Author: Jason Dunn

All Your Browser Crashes Are Belong to Flash!

Over the past year or so, I’ve been plagued with browser crashes of a specific type: Flash banners. There’s a certain type of Flash animation that gives IE8, Chrome, and Firefox absolute fits. Complete lock-up and eventual crash. Check out the screen shots:

chrome-flash-problems

Above: This is a Windows Live Flash-based banner locking up and crashing Google Chrome. Google seems to resist crashing the best of all the browsers, though when it tanks it takes the whole thing down – not just a single tab like they’d have you believe. I guess nothing works as well as the marketing tells us it does.

firefox-crash

Above: Here’s Firefox crashing on a Microsoft Bing Flash-based banner locking up and crashing Firefox. The behaviour is always the same: Firefox will peg one CPU core, and the memory usage will climb and climb – once it reaches around 1.5 GB, it will finally crash hard. I’ve lost count of the number of crash reports I’ve submitted to Mozilla.

firefox-bud-light-banner-browser-crash

Above: Another Firefox Flash banner crash, this time from Bud Light. Maybe Firefox doesn’t like lime beer.

firefox-crash2

Above: Yet another Firefox crash, this time on another computer, and from Budweiser.

Curious about what the actual crash report looks like when Firefox takes a dump? Dig this:

Description:
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name:    AppHangB1
Application Name:    firefox.exe
Application Version:    1.9.0.3399
Application Timestamp:    49f1091d
Hang Signature:    cc8e
Hang Type:    0
OS Version:    6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.1
Locale ID:    1033
Additional Hang Signature 1:    2de4e2a1ef83764b153393c7ddb0c147
Additional Hang Signature 2:    75d7
Additional Hang Signature 3:    fdf5d60b2d0319bb6c73afe447f9eeff
Additional Hang Signature 4:    cc8e
Additional Hang Signature 5:    2de4e2a1ef83764b153393c7ddb0c147
Additional Hang Signature 6:    75d7
Additional Hang Signature 7:    fdf5d60b2d0319bb6c73afe447f9eeff

This has happened to me on multiple computers, multiple browsers, and no, it’s not related to extensions on Firefox. The only extensions I’ve had installed for quite a while now is the Canadian dictionary, and Xmarks. But since it crashes both Chrome and IE8, neither of which have add-on extensions, I’m more suspicious of Flash itself – meaning that this problem is related to the Flash plug-in that each of these browsers use. I’ve updated, un-installed, and re-installed Flash more times than I can count and it never helped. I’ve watched as a banner goes through certain animations, and the CPU is pegged, then it transitions to another part of the banner and the CPU calms down. This is all related to the animation that Flash banner designers are using, I’m sure of it.

Because IE8 doesn’t re-open tabs when you close and re-open it – didn’t IE7 do that? – using it for my serious browsing isn’t much of an option. I fire it up when I need to check a site that I know I won’t keep open for more than a few minutes. Chrome is more crash-proof than Firefox 3.1, so I’ve been using that for the past month or so. It’s a nice, fast browser – but doesn’t render everything properly and sometimes acts funky, so I fire up Firefox on a regular basis. It’s weird using three different browsers! I haven’t tried Firefox 3.5 much since it was released recently, so I might switch back and hope that it’s less prone to “Flash Crashes”…

Jackson 5: ABC

Michael Jackson, regardless of what he had become in the latter years of his life, was a talented performer – this medley of several Jackson 5 songs shows just how talented he was, even at a young age.

Three New Amazon.com Features I’d Like To See

I really like shopping from Amazon.ca in Canada – and I’d shop even more from them if they had more products. They’re getting better in Canada, adding some electronics, but by and large Amazon.ca is a pale reflection of Amazon.com. At any rate here are two ideas I wish Amazon would implement:

  • Discount Alert: There are some books and movies that I want, but I’m not willing to pay the current price for them. Case in point: The Shield Season 7 is $49.99 right now. I recently purchased seasons two through five for $29.99, which is a great price. I was holding off on buying seasons six and seven until they dropped in price. I was checking on Amazon.ca for something else a few days ago, and decided to look up The Shield again – and wouldn’t you know, season six dropped in price by $20 and was $29.99. Why doesn’t Amazon have a way for me to flag a particular product, then notify me when that product is on sale? If a product I want to pay less for goes on sale for a few days, but I’m not told about it, Amazon is losing out on a sale. Further, if Amazon had 5000 people who flagged an item and were waiting for it to go on sale, they could go back to the manufacturer of that product and say “Hey, we have 5000 people who will probably buy this product if we can get the price down – what can you do for us?” That’s a powerful market waiting to happen.
  • Softcover Alert: There are numerous books that I’m interested in reading, but not so much that I want to pay extra for the hardcover edition. The extra size and weight of hardcover books means I’ll only buy them if it’s a book that I’m really excited about reading (typically something by Terry Brooks). It’s easy to forget the name of a book you want to read, so I’d like to see Amazon.com allow customers to flag a hardcover book and be alerted when it’s available in softcover. This would be an easy way for Amazon to rack up some extra sales. Or they could go even further and allow the pre-order of the softcover book, months before it comes out. This would be much better than what I do now, which is add the book to my wish list with a note saying that I’m waiting for the softcover version. People don’t seem to read the notes, so I end up with a hardcover version…
  • Series Alerts: More often than not, I’ll buy the first book in a series, read it, and forget about the next books in the series until many months later when they finally come out. It’s not that I don’t want to read the next book in the series, it’s that there’s no easy way for me to be notified about the new book in the series. If Amazon.com allowed me to flag a series and get alerted when a new book is released, or even pre-order the next book, it would simply show up at my door when it comes out. Again, easy sales for Amazon.com and a lot of convinience for me as a customer.

