I know you’re somewhere out there
Somewhere far away
I want you back
I want you back
My neighbors think
I’m crazy
But they don’t understand
You’re all I have
You’re all I have
[Chorus:]
At night when the stars
light up my room
I sit by myself
Talking to the Moon.
Try to get to You
In hopes you’re on
the other side
Talking to me too.
Or Am I a fool
who sits alone
Talking to the moon?
I’m feeling like
I’m famous
The talk of the town
They say
I’ve gone mad
Yeah
I’ve gone mad
But they don’t know
what I know
Cause when the
sun goes down
someone’s talking back
Yeah
They’re talking back
[Chorus:]
At night when the stars
light up my room
I sit by myself
Talking to the moon.
Try to get to You
In hopes you’re on
the other side
Talking to me too.
Or am I a fool
who sits alone
Talking to the moon?
Ahh…Ahh…Ahh..
Do you ever hear me calling
(Ahh…Ahh..Ahh..)
Ho hou ho ho hou
‘Cause every night
I’m talking to the moon
Still try to get to you
In hopes you’re on
the other side
Talking to me too
Or am I a fool
who sits alone
Talking to the moon?
Ohoooo…
I know you’re somewhere out there
Somewhere far away

– Bruno Mars, Doo-wops and Hooligans

The Firebot Blog

This will be the last firebot related post to appear on this blog.

I’m also reconfiguring how my mail server is working so even after he comes back up, bugmail reporting will take longer to have working again.

Happy Holidays

– Wolf

So long since I’ve waited
To live again
You’ve brought my world to an end
Love takes its victim and leaves its remains
My broken heart has died in vain
Tell me why have we forsaken the dreams we had
The pain makes it so hard to understand
You’re a lifetime ago but a memory away
And I’ll love you till my resurrection day
Love kills the fire’s gone
Dying embers still remain
Love kills and now you’re gone
Girl, I’ll never be the same again
Without your love, seems so dead and unreal
And now there’s nothing left to feel
Someday we’ll meet again–girl that much I know
At heaven’s gate we’ll say hello
Now I hear the wind is calling my lonely,
Lonely soul
For sorrow’s trembling hands please let me go
Love’s dying sin is just dust in the wind
I face the other side of no tomorrow
Love kills the fire’s gone
Dying ember still remains
Love kills and now you’re gone–Girl  I’ll never be the same
Love kills and love is just a dying ember in the rain
Love kills a heart betrayed–Lord please, please–
Please ease my pain–love kills–girl I need your love
Love kills with all its heart

– Vinnie Vincent Invasion

– Aristotle ("The Politics")

Recently, when approaching migrating this blog from one movabletype installation into another one, I decided.. I hate MovableType. It was nice when I first opened this blog way back when, but now, particularly with MT5, its just drifted too far to corporate blogging. The plug-ins are lacking, the themes are non-existent, and I don’t have enough traffic for the static generation design to do anything but waste my time.

So, that being said. This blog is now powered by wordpress. Its good stuff. Though I’m still not too keen on how commonplace wordpress is, but, c’est la vie.

Things might be broken around here for a bit, while I fix problems from this switch. Making things a bit more strange is that i’m also in the process of moving all my websites off of one server and onto another one, so you may see outdated pages for some links until thats done. Pardon the dust.

I recognize that this post is about to be little more than a complaint (as i’m not sure what better behavior would be, I don’t claim to know good design, thats what the UX team exists for), but I recall seeing somewhere, (I think it was Jennifer Boriss’ blog) a discussion about Firefox dialogs that get in the users way (specifically add-on updates.)  So this complaint is along those same lines… to draw a bit of attention to it.

