First thing to note, there are a few oddities with it being installed to the Program Files directory to be aware of. First, if you leave it installing there, you need to run the installer as admin, so it can actually write to the Program Files directory. The other thing, is Console2 is erratic about changing settings and not being able to write to console.xml, and lastly, if you want to change the hotkey, you’ll either need to copy and compile Wuake.au3 outside of the program files directory or just install it elsewhere. With that in mind, I moved it out to my home directory (C:\Users\Username\ on windows vista/7), and it worked fine once I updated the start menu shortcut.

Getting Console2 up to date is trivial. Pick up the new version from here and unpack the new Console.exe and *.dll files from the new console2 into the Wuake directory. Don’t overwrite console.xml, or you’ll have to reset the size and opacity. If you’re in userland, you can then tweak things accordingly in the settings menu. If you have it installed in Program Files,  copying the console.xml from Wuake,  running console from userland, setting your options accordingly, then copying console.xml back over works pretty well, if you don’t want to relocate Wuake.

Getting a cygwin tab set up is also pretty trivial, and follows the same process as a normal Console2 install: Under tabs, add a tab, and under shell put “C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe –login -i” and title it accordingly. If you bump it up to the top, it’ll auto-open Cygwin instead of the windows command line. Nifty.

To change the shortcut, you need Auto-It. It’s free, and handy to have anyway. Then just edit the Wuake.au3 file (Again, be careful of Program Files being a protected directory), and then you can either run it or compile it, and replace the stock Wuake.exe with your new one. The shortcut is right at the top of the file.

To change the shortcut to Ctrl+F12, the line would look like this: $hotkey = “^{F12}”  A full rundown of the keys can be found here. Just note that the modifier keys (+ for shift, ! for alt, ^ for control), need to be outside the brackets for the F12.

But hey, I do have a plan at least, which puts me a little ahead.

Step One: Post more to this thing, with my one occasional robot reader. Hell, better than it just sitting on my hard drive, right?

Step Two: Be less elitist in on-line games. I’m typically one of the people who sticks to my friends and avoids the lovely randoms. I should likely at least make an attempt to change that. At best, maybe I’ll meet a few entertaining people, at worst, I’ll have a few more idiot stories and lots of practice with insults. Win-win… mostly.

Step Three: This is where I would say something about being more social in meatspace, but being in the middle of corn, cows, and rednecks, last time I tried that it flew as a shot duck. So we’ll stick to not being antisocial on the tubes, first.

Step Four: Profit? Dunno, but it’s got to be better than the stereotypical basement-dweller having more friends than I do. Though, in my defense, I do have an awesome girlfriend that lives with me, so, point to me.

As much as I liked T-mobile, the network is a factor too. Pandora on Verizon’s 3g network is excellent, and I can have it going from when I leave (About 10 miles out of town), for 30 minutes until I get into work, without any skipping or slowdowns at all, Google maps and navigation pull up really quickly, and SSH runs like a dream.

There are some complaints, though. VZW has IRC blocked for some random reason. Haven’t gotten an answer from them yet as to why. There’s also something funny going on with http security certifications I’ve not pinned down yet. (Though, SSL is working perfectly on my machine). I’ve got a workaround for IRC (It involves a bouncer on my home machine, with an odd port and SSL on it.), and the weird security certs are on sites I’m not sure I trust anyway.

Still, it’s nice to have a phone with a network that just _works_ where I live

But, with Firefox 3.5 in beta, I figured I’d give it another spin. Chrome is still faster, I think, but it’s cut the difference by a huge margin. Enough that the extensions and customization gets to be a major motivator for switching browsers back.

Only this time, I went into much more customization details. So, I have a pretty tricked out browser. Here’s a rundown of my extensive tweaks so far.

Keyword Bookmarks
This is courtesy of LifeHacker. It’s an old article, but still the best example I’ve seen of how to do it. There’s a link in there to another article about keyword searches, which I also have set up.

Feedly
I’ve pimped out Feedly before, but it’s worth mentioning again. It’s the mother of all RSS readers.

DownThemAll
A high-speed download manager, integrated with Firefox? Sold.

ForecastFox
I’ve actually mostly yanked this one, so it’s not in the chrome of my browser all the time. But, I do throw it on from time to time when the weather’s bad.

OpenBook
This just makes it a lot easier for me to set up keyword bookmarks.