Object Collection: American Coins

I figured the 4th of July was a good day to publish my collection of American coin objects that I’ve scanned over the past week. All the coins are provided in transparent PNG format. Coins are tricky to scan – the edges on some of these coins aren’t perfect, but they should look good when dropped into a layout. I started these scans at 600dpi but had shifted up to 900dpi at the end where I scanned the $1 coin – I’ll be using 900dpi from now on for small object scanning. Enjoy!

American-$1-Coin-Front

US $1 dollar coin front
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

Continue reading Object Collection: American Coins

Quotable Quotes

When speaking of the harmony of natural law, this person said that it:

“…reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection…everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe–a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

Guess who said that? Albert Einstein. From “Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology” by Max Jammer.

Object Collection: Mexican Peso Coins

small-Mexican-5-Pesos-Front

Mexican $5 peso coin front
[Download high-res version, transparent PNG]

Continue reading Object Collection: Mexican Peso Coins

Isn’t Tooth Pain the Worst?

Of all the types of pain that I’ve been through in my life, tooth/mouth pain has to be among the worst – there’s nothing worse than feeling stabbing pain going from your jaw up your face, and there’s nothing you can do about it (I know you can relate Oilman). Last week I had the flu, and for a few days was consuming nothing but Gatorade and flat Ginger Ale – it was all my stomach could handle. After a few days of that, I noticed that I was getting some low-grade tooth pain. It wasn’t focused on a particular tooth, just a general area. I thought perhaps it was simply all the high-sugar fluids I was consuming creating some sort of sensitivity, but now that I’m back to eating regular food (more or less), the pain has gone up 100x and it’s clear I have something very wrong going on in my mouth. I spent a good part of the evening tonigh with an ice pack pressed against the side of my face. Not a great way to wrap up an otherwise nice weekend.

The New Floor, and New Floor Covering

A few people have asked what I ended up using on my floor, so here you go: they’re rubber/plastic tiles designed for a garage floor. I bought them at RONA, our Home Depot-type store here in Calgary. I didn’t cover quite as much space as I’d originally planned, but it’s enough for me to roll where I need to in my office. There are small bumps on the tiles, so it’s not like rolling over hardwood, but it’s not too bad. I ordered some rubber wheels for my Aeron chair, which will hopefully help further. I’m still getting things set up, so the wiring isn’t quite up to snuff. 😉

newfloor1

newfloor2

Object Collection: Blank British Airways Boarding Pass

I happened to find an old British Airways boarding pass when I was going through some papers, so for my first official contribution to the newly created Object Collection category, I scanned it, cloned out portions of the text, and here you go:

small-british-airways-blank-boarding-passClick on the image above for the high-resolution version (4000 x 1637, 1.75 MB).

I also created a lower resolution PNG file that has a transparent background, good for using in a scrapbook layout – you can download that here (2000 x 819, 2.8 MB). If you’re looking for another blank boarding pass, check out the Air Canada one.

Be sure to check out the whole Object Collection category to find more scanned objects. These objects are free for personal use, but commercial use is prohibited without permission. Please see my Creative Commons License for further usage details.

The “Object Collection” Category

Back in November of 2006, in the first month I started this site, I scanned an Air Canada boarding pass at a high resolution, edited out all the identification information on it, and posted it on this blog. I did this because I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, so I decided to create it and share it with others. Little did I know how popular that blog entry would become, and how many people were looking for exactly the same thing. Over the past 12 months, that one blog entry has gotten 22,868 page views, making it one of the more popular pages on this blog. I estimate that since first posting it in 2006, around 100,000 people have visited that page. The #1 Google search result for the terms “blank boarding pass”, and the #1 Google Images result is that page.

Since I’ve invested some time in improving my green-screen scanning technique, I’ve decided to launch a new category on this blog: the Object Collection category. I toyed with the idea of launching a new blog/site around this effort, but I don’t want to create more work for myself than I have to. The objects I scan will be posted to this blog, with the goal of creating a collection of high-resolution, transparent objects in PNG or JPEG (if transparency isn’t required) format. I’ll likely do them in groups of similar objects, so there shouldn’t be more than one new post every few weeks with objects.

These objects are free for personal use, but commercial use is prohibited without permission. Please see my Creative Commons License for further usage details.