Baseball hasn't always been my favorite sport and it still is not. Yet there is something about the start of the baseball season and Opening Day that gets my all gitty inside. I am not sure where this love of baseball has come from. I have always liked the sport, thanks to Grandma Uzzell and her love of the NY Mets, but never has it been a love affair. After last season I have come to appreciate this American national past time. From the bitter Red Sox and Yanks rivalry, to the Dodgers and Angels in the freeway series, damn those Angels for winning World Series rings recently, or the Battle of Bay. I believe the Giant fans are a big reason why I have started to really love baseball with a true passion again. The Giants fan never gave up on their team and just had a certain swag about them and the city that makes you just want to watch sport continuously. Remember Opening Day is fresh start, a new beginning for every player and team. If you team struggled last season, just missed the playoffs, lost in the first two rounds, or World Series, this is the time where none of that matters. Every team gets to start a new striving to achieve what seems illusive, World Series Championship. So I look forward to the fresh start, the hungry seeking a title and the hunted protecting their title. The past two years I have fallen deeper in love with the sport of baseball, along with the teams and players. I am a Dodger fan, I bleed blue, but I do enjoy just watching any team play just because it is baseball.
So on this Opening Day there are a slew of games on Major League Baseball Schedule. I plan on catching every game of the day. Two games are airing on ESPN3 and ESPN which I will watching via XBOX360, and the rest of the games I will be watching via MLB.TV on my PS3 and Apple TV devices respectively. (Make sure if you are using your PS3 to update to version 2.0 or if you are using your Apple TV update to iOS 4.3 in order to view the games)
This is quite a full line up of games and back to back, so pull up as many devices as you can and enjoy this lovely spring day. I plan on watching my Dodgers play host to my fiances World Series Champion Giants all while having some fun baseball food.
How do you plan on watching the first games of the season?
Internet browsers wars are starting to truly heat up. With browsers all touting that they have the fastest and best browser. Over my next few post I will be doing a basic review of the four biggest browsers right now, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari. I use all four browsers believe it or not and I test out all of my browsing sites on them. It is a lot of work to sync up all of my browsers but after using all four there are certain advantages and disadvantages to each browser and I will be highlighting some of them in my post. Up first Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and Internet Explorer 9(IE9).
Internet Explorer 8 was released in March 2009. The main new features added to the program are:
Accelerators, Web Slice, Search Suggestions, New Tab Features, Tab Isolation, InPrivate Browsing, and SmartScreen Filter.
Accelerators allow for quick access to web servers, ie on a webiste, you can click within the page to get news, maps, information or share it on a social networking site. Web Slice allows you to keep with with changes made to your favorite websites. Search Suggestions allows for suggested context as you type it out. New Tab features allow you to reopen accidentally closed tabs, and group related tabs together. Tab isolation allows you to closed a crashed tab without closing the rest of your tabs. InPrivate browsing lets you browse the web without saving any data. SmartScreen Filters protects you against installation of malware. IE 8 has full support for CSS 2.1. This is important because not all sites look the same on all computers. Some sites have fonts that may not be installed on your computer so if the web author sets up a CSS sheet they set all the default fonts and colors and information for the site so you can view it properly.
If you are using Internet Explorer there are some limitations with the browser. Most people are using a Windows OS (operating system) on their personal computer(that is changing with Mac OS becoming popular) which means you less of a choice in choosing which IE browser you would like to use. Internet Explorer 9 is the newest version of IE but only works on machines with Windows Vista and Windows 7 installed on your computer. If you are running Windows XP and below it means that the newest IE will be IE 8 and that will be your only option for browsing the internet. IE 8 is not a bad browser. Most users are familiar with this option seeing that it comes embedded with your OS. IE8 will be the first browser you will use when connecting to the internet, unless you have some type of external memory with exe files to another browser. IE 8 has rather archaic look to when you are looking at modern browsers today. It doesn't process pages as fast as you would like it to but it does get the job done if all you are trying to do is just browse. It you are checking sports scores, looking up a recipe or just reading news this browser will work for the basic user. However when it comes to processing images and watching videos from Youtube or living streaming broadcast the browser may not perform as well but will still perform. It has large back and forward buttons, with large tabs, and with the menu bar attached to the browser. It is a great browser for those just looking to surf the web.
Screen Shot from My IE 8 Browser running Windows XP Pro
What saddens me as Windows XP user is that I will not have the option of running IE9. Although I own Windows Xp and can not use IE9 on my os I also picked up a copy of Windows 7. Here is the IE9 information.
Internet Explorer 9 was released in March 2011. IE9 new features include: Brand new Interface, allowing for just basic controls and leaves more space for viewing. Hardware acceleration, making website perform like native apps to your computer, and IE9 is the first browser to use video card to speed up browsing. Pinning websites to your Windows 7 Taskbar. Unified address bar for navigating the site or to start a search. New tab page management, letting you restore your last browsing session, reopen closed tabs, and provide quick access to the sites you visit more frequently while displaying stats, sites icon, and title. You can also tear a tab off and make it its own browsing window as well or combine it within another browsing window. Better add-on management, which adds an adviser letting you know which add-on's are slowing your browsing and allows you to remove it. New Privacy features, you can limit sites that can track your information. Full HTML5 support just means FULL HTML5 support.
