Facebook Shenanigans

Keep those super annoying "top stories" away on facebook by simpyling using the following URL

• http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

instead of the standard one.

Firefox Upgrades Shenanigans Again!

Did an upgrade from Firefox 24 ESR to Firefox 31 ESR, because various websites (YouTube I am looking at you) keep nagging and nagging about this ... Again as with all of the latest Firefox upgrades .. huge, huge mistake.

All of the annoying updates and "innovations" like stripped down interfaces and hiding information, which may be suitable for mobile devices and such things, but for other users like the ordinary PC users are so infuriating ...


To name a few mishaps and misadventures reappearing are:

• Forced UI changes
• Reordering of menu bar entries
• Missing status bar (Link information in particular)
• Missing Download Manager functionality (no I don't want any mini-windows; I want a decent overview of what downloads are going on at the moment. Gosh ..

Regarding the UI changes, you may say, "OK, but you can change all that to your liking ..". But my answer is "Why, of why, do I have to do this over and over again after each FF upgrade???" This costs me a lot of time each and every time, because developers have found a new "optimal" arrangements of buttons and menu entries.

Again, I have to do a lot of stuff, to make the FF appear in fashion, that I can work comfortably with FF. Includes installing and/or updating:

1. Classic Theme Restorer
2. Status Bar Forever
3. Download Manager
4. Add-Blocker (OK, this one is not affected by FF upgrades, but you get the idea ...)

 Again, I am really, really close to ditching Firefox for good.

Rehearsal of Schumann's 4th Sympony with Herbert von Karajan

The Kraken

"Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."
-- Alfred Tennyson (1830)