Archive for July, 2007

When I was little, my grandmother had Revereware pots and pans. She was able to cook anything in those pans. It only made sense, to me anyway, to use Revereware, so a few years ago we purchased a set.

Two weeks ago, the smallest saucepan fell apart. The copper bottom literally came “unglued”. Yes, unglued. It appears they used some strange material to glue the copper bottom to the pan, and it came undone.

The difference between my Revereware and my grandmother’s Revereware? The stuff I bought is now made in China. Needless to say, I will be searching for a new cookware set.

With all the technology in the world, you’d think they would come up with a better way to attach the copper to the bottom of the pan.

How many words are thousands of pictures worth?

I am one of those creatures who learns by seeing. I usually don’t have to read a manual or ask too many questions. In fact, if I can see how something is done, I tend to never forget. It’s almost as if I have a photographic memory when it comes to remembering the order of things.

If I could put my brain into a 10 inch system with a video screen, it would resemble a digital photo frame. All of my thoughts and memories would pop to the surface for a moment, like a digital photo, reminding me the order of things, and then slip away just in time for another image to emerge.

Digital frames are so cool they blow me away. While the technology inside may be difficult for most people to grasp, they are surprisingly simple to operate for the end user. You don’t need a big instruction manual or hours of training to load your pictures onto them. You simply place a photo memory card into the slot and your pictures begin showing.

When you have a collection of photos from an important event, you no longer have to choose which photo to display. You can set your digital picture frame to slowly remind you of every moment, all day long.

The internet can be a very dangerous place for children. With the proliferation of websites that contain adult content, violent undertones and religious fanaticism, you must take precautions to keep your children safe as they surf the world wide web.

Having three kids myself, I think filtering software and parental involvement make a great combination for making sure your children are never exposed to those elements which might negatively affect them for the rest of their lives.

Parental control software, such as ChildWebGuardian, works by filtering the websites your children visit. The program checks the content of the website they want to view and automatically blocks those sites you find inappropriate, whether they are obscene, promoting drugs, advertising gambling, or contain violent undertones.

ChildWebGuardian allows you to be in control of your child’s internet experience and protects them from the dangers found on the internet. It does not rely solely on urls and databases containing illicit sites, it actually analizes the pages your child visits, in real time, and blocks those sites your child should not have access to. The program is compatible with all Windows operating systems and can be downloaded directly from the company website.

You can download a demo today, but at $29.95, it’s price is more than reasonable for the peace of mind you will have knowing it’s working to protect your children.

It’s only been one week since the last release of Stuffr, but I thought it would be best to go ahead and release this latest version because a few people have been waiting for Stuffr to support posting excerpts.

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While the main focus of this blog will always be technology, computers and software in general, there will be times where I will offer reviews and other “related” posts. They may be personal, then again maybe not. But from time to time you will notice links within the posts that point to a product or service someone is offering on the internet.

Smorty is a service that connects advertisers to bloggers, and allows bloggers to get paid for blogging about all of the topics the would be blogging about anyway. By participating in Smorty, I have been able to remove a majority of the graphical ads which were running in the sidebar here on Alligator Pit. Better yet, I will earn more in one post blogging for money through Smorty than I have earned in the past two months with those static ads.

It will be nice making some extra cash to help pay server costs or for that new gadget I have been wanting for so long. If you’re looking for a way to get paid to blog, you should check out Smorty too.

As I said two days ago, I was thinking of writing my own vacation planning software. It seeems some online reservation sites wouldn’t be so keen on the idea, as they would like to visit their site in person rather than use a piece of software to pull their information. Oh well, it was a nice thought, but I am not ready for that headache.

I might still write the application though but focus on some on Condo Hotels and choices like that rather than ordinary hotels and motels. Maybe they would be more receptive to such an idea?

People complain about the timing of software updates all the time. Many groups lambast Microsoft for taking so long to release patches. Wordpress critics fly off the handle because the development team waits until the next release cycle to fix certain bugs. Nevermind the fact that some of the bugs they get so pissy about aren’t something to get worked up over in the first place.

Just days after a security researcher blasted its Java patching system, Sun Microsystems Inc. has issued a critical update to the consumer version of its Java software.

Security vendor eEye doesn’t like Sun’s system because releasing patches for some versions and waiting on others could create a window of opportunity for hackers, but Sun says their system results in less bugs arriving on consumer desktops. It’s a toss up if you ask me.

EEye discovered the bug back in January. It is a critical flaw in the Java Network Launching Protocol, which is used to run Java programs over the Web. Hackers could exploit this flaw by setting up a malicious Web site that could install unauthorized software on any Java-enabled PC that visited it, according to eEye.

Java users have another reason to be up to date on their patches. On Friday, the SANS Internet Storm center issued a warning about two critical flaws in the way Java processes bitmap and jpeg images.

However, those flaws were not new. They were patched in the previous Java 6 update 1 release, which was made available in March.

What gets me though, is the lack of news about this issue. This bug was discovered back in January. It is a critical flaw. Today is July 14th. Seven months? Why is nobody screaming about this? Is it because it doesn’t involved the big bad Microsoft machine? Is it because it doesn’t involve some very popular open source software? Or could it be because it involves Sun, and no one really cares about making a big deal about it?

It just doesn’t make sense to me, that’s for sure.

The other day, on Slobokan’s Site O’ Schtuff, I posted about an excellent calorie counter site I visit daily. It’s called MyFitnessPal, and I absolutely love it.

In my quest for weight loss, I have tried many different things. First there was counting carbs, which didn’t really work for me. Then I tried some of the “diet dinners” which was a waste of money, for me anyway. Lately I have been counting calories, and it seems to be doing the trick. At one point though, I thought of using some of the diet pills out there, like Phentermine. MetaboSpeed and Hoodia750 seem like they would do the trick, so if I ever get to a point when the calorie counting isn’t working for me, I might have to give those a try.

Because I spend so much time sitting at the computer, I don’t really exercise as much as I should and I am wondering if I wrote an application that told me when to stop eating, if I could be doing just a bit better?

Over on my main blog, Slobokan’s Site O’ Schtuff, I have been talking about our plans for a vacation and the possibility of renting an Orlando vacation home if we get a chance to go down to Florida to visit my wife’s brother’s family.

I am seriously thinking of writing a ‘vacation planning’ application where you can put in the dates for your vacation, the destinations you would like to consider, and the accommodations you would prefer. You would then click a button and the software would automagically check all of the major travel services on the web and return a nice set of formatted results so you can compare all the prices in one nice easy interface.

I wonder if anyone has already written something like that?

It’s been a little over a month since the last release, but the wait is well worth it. The latest version of Stuffr now includes an “Add Category” feature for WordPress 2.2+ users. There are a couple of other changes and fixes as well, so you’ll want to grab this latest version.

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