IE9 loads pages almost instantly and has simplistic design. IE9 has a large back button and a small forward button. The search bar is about 1/3 of the screen while allows for a lot of tab space if you are browsing multiple sites at once. The browser also got rid of the menu bar and is available if you needed but not directly in your browsing view. Most of the screen is dedicated to your browsing experience. It reminds of you the browsers of now, Firefox and Google Chrome.
Screen shot of IE9 on Windows 7
This browser also has hardware acceleration built into the browser. Hardware acceleration is important for those who want their web pages to perform like apps. IE 9 adds this option to this this within the browser. Overall IE9 is great browser with great options and a great choice for your internet browsing needs. If I had to chose between the browsers I would suggest IE9. It has great functionally and streams video, music, loads images from sites with great pace. If you had a choice of IE browsers this is the one you want to use. If you really want to see what IE9 can do check out this video of Mike Tompkins.
Below are videos from YouTube about the announcement of IE9 to the world.
Basil Thai is a small sheik thai restaurant located in SOMA area. I had never eaten at Basil Thai before but after searching Yelp for an extended period of time I finally stumbled upon this restaurant. Yelp had some pretty good reviews for the place, with most saying that food and service was worth the visit. Now it was mine turn to really see if this was case.
Upon arriving I thought the ambiance of this location appropriate. It was dimly lit with candles on most of the tables. We were immediately greeted by the hostess upon walking in the door. So far the service was stellar. My fianace and I searched around the menu asking our waiter what were the house specialites and what was his favorite dishes. The waiter offered up his choices and we made ours. I cannot recall all that we order but I do know we ordered enough for a table of four to eat. Service throughout our visit was great. The waiter never left a dirty place sitting in front of us and only chimed in when he saw we weren't deep in our own conversation. If you wanted to go for some good thai or an intimate dinner with loved ones this is the place to go.
Here are some of my favorite items on the menu; gai satay(chicken skewers served with peanut sauce), hoi yang(scallop served with spicy sauce), and pad seew(fresh wide rice noodles stir-fried with pork, egg & Chinese broccoli), Thai fried rice.
Park Chow is local neighborhood restaurant in the Inner Sunset that has a unique menu but great food. Nancy and I have gone to Park Chow countless times and I normally get the same item on the menu while Nancy is the adventurer and tries a little of this and a little of that. On this trip to Park Chow both Nancy and I got Fusilli of Chicken & Sausage, mushrooms, tomato & cream. The sauce is white and very creamy and just taste delicious. The design on the walls is a little quirky but interesting and adds to the ambiance of the place. The service is about average but food is great and somewhere I would suggest all to go.
Happy Hour is that magical hour in the restaurant world where prices are slashed for food and drink. The restaurants are hoping that people will come in for those cheaper prices, and praying they will staying for dinner. Since I have been in San Francisco I haven't frequented as many Happy Hours as I would like but the ones I see about town are slightly discouraging. I normally see the signs outside of places or online and they always say "430pm ti 630pm" and once you go inside the price for what is consider "Happy Hour" food and drinks aren't really worth it. I should mention that in LA Happy Hours that I normally went lasted from 4pm till 8pm, and maybe thats why people in LA never stayed for dinner at these restaurants.
Well on this day in March I decided to surprise my Fiance' with a Happy Hour treat at one of our favorite restaurants. We haven't really been to the restaurant during Happy Hour before so we were concerned. We decided to head back to 1300onFillmore for Happy Hour with the hopes of maybe staying for dinner. Well this Happy Hour did not disappoint. We sat in very comfy leather chairs ate great food at great prices. We had fat fries, and no not like fat fries from Fatburger (LA thing) or from any regular hamburger joint. These were from real potatoes and had great color and taste to go along with it. As well we had fried chicken skewers, which I couldn't get enough. What is Happy Hour without $5 drinks to go along with it. Now a days I can not do the hard liquor but I can drink Wine and Champagne, funny the older I get the more I go away form the liquors I used to love for new liquors I love. Due to Happy Hour going so well we decided to stay for dinner. If you haven't gone to 1300onFillmore I suggest going, and when you go and if you go for Happy Hour make sure you get Shrimp Hush Puppies. It is my favorite appetizer on the menu, but it isn't a Happy Hour item. All I can say is we dine, we talked, we laughed all at Happy Hour. Nothing is better than sitting down with the one you love and just enjoying their company and time. That is why it is called Happy Hour.
Apple TV just completed an update in which made the new streaming Apple TV a new favorite of mine. In the newest update they have added MLB.TV, NBA Game time app, Airplay for apps, and Netflix Dobly Digital 5.1 just to name the big ticket items included in the update. I have a MLB.TV account and usually stream it from my PS3 but seeing that I now have this option on my Apple Tv makes it very well worth the money spent it. I have no been a fan of my NBA broadband package I purchased at the beginning of the season seeing that the only app that it had was on Google TV, which I almost purchased so I could watch games on my TV, or on your computer. The problem with the NBA package is that on your computer it does not show in HD, and that is a major drawback seeing that MLB, NHL and ESPN all broadcast in HD whether on your computer or on the application on your PS3 or XBOX. I have to say well done Apple because now I use my new Apple Tv more frequently than the old.
