CottonConsulting.Biz

Author: Larry Cotton

  • It’s a Flat World, After All

    The New York Times > Magazine > It’s a Flat World, After All

    Something I have long felt was happening has been written up in a recent NYT Magazine article and I suggest *ALL* good Americans read it.

    Bottom line, we are lazy and better get up!

    Changes in the world are going on while we watch the belly buttons of our existence. We are about to be outrun not because others are just faster, but because we are sleeping.

    Is this bad? Not necessarily. We are capable of creating new directions and new markets where they never existed before and I believe this means we need to create markets that need creating! Not just markets we can profit from short term, but as if God were after a market.

    Are we about to be beaten and killed in this field? Maybe. And maybe that’s good. We need to leave the current field and go to the one all the world can exist in together anyway. We need to move one way or another. As leaders or as paupers, we need to move.

  • Google Search: weather 97477

    Google Search: weather 97477

    Google Weblog reports yet another feature of Google searching it to find the weather at any zipcode. In the Google Search just type ‘weather 97477’ for Springfield Oregon weather or ‘weather new paltz, new york’ for my old home town’s current and future weather.

    But wait!

    There’s more!

    Google News has now made its pages configurable. Google has had a great News section that points to news stories at other sites around the web. Now you can organize their page to your choices of topics and arrangement. Just visit http://news.google.com/ and click the ‘Customize this page’ link.

  • Caedes Desktop Wallpaper – Caedes.net

    Caedes Desktop Backgrounds – Photography, Abstract, 3D – Caedes Desktop Wallpaper – Caedes.net

    I should just make a Wallpaper catagory here. I like to change my desktop wallpaper fairly often just to keep it fresh.

    This site is full of beautiful artwork from around the world. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

  • BACKGROUNDS – GNOME – art.gnome.org

    BACKGROUNDS – GNOME – art.gnome.org

    Been looking for Desktop Wallpaper? This is a view of over 200 graphics from the Gnome Desktop for Linux Library. Most or Gnome related but others are not and all are beautiful.

    This page will load all their thumbnails, a long dial-up load. 🙂

  • Urban Legends Reference Pages: Automobiles (Seat Belts)

    Urban Legends Reference Pages: Automobiles (Seat Belts)

    I was taught how to fly airplanes when I was a teen and actually soloed in a Cessna 150 before I got my drivers license. I knew the value of seat belts (bumps in the air can literally put you on the ceiling faster than you can imagine!) so I was never a rebel of the seat belt laws.

    Sadly one of those “rebels” died last week, a result of not wearing a seatbelt.

  • Make Firefox Faster at Forever Geek

    Make Firefox Faster at Forever Geek

    If you aren’t using firefox and you have been reading my blogs, you have learned nothing. 🙂

    If you are this link from forevergeek.com has a very good suggestion on how to speed firefox’s browsing. It is for broadband (cable/DSL) connections and basically tells you haw to make Firefox load more than one page file at a time, much like the download Managers do. So instead of pulling in the HTML page, and each graphic one at a time you will pull in up to 30 items at once.

    It works!

  • I made the move to Firefox/Thunderbird

    I actually moved to using Firefox back in version .8 and I *HIGHLY* recommend it. For many reasons, security, features, speed, to name a few I find Firefox browser much better than MS Internet Explorer or it’s derivatives. (I used Netcaptor which was a fuller featured IE instead of IE before I upgraded to Firefox.)

    Several months ago I switched mail programs from MS Outlook to MozillaMail, part of the Mozilla Suite. I liked Mozilla and wondered what the value of switching again to Firefox/Thunderbird would be. About a month ago I began switching to Firefox as Browser and kept using MozillaMail. The only drawback I found was clicking a weblink in MozillaMail always uses the Mozilla Browser, even when Firefox was ‘default’ browser.

    Now I have everything working in the latest Firefox/Thunderbird combination and I’m finding I like it a lot.

    The one thing I liked about MS Outlook was its calendaring ability. The Mozilla Suite has a Calendar that I found adequate and it is now available as a stand-alone program, Sunbird. It is an ical compatible program (meaning it uses a format MAC’s have used all along) and while I’m not yet as accustomed to it as I was the Outlook Calendar, I think its going to work for me.

    All programs are under constant development and this Open Source program I will call ‘Ready for Prime Time’ and are recommendations from me. 🙂

  • Miranda Instant Messenger

    Update 1-21-2021: Looking over old posts I see this project was abandoned 2012. But a new “clone” has come up I have yet to test. But for those interested it is Miranda-NG

    Miranda Instant Messenger

    If you use Yahoo IM or AOL IM or MSN IM or ICQ or Jabber or just want in house network IM this is one handy Open Source (No Charge!) Internet Messaging client.

    I have a few people on each service that I like to stay in touch with but its memory (resource) intensive to run all the brand name clients so I was looking for some way to have them all in one.

    Actually I have been using Trillian for this purpose for several years and it has a free version which works well but you really need to buy their Pro version to get full use of it. It is very good, but my $ is going to medicine and food these days, so a little more searching led me to Miranda.

    Miranda has loads of Plugins that will not only let it interact with other IM servers but has added features for RSS feeds, Weather feeds, Stock feeds and more. It’s not as easy as perhaps the Yahoo IM itself to set all this up, but its not unreasonable either.

    This is now one of my standards for OS Setups.

  • Textbook disclaimer stickers

    Can you believe it?

    My parents are rolling in their graves. This is what kids today get to see on their textbooks and some suggestions of what they might add over the stickers.

    Textbook disclaimer stickers

    If you don’t have time for any of the above, but are not opposed to
    being horrified and entertained at the same time (for free!), go get
    yourself a really stiff drink and check out some of the slick web sites
    where anti-evolution school board members, teachers, and fellow parents
    get their strategies, lesson plans, and Darwin jokes:

  • PSPad – freeware HTML editor

    PSPad – freeware editor,PHP editor, XHTML, JavaScript, ASP, Perl, C, HEX editor

    Once in a while I run into a real gem of a program and can’t believe it’s not better known.

    I’m not a programmer but I play one on the web. 🙂

    As such I need to work with text files and read them as a real programmer would, recognizing line numbers, programming formatting, and comparing file differences.

    I have used Context free version for some time fairly happily but it is a little lacking of features in the free version.

    I used Win32PAD and found it fast, but the line numbering doesn’t stay with the line when you word wrap.

    Now I did a little searching today for a free file compare program and ran into PSPad at NoNags.com. This is truly a *GEM*!

    Not only is it doing normal text editing wonderfully but it has a file compare feature built right in. I has FTP built right in. It has excellent help files (in many languages) built right in. A spell checker built right in.

    If you want a replacement for Windows Notepad just about anything will do but this program has everything I can imagine any normal human will ever need.

    In my book it’s five star *****

  • Article: Pollution triggers bizarre behaviour in animals�| New Scientist

    Article: Pollution triggers bizarre behaviour in animals�| New Scientist

    “Hyperactive fish, stupid frogs, fearless mice and seagulls that fall over. It sounds like a weird animal circus, but this is no freak show. Animals around the world are increasingly behaving in bizarre ways, and the cause is environmental pollution.”

    I should list this under ‘Things we know, but are afraid to admit.’

  • The Void at LBStone.com

    The Void at LBStone.com

    Some great videos, MP3’s and browser files of ads and plain great clips.

    Try ’em!