PersonalMenu
This is a chrome-style button dropdown menu I really like. I’ve got my bookmarks, speed dial and menu buttons all on the right of the location bar, and no bar above it.

ScribeFire
I’m even writing this from ScribeFire. It’s a really nice blog editor, built into Firefox. Plus, it beats most of the external editors I’ve seen. The only bad thing about it is the lack of keyboard shortcuts for common tasks not already taken by other Firefox tasks.

TwitterFox
A twitter client. It’s nice and small when you’re not using it, but hit your keyboard shortcut, and it pops right out. Handy, that.

FoxTab
Sure, it’s mostly pointless eye candy. But, the ability to pull your tabs out into an interesting preview quick-switch mechanism is pretty cool. And, by looking at the tabs, it’s a lot easier to quickly switch to the tab you want.

I’m not too worried, however. Well, not about myself. We’re going to stay with some of my Girlfriend’s friends for awhile. Mostly, I’m worried about my cat. We’ve got food, we can get him water, and we can improvise a litterbox, but he’ll still likely be all cooped up in my car for awhile. On the bright side, it’ll give me an excuse to walk my cat, something that gets some really funny reactions out of people.

I’m actually not as worried as I thought I’d be. After my court date, I was really really stressed and freaking out… then I had one of those moments of clarity, where I realized everything was going to be ok.

Truthfully, it’s kind of liberating. I’ve got decent internet through my phone wherever I go, (The Treasure Valley in Boise has a really good EDGE network), plus, it works well enough that I still get calls and SMS (Even email!) while it’s tethered.

I’ve also got a couple of contract gigs, which adds a little bit to the war chest. (Plus, pizza on the job!)

This is going to be a running series for awhile, so stay tuned. If nothing else, it gives me a reason to post everyday, or close to it.

For the Curious:

My bag of tricks (One standard size beat-up backpack.) consists of: 

• My laptop (With standard cords, and a standard mouse.)
• My PSP and associated cords
• Spare AA and AAA batteries
• A tech toolkit (Screwdrivers, pliers, crossover and loopback ethernet adapters, a patch cable)
• A security live DVD (Backtrack, if you’re curious)
• My USB watch with portable apps and portable python on it
• Ubuntu 8.04 and XP install discs
• My G1 and cordage
• My Leatherman knockoff

As much as I’d like to keep my Python Cookbook handy, it’s probably 1200 pages too large.

Take my blog writer, for example. I use ScribeFire. It ties in with my browser, and I can edit posts offline, and post them when I’m done. I really like it.

You could make the case that since it’s a hard firefox extension, it’s still a desktop app. But seriously, what’s the benefit of a blog editor without an internet connection?

Look at Gmail. For a long time, I used Thunderbird. But, with Gears integration, I can just take my Gmail offline with me. I can write an email, set it to send, and next time I’m connected to the mighty Google Cloud, it’ll send.

I also used to use Sunbird. I even had it tied with my Google calendar. But, I found myself more firing up Firefox to view or tweak my calander than Sunbird.

There’s a lot of really compelling features in Gmail that are hard to match in any other app. Calendar integration is a good example. Google Talk, Google Docs integration… all awesome.

In fact, the only cloud app I don’t use more online than offline is office stuff. There’s just something about being able to fire up a word processor. Though, with what is likely another stint of crappy internet, just for kicks, I’m going to try.

Once upon a time, webmail was quirky, and definitely not as good as a good desktop client. Online Documents usually meant “Save in word, upload somewhere.”

It’s funny to me to look at things now, where in a lot of cases, web apps are more full-featured and awesome than the desktop versions. Some of it has to do with the sharing and collaboration you can only get in the Cloud.

But some of it is just better applications. Which, truth be told, I still have a hard time getting my head around.

My main offline apps are Eclipse (IDE), Gimp and Inkscape, and games.

There is a cloud-based editor, Bespin. It’s ridiculously cool, but still in Beta. AFAIK, it’s only got Javascript syntax highlighting, but all kinds of awesome. It’s something I can see _TONS_ of potential in. Especially if there’s live collaboration ala google docs. How cool would it be to just open up sourceforge, look through and make changes, and save them instantly.

I’ve not seen any decent Gimp or Inkscape tools online (Though, I haven’t looked either).

