Aehso’s Output

Yet another cool Firefox extension, Performancing for Firefox adds a split-screen HTML editor that can be configured to post to your blog(s) via XMLRPC. Just like I’m doing now. Sweet.

I’m going to have to come up with a decent Firefox extension, all the cool kids are writing them these days…

Via the Yahoo! Search Blog, a very useful GreaseMonkey script that pops up a Yahoo search button under your mouse whenever you highlight text in your Firefox browser.

And not a privacy invading toolbar in sight.

I was getting a bit tired of the US-centric news at the top of the Irish Google News page when I just noticed it is easy to add your own sections to the Google News page.

To do this:

• Click Personalize this Page (top right)
• Click “Add a custom section”
• Choose the keywords you want Google use when searching for news for this section. Choose carefully e.g. “Ireland Dublin” gives me news stories related to our beloved country and capital city. You can also use the Advanced link to narrow the search to a particular language and provide your own section label (otherwise it is labelled using the keywords you provided).
• You can also delete the standard sections - edit one and you’ll see a “Delete Section” tick box - tick it and save changes and poof!
• Lastly, you can rearrange sections by dragging them around the layout provided in “Personalize this page”.

An old entry in Shifting Baselines blog has two rather disturbing graphs, taken from the WWF Living Planet Report 2004. Here’s one of them:

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Now I’m no ecologist so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the figures in this report but I figured that the sickening sensation it induces makes it is important enough to stick in front of a few more eyeballs.

The recent launch of callcosts.ie by ComReg shows that occasionally our government produces reference material that is immediately useful.

Some other immediately useful quick reference sheets, curtesy of the Financial Regulator:

• Credit Card Cost Survey. Forget complicated measurements like APRs, this reference uses a simple example: a consumer who owes €4,000 on his card pays off only the minimum
  payment each month, misses the due date on three occasions, charged one unpaid item fee when his cheque bounces). Some accounts would leave the above consumer over €1,000 worse of after just 12 months. (Hint: BOI and AIB are not the cheapest - *shock*, *horror*)
• Personal Current Account Cost Survey - again, an easy to read comparison sheet. (Hint: BOI and AIB are not the cheapest - *shock*, *horror*)

More useful quick references on products like car and home insurance are available from the IFSRA website here.

Now, if they just did one on the relative performance of car dealer cartels. I, meanwhile, am off to change my credit card…

When growing up, the status of millionare seemed to signify membership of an elite list of the richest people in the world. (Yes, I was a naieve country boy and no I’m not that old). Now, it would seem you need more than a billion to join an elite list.

There are 691 members in 2005, up from 587 in 2004 so 2005 was a good year for the super-rich. There are now 3 “Irish” billionares - John Dorrance, Tony O’Reilly and Sean Quinn.