If you are feeling early-adopter-y, you can hop over to mozilla.org and download the new Firefox 3 Beta build. It’s faster, slicker, and has OMG HOT new UI tools that should make your day better.

Five Things I love about Firefox 3:

1. Because this is a beta version, most of my extensions and themes don’t work in F3…and I don’t miss ‘em. I’ve been using it all day and haven’t had a single withdrawal symptom.
2. Fast. Hella fast. Hecka fast. So damn fast. The memory management of Firefox 3 is slick. It caches less, stores image data more efficiently, and plugs memory leaks from extensions before they happen. This all comes from of the kind of nerdy nerdy attention to detail that was a feature of pre-Moore’s law programming, when bits were carefully placed like bricks in an arch. Hooray for OCD programming!
3. Oh Bookmarks! Ye annoy me less! You are now a one-click thing on the navigation bar, with a cute star icon instead of a time-eating top menu monster.
4. Full Page Zoom. If you don’t like squinting, download this browser. Hitting Ctrl + makes EVERYTHING get bigger, including images. This feature eliminates the “Big Text Stomps Nice Layout” problem we saw in earlier versions.
5. Tab quickmenu. Stop worrying about all those tabs stacking up in your window. You can get at them from a dropdown in the corner. No fuss. There’s more room for page titles too, so you don’t have to find the tab you want using only the first ten characters.

I am officially Old Enough To Know Better

cat on face… typing this from beneath the fur….halp!!!!

I’m home sick with an intermittent fever, which is leaving me both unconscious and contagious. I’m trying to get some work done, but the cold meds are leaving my motivation low. So, I’ve been catching up on RSS feeds and click-trancing.

Here are some highlights:
Geek Love: Wonderful NYT Obit for the inventor of Dungeons & Dragons.

Dad Labs video: Man tries breast pump.

Go Josh Go! A $100 Million Donation to the N.Y. Public Library

Preparing For “The Colbert Report – Jennifer 8. Lee writes about her stint as an author-guest.

NPR Unapologetically Harriet, the Misfit Spy

Sesame Street on information visualization – This reminds me of my research recently on Learning styles in new Second Life users. It’s a real design challenge try and accommodate both the square and the musician.

I’ve been reading the webcomic Questionable Content in between naps.

I am so happy.

Tonight I walked home from the 24th and Mission BART stop. It was Valentine’s day, and the neighborhood celebrated by being outside.

Stores stayed open late. Perfumed Latino guys pushed and egged each other on, nervously buying flowers for sweethearts and would-be sweethearts. The bodas civiles joints lubricated their trade with sidewalk tables of cheap teddy bears wrapped in red cellophane.

I walked home in my pink dress. Women holding little girls walked by, clutching roses, boxes of chocolates. Women completed errands, hauled children, and bought food with the same grim determination, red cellophane emerging from their purses.

I saw a beautifully happy couple. Their little daughter ran up the sidewalk in front of them. I caught the man’s eye as I passed and saw satisfaction on his face.

More people were on the street than usual. More police were around. I saw two huge officers, giants. One had his hand on the back of a tiny fast-talking man. There was no sense of potential violence, just a solid hand on the back and a posture that clearly communicated that whatever jig there may have been was now thoroughly up.

There was music and the smell of onions cooking. The jazz club was setting up a show. As I walked home, buses drove back and forth full of people like me, heading home, and out, and home again.

Yep. That’s some good grammar there.

In the future, I’ll make sure not to park my imaginary “car” under THIS vaguely menacing sign…

I visited my local Bernal Heights library branch this afternoon, in search of a place to sit and read. It turned out to be one of the last weeks the building is open before it closes for an extensive renovation. On a kid-filled sunny spring Saturday, the current building gives the impression of being a community center rather than a library, with more conversations, computers, and chaos than visible books.

I’m looking forward to the new design. The neighborhood obviously is drawn to the location, which swirls with families out walking dogs and babies.

— — — —

Things I’m currently researching…

• Wedding venues in the Detroit area that are:
  • Non-religious
  • Interesting-looking or unusual
  • Cheap, cheap, cheap!
• Things to do in Brighton, UK
• Search Engine Optimization
• Cat grooming (did you know you can use baby powder to make your cat less itchy?)
• Better WordPress plugins (I’m playing with a new Twitter sidebar)
• Management jobs in SF for my sweetie Chuck this summer