Friday, February 12, 2010

My Dewey Color System® Career Testing Results

Best Occupational Category: You're a CREATOR

Keywords:
Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

These original types place a high value on aesthetic qualities and have a great need for self-expression. They enjoy working independently, being creative, using their imagination, and constantly learning something new. Fields of interest are art, drama, music, and writing or places where they can express, assemble, or implement creative ideas.

CREATOR OCCUPATIONS:
Suggested careers are Advertising Executive, Architect, Web Designer, Creative Director, Public Relations, Fine or Commercial Artist, Interior Decorator, Lawyer, Librarian, Musician, Reporter, Art Teacher, Broadcaster, Technical Writer, English Teacher, Architect, Photographer, Medical Illustrator, Corporate Trainer, Author, Editor, Landscape Architect, Exhibit Builder, and Package Designer.

CREATOR WORKPLACES
Consider workplaces where you can create and improve beauty and aesthetic qualities. Unstructured, flexible organizations that allow self-expression work best with your free-spirited nature.

Suggested Creator workplaces are advertising, public relations, and interior decorating firms; artistic studios, theaters and concert halls; institutions that teach crafts, universities, music, and dance schools. Other workplaces to consider are art institutes, museums, libraries, and galleries.


2nd Best Occupational Category: You're an ORGANIZER

Keywords:
Self-Control, Practical, Self-Contained, Orderly, Systematic, Precise, and Accurate

These conservative appearing, plotting-types enjoy organizing, data systems, accounting, detail, and accuracy. They often enjoy mathematics and data management activities such as accounting and investment management. Persistence and patience allows them to do detailed paperwork, operate office machines, write business reports, and make charts and graphs.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Top 5 Firefox Add-Ons

I usually try to keep my Firefox add-ons (extensions) to a minimum few that I truly value and use on a regular basis. If there is one or two that I love but rarely use then I might add it but keep it "disabled" until I find that rare time I need it, which also requires a restart of the browser. By limiting them and not getting gluttonous I can avoid causing Firefox to become far more bloated, sluggish and unstable. One of the reasons other browsers 'appear' to be faster is the lack of add-ons/themes, few if any customizations and the fact that nearly all of them (except Firefox) pre-launch in the background with Windows. Don't believe me? If you have multiple browsers then restart Windows and check your task manager... or better yet check start up services under msconfig.exe

Having said all of that, my top 5 Firefox add-ons are:

1) Ad Block: Does exactly what you think. Often blocks flash and java based video ads as well. More to the point it blocks all the ads flooding a webpage like landmines to accidentally click. Best of all is the speed you will enjoy while using it. I often never realize just how many ads there are on a website until I use another browser.

2) Flash Block: Same principle as above, but for Flash - which is Adobe's memory hog of a internet monopoly (not unlike it's equally piggish and domineering sibling .pdf) I seriously cannot wait for HTML5 to arrive soon enough so we can all put Flash behind us. It prevents all of those animated ads and videos (including on YouTube and MySpace) from auto-launching until you tell it to.

3) Bookmark Autohider: This cool Firefox 3.6 add-on auto-hides your bookmark toolbar. It is also customizable! All you have to do is draw your cursor up to the URL field and then it appears for as long as you have dictated it to. Then it goes away. Too cool. I used to have a userchrome hack to do this, but it never worked perfectly and could not be so easily customized.

4) Coral IE Tab: There are some web pages that just haven't been designed to function outside of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Now no webpage is off limits and no need to switch browsers... with one exception still - Windows Update (of course). You can, however, also launch said page externally in IE itself with one click as well. It has icons available for the "Tools" menu, the navigation bar, the status bar and the 'right click' context menu.

5) Easy YouTube Video Downloader: If you just absolutely MUST save that video you found on YouTube to keep for posterity, this is your add-on.

Now there are many other add-ons I have tried. Some are no longer necessary when the function was added into Firefox (PDF Tab), some were crap (too many to mention), some are no longer supported or updated for Firefox 3.6 One of my other favourites was Answers... as in Answers.com I don't mean the search engine field plug-in, but an actual extension that enabled you to highlight and click on any word/phrase on any page and use the context menu to look it up on Answers.com - which would provide you with dictionary definitions, a thesaurus, Wikipedia listings, translations, search engine results, conversions... BRILLIANT! Sadly it hasn't been updated for 3.6 The best thing about was I could leave my search engine set for Google AND have the add-on for Answers - both accessible via the same context menu!


Lastly... themes. My favourite theme/skin that I have ever used (and still do) is "Noia 2.0 eXtreme" I used to use the Oulook 2003 Blue Skin and Bartoccelli's Silver Skin, and liked them both before they became out of date and unsupported for Firefox 2.0 and 3.0, respectively. Then I found Noia 2.0 eXtreme which has the silvery greyness of the toolbars and colourful icons that Silver Skin did (plus dynamic)... and most surprising of all is how many additional icons/links I can have on the bookmarks toolbar (or even the main/file/nav toolbar) vs. other themes - including supposed "mini-themes". Yet this one looks as big as any normal theme. Kudos to Kongbeat Kuatrakull! :-)

Monday, February 01, 2010

[UPDATE to my IM blogs with Nimbuzz included]

I have just discovered yet another multi-protocol IM client that features something none of the others do: Nimbuzz http://www.nimbuzz.com

As I mentioned in my previous blogs I have used Trillian, Pidgin, Digsby, Meebo, VoxOx and now Nimbuzz (in addition to single clients like AOL/AIM, Yahoo IM/YIM, MSN/Windows Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, IRC, MySpace IM, Facebook IM, et.al.) When using one of the multi-protocol clients, including Meebo, there is always an issue with mobile phones. The networks block or restrict it's usage assumedly to encourage the $$$ spent on SMS per-text charges, apps or bucket plans. Nimbuzz is the FIRST multi-protocol client (and I think the first IM client period) to get around this, at least for now. So here are my latest recommendations when choosing a client (unless ALL of your friends, family and varied contacts just happen to be on the SAME, single network - like AIM, YIM, MSN or GoogleTalk):

1) Pidgin (Windows)/Adium (Mac) for cross platform, open source and the nearly ALL the networks aggregated into the same client.

2) Digsby for the primary networks with email/webmail (POP, IMAP, AOL, Yahoo, Google) and social network integration (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) - but it's still only available for Windows.

3) Meebo for multi-integrated IM via a web browser when you are on a computer that's isn't your own (work, library, friends/family, etc.)

4) Nimbuzz for multi-integrated IM via a mobile device.