I’m approaching week 4 with perfect vision since my lasik surgery. It has been fluctuating from between 20/20 and 25/20 which isn’t being helped by dryness. It’s also 107F outside with not a cloud to be seen, which doesn’t help either.

I still have dry eyes and I’ve switched from Systane to optive from Allergan. I actually like it more. I found that the Systane leaves me with blurry vision for about 5 minutes after I use it and I have to use the Systane more frequently to get the result from optive.

So the iPhone is coming and I don’t really care. Sure it looks like a great product at first and then you see the price and the 2 year contract from a company that is notorious for helping the government illegally spy on their customers. The amount of hype for a touchscreen cell phone with 8gb of storage that plays mp3s and has average call quality amazes me when the features it offers are lack luster when compared to other music players and cell phones.

iPhone is a worthless iPod

It’s supposed to be an iPod with video but its not.

No headset jack

This thing is supposed to be the iPod 2.0 yet you can’t plug in some ear buds and listen to music. I’m supposed to blare this thing like a radio? You have to buy an expansion card just so you can use any run of the mill headset to listen to music. Back to feeling like they are trying to take every nickel they can from me. Don’t believe me? Look at the 360 view and see if you can find a universal headphone or headset plug. It’s also been reported that it can’t stream to bluetooth headsets, so its not wireless. If you want wireless you’ll need another expansion card.

No music ring tones

I bet that this is the deal breaker for most people. You can’t even make your own ring tones. People will get sick of getting nickel and dimed after spending $1700 on just the phone+contract. You’ll probably have to buy ring tones off iTunes or get them free with song purchases. Either way, all that old music you own from iTunes or CDs will cost you more money if you want a ring tone.

No iTunes

You cannot access iTunes to make a purchase and download a song while you aren’t connected to your home computer. Everything has to be sync’d to the phone. It’ll feel like having an old Palm Pilot. It’s kind of baffling that they don’t allow impulse shopping.

Sub par cell phone

It’s supposed to be the ultimate cell phone but it skips out on very basic features.

Limited text messaging

You can’t send picture messages. It has a camera and you can’t send people photos? Also instant messaging is disabled. So you are SOL if you were like me and avoided paying 10 cents per text message and used AIM. You can’t use AIM/MSN/etc. Being reduced to using AIM Express/Yahoo in a web browser isn’t an option when you have to sign in every time you navigate away.

Average users will probably have a huge problem texting. When a all professional technology reviewers say it took them about a week to be able to type on the keypad without errors you have to know that 25-50% of the general populous will never be able to do it. I still meet people that can’t type T9 words to save their life. If a geek has a problem with it then the average person will be frustrated and confused.

No games

No games or 3rd party developers? What a waste of a display. All I can use this for is the web and YouTube. Forget flash game websites. The iPhone internet browser doesn’t support flash. I think they are afraid of giving people to much repayable content. Once you’ve watch the crap on youtube what are you going to do? Probably buy a movie or a song.

Other things

• No GPS, ok so access to google maps is basically me typing the current address every time I’m LOST.
• No Unlocking, if I want to sell the phone I’m limited to AT&T customers. Everyone either owns an iPhone already or is a new customer and can buy version 2.0. Basically the only market is people who have broken their phone and want a replacement.
• No voice-recognition or voice-dialing capability. Ok, my phone from 1997 had this.
• Only IMAP email support. I kind of understand not supporting pop3 but you basically cut out all the refugees from blackberry and windows mobile.

Links

• What the iPhone doesn’t have
• iPhone: exploring the limits of 3rd party apps
• Top pros and cons

With the release of Safari for Windows a number of people have labeled its private browsing mode as “Porn Mode”. Stealther enables this functionality of surfing the web without leaving a trace while not having to annoyingly clear all of your private data.

Alex Albrect on a recent Diggnation episode claimed that Safari would be great if you wanted to buy your girlfriend flowers and/or hide your porn browsing from her. Either way you don’t want to leave a trace and you consider completely wiping out the history a trace. The Stealther Plugin for Firefox fixes this problem by temporarily disabling your private data.

