Whomwah.com

I bought a digital radio about 6 months ago now and it’s been a revalation. Not because you can get *danger work plug alert* loads of great stations from the BBC, but because you can also pick up Gaydar radio.

Me and the Girlfriend share different chores around the house and when it comes to food, the rule tends to be that she cooks. The reason being, I could and would burn water, and she’s a fabulous cook and enjoys it. My part of the deal is to leave the kitchen like a new pin.

This works really well and also gives me a chance to listen to the radio in the kitchen. Now I don’t know about you but the last thing I want to listen to when I’m doing the dishes in some Radio 4 chat show or Radio 2 Country program. I want something cheesey to sing along to and that’s where Gaydar comes in.

I don’t know about during the day__I imagine it’s the same old daytime commercial crap__but in the evening it’s cheesy dance music all night long. Fantastic! Doing the dishes will never be the same again.

Now I must admit, I’d always been in the I’ll-use-Opera-like-I-use-IE ….. *ahem* Never! camp due to it’s own bunch of strange behaviours. But I’ve been playing with the Opera 9.0b2 release and you know what, it’s really very nice.

The bits I like. Oh and I’m using the Mac version__I assume the PC version is the same__. The most obvious plus for me was the speed of the thing. I find it renders pages much faster than Firefox__my current browser__ and in the relms of Safari, Omniweb or Camino. They’ve also kept the whole UI compact and un-obtrusive. Opera customisation has always been good but now it’s an art form. You appear to be able to change anything and everything. Other nice features are Session saver, Fast-forward, User styles, CSS3 support, blimey so much I like.

They also seem to have packed many different apps in. Quite a feat. Extras include Email Client, IRC, Bit Torrent, Small screen mode, Widgets the list goes on. I’ll be honest I don’t think I’ll use many of these extras__why would you not use Mail? and I have widgets__but the fact you have them available is a bonus.

But …. and there seems always to be a but with Opera, the bloody thing still doesn’t work on sites I view frequently. My first example is flickr. I visit this site a lot as it’s where I store my photos and the first thing I got was ‘your browser is not supported’ looks like the user_agent problems, I think they have set the user agent back to ‘Opera’ in this one. Anyway. Next, after I have forced my way in I try and organise some photos and the brower either hangs or does does nothing, oh and the DHTML menus don’t work.

I realise these are likely not Opera problems but not a great start. I don’t know how Opera fix this, after all they are well known for their Standards Support and it’s one of the rare few that passes the Acid2 test. I know this browser is good, no infact I know this browser is great, but if the big sites break it then where’s the confidence. I wonder if they can make it more flexible in certain situations maybe a toggle should/will work. Hmm, I guess that goes against the grain. You see I really want to use this browser, but viewing the sites I like is far more inportant.

So, in summary I think this browser’s fantastic but I won’t be using it just yet, lets hope some of the problems are addressed in the final release.

This made me laugh when I saw it on someones myspace comment page. I guess you need to know who the chuckle brothers are but hey.

Oh and don’t get me started on myspace. I know it’s very popular but my god it must be up for worst designed, most uncompatible and least navigable site ever. With what seems like 50% of the screen real estate dedicated to adverts, someone is becoming very rich. Oh and people tell me it works fine in IE?! I rest my case.

I haven’t been to odeo for a while now. I kind of stopped using it when itunes added podcasts but I’m kinda thinking I should have stuck with it. There’s some great stuff on there. I listened to a bunch of geek talks today and some great mixes, but this one I really like.

Recorded live on WBA’s Underground Railroad the day after Malcolm’s birthday, hiphopmusic.com‘s DJ 3-d creates a great backdrop of some of Mr X’s speeches.