Archive for May 8th, 2007

The next time you need to refresh (IE) or reload (Firefox) the content of your browser, try pressing F5. The alternative is to use the mouse to click the little refresh (reload) button.

There are times that the data on the page changes in real time - the weather page - the school delay page - JR’s blog. The F5 key will go out and grab the latest version of the page.

I use this one so much that I programmed one of my mouse buttons (I have a mouse with several programmable buttons) to act as F5. Since I normally browse the web while I use the mouse, the mouse button saves me a trip to the keyboard or the tool bar. From anywhere on the page - mouse click - refresh (or reload).

TSPY=1.35 (without programmable mouse)
TSPY=2.88 (with programmable mouse)

Once in a while I stroll over to Will Richardson’s blog just to see what’s going on. Today was one of those days. I read his post on Second Life and couldn’t help but laugh. Can we just end this whole Second Life thing? There is nothing worse than a virtual environment where every avatar is suppose to represent a real person… that can only communicate by typing on a keyboard.

I said (rather, I typed) something funny to someone in SL and got back a “LOL” in the chat dialog. Isn’t it bad enough that we can only chat with a keyboard and not with our real voices? Now I have to imagine that the virtual representation of someone I’m talking with is also laughing based on the fact that “LOL” was typed back to me. Shouldn’t the avatar grab his gut and roll around on the ground? Maybe there is a way to make the avatar do this and no one I have talked with knows how to do it. I could create a cheat sheet of all the body language needed in SL. Then when someone says (types) something funny I could say “PWWILAMCC”.

Please Wait While I Look At My Cheat Sheet… and then I could roll around on the ground laughing.