If there are times you want to surf the web without leaving a trace in your local computer, then this is the right extension for you. What it does is temporarily disable the following:

• Browsing History (also in Address bar)
• Cookies
• Downloaded Files History
• Disk Cache
• Saved Form Information
• Sending of ReferrerHeader
• Recently Closed Tabs list

Installing Stealther

Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1306 and click the Install Now button.

You may be required to give permission for the addon to install by going to the Tools Menu and then clicking on Options…

Stealther Configuration

To access the configuration menu for Stealther you can go to the Tools Menu -> Addons -> Select Stealther -> Options

You can add a toolbar button by right clicking on your navagation toolbar (back/forward/reload/stop/etc) and dragging the round grey lock to the position you want it on your toolbar. Here is where I put it.

If you want to hide the existence of Stealther you can opt to not install the toolbar and hide the Tools menu entry.

Using Stealther

When you click the button it turns blue and it will force the browser to forget everything that happened once Firefox is closed. There are a number of ways to can use Stealther

• [Tools / Stealther] menu option
• Toolbar button
• Statusbar icon
• [Ctrl+Shift+S] keyboard shortcut (customizable)

The recent edition of PC Gamer revealed all the Protoss unis that will be included in the sequel to Blizzard’s smash hit Starcraft.

Protoss Units

• Zealot
  Still equiped with psionic blades they have a new charge ability that enables them to near instantly close the distance to their enemy.
• Stalker
  The dragoon 2.0. They can now blink anywhere within visual range.
• Immortal
  The dragoon that kills tanks. They have a shield that deflects heavy weapons.
• Colossus
  A four legged walker that can step over walls and is equipped with a beam cannon that tears apart infantry.
• Phoenix
  A Standard aircraft that can activate an overload ability to discharge its weapons at all nearby units. Kind of like the deathblossum from The Last Starfighter.
• Phase Prism
  Aircraft that is both a troop transport and a mobile pylon.
• Warp Ray
  Flying beam weapon that increases its damage the longer it fires on a single target.
• Mothership
  Superweapon that has three abilities, time bomb a missile shield, the cracker a beam out of Indenpendance Day an a black hole ability.
• High Templar
  Templar 2.0 with the same psionic storm attack and a new forcefield ability that can trap or protect units.
• Dark Templar
  Same as starcraft he has stealth and unrevealed special abilities.
• Twilight Archon
  Original makes his return and is just as powerful.
• Tempest
  The carrier makes its return with a shield that protects it from ground fire.
• Soul Hunter
  Anti Infantry unit on a skateboard from Back to the Future. Every unit they kill adds another beam weapon to their firepower. They start with 1 beam weapon and can have as many as 3.
• Reaver
  The artillery unit makes its return.

You can also check out the gameplay preview and the trailer on YouTube or visit Joystiq for their review.

Here are ten commandments that outline mistakes so heinous that they should be classified as crimes by internet society. Please never make these mistakes as they turn users away and make them look for alternative content providers.

javascript:window.open()

This is my number one pet peeve. Its the ultimate way for me to not link to your site because the browser clipboard and even search engines have no idea what it means. I also browse with disabled JavaScript. In addition to your site looking like crap the links don’t work. The rule is if the code is <a href=”xxx”> the xxx should never be javascript:some.function().

Example: CNN Video

Pop-Ups

Everyone still hates them. Users don’t want you to decide to open a new window for them. Middle mouse button or ctrl-click has the functionality. Let the user decide.

Reinventing the browser

This is for the sites that think they need to reinvent the wheel. A perfect example is back and forward buttons. Next page? No thanks. Go back? My browser history can do that.

Splash pages

A page that previews a page is the fastest way to convince someone that your site is just advertising spam. People have been trained to have extremely short attention spans and having to do 2 clicks instead of 1 or wait 5 seconds more for a redirect is a crime. If it takes about 5 more seconds to stumble past your splash page you will waste 1 day of human life every 20,000 visits.

Example: ign.com

Sound

There is no reason to ever play sound on a web page unless its in a widget that is specifically made for the sole purpose of playing that sound. It should be disabled or muted and require a click for the user to start listening.