This dialog has greeted me twice in the past couple of days (I’m thinking on two different machines, not sure), it doesn’t appear at the beginning of a browsing session, or at any seemingly predictable time, just randomly in the middle of things. I recognize what the dialog is for (blocklisting) but I’m confused by a few things…

• Why is this particular dialog advocating restarting my session suddenly in the middle of things? (Which for the security case I can see the reasoning for..) but… this is a plug-in, (one I barely knew was here.. so it being turned off doesn’t bother me..) why do I have to restart to disable a plug-in?
• Where did this dialog come from? Is it new to Firefox 3.6? I don’t recall previous versions prompting when the blocklist was invoked. Does this now appear for any blocklisted item?
• What happens if I click cancel, because I’m not ready to abort my browsing session just because this dialog has intruded into my time and asks me to deal with it? I’m assuming, given that Firefox developers are sane (mostly) people, that it just aborts restarting, but I can also see how cancel might be construed in this case to do nothing and leave the vulnerable add-ons enabled.. What actually happens?
• And assuming for a moment, that I’m supposed to make a choice here, since there’s checkboxes and such on this dialog, there’s no information presented to make an informed one. (Yes, I see the More info link that goes to the sorted ascending by date blocklist page that says it tiny print at the bottom there’s a security issue. but that’s investigating the dialog, on a tangent.) The dialog only has vague “stability or security" wording thats used often throughout Firefox So, how am I supposed to know what to do?

Now, don’t misunderstand, I’m supportive of the blocklist feature, and think that the feature is beneficial, and I’m sure the reason this plugin being blocked was a fine idea. I’m questioning if this dialog was well thought out or if its more confusing than its worth (or at the least, a significant cause for confusion for people who have to encounter it). Since previous versions seemed to get along just fine without it.

I consider myself tech-savvy, but when faced with this dialog, I’m definitely finding myself asking.. You’re the program, just deal with it. and let me know what happened so if it is a problem, it can be reverted. What do you want me to do about it?

History

XMTuner is a Windows application designed to replace the no-longer maintained uSirius and uXM applications that were written by Millard software. It was born when SiriusXM upgraded their internet radio player and broke the applications for good, as an avid XM Radio fan, and an owner of a set-top media player which was no longer as useful, my friend and I set out to write a replacement that would match as closely as possible the functionality of uXM, as well as to extend it with useful additional features. In the last few months, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Starting out with a simple featureless but functional application, and improving and adding to it bit-by-bit in each new version.

Read more on The XMTuner Blog…

What is XMTuner?

XMTuner is a media application that provides XM Satellite Radio streams to media servers, set-top media players, game consoles, smart phones and virtually any device capable of playing streaming media. XMTuner also has its own built in player to play XM Radio right from your desktop.

Features:

• Built-in Media Player – New!
• Recently Played History – New!
• Integrated Program Guide – New!
• Runs as a Windows Service
• Now Playing website
• PLS, ASX and M3U Playlists – New!
• RSS (Podcast) Feeds
• Transcode to MP3 streams for greater device compatibility (requires TVersity)
• Unobtrusive notification box keeps you up to date on what’s playing – New!
• Minimizes to a tray icon to reduce desktop clutter while you’re working
• Built-in Updater

[Download] [Homepage]

First off, for those who are new to IRC or just don’t have the time to dive into details.. Firebot, is the IRC robot that hangs around many of the channels on irc.mozilla.org. It’s maintained by me, Wolf, I can be found in many of the same channels. It runs the mozbot software, which is a mozilla.org project, which I also am the module owner of.

Mozilla’s Bugzilla: Feature requests and bugs for Mozbot itself belong in bugzilla.mozilla.org, in the webtools/mozbot component. This is the best place to track them. Just telling me will likely result in your request getting lost, its unfortunate, but I just don’t remember things that well.

Firebot’s Bugzilla: Configuration needs for firebot, (Examples: turning on a tree in Tinderbox, adding new Bug announcements, disabling a module in a channel, enabling a feature in a channel, making the bot join or leave a channel, etc) on the other hand, are frowned upon in that component (though I personally don’t care, the bugzilla overlords seem to.) therefore they belong in Firebot’s Bugzilla.. at https://bugzilla.pcfire.net/  ( Specifically the new bug form for firebot is here: [New Firebot Bug/Request Form] )

Via E-Mail: If you don’t want to go through the trouble to sign up for yet-another-bugzilla (ideas for better ways to deal with this are welcome), which I can understand, you can also e-mail them to me via firebot-admin@ <this domain>. You can also ask firebot for it.. just “/msg firebot admin?” and I’ll file your bug and link you to the number so you can keep up.

Confused? The distinctions aren’t very clear and I’m not picky about them, so if you’re confused or not sure, just e-mail me Thanks.