Italian Festival 2009: Hamilton, Ontario

Today was quite an eventful day for me. Wasn’t too bored, or lazy at all. I spent all day pretty well outside. Well, the later half anyway. All afternoon outside. It was a blast. There has been many festivals here this weekend. Three to be exact.

Friday to Sunday there was the WingFest at Hamilton Harbour which looked like a blast with bands, chicken wings, entertainment for the family, carnival, and arts and craft show, boat cruises, fireworks, and what restaurants/ vendors had the best tasting wings. Fun for all to say the least. Honeymoon Sweet, The Spoons, April Wine played at the show, plus many others. I can’t really say anything about a review because I didn’t go. I should have went because it would have been awesome to see the fireworks, and the floating museum – a Canadian warship. Not sure if they’d let me take pictures inside as it’s part of the navy down at Hamilton Harbour. I’ll probably go next year if they have other more popular bands. The radio said that they’re giving Buffalo a run for the money, or well … competition since Buffalo was the first ever place to have a WingFest.

The second festival I went to this weekend was the Turkish Festival down at Gage Park. It was today, Sunday afternoon. It’s really nice to see different cultures, and foods and just overall differences in human beings. Turkish people have my utmost respect. The festival was an all day jamboree of music, dancing, food, and drink. Even though I can only speak english – it was still awesome. I bought a Turkish tea, and a Qur’an. I encourage everyone to go to the festival next year. At least anyone around the area, or at least anyone who wants to go. It was really nice to see a bunch of happy people, and different characteristics of different cultures. I loved it.
I liked it so much, I went back a second time. This time it was quite late in the afternoon, around dinner time. I picked up a Shish Kebab on pita from a food vendor. Originally I wanted a Chicken Shawarma, but they didn’t have anyone there selling any. Then I figured I’d go in line to get a Donair. But, ended up in the kebab line, which was still alright. Albeit, quite expensive, but it was well worth it. I also picked up a Turkish coffee that time, too. Drank about 6 waters throughout the day. It was the perfect day! Coming home from the Turkish festival, I realized that there was a lot of activity at Ivor Wynne Stadium.
I took my dog for a walk around the stadium after getting home, and sure enough – the Italian Festival was a sure sign of the activity. I waited for a few hours, and around 9:30pm I headed over to the stadium with my camera strung around my neck, and patiently awaited for the fireworks. While take a few pictures of the fireworks from the middle walkway in the stadium seats(the walkway), a security guard told me I was a fire hazard standing there taking a picture. So I thought about it, took a few more pictures and went and sat down in the east part of the stands.
Once the fireworks arrived, it was awesome – the pictures started rolling out of the camera. A bit loud, but the display is really awesome. They do a good job every year with the pyrotechnics. The Italian community loves it. The other onlookers love it, too. The italian festival consists of a free concert, Italian merchandise, food, and beer. A lot of  talented musicians play there.

I’m glad I live in such a diverse community. I’m proud to be Canadian. I’ve never said that before, and I’m so glad we have such festivals around. It brings people together in such an event where people can be happy, and be social at the same time. I love different cultures, food, music and happy people. I’ve yet to find a person to tell me stories of how they’ve became to be, or how life was when they were not in Canada. I’d love to hear, and see the expressions of such people. It’s one of the things that interests me the most about people.

Anyway, that was pretty well the extent of my weekend. It was a great weekend. Hopefully tomorrow is just as good.

Here’s a link of the fireworks, and a few shots of the stage area.

Proudly Canadian.
Have a good one.
Until next time.
Justin

Mozilla – The New Firefox, and Thunderbird

Recently, I just disovered an awesome Firefox Addon. It doesn’t really help in productivity, but it is visually appealing. But, I mean, some would argue that if one thing isn’t visually appealing, that it wouldn’t help in productivity. I agree with that statement because you’re only as good as your environment is. If you’re in a place with less distraction, nicely painted, and visually pleasing, you want to be there, and be square about being there and doing whatever you need to do. Heck, you may even want to stay where ever you are, and never leave.

