Slightly new design

Those of you who should happen to visit the home page, and not only this blog, might have noticed a slightly new design. There’s now a new header in place, but more important, drop down menus to the most places in the site. This should at least make it easier to get an overview of what’s available here, and maybe even more attractive to spend some time and find something of interest.

It’s still not perfect, but a step in the right direction.

I could of course have waited until I had it all redesigned as I want, but I choose – as usual – to apply changes step by step. It may be that I’ve added something new that must be included, or that all this “new stuff” requires a redesign to be effective. This time it’s the latter reason that’s behind the update.

Funny to think back on how the site has changed from the beginning.
(Warning: Nostalgia trip ahead…)

Quit smoking or quit work

That smoking isn’t the best thing you can do to take care of your health is no secret. Smoking do cost, both money and health – but who should pay for it? Not Weyco, at least:

Weyco founder Howard Weyers said previously that he instituted the tough anti-smoking rule to shield his company from high health care costs.

“I don’t want to pay for the results of smoking,” he said.

The result of this policy? Four employees were fired for smoking.

The question now is: Will more companies follow suit?

Birds are ancient, too

Not many days ago, the world was shook up by the news that not only did mammals coexist with dinosaurs – they were large enough to go dinosaur hunting, too. Now we learn that birds may have evolved earlier than previously believed, too: They existed – like mammals – at the same time as dinosaurs, and didn’t wait to evolve until the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Fascinating to read. What will be next? Will fossils be found that explains old cave paintings and other depictions of men hunting animals that looks like dinosaurs? (Whatever the explaination might be, it would be interesting to see.)

Spammers will win?

I have one thing in common with the majority of you: I hate spam! I use various mail addresses for specific uses to help sort the mail in various folders, and filters to throw spam in the spam folder automatically. A few false negatives happens from time to time, but they’re easy to pick out from said spam folder and trash the rest.

However there are of course those who don’t ignore the spam, and that’s the reason we can’t get rid of the problem. Not only do people fall for the temptation to reply to spam that ends up in their in-box – some are also replying to the spam that’s filtered to the spam folder! With such a behaviour, where’s the incentive to stop spamming?

I favour more and more laws that makes it illegal to send spam, period! After all, it’s not impossible to reach potentional customers without sorting to spamming.

GMail Hacks

A mail dropped in to my mailbox today, and it contained a link to an article about gmail hacks; how to get the most out of your gmail account. An interesting read, especially for those who haven’t had time to look around at what’s possible.

Incidently, I have a few invitations for gmail accounts if you would like one yourself – just give me a hint and a working email address I can send the invitation to… 😉

Yet another IE spoof

Netcraft tells about yet another IE spoofing trick:

A number of recent phishing sites blocked by the Netcraft Toolbar community have had a common technique of using JavaScript to create a narrow popup window, which is then placed on top of the Address bar. A fake URL is entered into the popup, using the same default font as the real address bar. The script continually checks the location of the browser window and moves the popup accordingly, ensuring that it is always placed on top of the Address bar, thus obscuring the real URL of the phishing site.

It might be in its place to remind people that the safest way to avoid trouble with IE, is to use a different browser. (And while there’s a lot of talk about Firefox, personally I find Opera a better choice. In my humble opinion, of course.)

What Kind of Bra Are You?

OK, this test is really aimed more at the females than the males, but I just couldn’t leave it alone… (Wonder what this tells me about the girls for me? Hmmm…)

You Are a Lace Bra!

Dreamy, romantic, and ultra-feminine
You’re a womanly woman who makes guys feel like men
Your perfect guy is strong, determined, and handsome
With a softer side that only you can draw out

What Kind of Bra Are You? Take This Quiz 🙂

Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

Dinosaurs were the prey of mammals!

Some fossils of a couple of mammals in China provides the world with a surprise: The last meal of the smallest of them was a dinosaur. A small dinosaur, and not fully grown, but still a dinosaur.

This means that the view currently being held, that mammals at the time of dinosaurs were small creatures the size of mice, must be reviewed. Obviously. The smaller of the mammals – Repenomamus robustus – was the size of a cat, while the larger one – Repenomamus giganticus – was the size of a dog. Read more of the details around this in Wired, The New York Times article and opinion.

The fascinating thing is when you start thinking about what this means: Unless we ditch evolution in favour of creationism, these mammals must have evolved from smaller creatures – and I don’t think it’s very probable that the result of this produced only these two species. What more can be found? Also, it doesn’t take a very bright brain to realise mammals of at least this size coexisted with dinosaurs. I say ‘at least this size’, because up until this it was “well known” that the largest mammals coexisting with dinosaurs were the size of mice – who is to say we won’t find proof even lager mammals lived at that time, too?

Then I wonder – since we now know large mammals lived in the time of dinosaurs – can we be sure that the dating we have of fossils of mammals that size and smaller really are correct? Are all mammals previously believed to be from the time after the dinosaurs really are from such a late period? I may be going out on a limb here with wild speculations, but I would find it stranger if these two mammals were the only one found living in this period – and the dating game isn’t an exact science, that much I’ve read earlier.

In any case, it will be interesting to read more of this – if anyone have further links or more to ponder, please let me know.

Digital Proof – Fuel for the fire

I have often told people about the virtues of browsers other than IE, not only due to the extra features and support for standards they offer (as opposed to IE) but also due to all the security risks present in that aged browser.

For some it has worked, for others – well, they don’t seem to care enogh. Even if they’re among those who complain over browser hijacking and all sorts of problems.

If the reason for this is the lack of articles I can support them with at the moment, maybe the following site can be of help? Digital Proof – Fuel for the fire. An easy to remember URL, at least. Hopefully links to new articles will be added as they’re written. And hopefully people will take a hint… 😉