Apple recently released Safari 4 beta for the Mac, and I think it’s actually pretty good. What especially trigged my interest was it’s new tab system, and most of all the sheer speed of this thing. Loading and rendering pages is suspiciously fast. The Norwegian online IT magazine seems to agree with me on this. (originally from Maximum PC)
However, there is always some wrinkles.
Wrinkle number one was the “Top sites” functionality. It is really slow, and bogs down the browser experience. Luckily, it’s mendable. I found a great list of tips for disabling/re-enabling functionality over at Macosxtips.co.uk. To say goodbye to Top Sites just enter the following in the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool FALSE
The other thing was a decent flash block. I usually don’t mind sensible ads on web pages, I even find good deals that way some times. But flash ads are way to annoying, so I want to block them. Firefox has a nice plugin called Flashblock, which I have been using for quite a few years now. It blocks all flash, and gives a clickable flash symbol that will display the flash animation/video. Very useful.
I have been looking for something similar to Flashblock for Safari, but only found SafariStand which is based on blocking/allowing for specific sites… Not very useful, really – or I didn’t figure out how to set it up properly. But after some more googling I finally found ClickToFlash which does the same thing as flashblock and to top it all off is free as in freedom. Me like!
As a little reminder to self, here is how you do it – from macosoxhints.com via Bytex. If you don’t limit the size of the DMG you will apparently run into problems with Time Machine (TM) killing off your entire backup. I currently use a smallish USB disk for backup, but I would much rather have TM back up over the network, preferrably via SSH. Unfortunately, ExpanDrive does not support this officially. I am planning on giving it a try over ordinary sshfs in Fuse. I’ll be back with more.
My friend ez tipped me off about acerfand, which effectively silences the very annoying fans on the aa1. Just follw the instructions in the README file and you are good to go!
Basic fan control for the Acer Aspire One
=========================================
Rachel Greenham and others, 2008. See http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=300&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a for details.
In particular, acer_ec.pl is not my own work. 
Simple install:
1: Download acerfand and acer_ec.pl from this folder into /usr/local/bin. Ensure they're executable.
2: Add "/usr/local/bin/acerfand" into your /etc/rc.local file.
3: Reboot. Or just run acerfand to start it immediately.
--
Rachel
P.S. The mail-notification .deb is prebuilt for ubuntu with SSL support enabled, unlike the one in the Ubuntu repository.
I have to excuse the poor quality of these shots, the Nokia 6300′s camera isn’t all that.
First, the MacBook Pro:
Read more…
Det hender at nerden går rundt i byen som ein tilnærma vanleg mann. Dette varer heilt til nerden går forbi ein stad der det luktar kaffi og wifi-finnaren hans slår ut på ein ESSID som er den same som det utestaden heiter..
Nettopp dette skjedde med meg i dag, då eg gjekk forbi Grensen Restaurant på sørsida i Halden. Diverre hadde dei berre vanleg traktekaffe i dag, men nettet fungerte utmerkt på min Acer Aspire One med Linux etter at eg fekk WPA Personal-nøkkelen deira.
På ein ordinær torsdag var det i tillegg heilt daudt der, så eg fekk den trivelege betjeninga for meg sjølv. Servicen var sjølvsagt upåklageleg, og kyllingsandwichen eg bestilte var heilt OK.
Av andre fasiliteter kan eg nemne godt med straumkontaktar ved alle vindaugsborda, bra nettverksdekning og bra musikk med behageleg lydnivå. Det var heller ikkje noko danskebåt-liknande ventilasjonsanlegg slik som på til dømes Dickens. Tappekranene ved bardisken hadde fine skilt der det stod “Borg” og”Coca Cola”, så det er råd å få seg kvalitetsdrikke der òg.
Det einaste som var litt under pari var faktisk kaffen, som var litt vel sterk og kanskje bar litt preg av å ha stått i kanna litt vel lenge. Snakka litt med innehavaren, og det er kaffemaskin undervegs ganske snart. Det gleder vi oss til.
Med kaffemaskin, nettverk, straum, bra lyd og triveleg betjening har Grensen Restaurant godt potensiale til å bli ny stamstad etter at studentkroa la inn årene. Det blir spanande å sjå korleis resten av menyen er, neste gong blir det å teste hovudrettane.
