Donate For Relief

Amazon makes it easy for you to donate to the American Red Cross Society for the tsunami victims. (via)

Earthquake! Tsunami!

Read on for the horror in first-person.

Home was hit by Tidal wave... Practically lost everything.... Family is fine... Thank God... - Ronnietan

... and then tidal waves about 16 feet high hit the West coast of Phuket (Rawai, Patong), the Similans, Koh Lanta, Phi Phi Islands. The wave reached 300 m inland at Patong and swept hundreds of tourists into the sea. - ellie_elephant

There was a kinda big earthquake in my place this morning... It woke me up, and I ran downstairs amazingly fast... That was shocking. I thought this house will be ruined... - Meilathena

Priya and I are safe, barring a nasty shock when she was jerked out of bed early today morning by the quake... - Suresh Ramasubramanian

Thankfully my parents are okay - they have not been affected physically. However we have lost some of our closest friends... - Dhruhini

I am closer to the beach. A church by the beach is supposedly flooded, and there are reports of people being drowned, while in Church. I wonder if they got trapped or something! - notangel78

The beach is totally flooded. Chennai without a beach feels totally weird, even though its only temporary... People around the beach have been forced to evacuate. Looks sad. - Vyshnavi

We had tremors, and floods. Apparently there are dead bodies up the coastline. Fuck... We're fine. But scared. - Rulinian Wexile

I'm scared... My best friend, Alyssa is currently on holiday in Langkawi, Malaysia - Sophia

He was jet-skiing at a beach in Phang-nga province, one of the place that the wave hit hardest. They found his body about 100 metres away from the hotel. - D.M.

The water went out then came back in very, very quickly, taking everything with it. When the water came into the bungalow, we put everything on the beds... All the windows were closed, so the water kept pushing everything up towards the roof. It pushed us up to the roof, then the roof came off and we floated away - Mr Sköld in Daily News

We were standing there taking pictures and the wave started coming back, faster and faster, so we started to run away, faster and faster, but my parents didn’t run fast enough. - Mrs Holmberg in Daily News

Jayanti Lakshmi, 70, had gone shopping with her daughter-in-law in Cuddalore, southern India. Ms Lakshmi returned to find her son and twin grandsons dead in their hut. - BBC

People that were snorkeling were dragged along the coral and washed up on the beach, and people that were sunbathing got washed into the sea. - Simon Clark in CNN

My mate's staying in a police station for the night and luckily she hasn't had to go through the trauma that some of the survivors of the tsunami have had to go through. - Eshin

I feel sad too to see the victim, and the tsunami is 9 mtr high, and it swept out all the living near the beach... - In a post to Meg

People are rushing out from the coastal area into town, ambulance the other way round. Bodies have been found, many still missing, millions worth of assets damage, coastline of Penang is in mess. - calmocean

It's the way of the world. There's only so much we can do against the forces of nature. - Aerna

We called up our friends in South India and Sri Lanka and they are safe. Still, they know people who have been affected and some are still missing. We are all affected. - Dina Mehta

The wave(s) that came were 4-5 m high. If they could pick up those cars and throw them over the fence, we wouldn't have had a chance. - The Command Post

There was an earthquake, after five minutes there was water all around and we ran away. When we came back, our homes had been destroyed - in NDTV

As we watched it became apparent that the sea was behaving very oddly. Waves were not breaking as normal. The sea appeared to be surging. One such surge practically emptied what we could see of the bay. This was followed by the sea moving repidly back into the bay and reaching right up to the promanade area (and possibly beyond) [...] At no time could we make out any people. - Andrew Sutton

Later on we went down to the beach and believe me, the paradise has been changed to hell. We know also for sure that the official figures underestimate the number of casualtiesa, if you think about all the fishermen. - (via)

He recounted hearing what sounded like repeated explosions coming from the coast. When he left his home to investigate, he spotted a wave towering above the tree line about a mile inland. - Yahoo! News

Since I was now sure I was fully awake, I sat on the bed. There it was again. There was a definite tremor in my bed. It went on for another two minutes. - MadMan

I heard an eerie sound that I have never heard before. It was a high pitched sound followed by a deafening roar. I told everyone to run for their life. - Chellappa in Reuters

At 10am (local time) all of a sudden, just out of nowhere, a massive wall of water came through. There are cars upturned and floating, there's debris, there are beach chairs and beach umbrellas, bits of restaurants are starting to float by. - Australian State MP John Hyde in smh.com.au

...her family lives right on the beach. Her frantic phone calls were unanswered. Her husband and teenage son, who just celebrated his birthday a month or two ago, are either homeless or dead. - David Lok

A lot of these were originally compiled by Insomnia

Tropical Snowflakes

Tropical Snowflakes

It doesn't snow much in India, not even in Kodaikanal. But that doesn't stop nature from placing beautiful white fluffs all over the place in the winters. Shot in Bryant Park, Kodaikanal.

