Diego Garcia seems to have escaped unscathed. Tsunami’s are something we talked about on the island whenever the earth shook. We always joked that a 9.0 earthquake had just occurred off the coast of Sumatra and laughed nervously – awaiting a huge wave that thankfully never came. Diego Garcia has an average elevation of four feet. The thousands of U.S. military and Philippine workers who live there are very lucky.

Twenty nine looks good on ya!

On a side note, I’d like to point out that these shots were taken wth our trusty Canon G3 – still the best digital camera for most people. There is a catch though – you must always shoot using aperture priority. To get these shots, I chose 1/6 second with the lens wide open. The Canon’s fast f 2.0 lens, perfectly exposed fill-flash and easy hand-holding make these shots possible. Shots like these are impossible to make with my Nikon D70 – or any other DSLR, for that matter.

I got out of going to Fresno this year. Instead, I was forced to go to Redding. Worse, right? Well, it turned out to be a ton of fun. Yeah, that Hale/Hunter Clan really knows how to throw a dart.

Santa came a bit early to thedude’s home this year. Looks like she brought a case of wine.

Thanks Ali! ;-)

Man, I wish Kelly and I could have made it to Bali this year.

One of the very few things I like about Christmas is that it provides a legitimate excuse to listen to this.

Have a look at the first two or three of these – at least. There is much to see here – many of the illusions are positively baffling.

If I could make my own Flash Holiday greeting this would be it. Unfortunately, I’m nowhere near as clever as Odd Todd, who has created some of the best Flash movies on the web.
(3 megabyte file.)

If you have a broadband connection, and don’t mind waiting for a 2 megabyte file to download, then sit back, pop open a brew and and enjoy a White Trash Christmas.

While on the subject – have you checked out this other Dude’s site lately? I’ve been told more than once that I am most definitley NOT The Dude – that in fact, this Dude is THE ONE TRUE DUDE. Don’t tell my shrink, but I’m inclined to agree. The Big Lebowski is one definitely one of the funniest films ever made.

PhotoDude.com: All The News That Fits My Whim Thanks, Friskodude for leading me to this cool site. Today’s post is of particular interest to bloggers like myself who use MovableType.

With all of the hoopla about Firefox out there, I thought I’d weigh in with my 2 cents worth.

First of all, if you are STILL using Internet Explorer, please, please download a copy of Firefox and give it a test drive for at least a week. I’d recommend you install a few extensions as well. I consider the mouse-gestures and Sage add-ins a must. You will find Firefox to be a fast, lean, great-looking, secure web browser with numerous feature sorely lacking in Internet Explorer. Tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, support for RSS, mouse-gestures – the list is long. I LOVE a few features – one of my favorite is the “Begin finding when you begin typing” feature. With this option enabled, (inexplicably, not the default setting) finding a word or phrase in a document could not be easier – simply type the word. Very slick. My bet is that you’ll like it.

That said, I’d agree that Firefox is cool, but it’s no where near as nice as Opera. Here are a dozen resons why Opera RULES!

1. Opera saves much more state when it exits. Even if the computer crashes, Opera will re-open exactly where it left off – all tabs open, and all of the history saved along with each tab. Firefox does not save history.
2. Tabs in Opera can be relocated – or even torn off the page altogether.
3. Clicking on the CURRENT tab takes you back to the tab you were viewing PREVIOUSLY. Brilliant!! This feature alone convinced a coworker to try Opera, and he has since become a HUGE advocate for Opera.
4. Opera’s mouse-gestures work flawlessly. I found pages in Firefox that somehow prevented mouse-gestures from working.
5. Opera includes an amazing e-mail client. For the majority of users, it’s great. My only complaint is that Opera lacks support for LDAP. (For this reason and because Opera’s spell-checker is clunky, I use Thunderbird as my e-mail client.)
6. Opera’s zoom and full page views are the best in the browser biz.
7. Opera’s fast-forward option is brilliant. Coupled with mouse-gestures and the full-screen view, fast-forward is one of my favorite Opera features. You just have to try it to understand what a cool feature this is. (If you’re viewing my site with Opera now, click the fast-forward button. You can also press ALT-Right Arrow, or learn the mouse-gesture for fast-forward. Press F11 and try this in full page mode. Awesome!)
8. It is possible (and fun!) to work in Opera entirely without a mouse.
9. Pressing ALT-SPACE to go to the home page is easier (but less intuitive?) than Firefox’s ALT-HOME key combination.
10. I can tell Opera to use my proxy server (or not) with a single key-stroke (F12) and a single mouse-click. Firefox requires a minimum of six clicks. Internet Explorer needs seven! Hey – this stuff adds up!
11. Opera’s “wand” is the best password management system I have ever seen.
12. Opera’s support for RSS works better. Firefox (with Sage installed) generates really nice looking article indexes, but the feed from one of my favorite blogs causes Firefox to crash.

To me, Opera still gets the nod, but I’d recommend that you check out both of these excellent browsers. They both render my site better and faster than I.E. does – and that makes me very happy.