The Blog of Shawn0

Well. Things have gotten interesting. This semester of school is turning out to be a real pain. School has gotten complicated, and I am beginning to lose all will to go. Every day, I dread to wake up. I just don’t want to get out of bed. Besides that, the snow isn’t helping. I can’t go anywhere. I can’t wait for the day that it starts warming up, and I can get out again. All i have been doing is sitting in front of a computer all day. I feel like I do not want to waste away in front of a couple of CRT screens. I want to get out and live. Now that is off my chest, let’s get on to the interesting stuff.

The past few weeks, I have been working on a podcast. Basically, a few people and I will talk about recent tech stories, and deeply criticize them. I could have good comments about the stories, or extremely bad ones *cough*iPad*cough*. I think it will be awesome to bash the really dumb moves in tech. Other than that, I just chose a different theme for my website (as you can tell). I got sick of the one that I have been using, and I think that this one looks a hell of a lot better.

So. The last thing in this post: I need a name for the podcast. That seems to be the last thing that is holding me up in the entire process. If you have an idea for a name: PLEASE COMMENT!!! As soon as I can find a name: I can start planning the first recording.

So, what’s up guys? I, like many others just got an iPod Touch for Christmas. I, being a Firefox user, wanted to have my bookmarks synchronized from Firefox automatically when I sync my iPod. After doing some searching, I came to the discovery that the old methods did not work at all because they happened to be incompatible with Firefox 3.0, even after circumventing the compatibility check. After a while of googling, I came to an epiphany. I already use the plugin Xmarks to keep my bookmarks backed up and synchronized between my computers, so why not take it a step further and have it synchronize to one of the iTunes-compatible bookmark platforms. So, after this sudden realization, I gave it a try and it worked! So now: I am going to teach you how to do this. It’s quite simple if you know a little about how XMarks works.

A quick overview of Xmarks.

Ok, so XMarks, before it does the actual synchronization of the bookmarks, takes a look at all of your bookmarks, most importantly the date the page was marked. After it looks at that, it takes a look at what’s on the XMarks server and compares the two. If there is something on the server that was added since the last synchronization that is not on the computer, it goes ahead and copies it over to the computer. The same applies to something new on the computer.

Getting this whole thing to work.

So now we have somewhat of an understanding of this, let’s get started. First, you will need to have an account at Xmarks. Even if you have one, I recommend that that we start fresh with a brand new account. Tip! If you have already created an account using a Gmail.com email as your email address, you do not need to create a whole new email address. You can just add a + and then something like Xmarks to the email, so you will get something like this: myemailhere+Xmarks@gmail.com. Any emails sent to this address will still end up in your original inbox. To register, go here. Once you have created an account, I SERIOUSLY recommend that you back up your Firefox bookmarks, just in case something goes wrong and all of your bookmarks get deleted. Here are the instructions:

Backing up your bookmarks:

1: Open up your bookmark manager in Firefox.

2. Click the import and backup button on the toolbar on the top of the window. Click backup.

3. Navigate to your desktop if you have to. Save this file. Feel free to change the name of the file if you want, but it does not make any difference to Firefox what the name is.

Now that that is done, the process of setting up Xmarks begins.

Installing Xmarks for Internet Explorer

Yes, I said it, Internet Explorer. Even though IE sucks in my opinion, it is still vital to this quest. Internet Explorer is the only way we can get this to work between Firefox, Xmarks, Internet Explorer and iTunes. Here are the steps:

1. Download Xmarks for IE

2. Run through the installation of Xmarks just like you would with any other installation

3. A setup window will pop up (sorry, I could not get any pictures for this as I could not get the setup wizard to run again). The wizard will ask you for your credentials to Xmarks. It will also ask you how you want to synchronize the bookmarks for the first time. I recommend the option that merges your bookmarks, especially if you did not create a new account.

4. After the wizard is complete, the initial synchronization should run and a page in IE should show up telling you the process was a success

Installing Xmarks for Firefox

The process for Firefox is somewhat the same as IE, except it does not install as an application.

1. Install the Xmarks addon for Firefox

2. Restart your browser (Don’t worry, this page should return on the restart)

3. You should get a pop up with the setup wizard for Xmarks. If not, open up your addons (it should be in tools) and find Xmarks then click Options.

4. Once you have logged in you will be asked if you want to synchronize your passwords along with your bookmarks. This does not affect how bookmarks will be sent to your iPod or iPhone.

