e-wot?

I’m in love. I <3 Delicious. mmm.

It’s been three days, and I’m already settling down into a very sweet relationship with Delicious. I’m slow, I know Delicious has been around a while. And I know I’m not the first… But it took me a long time to get away from the traditional idea of keeping all my bookmarks saved on my computer – computers (plural) that is. That’s me, a traditional guy (with too many collections of bookmarks on too many computers).

But I’ve been around a bit, experimenting with other ways to sync my bookmarks. I tried syncing my bookmarks with Bookmarks Synchroniser (predictably, I guess), but that went all crazy and I finally had to end it. Foxmarks was fun for a while but didn’t quite have what I was looking for. I even tried Furl (blush). All along I knew about Delicious, but somehow we didn’t ‘click’. Maybe the timing wasn’t right, our stars weren’t aligned (or something).

And then one day I was playing with Google Chrome and getting annoyed at how I couldn’t search my bookmarks as I was used to doing in Firefox. Then it dawned on me that Google didn’t want Chrome to be like Firefox, they wanted us to use the ‘cloud’ and online apps an’ stuff. They probably want us to use Google Bookmarks, pfff. Well, I took a look at Google Bookmarks and compared them with Delicious and then it clicked. Oooh, Delicious. You so fine.

And the finest thing about Delicious for me? The Delicious addon for Firefox and IE7. It’s awesome.

So now I’ve combined my home, work and other saved bookmarks into one, and they’re all on Delicious , and all in all my sidebars, on all my computers, all the time. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.

When I ‘Ctrl D’ to save a bookmark, up pops the Delicious prompt suggesting tags to categorise the link. Easy peasy.

It’s too good to be true. I’m waiting for the honeymoon period to wear off. But until it does, I’ll shout it from the rooftops. I <3 Delicious .

I’m on a quest to find the simplest way of turning my old photos and slides digital.

There isn’t much that grabs my fancy. I Googled and was first drawn to the HP G4050 which looks pretty good, but apparently takes ages to scan stuff. This Braun looks like it could be quick, but it’s way out of my price range.

I then got thinking that it takes a split second to take a photo with digital camera, so why not take a photo of a slide or negative with a digital camera? Sure enough, someone’s tried this already with good results: Pete Ganzel

But that looks way too difficult for me to set up. Got to admire the guy though.

And then there’s Shot Copy, which I’m sure does the job, but somehow looks a bit funny.

So why isn’t there something that’s super fast, hi-res that I can effortlessly use to convert all my old photos with? If it exists, where is it? I’ll pay.

My Firefox was behaving badly. The pages were not loading properly. So I bit the bullet and tried to solve the problem. The solution turned out to be my Firefox profile. I guess it had become corrupted. Anyway, I fixed it. If you also have this problem, then here’s the solution on Windows XP. It’ll take an hour at least. Take a deep breath.

1. You’re going to delete your profile folder so first backup your current profile folder. You’ll need it later to copy your saved passwords (and as a ‘just in case’ measure). I copied mine to my desktop. You should find your profile folder here: C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default
2. The XXXXXX.default folder (all letters and numbers followed by .default) is the one you should copy. Paste it onto your desktop (or somewhere easy to find).
3. Open your current Firefox and write down your addons and your search engines. I took screen shots of these and printed them out (press Print Screen – Prt Scr – it’s a keyboard key, top right on your keyboard). Save these ‘cos you’re going to have to re-install these manually later. Boring, but it’ll all be OK in the end. Promise.
4. Backup your bookmarks from within Firefox: bookmarks>organize bookmarks>Import & backup (dropdown)>Export html – save them to your desktop (or somewhere easy to find).
5. Download Firefox to your desktop (or somewhere easy to find).
6. Now you can uninstall your current version of Firefox (from control panel, uninstall programs).
7. Then delete your profile folder in C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default (you saved it already right? Point 1 above?)
8. Install Firefox from your desktop (or wherever you saved it in point 5 above).
9. Reinstall all your fave addons and search engines manually from the lists or screen shots you made. This will take a while. Addons are here. And you can get the search engines by going to the sites or by going to Mycroft.
10. Now go to your old saved profile folder on your desktop (or wherever you saved it in point 1 above) and copy all your saved passwords by copying the following from your saved old profile folder on your desktop (or wherever you saved it in point 1 above): key3.db – signons.txt – signons2.txt  (source)
11. Paste these into (and overwrite those in) your new profile folder at C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default
12. Import your old bookmarks from: bookmarks>organize bookmarks>Import & backup (dropdown)>Import html>from an html file…. browse to where you saved it and open it.
13. You might need to reorganise your bookmarks from within the Firefox Bookmarks Organizer so they work how they used to.
14. Now you should be happy. Firefox should be back to normal.

Well, that was long. But that’s what I did to fix the problems I was having with Firefox. What a relief.

I tried other approaches, but this was the solution that worked for me. I hope you have equal success.

No posts from me in a while. I’ve been busy, what with Xmas and everything.

I’ve been struggling with a web developer who’s missed a big deadline. It’s been emotional.

On the lighter side of busy, I’ve also leveled my Death Knight (in World of Warcraft) to 80 and I’ve been playing GTA4 on my PC… both have taken up much of my holiday spare time.

I’m sorting out some Google stuff to post, some tips for handling web developers (lol), and my take on GTA4.

I’ll brb

Meanwhile, check out the BBC’s In Our Time podcast about Darwin. It’s great.

And if you haven’t tried Google Chrome, you should. It’s faster than Firefox (which now feels painfully slow by comparison). I’m almost converted, but not quite.