A Very Good Year

According to the browser stats maintained at the W3Schools, this December the number of Mozilla (mostly Firefox) users was more than 20% of the Internet's crowds. That's a leap from 8.2% to 21.2% in a year. Internet Explorer crashed from a high of 84.1% to 71.7%.

Let that sink in again. One in every five users is a Firefox user.

I like the sound of that. I think that makes this a very happy year! Cheers to that!

Did you get Firefox yet?

Previously:

• Browser Trends

Link Bin

Long time no idea for a post. It's time for a link dump!

• A great article on Using the XMLHttpRequest Object.
• The Institute of Internet History (via) - for a record of the origins of the Internet.
• Some people just done care about spyware!
• A slashdot review of Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I Steal Your Job? by N. Sivakumar. The comments that ensue are very interesting.
• Now, after the iPod, it's the iPhone!
• Don't boot me! I'll sue you! (via)
• Why nerds are unpopular. Now you know.
• Orgasms at a push of a button, now available on your cell phone. (I love her columns, by the way.)
• Top 20 IT mistakes to avoid. At #11 is "Developing Web apps for IE only".
• Most hated online advertising techniques.
• Google that speaks. Speegle. (via)
• 2004 Year-End Google Zeitgeist.
• CSS Zen Garden? (via)
• Our relationship just hasn't been working for a while, and now, this is it. I'm leaving you for another browser.
• The Nit Picker's Guide to the Lord of the Rings - so that you know where the movie went wrong.

Ho Ho Ho!

From a friend over SMS, a few days before Christmas:

Merry X'mas. A bit early I know, but there's thousands of beautiful and sexy people to wish, so I thought I'd start with the ugly fuckers first.

Merry Christmas to you too! Hope you have a great time!

What Do You Suggest?

It's no news now, but some time ago Google announced the launch of Google Suggest. Sure enough, it got slashdotted. Some talked about it, some dissected it, some others hacked it.

Then the fun stuff started rolling out. Some others got more serious about the fun. Some others thought the fun was news! Weird, isn't it?

An Incredible Time

My 10 day holiday has now extended into 15 days, and I still can't have enough.

Yesterday, I went for The Incredibles - an animation by the really cool guys at Pixar Studios (the guys behind such movies as Finding Nemo and Toy Story). It's a wonderful story about a family of retired super-heros who eventually get back into the "saving the world while wearing spandex" business, interspersed with very humorous takes on mid-life crises and growing up super-kids.

Needless to say, this is a can't-miss.

GMail Invites Again

I don't know a single person who doesn't have GMail already (ok, I do, but they don't need it anyway), so when I get invites, I turn to my blog.

I've got 4 GMail invites with me. If you want an invite, leave me your first name, last name (yes, seriously - I am tired of making up first names and last names from e-mail addresses), and your e-mail address, and I'll zip you an invite within a day. I have only 4, so I'll give it off to the first 4 who write in.

The Firefox NYT Ad Is Out

Sorry for one too many Firefox posts, but there's stuff happening that cannot be ignored.

The Firefox advertisement that has been in the pipeline is finally out on two pages in the New York Times.

For those who want to see a copy but cannot grab the NYT, you can download a PDF version from the Mozilla site.

Previously:

• More On The Firefox NYT Campaign

The Fox On Fire

Need I say more?

That was on the 12th. Right now, its beyond 11 million. That's 11 million happy users. And a lot of happy developers. As I see it, there's only one company in Redmond worried right now.

I'm Back

It has been 12 days since I hit that "New Post" button. It feels so good to be clicking it again.

In my last post, I just assumed that my site hits will plummet to a new low. However, when Dave Shea gave me a link in his Dailies, it started a chain reaction with more site linking to me, resulting in one of the highest ever hits I have got on my site in one day. That effect is still to dwindle.