Example: any myspace profile

Multi-page articles

If anywhere on your site you have next page, last page, links to page numbers. This is mainly done to make it seem like people spend more time on your site. The general rule for identifying a problem is if the printer friendly page is more reader friendly than your article. This sort of falls under reinventing the browser. Use bookmarks damn it. #page_2 is more effective than page2.html or crappy_article?page=2.

Example: Tom’s Hardware

Stories without pictures

A picture is worth a thousand words. If you have content that is about imagery and you don’t have an image. Posting random art that isn’t directly related to the subject at hand also falls under this category.

Example: 50% of AP news websites.

Resizing the browser

Never resize a users browser. Either use a fixed width or a fluid style.

Bad spelling and grammar

The only acceptable place to look like an idiot is instant communication. Text messages, especially with your phone, are the only place you shouldn’t really worry about appearances. Bad grammar and punctuation is only acceptable in forum posts. Every good browser and email client has a spell checker. Those red lines under words mean you have to click them and find out where you went wrong.

Example: digg.com - sure its all user submissions but they have a spell check and people still butcher English.

Requiring a specific browser

Theres no excuse for not at least testing how your code looks in Firefox and IE7. If your really good you will turn off JavaScript and see if someone can use your website. Your site gets bonus evil if you lock out users that aren’t using the browser you want them to.

Trillian is the best IM client that links together multiple services. I currently use it for multiple AIM accounts, MSN and my old ICQ account. The only problem I have with trillian is that I have to wait for it to reload whenever I reboot my computer. I decided to take action into my own hands and neutred its plugins so that it would load in under a second instead of 5-10 seconds.

In the Trillian directory I renamed all the features I don’t use:

• crypto.dll
• proxy.dll
• plugins\av.dll - by far the biggest slowdown
• plugins\irc.dll - mIRC for me.
• plugins\http.dll

This removed a good 8 seconds off the time required to start Trillian. I’d recommend it for anyone that sees the Trillian splash screen when they start windows. Also remember if you update Trillian you will need to remove or rename these files again.

This is the only 22 inch widescreen that I would consider buying based on what I have read when making a decision to purchase this screen. I bought the screen from Newegg. Originally I was somewhat worried about the screen because about a week into using it I got a little red stuck pixel near the center of the screen but after another week of usage it went away.

I personally like it a lot for web/graphic use but I think it sucks for games. I don’t think any LCD can be good for gamers at this point. The problem I have with the screen is that there is a 5×3 grid of LCD panels that make up the total viewing area. Each panel seems to be updated at different times causing tearing in the same spots on the screen all the time. This makes tearing very noticeable and its horrible for anything with lots of horizontal motion. I received the ‘S’ panel which is supposedly the best one for games. I’ve messed around with it a lot and cant get the little mini panels to update all at the same time.

The other complaint I have about this screen is the power button. Its an extremely bright LED that blinks when the monitor is in standby. The blinking light is enough to light up my room at night and to fix this I had to resort to putting tape over the powerbutton to mask the light it produces.

This screen is extremely bright. After having Lasik, I had to turn the brightness down to zero to use it. I’m not knocking the screen, I think its great. It has great color reproduction and the lowest brightness is better than the highest brightness on my old 15″ LCD.

I’d recommend the Samsung 226BW to anyone who uses their computer for anything but gaming. I think its a great product.

I’ve gotten a lot of gifts from various people close to me over the years. I’d thought I’d make a list of the most useful gifts that I’ve ever received. It kind of surprises me that none of these have much to do with my facination with technology but I guess the tried and true stuff works the best.

Husky 6-In-1 Screwdriver
I got this as a gift when I went away for college. This is the only gift I’d had to buy for someone else so they woud stop taking mine. This is probably the most used gift I’ve ever gotten. It works great with my computer and its compatible with all the stuff around the house I have to tinker with.

Hammer
A lot of things get fixed with force. This thing is great.

Clothing
I don’t have a link for this because its kind of general. 90% of the clothes I wear have been picked out for me by someone else. I know its sad but I can’t pick out things for myself. I guess I like getting stuff that has been approved for my use by someone else. If I like it and they like it then it cant be bad right?