And a lot of games I play you won’t find online. But, there’s always Newgrounds or Kongregate.

Still, it’s enough to get me fascinated with thinking about what applications will look like in 5 years.

It’s no big revelation to say that we’re an incredibly connected society now. But for me, this is absolutely nothing new. My mom was one of the first webmasters, way back when. I learned HTML before I learned how to multiply.

Hell, I was probably even one of the first kids my age to use e-mail for everything. (My Xbox LIVE Gamertag is off by a few years of my actual age, because I got it when I needed to tweak my age.) And I had other emails before that even.

But there’s more to it than that. Considering how often we moved, and how far away, I don’t really have a home state. I don’t really get attached to places. I’ve taken to defining “Home” as “Wherever I live now.” And you know, I really don’t mind. I love that I moved so much. How many people can say they’ve lived a block from a beach in sunny Florida, and lived in the Mountains. (Rockies FTW).

There was always one thing constant though. The Internet. No matter where we were, I had access to the internet. Not always the greatest, but there nonetheless. I could keep in contact with friends I had to move away from, keep a consistent community of friends around me, all well before the Web 2.0 entered our lives.

Hell, I even owe the love of my life to the Internet. I met her in a crappy chat room I went into because I was bored, and shooting lonely, angsty, bitchy fish in a barrel. Three years later, we’re living happily ever after.

I owe finding people with similar interests, that I never would have found locally. I owe that I wasn’t alone my entire childhood to the internet.

All things considered, I didn’t grow up in Florida, or Nebraska, or Colorado. I grew up on the Internet. And I’m here to help.

One of the things I loved about chrome is that it was lightning fast. Quick to load, quick to load pages, and the default tab was all kinds of awesome. The architecture of it was also awesome. (Each tab has it’s own process, so if something goes down, it doesn’t crash the browser.)

But, I find that I missed the extensions. Quite a bit, actually. Like, I’m writing this from ScribeFire. I’ve also got a weather monitor, and RSS reader, and a twitter client.

Outside of Twitter, this is all stuff I’ve got on my desktop via SuperKaramba. (Think Yahoo Widgets for Linux. Pretty shiny, actually.) But, I find there’s a lot of stuff I just really like having in my browser.

Like Twitter. It’s really nice to have that always-on in my browser. Same deal with the weather. Feedly (RSS Reader) is all kinds of awesome. It’s got a magazine look-and-feel, with all of the instant awesome of the internet.

And I really like having a standalone blog writer. Especially considering I can just open it in a new window, and edit it whenever, even if I’m not online.

This, however, isn’t to say there’s a lot of really neat stuff I’d like to see in Firefox from Chrome.

The main one, and probably one that won’t happen, is the architecture. Have every tab and most extensions run in their own process, so that when I crash a tab with a bad Java applet, I won’t tear down the browser.

The second is the speed. Which I have heard is a major improvement in 3.5, but I still want to see it. Truth be told, I think this is related to the first one.

Third, is I really love the new tab page from Chrome. My 9 favorite web sites, recently closed tabs, and history. Much better than a homepage for me. (Any, well, chrome I’d have on it, I have in my browser normally.)

Fourth is the “one bar” system. It’s easily my favorite feature in chrome, and I still accidentally try to use it in Firefox.

Of course, the big thing with this, is Firefox has full extension support, and chrome does not. Reading above, I’d likely switch back in a heartbeat if Chrome had good extensions for everything I use.

Of course, assuming that Firefox didn’t come out with something else awesome. Which, considering it’s history, is a really bad bet.

It’s going to take quite a bit for Chrome to win me back. It’s likely possible, but it’ll take some doing.

Also awesome, is the fact that it’s been ported to two managed languages. Java (Jython), and .NET(IronPython). Now, you may be wondering why you’d port one programming language to another. The short form, is A: As a scripting language, and B: To access the libraries written in Java and .NET through Python. Basically, IronPython makes Python a .NET language (I.E, on level with C# or VB.NET), and Jython means python can access Java libraries and functions. mod_python is awesome if you’ve got a fresh Apache set up, but if you’ve already got a whole bunch of Java servlets… well, fitting in a few Python servlets to either prototype with, or make use of python’s exceptional agility, starts to look really appealing. 