I’m at this point with Firefox. After using many other browsers in the past, I’ve never been happier in geekdom. The appearance of Firefox, and Thunderbird now has made my Desktop, or GNOME desktop environment visually pleasing. I can customize the look of Firefox, or Thunderbird to make it stand out and not just let it drap around like I did before. I won’t lie, I even did it with Firefox, and various others.

As mentioned before, they’re not really for producitivity. Personas for Firefox are more visually pleasing to the eye than anything. It lets you customize the looks of Firefox, or Thunderbird just like any other theme available for Gnome, or KDE but, it’s only for Firefox, or Thunderbird. They’re simply skins which is driven by the commity of users who want to create their own. You can design, and upload your own which will individualize your browser.  There are hundreds of artist-created skins as well.

What makes Personas really shine is the ability to look at them via your own browser – just by opening the browser up. Once Personas are installed, the bottom left side of the bar Foxy’s head appears. Just simply click on the head, and you can have your choice of what skin to use. There’s a huge variety of whatever you want. Even hovering over each skin that’s in the addon, it will change the theme while just hovering over the picture(or name) with your mouse.

It’s easily one of the best addons I’ve used because of the quality of the addon, and the aesthics are pleasing to the eye like I’ve mentioned before.

NOTE

Personas come as a default installation with Firefox-3b5. However, if you want to use Personas in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope’s version of Firefox which is Firefox-3.0.10 you’ll have to download the addon. And, if you don’t have Firefox, and want to download and install Firefox to use Personas – here’s the URL: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

To use Personas in Thunderbird, you’ll have to download the beta version of Thunderbird which is Thunderbird-3b2, and install Personas via the URL above. Download the .xpi file, and install the addon like any other addon. You’ll come to an “install” button in the window – just browse to the file and press ok to install. Here’s the link to the Thunderbird download page.

In Jaunty Jackalope, I downloaded Thunderbird into /opt so I have the beta, and stable versions so if the beta messes up, I have the stable to use. Just symlink the thunderbird executable in /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird into /usr/bin. Here’s the code: “sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird3″ without quotes. This will let you have two working Thunderbirds in an installation. Create a new profile with, “thunderbird3 -P”. Howto in the ubuntuforums.

Hopefully this helps you.
Enjoy.

Justin

The Mozilla: Firefox Update

What internet browser do you use? Hopefully not internet explorer, or Opera. Firefox has been awesome ever since I’ve stepped foot into using it. I love the user interface, the way I can handle addons(or plugins), the way it performs, and the ability to do whatever I want with it. It just keeps getting better, and better.

Prior blog posts I’ve named off a few addons I’ve used, and still use. Some addons I don’t use, and addons I’ve moved onto something better  because they’ve simply evolved, or there’s just simply something better out. There’s going to be more of that because Mozilla just changed how addons are made with jetpack. Jetpack is an API that will be far more superior than a lot of things they have done. Now any user that knows html/css or javascript can make addons for the browser. This is a good step that Mozilla put forth for the user because now it’s not an impossible task for the user to make something of their browser and have a choice. You don’t need to be a programmer, or know what you’re doing to customize the addon you want. Someone with no knowledge can have the ability to make addons and fool around with the API with the various examples on the Mozilla Labs website where you get Jetpack. With this going for Mozilla, I think it’s going to help a new breed of programmers, and people who do want to learn how to program, or code since it’s possible to do so. It’s not an impossible task. You can learn how to interact with an extensive API, and see the changes you want to see right after a refresh of the browser.

Jetpack as stated is an API for web development languages which means it’s good for the web-2.0 crowd. If you want a Digg counter on your bottom panel of Firefox, it’s possible. If you want a switch to turn off ads and other such things that are annoying, you can. What about removing embedded movies, or objects? It’s possible. What about statistics, and a graph? It’s possible! There are endless possiblities that anyone can explore.

I’ve yet to try this addon yet, but it does look interesting, and has me intrigued. I have it installed, and ready to go in Firefox-3b5. I’m more of a user than anything. I’m not a developer, I don’t code. I am part of a community of users, programmers, and activists. At least I’d like to think I am. Linux is a wonderful thing.

Jetpack – A Call For Participants
Mozilla Labs – Jetpack

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