[News] Ailing Silverfoxes

2 Silverfoxes who're not in best of conditions right now - Prince Rainier III and Pope John Paul II.

From Reuters - Monaco's Prince Rainier in "worrying" condition:

MONACO (Reuters) - Monaco's Prince Rainier remains on an artificial respirator and is in "worrying" condition three days after being taken to intensive care, his palace said on Friday.

The 81-year-old prince, who was married to the late film icon Grace Kelly, has been suffering from a lung infection complicated by cardiac and kidney problems.

(Wikipedia)

From Reuters - Pope Weak, Sidelined, But 'Lucid' on Good Friday:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Christians around the world commemorated the death of Christ on Good Friday and a senior cardinal sought to reassure Roman Catholics, saying Pope John Paul was still "lucid" despite his great physical frailty.

The 84-year-old Pope, who is making a difficult recovery from throat surgery performed last month, was sidelined on the most somber day of the Christian calendar.

(Wikipedia)

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, Pope, John Paul, Rainier

[Personals] Silverfox Admirer Ratings

Right! As mentioned in Establishing Criteria for Personals Site, I'm going to use the following criteria for assessing Silverfoxes related personal ads websites. In essence, it consists of:

• Number of members (esp. number of Silverfoxes)
  
• Granularity of search i.e. how detailed a profile is and how searchable it is
  
• Ease of use and aesthetics
  
• Features for non-paying members (some sites are known to be a pain if you're a non-paying member)
  

Each criteria will be rated between zero to five Silverfoxes, any big boo-boos will be red-flagged too; an overall Silverfox rating will also be given.

As an example, had Inretrospect - Silverfox Admirer been a personals site, its assessment would go something like this:

Number of members
Pathetically low. With an overall readership of 30 a day, this site can do a lot more in the membership department! But at least it isn't zero!
Rating: (RED FLAG) 1.5 Silverfoxes

Granularity of search
Silverfox Admirer groups its blogs into categories allowing for easy search with blogger or technorati. While it's not extensive, it's sufficient for most users.
Rating: 3.5 Silverfoxes

Ease of use and aesthetics
Knowing that Inretrospect can't design for nuts, the layout and use of Silverfox Admirer is certainly clearly above expectations. But as it's clearly not his work, I'm deducting half a Silverfox from an otherwise 3 Silverfox rating.
Rating: 2.5 Silverfoxes

Features for non-paying members
This blog does not differentiate paying and non-paying members. You're getting the real deal here! As far as features are concerned, it contains newsfeeds, counters and comments. Inretrospect even creates links so that you can subscribe to his newsfeed through Yahoo and MSN!
Rating: 4.5 Silverfoxes

Overall rating
Inretrospect - Silverfox Admirer is a growing blog that can do with improvements in several areas. It's user-friendly, contains useful links, has interesting puter lessons and gives you a lesson in international news through Silverfoxes! However, it can do with more members but that'll come with time.
Overall Rating: 3.5 Silverfoxes

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, personal+ads

[Puters] Good and free software for Windows

A friend was asking if there were any good and free softwares out there for Windows XP. I said that there were lots and it really depended on his needs. I also promised to post a short list here so here goes:

• Grisoft AVG - Anti-virus software. Scroll down and get the free version, not the trial version.
  
• ZoneAlarm Firewall - Think of a firewall as a security mechanism that helps lock or close your open windows and doors to your computer.
  
• Firefox - Web browser extraordinaire. Few problems with spywares and adwares when compared with Internet Explorer. It's often touted for its pop-up blocking abilities too.
  
• TugZip - For opening files with extensions like ZIP, ARC, GZ, RAR, TAR etc.
  
• OpenOffice - If you don't wish to fork out lots of money for Microsoft Office, OpenOffice is your best alternative. It opens most Word, Excel and Powerpoint files and even allows you to save your word processing, spreadsheets, presentations as Microsoft Office or PDF files. Take a look the screenshots to get a better idea.
  

