Wizard's First Rule and The Wheel of Time

I wonder if somebody else noticed the similarities between two books:

The Wizard's First Rule, written by Terry Goodkind and The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.

I've read the Wizard's Rules series first. Then one day I started reading the The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and was amazed when started little by little noticing the same ideas, events and places.
Here is a list of a similarities I could remember:

• The "Palace of the Prophets" links to the Wheel's white tower of "Tar Valen", where the sisters ordering the magic live.
• The "Sisters of the dark" link to "Black Ajah"
• Dark friends in both books.
• Prophesies play important role in both books
• The "Sliph" points to the "Traveling Ways"
• Even the dreamwalker is around in both books

And i'm still reading. What more would I find.
Nevertheless I like Goodkind's writings more. Moreover - they are fantastic! A very good creation indeed. Is it possible that he used the predecessor's work as a solid base for his own?

Or maybe it's already a known fact about what I am guessing above?
Wizard's First Rule
The Wheel of Time

Why still use a "Work Offline" mode in browser

Some

  resources on the Internet suggest that the Work Offline feature in browser is rudiment and not useful nowadays.

There's no reason to turn it on if you have (and you usually you do) a broadband connection at home or on the go.

And the same goes for me. I do have a broadband Internet connection and a decent computer.

But still I’m fan of the feature because find it very useful.

The reason I see this feature to be helpful is that being a hardcore web-surfer I like to open a myriad of browser tabs and windows.

I

  do value them very much and like them to be always opened. I use bookmarks as well, but with the different purposes.

I do not review all the tabs during the each browsing session, but still prefer them to stay opened.

When it happens that browser needs to be restarted all this tabs and windows (the amount can be about to 70) start to drain their contents from the Internet, thus making it slow and making PC slow also.

The memory usage goes up and the PC or browser can become not usable for a few minutes, while all those flashes, javascripts and animations are loading.

That's why I find the "Work Offline" solution plays a perfect role. It restricts the Internet connection for all those hungry tabs, and I refresh only those that I need during the current browsing session.

I'll repeat myself again: I need my current browsing state with all those opened tabs. The bookmarks are the solution for another problem but not this one.

The Work Offline mode works great in Opera 10.6 (and its previous versions). FireFox (currently 3.6) also has this feature, but has some "bugs".

If I switch on the Work Offline mode and then restart the browser - it will start again with this option set off and wouldn’t be helpful in this way. This is a known issue which is addressed here.

Terminator Fake episode F1

A dark deserted street. The sun set just as a transferring membrane around me had dissolved. I’m now able to move in the past where I was sent to. I watch. I do focus on the purpose installed deep inside me. I watch. I do repeat the whole thing again and again. Target not found. This is only the beginning. John Connor must be found.

Smoke, music and laughter. John Connor sits on the sofa at someone’s party saying funny things to the girls. The door is knocked out by a powerful blow. A big man with a shotgun stands in the doorway. Everybody’s eyes turned at him.

“Well well, mister Terminator, by what chance?” John asked.

With no answer Terminator threw up the gun and almost made a shot, but someone’s strong hand snatch the gun out of him. Terminator turned the head towards the butch. Another Terminator.

“Well the Terminator number 5… 6…. Does anybody remember?”. John chuckled. As you see there are a lot of them who came before and all are under my control now. Terminator rushed toward his target but more hands appeared blocking his way.

“That’s strange they still send such peace of junk over me. Don’t they think they need something better to defeat a great John Connor….? Like T-1000….?”. John turned the head to the right from where a T-1000 cyborg appeared out of the darkness.

“Yes he is also under my command” said John.

Strong hands held the newly-fledged killer very hard so that he couldn’t move.

“You too would be programmed to serve Connor the Great soon!” John continued, rising and watching into his face. “What use can I make from you? Maybe to teach you to pedicure? Do you know what the pedicure is?”

“You’re a damn bastard John Connor!” Terminator roared. “I understand now why does Skynet hate you so much!”

“I've got an idea what would I do to this peace of junk” Connor stroke back.

Scene moves into the future. Terminator stays on the knees before one of the Skynet’s computers.

“That swine programmed me to pedicure his toes!” wept the cyborg. “And then he sent me back in the future for everyone to laugh on me.” Skynet didn’t answered but squeaked.

This is a fake episode for the Terminator movie.
Get to know the original: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator

V show. Fake Episode F1

Erica

  and her team have got a message saying that a whole V ship located in Moscow is now under the control of the Fifth Column. Shocked by the news, the New-York based resistance cell travels to the Moscow to learn the methods used by Russians.

There Erica meats Igor Menkoff - the local resistor. They are having a following dialog:

“Igor please we need to know the way you’ve put a whole ship under the Resistance’s control. The 5th Column could use your experience in every corner of the globe”

“The trick is to awake the human feelings in those geckos! They aren’t that bad as it seems at a first glance.”

“And how could you do this to every V on the ship and at such a rapid rate?”

“I can only say that … vodka - connecting people... ”

Camera then shows a two-days earlier scene. Igor Menkoff is sitting behind one of the V in a snack-bar. Menkoff folds him with one arm by the neck and asks, “Andrew, do you respect me?”

This is a fake episode script for the V series.
See the original at: http://abc.go.com/shows/v/

Customize Opera feed reader fonts

Opera supports page zooming for a long time now and does it well. This feature also works in Opera’s Feed reader. However the font size of news titles there is not customizable the same way as web-pages are.This causes an annoying disparity between them.

To make fonts bigger, go to the Tools menu -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Fonts, and set the desired font for ‘Browser panels’ item.

Return to the parent tab

Continuing talking about the web browser features wish-list, lets consider this new feature: Return to the parent tab.

Let’s examine the situation in which we’ll need such feature and see how would it solve the problem.

Remember when you are going to click some link but wish it to be opened in a separate tab so that it would not overlap the current one. Usually you would do so by right clicking the URL and choosing “Open in new Tab” or “Open in Background Tab”. That seems to be convenient enough until that after a time you decide to return back to the page you've originally come from. It is possible that you already closed it. Or you simply do not remember which one of this mess of tabs was a parent to the one in focus. This happens because there is no any “Back” navigation button for such a situation.

Returning to the parent page could be rather important. It allows you to navigate through the logical branches of your web surfing session.

Consider an example when you found yourself on some good gifts website and now you are eager to return back to the catalogue which has a link to such a useful resource.

Lets imagine where the “Return to parent” button could be placed. In Opera© browser for example:

I don’t know what exact effect should this button trigger. I have 3 ideas:

1. If parent tab is still open, then clicking on “Return to parent” button should bring focus on this tab.
2. Button could move directly to parent address, thus overlapping current (child) tab.
3. Button could open a new tab with parent address filled in.

Which would be the best? Any other ideas?

In-page bookmarks in Web Browser

Here I’ll talk about new features I wish to see in modern web browsers.
Today we’ll review the “In-page bookmarks” feature.
It relates to the navigation aspect of a browser. Let’s take Opera© (10.0) as a sample.

So what does this feature resembles. It allows placing bookmarks directly inside the page contents. This has two advantages:

1. If web page is pretty long and several parts of interest are scattered far away from each other I can put a bookmark in front of important peace of material. Then I would be able to navigate among this marks easily, since they are looming alongside the scrollbars.
2. The placed bookmarks would help in getting clue about why some yesterday's tabs in my browser are important and what significant information do they keep.

In-page bookmarks can have a description assigned by browser relying on nearby context, or by user himself.