You can click this to make it larger

5. Again, choose to merge data on the server

6. Choose to start with data on the server

7. Click next to begin the sync process

8. Right click the Xmarks taskbar icon and click synchronize now to get your bookmarks in to IE

Getting the bookmarks on the iPod or iPhone

The final process of this whole song and dance is to get your bookmarks on to your iPod or iPhone.

1. Plug your iDevice in to your computer

2. Locate your iDevice in the devices list in iTunes

3. Click the info button on the iPod device management

4. Scroll down to Web Browser, check the box next to “Sync bookmarks with” and make sure Internet Explorer is selected

5. Sync your iPod or iPhone and you are done!

Well. That’s it! I don’t know what else to say, other than thanks for reading… So thanks for reading!

EDIT: I should have put something like this in here already but this method works across all Xmarks compatible browsers. This post has been tailored to the Internet Explorer installation, but if you happen to be on a mac, then you can download Xmarks for Safari in place of IE. The process is pretty similar to the IE installation.
12/30 1:25pm Eastern

Everybody has them. For some reason, they are beginning to annoy me every time that I see them. One main one that I hate is the J.G. Wentworth Opera Advertisement:

Something about the constant repetition of the phone number bothers me. WE GET IT! Your phone number is<Sorry. No free advertisements for crappy companies> . What’s worse is the people singing. They are SO obnoxious.
It is true that I like apple better than windows, but nothing has made me hate windows more than this:

Microsoft is corrupting the youth with their propaganda! I understand that Windows 7 is a great improvement from Vista. That is why no kids that age know how to use a mac any more. It is so depressing. Why cant their ads be more like this:

This is an advertisement that actually makes me shut the TV off. It is just a sad, depressing commercial about animal cruelty. Therefore, I highly recommend you do NOT click the play button below:

So. Now that you know what commercials that I hate, what commercials do you hate? Leave a comment below! Links are welcome! By the way, I set up a fan page that acts more as a public profile. If you want to talk to me on Facebook, just become a fan and leave a post on my wall. I also have Twitter, which is @shawn0.

Saturday morning, I tried logging in to my Facebook, to get this message:

Account Unavailable: Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

So far, it has been 96 hours since it has been “unavailable due to site maintenance”. I am really angry because what was supposed to be a few hours turned in to a few days. I do understand that Facebook is a free service, but they should react to problems with their service as they would if they were giving paid services to people. What strikes me as odd is the fact that they didn’t acknowledge the problem until yesterday, with a post in the help section:

Some users have been experiencing difficulty logging into the site for several days. After they enter their login information they receive a “Site Maintenance” error message. We are aware of this technical issue and are working to resolve it as soon as possible.

and a release of information to CNET, which also came out yesterday. In that release, the spokesperson for Facebook said:

We are currently experiencing a technical issue with one of our databases that is resulting in an extended period of maintenance for some users. We are working on a fix now and hope to have this resolved in the next 24 hours.

Well. It has been more than 24 hours, and I am still getting that dreaded “site maintenance” error.
Two days ago, I sent in a support message, but Facebook is hiding behind their canned responses:

Hi,

Thank you for submitting this bug report and taking time to help us improve the site. Unfortunately, we are unable respond to every bug report individually, but we are reading them.

{I am cleaning out the fluff about sending a screen shot}

Once you have saved the screen shot, attach it in a response to this email. If your issue is unfamiliar to our team, we may contact you for more details. If we have identified and are troubleshooting your issue, we will not need to contact you for more details. We appreciate your patience.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

I do not understand why Facebook has to make it such a problem to log in. For all we know, with how long they took to say that they were having problems, they may not be working on the issue at all. Let’s just say that Facebook has lost its place in my starting tabs.

Update: 10.8.2009
My account is fixed. Just thought that I would put that out there.

So! What’s up guys? I haven’t updated in a while, but I have been busy. School has gotten a little wild, with projects and all. I just got done with “As I Lay Dying”. That book was so boring. If I did not have to do it for a project, I would not have read it in the first place. Most of the time, I did not understand the writing, and even had to resort to using the sparknotes. The book did have it’s good moments though. At the end of the book, it left you on a huge shocker. I am not going to spoil the story by telling you. You will just have to read it for your self.

In other news, I heard that the new Paramore album has been leaked. I know it gets released tomorrow, but has anyone listened to it yet? Is it good? Bad? Is it as good as their other albums? If you do not know yet, I have been listening to Paramore since before they got big. The only thing is they are among my huge music library that already exists.

Now about the website. I have began tracking basic information about my users, no personal information, but information like how many visits that I have gotten, where the people went and that stuff. Nothing that big, but cool none-the-less.