Open Firefox in Chrome, IE8, Safari, and Avant

Google's Chrome opens sites faster than my default browser Firefox. For now I cannot leave Firefox for Chrome because of the availability of extensions (add-ons) for the former which the later lacks.

I only use Chrome when Firefox is having a noticeable difficulty loading pages. Although I have exported my Firefox bookmarks to Chrome, it is cumbersome to export them whenever a new site is bookmarked in Firefox.

I have discovered one way of viewing my Firefox bookmarks in Chrome: click and drag a bookmark into Chrome's page and the page will load in Chrome. A bookmark can be exported too into Chrome's bookmark toolbar by the click and drag method.

Likewise, the method above is possible if it is done the other way—from Chrome to Firefox. In fact, the exporting method can be done also from Firefox to IE 8 and vice versa but is not possible for the Opera browser.

Of course there are Chrome View and Safari View add-ons for Firefox but the fact that it can be done into IE8 (Avant and Safari, too) makes this method handy for those who uses more than one browser.

In Avant and Safari, bookmarks from Firefox can open into these two browsers but not the other way around.

The Pythagorean Triple Generator

For those who are interested in a Pythagorean Triple Generator you may fetch it from my geometry class website.

This program is written in Just BASIC language and it is free.

USB Flash Drive Not Appearing In My Computer

I plugged a USB flash drive into my Windows XP PC and it did not appear in My Computer. It used to appear as Drive G: two months ago. When I checked Disk Management the flash drive is there with a drive letter J: and I can open it in the Computer Management window.

It took me a while to figure out the real culprit. I changed the drive letter of the flash drive to Z: in the Computer Management window but it did not solve the problem.

The only hardware I connected to my PC for the last two months was a three-partitioned external hard drive which is currently assigned the drive letters G, H, and I.

Would unplugging the external hard drive enable the USB flash drive to appear in My Computer? No, it did not.

Suddenly a thought came into my mind: Tweak UI. I have this Powertoy and I remembered checking boxes for drive letters.

So there it was the culprit. All the checked drive letters have been assigned to my internal and external hard drives and DVD drive. No drive letters were assigned for new removable storage.

I opened Tweak UI, checked the drive letter J: in the window and click OK. And that solved the problem—although I have to change the flash drive’s drive letter to J: again since I changed it to Z: earlier.

The Pythagorean Triple Generator

I was practicing how to write programs one day learning how to create a line in Liberty BASIC when it came to me that I could create a triangle. One thing led to another that I thought I create a Pythagorean Triple Generator and at the same time draw the triangle in scale. The result is a program written in Just BASIC language.

The program is available at this website, CST Geometry. You may download the program free.

Learn To Program Free

One of the activities that I did when I bought my PC was to learn programming. There are many programming languages that can be learned free in the Internet. One is Liberty BASIC which is derived from the traditional BASIC language, and then there is Just BASIC. Although the later is a watered down version of the former, the fun thing about Just BASIC is that you can create a .exe file from that language for free, i.e., a stand-alone program. The two languages above works on Windows XP.

If you are adventurous enough there are free tutorials for Java and Python languages. To be honest I have learned the basics of these two object-oriented programming languages in their websites, Java Tutorials, and Python.org. Java is a complex language but I was surprised with the way Python’s syntax are written—the syntax is much more like BASIC and reads like English. I have learned from Internet forums, Python is a very powerful programming language. You might like to try to download the free pdf Think Python (note this pdf discusses python 2. Latest version is 3).

Going back to Just BASIC, I have written a program called The Pythagorean Triple Generator.

Crazy Gadgets

Not crazy as in mentally unsound but insanely entertaining. I found this website where amusing gadgets can be downloaded and added to my blog's sidebar.

The hamster at the right is an example. And don't feed him too much by the way.

The website is aBowman. Check it out.

External Hard Drive

A year ago I changed my 80GB hard drive with a 500GB. Both were Seagate SATA. I was thinking of utilizing my old hard drive as an external hard drive and use it as a backup.

Today, I just did that. Much to my surprise as soon as I run the external hard drive, my old data were still there except for my own (administrator) My Documents folder which is now empty and cannot be opened. But the other data, they are still there; documents of limited accounts, mp3s, and video files can be opened and played. I thought that unplugging the hard drive from the motherboard will automatically delete the files.

A warning to all with hard drives they want to sell—wipe out your files for good!