My vision used to be so bad that I couldn’t find my glasses or contacts if I misplaced them. I was extremely nearsighted with -7.5 or more in both eyes. Everything needed to be about 18 inches away for me to see it clearly. My contact supply was running low and my prescription for my glasses was about 4 years old. I’m on summer break and had the time to explore the option to get Lasik done. I went to the doctor and discussed it and had my free exam. I did some research online about the doctor I’d chosen and read about the procedure. Three weeks later I was on my back with a laser shooting into my eyes for less than minute total.

For the next hour I had my eyes closed while trying to get to sleep. About 45 minutes after my surgery I started to feel pain. It felt like someone had scratched a 1cm square on my eyeballs by running a needle back and forth. This probably isn’t much different than what actually happened. Around this point I fell asleep and woke up 4 hours later. Strangely the cuts on my eye have healed by now, no pain. The best way I can describe the next 3 days is feeling like you slept with your contacts in. The eye drops help but it doesn’t go away much until the end of the first week.

The next day I woke up and went in for a checkup and my vision clocked in at 25/20 vision, better than what I had with contacts. The vision wasn’t perfect right away stuff really close and far away would be somewhat blurry. Each eye takes turns going up and down throughout the day. Its not bad at all, I had to move my screen to the back of my desk and sit farther away from the TV. The only annoying part is that I would instinctively try to readjust the way the non-existent contact was sitting on my eye. Just a habit from 10+ years of wearing contacts.

Its currently been 6 days. Every day my vision gets better. The worst side effects that I experienced with Lasik is the sensitivity to brightness which lasts for about 3 days. Its like you are semi dilated the entire week so you have to wear sunglasses to use the computer or go outside. I currently still have halos at night. I expect to have them for a while as its supposed to take a long time for them to go away. I’m not to worried though because I can already see the halos disappearing on dim lights.

Medication wise I’m currently taking eye drops of Restasis, Pred Forte, Zymar and rewetting solution called Systane from the same company that makes my old contact lens solution. The Restasis gives you red eyes for about 15 minutes and burns a little, if you leave it in the fridge it removes the burning and most of the redness. The Pred Forte makes you have a white haze over your eye for about a minute. Zymar somehow goes from your eye to dripping down the back of your mouth and has a bitter aftertaste, its the worst one. If you place your fingers on your tear ducts and apply little to no pressure it prevents the medication from producing an after taste in your mouth.

The Good

• Near perfect vision
• Best vision I’ve ever had
• No contacts or glasses

The Bad

• Halos at night
• Slight dry eye

Right now I’m extremely happy with my new vision. Every day I wake up and I’m amazed how far I can see. I’m constantly testing myself to see what I can see. I believe it is one of the best investments I’ve ever made and even if all the problems I currently have never go away I think it will still be worth it.

Some information about the procedure which involved 2 lasers. I had an IntraLase cut the corneal flap. The laser that did the correction was called the VISX Excimer Laser with CustomVue wavefront mapping. I would also like to note that if you are making a decision soley based off this blog post I think you are insane.

If you like to stay current you have to read a lot of websites. RSS Feeds are like a gift from heaven because they make it so much easier to browse and ignore content. Using a RSS reader like Google is like reading 100s of printer friendly websites at one time. No outrageous ads and quick, easy browsing. I’d thought I’d share some of the feeds that I subscribe to currently.

• TechCrunch - Just like Mashable but more focused. I’ll read a story here before I go to Mashable.
• Engadget - Who doesn’t like gadgets? I wish they would shut up about the iPhone though.
• Official Google Blog - Keep an eye on what Google is doing.
• Slashdot - News for nerds. Now that JonKatz is gone the site is pretty decent. They could use a spell checker though.
• Digg / Technology - most of Digg is now filled with spam, repeats and bad spelling. Occasionally they have some links that I haven’t seen somewhere else. I do enjoy watching diggnation every once and a while.
• How to Change the World - Guy Kawasaki’s blog. I like to read his insights as an entrepreneur.
• Mashable - I like to see whats new in the web.
• Penny Arcade - Because their comics aren’t daily its nice to see when they put out new comics.

The only complaint I have about Google Reader right now is that you can’t use search. The lack of search makes no sense to me. Where is the text search Google? Isn’t your whole business model ads and search.