Which brings me to the last point of Python’s Awesomeness. A live console. I’d reccomend installing python anyway, but if you want to get the idea first, go here. You’ll have to approve a security warning, as it’s an appalet running a full Python console via Jython. It’s on GNUCitizen, but if you’re the paranoid type, source is available here.

And probably the best way to get used to a new language is to play around with it a little. So here’s a quick primer.

First, the basics. (Just type this into the interactive console, hit enter to go to a new line, no real worries.

A simple math test.

print 2 + 2

This is building a list.

list = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0]

Printing the list.

print list

Look, an iterator!  (Just hit enter after the colon, then hit enter twice after the n.)

for n in list:
	print n

Basics out of the way, lets look at something a little more substantial (This only works in Jython, as it refrences Java code.) A more-or-less linear translation of Sun’s Swing hello world. (Put into procedural form to make it easier to type out into the console.)

from javax.swing import *
frame = JFrame("Hello, Jython!")
label = JLabel("Hey, a label!")
frame.getContentPane().add(label)
frame.pack()
frame.setVisible(1)

At this point, a Java window should pop up. Now, if you would, window your web browser with the console in it, and arrange it so you can see both the new Java window, and the python console, and type this line.

label.setText("Look, Dynamic!")

When you hit enter, notice anything? Like, how the label changed instantly, without any need to recompile, relaunch, or otherwise fiddle with it? You can do the same thing with WinForms in IronPython, and Tkinter in stock (CPython). (Though, the procedure in Tkinter is different). Overall, it provides a really agile and quick way to develop. Plus, the syntax is dead simple.

First off, the idea that I should be in “buisness-mode” and looking out for how I can ease my fit into someone else’s expectations 24/7 just pisses me off. But it does a lot more than that. It makes me really believe that something is deeply and truly wrong. But there’s more to it than just that. The fact that someone can pass judgement on my life, even though they’re no part of it…

Let me clarify. In my private life, I listen to metal, wear lots of spiky clothing, play violent video games, and wear t-shirts with interesting remarks on them. I do such, because I like said clothes, I like said music, and said games are fun. That said, I bet a lot of people would think I’m an evil, horrible person, ill suited to do more than flip hamburgers. I won’t dispute the evil bit, but the rest of it is a bit inane. Also consider, that whenever I’m not playing a game, I’m hacking on Python, running web, email, and FTP servers for fun, running a network rig worthy of a small buisness, and usually watching the Discovery or Science channel. Now, if you took the spiky clothing, sarcasam, and metal out of that, what would you have? The local geeky kid that everyone thinks is going to grow up to be the next Bill Gates? (Though, I think we could use another Linus Torvalds more.)

It’s the old truisim that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. But there’s more to it than that. Frequently, what someone does in their off -time (Another rantworthy concept) has precisely zero connection to what they do at work. Lets be honest about expectations here. I expect to get paid for providing a service, and you expect to recieve said service in exchange for paying me. Pretty straightforward. So, I have to ask, what part of this involves you googling for my blog, reading it, and deciding if I’ll be a “good fit” for the company? Now, if you want to see what I have to say, that’s fine. But basing an employment decision off of if the hiring manager likes what I write personally is troubling. 

Besides, who in their right mind bases their opinion of the company, by the people that work there? Besides the customer-service aspect, customers generically have little-to-no connection with your employees.  Quality-of-product is a lot more important than your employees being your kind of people.

Outside of that, most people are capable of compartmentalizing their life. I don’t insult your stupid customers, but I do fix their computers. You pay me, and you don’t worry about what I do once I go away. It seems like a good deal to me. This brings up a good point. Why should you care if someone drinks, or smokes, or gets high off the clock? In fact, most of the employers don’t care if people drink off-the-clock, or over weekends.

Why should an employer care if someone smokes pot on the weekend? Because that shows a habit? What about the people that go and get smashed every weekend? Last I checked, alcohol was more habit-forming than marijuana. Because it’s illegal? So’s driving home drunk, or drinking underage, or speeding, or running red lights. Yet, nobody freaks out about that as much. But most places do drug tests. It’s not like they’re even impairment tests. It just tells them if you’ve taken any illegal drugs in the last random timeframe. Not terribly useful to see if you’re high/drunk/wasted on the job. So, it’s basically just another lifesytle test.

In short, just another way for employers to keep track of the personal lives of their employees. Somewhere I don’t believe the employer has any place.