Cleansoftware.org has a longer list if softwares for other purposes e.g. Gimp as an Adobe Photoshop alternative. A Gimp screenshot:

Technorati tags: avg, ZoneAlarm, Firefox, OpenOffice, Gimp, Free

[Personals] Establishing criteria for personals sites

I have some sites that I linked the last time round and have yet to review. I'll probably come up with some criteria over the weekend on how I rate these sites. Some quantitative considerations off the top of my head:

• Number of members
• Number of fields available
• Granularity of search

Some qualitative considerations:

• Web aesthetics
• Intuitiveness and user-friendliness
  
• Features available to paying and non-paying members
• Other nuances
  

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, personal+ads

[News] Wolf or Silverfoxes at the door?

Bush is nominating Paul Wolfowitz to take over as the President of the World Bank from James Wolfensohn.

The US president's choice of his hawkish Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank has sparked outrage from aid agencies. Oxfam wants a "open and transparent" selection process, while Greenpeace is "very disturbed" by the nomination.And the frostiness of some European governments speaks volumes in the polite, hushed world of diplomacy.

But the US president usually gets his way. So anyway, here are the two Wolf-men - Wolfowitz and Wolfensohn.

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, Wolfensohn, Wolfowitz, World Bank

[Internet] Fun name generators

While surfing the web, I found these really fun name generators:

• My real japanese name is 猿渡 Saruwatari (monkey on a crossing bridge) 明 Akira (bright).
• My penis's new name is Microsoft the Ever-ready Space Invader.
• My very British name is Rupert Watson.
• My new third grade nickname is Lieutenant Penis E. Moronville.
• My totally gay, Carlian nickname is Mostly heterosexual non-Carl.
• My hobbit name is Mongo Sandybanks.
  

There's even a blog dedicated to this -- The Generator Blog!

[Humor] Peace Negotiations - Dubya Style

Saw this on "100 Monkeys Typing" and just had to post it!

Peace Negotiations - Dubya Style [100 Monkeys Typing, Feb 26]:

In case you can't recall who the two men on either side of GW are, [News] Middle East Peace Process may help to jog your memory.

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, Bush, Sharon, Abbas

[News] Gannongate on the daily show

I'm on a roll. Read about the Jeff Gannon aka James Gucket aka owner-of-several-gay-porn-sites aka former-reporter-from-rightwing-TalonNews-who-had-a White-House-Press-pass aka "8 inches cut and strictly top" from Onegoodmove and Americablog. Click on the picture to watch the video segment (Quicktime required)

The prominent silverfoxes that appear in that segment are Dan Rather, Jeff Gannon/James Guckert (ok, he's NOT a silverfox, but he's definitely a main character in this story!), Wolf Blitzer and Bill Press.

A lot on "Gannongate" can be found on Americablog which was reported by the CNN analyst on the "Daily Show" segment found on onegoodmove ... That's a long one! Americablog:

[Americablog covers issues on] US politics overall with a particular focus on the Bush Administration, the radical right, and gay civil rights.

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, Gannon, Guckert, Blitzer, Stewart, Press, Rather

[Internet] The Numa Numa song that took the web by storm

I can't believe that this little home-made video done by Gary Bolsma, from Jersey, of himself lip-synching a very catchy Romanian pop song has taken the web by storm! A friend sent the link to me about a month ago. Click on the picture to view the video (Shockwave).

Article from MSNBC "You go, Gary! ‘Numa’ takes Web by storm":

A bespectacled, lip-synching young man from the Jersey suburbs has become the hottest thing to hit the Internet since the Spiridellis brothers started making JibJab cartoons.

Gyrating before a Webcam to the techno beat of a Romanian pop song without ever leaving his chair, Gary Brolsma’s uncanny timing in a video he calls “Numa Numa Dance” has Web watchers cracking up around the globe and cramming the e-mail boxes of their friends with links to the cyber hit.

