Yes, Virginia, There is a HarpShot

Some people have asked, HarpShot? What the heck is a HarpShot? If you have to ask, you don’t need to know.

Rainin’

Today was one of those days that could’ve been better and could’ve been worse. Reckon kinda like most days for most people. Rained around here. Water. It rained water. I’ve heard there are places it rains other things – disaster, money, cats, dogs, inns. Yeah, I was really goin’ on about somethin’ the other day and my buddy said, “Hey, rain inn, dude.” Or, maybe it was, “Hey, rainin’, dude.”

Later I thought it must be finally gettin’ ’round to quittin’ time. And, it was. Everybody had quit. Except me. That was really spooky.

Maybe tomorrow will be different. Or maybe it’ll still be rainin’. I dunno.

Kevin Gunn & the Weathervanes

Back in 1970 I was a freshman at Univ. of Kansas and thought I’d be a writer of some sort so I took English and writing classes, including the Science Fiction class taught by James Gunn, author of several sci fi novels and other works. I learned a lot from Prof. Gunn, and still have some short stories I wrote that have actual praise (not to mention the criticisms) from him in the margins. But, ultimately, my career went a different direction, although, as I think about it, it involves an awful lot of writing. As time went by my kids grew up and went to college about the time the www was starting to get noticed, and I developed an interest in making websites. I found a great web editor called Web-O-Rama. Lo and behold, turned out it was written by Prof. Gunn’s kid, Kevin Gunn. More time went by and along came the likes of MySpace and FaceBook and LinkedIn. While goofing around on FaceBook one day I came across, yes, Kevin Gunn! He’s now devoting his efforts to his real passion, music. Be sure to check him out at Kevin Gunn and the Weathervanes. Kevin has me thinking again about my back-burnered passion, writing.

Browser Update Reprise

Apple recently released Safari 4 beta. Wow, it’s fast. It’s a real pleasure to browse sites and pages using it. It’s about as quick as flipping pages in a book or magazine, even with images displayed. I expect Firefox will pick up on Apple’s technology and use something like it to speed up Firefox. Meanwhile, if I want to look at pages fast, I go Safari; if I’m developing web pages, Firefox is still the choice, due to certain very helpful plug-ins. Most people, I think, would find Safari a real joy as their primary browser.

Browser Update

I posted recently (measured in space, not time) about discovering Safari for PC. Since then, of course, I’m back to Firefox as browser of choice. It’s the plug-ins. They enhance security, enhance usability, enhance web analysis, design and production; all on top of general reliability and satisfactory speed. Occasionally I re-visit Safari, Flock, Avant, Orca, Opera; but, generally, if I’m not using Firefox I’m using Google Chrome.