Microzillasoft Googefox Explorer.

Hello all!

This was technically meant to be last week's blog post, but a combination of a hectic work week and my tired/laziness it did not exist. Also I'm still pretty busy and a little exhausted, so this week's contribution may be a little less than usual. We'll see. Here it is anyway for all of you to enjoy!

Something rather annoying and, well, really downright unprofessional. I'm talking about the fact that for the second time Firefox has managed to lose all of my bookmarks. All of them. Every, single, one. Not a bookmark in sight. And I think I'm allowed the right to be shall we say, just a teeny bit peeved? Yes, I think so.

I don't know where they've gone. Perhaps Firefox was on a night out and just happened to drop them after stumbling headfirst into a ditch. Who knows. Firefox certainly doesn't! Well of course, I tried just about every single solution on the help page, and in Firefox's defence the list of solutions was fairly extensive. Sadly, nothing worked, and I'm left in a little bit of a pickle.

Because losing bookmarks itself is bad enough. What's worse is not being able to add more. Or even to use the "back" or "forward" buttons properly. For some reason, my history is apparantly fucked and nothing I do can fix it. So I'm left with just about one option left...

I have to uninstall Firefox.

Now just let that sink in. I know, it's shocking. Why would anyone get rid of Firefox? Silly people, that's who. The simple solution would be to just reinstall it straightaway, and to be honest that's probably what I'll do. But for a few, heretical moments I considered other browsers, other purveyors of this fine internet. Don't judge me! We're all lured away by newer, shinier models. We all debate whether to trade in for an upgrade or whether to stick with old faithful.

Well, have no fear folks, ol' Foxy won't be going anywhere just yet!

I'm going to try uninstalling and then reinstalling good old Firefox first before I do anything more drastic. For the simple reason that I just darn love the thing! Sure, it's lost my bookmarks twice, but in the grand scheme of things I think it's pretty awesome. And because I've currently got this pedestal, you get to hear me tell you why!

We all know Internet Explorer sucks. Plain and simple. It serves it's purpose, it let's you use the internet, and it even has tabs now! There is also the added bonus that it comes preloaded onto every Window's computer, so most people can use it. But if you actually want to do anything useful, it kind of sucks.

This is what I love about Firefox. It's customisability. There are literally so many things you can do with it. It may not be the absolute fastest browser, but it does a decent enough job. Plus I kind of like being loyal to something, maybe it's the socialist in me, but I realise everyone makes mistakes, and Firefox has done a lot more things right than wrong.

I did almost consider using Chrome...it's shiny allure pulled at me, tempted me, caressed my face and tousled my hair, telling me to come over to the dark side. It even offered cookies. Fortunately I did not succumb! Now don't get me wrong, Google Chrome is a good browser. But I can't see any decent reason to switch to it, other than to try something new. So it's a few fractions of a second faster at loading? I'm used to dealing with 1MB broadband, I've learned the art of patience. Also it hasn't anywhere near the amount of add-ons and plugins Firefox does. True, it's a lot newer and that number will grow, but I don't want to wait a year for what I could have now.

Finally, when it comes down to it, Google is basically "The Man" of the internet. Once it was an honest and innovative search engine. Let's face it, before Google the internet sucked. Before Google, the world sucked. However, success has corrupted it, and now it's vast stockpiles of cash are buying out everything in a Microsoft fashion.

All joking aside, I definitely prefer to not put all my eggs in one basket, as it were. I like searching with Google, browsing with Firefox, computing with Windows and rocking out with iTunes. No electronic monopolies in this house!

I'm going to leave you with this: Movember is coming! For those that don't know, Movember is an event where men all around the world grow moustaches in the month of November in order to raise money for men's health charities. I've decided to take part this year, and all money raised will go towards the honourable Prostate Cancer Charity. If you feel like sponsoring me, head on over here:

http://uk.movember.com/mospace/641122/

Until next week, toodles!
~ Toby