Just incase anyone’s wondering: HDMI is noticeably better quality than component even though they are both HD. I had figured since VGA isn’t noticeably better than DVI, the same would apply to HDMI and component, but this just isn’t the case.

All this came about because my monitor only has one HDMI input which is normally used by my computer, but I wanted to hook up my PS3 as well. So I bought a cheap HDMI switch off Newegg, but my monitor would drop the signal from time to time (I’m guessing loose cable connections on the back of the switch) and that’s just not something that you want in the middle of a video game. So, I decided to use the component inputs on my monitor for my PS3. I got the new cables for my PS3 the other day and finally hooked them up and I can indeed tell the difference. Sure, it’s technically 1080p still, but the fine detail just isn’t there. The screen is also noticeably darker. I guess I’ll go back to my switch or just manually switch out my cables (ugh).

So yeah, incase anyone’s wondering whether to hook something up to their HDTV with either HDMI or component cables, without a doubt use HDMI. Don’t learn the hard way like I did.

Description from National Geographic:

May 6, 2008—After 9,000 years of silence, Chile’s Chaitén volcano (pictured on May 3) is erupting with lava, ash—and lightning.

Since the volcano awoke on May 2, it has continued erupting intermittently, blanketing the area in ash and forcing more than 4,000 people to flee.

The mingling of lightning and ash seen above may be a “dirty thunderstorm.”

The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms.

Found via DD32’s blog.

WordPress 2.6 beta 1 is out. See Ryan’s blog for list of major changes.

This release contains the new default Gravatar options I coded and blogged about earlier.

I’ve been using WP-Super-Cache for quite a while now on my other website (I don’t get enough traffic to use it here) and it’s been working wonderfully.

Well, today Top Gear returned to the airwaves after a 6 month break causing the site to get 207,640 pageviews (that’s not users, that’s just pages loaded). The server didn’t even blink. Okay, so it was helped along by Squid, but it still did a magnificent job.

If you get TONS of traffic or are on an underpowered server, I highly recommend using it. :)

Firefox 3 came out today. It is entirely awesome and I really suggest you give it a try. I’ve been using the betas for a week or two and I love it to death.

Oh, and before you complain about the “awesome bar” (aka the new address bar), give it a few days to learn your browsing habits. It’s sorting order will greatly improve as you surf the web.

I’ve just released the latest version of WordPress Admin Bar. The new version features themes, the ability to hide items, and much, much more!

WordPress theme developers: please consider bundling your own custom admin bar theme with your WordPress theme. It’s a much slicker experience if the admin bar matches the theme. For details, check out the plugin’s theme API. It’s just a single function call and then some CSS.

Five years ago today, I made an account on some site called “Audioscrobbler”. It was a new fangled site that’d keep track of the music you listened to and create trends, history, etc. No one had really ever heard of it and I only did because I knew one of the developers who was also helping out with Audio-Tracker (a “Now Playing” image site).

Five years later, Audioscrobbler has merged with Last.fm and become the awesomeness that it is today. Oh how the times have changed.