Featured Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show, the video has already gotten more than a million hits on one Web site, according to one report. On MSNBC.com, “searches for this kid absolutely dominate our site search today,” according to producer Will Femia...

By the way, some of the random pictures that pop up through the video look rather brotherly don't you agree? Ha!

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, numa, humor

[Humor] SNL Robert DeNiro as Homeland Security spokesperson

D sent me the video file. Click on the picture to see the video of a bearded Robert DeNiro pretending to be a Homeland Security Spokesperson, Craig Henson, on Saturday Night Live!

Some choice quotes:

We've received 475 calls over this man ... M'Balz Es-Hari
We are also currently searching for a man we believe to be an Al Qaida lieutenant Hous Bin Pharteen ...

Ha!!!

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, humor, DeNiro

[News] Pioneer of 'Total Football' Michels dies

From Soccernet:

Tottenham sporting director Frank Arnesen has hailed Rinus Michels as one of the greatest characters in Dutch football following the death of the former national team boss today at the age of 77.

Michels, who will be remembered as the man who pioneered `total football', passed away in a hospital in Aalst, Belgium, after complications resulting from heart surgery two weeks ago.

Known as the 'Sphinx' in his homeland, he led Holland to the 1974 World Cup final where they were defeated by Germany while he was also manager when the Dutch claimed the 1988 European Championships - the country's only major trophy.

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, obituary, Michels, football

[Puters] News Feeds Part 2 - Getting it on Yahoo

What happens if you're using a browser that doesn't support RSS feeds like MSIE? Short of downloading a feed reader and creating more clutter on your desktop, I suggest you sign up for a free account on Yahoo or MSN if you don't already have one. It's not bad too considering that they give you a few hundreds of MB of space for your e-mail. I'll illustrate how this is done with Yahoo:

Getting Live News Feeds on Yahoo!:

Step (1) - Go to http://my.yahoo.com/ and sign up for an account if you don't already have one.

Step (2) - Once you've signed up, armed with your user identity and password, go back to http://my.yahoo.com/ and sign in.

Step (3) - Come to http://silverfoxadmirer.blogspot.com/ and click on this button (go to the right column of the page and scroll down).

Step (4) - It will bring you to a page that looks something like this

Step (5) - Click on "Add"

Step (6) - Then "Back to previous page"

Step (7) - This will bring you back to the main "My Yahoo!" page. Scroll down to the bottom of the window and you should see this

Essentially, it shows you what the title of the latest blog/article is and even when it was last updated. You can tweak around with the "edit" buttons or the "Change layout" button on your My Yahoo! page. I may create another tutorial on that another day if there's demand and if I'm able to find the time.

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, Newsfeed, Howto, FireFox, Yahoo

[Puters] A simple tutorial on news feeds

So here's the situation. There are so many interesting news sites and blogs (like Inretrospect - Silverfox Admirer, Ha!), is there any way of getting all these wonderful information delivered to me directly instead of my having to spend all this time browsing through all of them?

Why yes there is! Enter the news feed! If you spot any of these images

or images containing "RSS" or "Atom" or "XML" in it, you've found the source of these feeds!

If you're using a web browser that supports news feeds like Firefox, just add on the "feedburner" or "XML" or "RSS" links to your bookmarks. I'll illustrate how it works on Firefox.


Getting Live News Feeds on FireFox 101:

Step (1) - Go to http://www.getfirefox.com/, download Firefox and install it.

Step (2) - Run Firefox and surf to http://silverfoxadmirer.blogspot.com/.

Step (3) - You should see the following icon -- -- at the bottom of your firefox browser when you're here.

Step (4) - Click on that icon like so

, then click on subscribe like so

Step (5) - This window will pop up

, just click on "OK" --

Step (6) - Go to your file menu and select "Bookmarks"

, scroll down like so

and there you have it! Latest updated news from this blog everytime you browse your bookmarks!

More on getting news feed on next blog.

Technorati tags: Silverfox Admirer, Silverfox, Newsfeed, Howto, FireFox, Yahoo