chrishansenhome

...but not without angst. I have a passel of meetings every single month, and they just get more and more dense. I had two meetings in the middle of June, and one preaching date at St. John's Larcom Street. After much searching and comparing notes and the like, HWMBO and I concluded that June 7-26 were the only days we could go to Singapore this summer. So, with reluctance, and profuse apologies, I've cancelled the two meetings and the preaching date and booked the tickets on Singapore Airlines.

For my Singaporean friends, we'll be arriving the afternoon of June 8th (although we will leave noonish on June 7th London time...) and probably be ready to roll on June 9th. I want to take one or two side trips this time--perhaps one to Hong Kong and one to Bangkok, but there is a slight possibility of a Shanghai trip to see our friends Jane and John there. More will emerge as time goes on.

Mainly, however, my problem is websites and Firefox. I had an add-on in Firefox that prevented scripts and the like from untrusted or new sites from being run. However, it's been a gigantic pain in the arse. Most of the sites I visit are OK sites, with no problem of dodgy Java scripts or the like. So when the little pop-up bar says that a script has been stopped from running, I have to allow it to run to see the website.

So far so good. But on the Singapore Airlines site, there is an extra special script (not Java, but something else) that runs when you press to confirm your credit card details and take the booking. The add-on prevented this from running, and the site came back to me with "there is a problem, call us". I finally tracked it down, and decided in rage to uninstall the add-on. Then I submitted the page again, and it took, and luckily only sent me one confirmation, not three.

This add-on is one of those things that sounds like a really good idea when you read it on a website, but when you actually install it turns your online life into a series of living hells, each one more frustrating than the last. If you come across No-Script, pass it by. It will kill all the small amount of joy left to you in websurfing if you install it.

You have been warned!

I am a devotee of this program, and have been listening to it, on and off, almost since its inception. First it was in New York City, a hiatus in Chicago, then back to listening again in San Francisco, then a hiatus until they placed their program archive on the Web a few years ago. I subscribed to unlimited access, and have been able to hear the programs over the 'net since then. Getting broadband has made it even better.

So imagine my surprise last weekend when their website changed formats and, all of a sudden, I couldn't get access (which I had paid for). I emailed their helpdesk, and got a reply back on the weekend itself (commendable). The old service was hidden under the new interface, but, surprise surprise, it doesn't support Opera. When queried, their support person said: "Thanks, Chris. We do intend to keep the current service active for the foreseeable future, and will most likely integrate the RealAudio streams into the new service. We cannot guarantee support for Opera, however, as it is losing the browser wars. Safari yes, We intend to support Firefox, and of course IE."

I suppose this means that no matter which browser one picks, losing "the browser wars" means that websites will stop supporting it. I am getting a bit miffed with Opera, mainly because it's not very resilient when it comes to detecting site encoding. If the site isn't specific on how it's encoded, Opera doesn't do a good job of discovering what it's encoded in and showing it to the punters as well as it can.

So my options are:

• Go back to IE. I want to resist this; if I have to, I'll save it for Hearts of Space and other inflexible providers.


• Try Firefox. I was not cheered when I read this week that it has more open security problems than IE does.


• Stop listening to HOS. I don't want to do this.

What a pain this all is! While I don't particularly like RealPlayer, I've come to an accomodation with it such that it doesn't intrude on my "computer experience" and only docilely appears when I want it to, and is free.

I suppose I could get a MacMini...but HWMBO isn't keen until I get a new job.