MP3 player, Meteos, SeaMonekey...

Sorry about the lack of here updates recently. Alot's happened in the two plus weeks since my last post here. Here are some highlights in no special chronological order:

• Bought a hard drive-based digital music player. To be speficic, I purchaced the Creative Zen Micro. It is a 5 GB device, which retails for $200 USD, but I got $60 off at Staples as I had two old gift cards laing around that I've been meaning to use for a long time. I had been looking at alternatives to my aging portable CD player for a while. I was originally looking at a CD/MP3 hybrid device that one could put many hundred MP3 files onto a CD-R and listen to them on the player. But then a friend of mine had the Creative Zen Micro, and the player had attractive features I'd not seen in any other protable devices. I further looked into the player, and read fairly positive reviews on major technology sites.

The player itself is very light, and easily fits in my pants pocket, which cannot be said for any portable CD player that I've had. Plus this thing beats carrying around a CD book with fifteen CDs in it.

• I bought the game Meteos for my Nintendo DS. On Saturday, on the long bus ride to the band competition, me and three friends played Meteos in multiplayer mode. Meteos is a puzzle game, which losely resembles the game Tetris. At first I had no idea how to play, but hen as we kept playing, I eventully figured it out, and enjoyed the game. In fact I liked the game so much, I bought it.

• SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha released:

Over a week ago, in MozInfo701, I wrote:
"Last March, the Mozilla Foundation announced that they would officially put an end to new development of the Mozilla Application Suite. Now, over seven months later, the SeaMonkey Council has made available the first alpha release of the SeaMonkey browser suite. There are many changes and new features in this alpha release from the last official Mozilla Foundation release, Mozilla 1.8 Beta 1."

I have been using SeaMoneky 1.0a since then as my primary browser on Windows XP. It has been very stable for an alpha, but then again it's based relatively stable Gecko 1.8 codebase, which will eventully become Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and SeaMonkey 1.0. There are some noteable features in SeaMonkey 1.0a that I'd not specifically mentioned before. One thing that was ported from Firefox is a small notification that pops up when downloads are completed, and one thing that I have already made great use of is inline spell checking in Mail. More about these new additions are over in the SeaMoneky Blog.

That's it for this update, for now.

Start of school, band performances

Time for another one of those cumulative updates. I have been very busy the past few weeks. I apologize to the readers for the lack of updates lately.

School:
• School started on Aug 31.
• We have a new schedule at school for the day; the day is now 15 minutes shorter than last year. About a week before school started, we recived a letter, stating the new schedule. I thought nothing of it, except one thing: We had to go the cafeteria if we arrive at school before 8:05 AM, as all the teashers are supposed to be at meetings from 7:30 - 8:00, and they didn;t want students roaming the halls unsupervised. Well, Aug. 31 rolls around, my mom drops me off at school at around 7:45, there were a few teachers standing at the doors, directing me to procede to the cafeteria. I did. I arrive in the cafeteria, and find many students already there, and it was difficult to find a seat, none-the-less find someone I knew. So, I sat down, and pretty much looked at a clock until the 8:05 bell rung and we could leave to go to homeroom. Well, on the second day of school, I arrived a little later, maybe around 7:50, and the hallways were clear. I leasurally walked to the band instrument locker room, where there were a few other band stundents. Now, each day of school after that, I stay there until the 8:05 bell, mostly I study for my first period chemisry class.
• That brings me to another area, my classes. As I already said, I have Chemistry-A first period, and that will most likely me the toughest class I have this semester. So far, we've had two quizzes and done one lab. That lab was today, where the hightlight was when we got to burn a piece of copper wire with a Bunsen burner!
• Amreican History is my second preiod class. It has been so far an easy class(I've always done well in social studies), but I expect it to get more difficult as we advance through the course.
• Microsoft Office XP is my next class, which means I get to spend another 77 minutes a day on a computer. So far the class has consisted of doing activities in Microsoft Word 2002 from a thick paperback workbook. We will also cover Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. A plus to the class is that we get to use the newer PCs at my school with the LCD monitors. Also, it's worth noting that it appears as the school has finally installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 on their computers. I has hoping to see this icon on the desktops of the school computers this year, but no luck!
• Fourth period is where I have both health and phsical education (they alternate days.) On Wednesday, we started our pool unit in PE, so we get to head over to the pool at the middle school for nine classes. Thankfully this year, we do a water games uint, opposed to the snorkeling unit we had last year. Today, we played pool volleyball.

Band:
Today was our first marching band performance at a home football game this year. Tomorrow is our first competition, and Sunday, we have to perform at the York Fair; a busy weekend is lined up...

Now please excuse me, as I try to get some sleep at 1:30 AM!