URL bar, since at any given time I'm really only likely to care about one function or the other.

More interesting to me was a link to a page which also discussed future browser design, calling such a design a "debris-free browser".

Interesting because the very first diagram he presents:



...bears a shocking resemblance to Google Chrome:



Of course he carries on and proceeds to clutter it up. But it is interesting, and perhaps educational, that the ideal he starts with is closest to Chrome.

Personally I've abandoned Firefox. Chrome works for 95% of my personal browsing, probably because 75% of that personal browsing is within the framework of google web services: Gmail, Google Reader, and Google search. I keep IE around because there are still many, many web interfaces for old switches and other equipment which require IE either explicitly or implicitly through failing to work with other browsers. This gives me a visual separation between "work" and "non-work" contexts.

I don't have Firefox installed any more, and frankly I don't miss it.

I am confused.

A volcano erupts in Iceland, and the resulting ash cloud movement forces a "no fly zone" so that airplanes don't fly through the ash.

This is, I think, the interpretation of a "no fly zone" that people understand.

So why does a "no fly zone" in Libya involve dropping bombs on tanks? I mean, you can probably make an argument for preemptively dropping bombs on Libyan planes to ensure they don't fly -- but firing missiles at Gadaffi's compound? What does that have to do with keeping Libyan planes out of the air? If we are going to provide combat air support to rebel operations, we should be up front about it rather than hiding behind the "no fly zone" and baffle-gabbing it with "duty to protect" nonsense.

This is why politicians are not trusted. Even when they appear to be speaking English, they are really speaking a highly specialized language which is both inconsistent with English and has distinct definitions for terms -- even though the politician's language happens to use all the same words as English.

Tron: Legacy

Look who I found lurking on young Sam's shelf, at 0:02:09:

Cancer

So yeah, happy birthday to me.

Here are the highlights:

• I have thyroid cancer; and
• I'm going to be fine.

That's all you really need to take away from this.

More details.

Back in December while I was at the doctor's on an unrelated issue, she noticed that I appeared to have a larger bulge at my thyroid than I should. She ordered an ultrasound, which happened about a week later, and early in January I was told I had a 4 centimeter "nodule" on my thyroid. Therefore, a biopsy was ordered, four months later that happened. The result came back that there were cancer cells in the biopsy.

That was about four weeks ago now.

So since then I've been to visit the surgeon who will be dealing with this, and from that we've learned a lot more about this than we knew before.

There are four types of cancer. I got "lucky" and got the one that is least likely to metastasize . The 10-year survivor rate is better than 99% (which means at this point I still have a better chance of getting hit by a car than dying from this thing). I am also young, comparatively speaking, so at this point the indications are that this is a stage-1 cancer. This means the cancer has not spread elsewhere.

The surgeon will be taking my entire thyroid, plus doing some digging around in my neck while I'm "open" to look for evidence of further problems. I will be in the hospital for two or three days while they make sure there are no complications, and then off work for two to four weeks following that. The surgery will likely take place around six weeks from now.

Post-op there will likely be a "radioactive iodine" scan, and depending on what they find while digging around in me I might need some direct radiation. But this is fairly routine.

Longer term I will have to take a thyroid hormone substitute for the rest of my life, which will probably be in the form of a pill taken once per day.

And that's really it at this point.

Right now we don't know what this will mean operationally for the family. We'll plan for things as we learn about them.

So yeah, I'm going to be fine. This is a big deal, but it isn't the BIG deal.

(I wrote this out simply because it is the easiest way to spread it around.)

LastPass

Kind of ironic: this banner ad:



...which gives me the reaction yeah until they make you change it.

Quick thoughts on the LastPass outage:

• Amazing how many things I can't get into any more because my nice, safe, strong passwords are hidden in a system I can't get to.
• Amazing how many things I can get into, because my nice, safe, strong passwords have still been remembered by the browser.
• Although this isn't necessarily a security breech, it is still an outage since I can't get my passwords. This, I think, is going to get a bunch of people to re-think their use of the service.
• Also enjoying the pages which come up when you try to change your password saying the service is busy, so "try again in a few hours". Yeah. I'm still locked out here, dead in the water. This convenience is costing me efficiency. If it goes on for more than a day or two (ie if I can't get this sorted by Monday) I will be in trouble, and for all LastPass's trying to keep their customer information secure -- I won't be able to justify the risk of a similar outage, however well intentioned, in the future.