Anyway, enough about when I was away. Let's get on with some more blogging, shall we?

Previously:

• We'll Be Right Back

We'll Be Right Back

I'm off for 10 days. I will be in a dusty town with no computer access, let alone the chance of getting online and making blog posts. I know my site hits will plummet to a new low. After all, since the inception of this blog, this is going to be the longest break I'll be taking from blogging. But I have to do this. I have no way out.

Regular programming shall commence on the 16th of this month. Please don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after the break.

Link Bin

This is probably going to be my largest link dump till date.

• Crap Jobs - tales of woe can make for hilarious reading and it is with this in mind that the Idler Crap Job project began.
• The most persistent design bugs - some of the biggest mistakes we have yet to fix.
• Portable Firefox - keeping Firefox on a USB drive that you can carry around. (via)
• Really simple and foolproof traffic building tips - Nothing new, but a good summary.
• Arabian Gulf? What Arabian Gulf?
• WTF is that? VB++?
• I didn't like the semantics of the markup, but these menus are awesome!
• Hicks rebrands Joshuaink. From the designer of the Firefox logo, here's his finest work yet.
• I found this interesting set over at Flickr the other day.
• Lycos launches attacks on spam servers by asking users to install a screen-saver, like how the SETI project worked. (via)
• Worst excuses people give after being caught speeding by the safety cameras. (via)
• An interview with the co-founders of Flickr.
• Beer logos, available for download in Illustrator and EPS formats. (via)
• Wikinews (English, German) launched by The Wikimedia Foundation (the guys behind the hugely successful Wikipeida) launch the Wikinews, a free news-source created collaboratively by volunteers around the planet.
• Firefox users ignore ads. Now I know why it'll really take 5 years for me to get any money for my ads on this site!
• Tech Support jokes. And more Tech Support jokes. (via)

Fatal Error

A small mistake in my previous post, a bandwidth crunch over my network, and Blogger's servers going down temporarily all happened at the same time, pulling my site down for a couple of minutes. I've fixed most of the things now, and everything should work as normal. Only my feeds would have (probably) gotten a little cluttered with titles linking to non-existant posts. I apologize for the confusion. I'll try my best to ensure that it doesn't recur.

Continuum Navigation Links

Heavily inspired by Web-log Continuums at Functioning Form, I have started adding a list of relevent links, titled "Previously", at the bottom of some of my posts.

This lays out a contextually relevant path for readers who are interested in how a particular idea has continued to evolve on this blog.

Though the idea presented there is rather complex to implement, I decided I'd rather get started with using them in my blog. Currently, I am manually adding the links and the relevent markup and style. In my "Perfect Blogging CMS", these links will be more detailed, and will be inserted automatically. But then again, perfect blogging CMSs have yet to see the light of the day.

From my site's stats, the continuum navigation looks well received. I would appreciate it if you could tell me first-hand if you like this type of navigation, or if you think it is just some clutter-stub.

Road To Ten Million

From a recent post on the SFx Site:

In just 23 days, you all have helped over 8,000,000 people discover a better Web experience. If we keep up this pace, we have a shot at hitting 10 million downloads in the first month.

Please do your bit. Get a co-worker to switch. Give it as a Christmas gift. Spread it in your school. Talk about it to your Internet Cafe guys. Do anything you can. Let's make browser history!

Previously:

• 1 Day, 1,000,000+ Downloads

World AIDS Day

Just a quick note to remind everyone that the AIDS threat is real. Please do what you can in your powers to prevent it, and help those who are suffering.

Netscape Prototype Browser Launched

Netscape has launched a prototype browser based on Firefox 0.9.3 (via). The most interesting thing about this browser is that you can switch the rendering engine from the Gecko Engine to the Trident Engine, used in Internet Explorer, by simply choosing to "Display like IE".

The Buzz says:

The geek in me says 'cool'. The web developer says 'why include the clearly inferior Trident engine at all?' The standards evangelist just says 'aaaaaaaaaaaargh!'

MozillaZine has a detailed look at the browser. You can also look at some screenshots.

The browser is available for limited download. No, I am not bothering to.

Smooth Scrolling Internal Links

I came across this Sitepoint article on Making Internal Links Scroll Smoothly with JavaScript (via) - a tutorial on making cross-browser smooth scrolling possible with unobtrusive JavaScript.

Previously:

• The Usability Of Internal Links