Browser Nostalgia ; or, Size Doesn't Matter

I am writing this in Firefox with a metric ton of plugins, and with all its functionality, it seems like the browser to me. I'm reminds me of around three years ago, when one of my friends, an open source geek, gave me the the a package for setting up Firefox (version 1.0!), which was only around 15 MB in size, whereas the huge, bloated IE installs used to be around 50-60 MB in size. 

 

At the time, my first thought was, "Hey, this thing is a lot smaller than IE, so probably not very functional – must be one of those barebones things written by a couple of coders in their collective basements".

Three years down the line, I almost never use IE. If I want a heavily functional browser, I use Firefox. For a basic, fast browser, Safari for Windows is more than sufficient. And I have learned to be properly respectful towards open source ideas developed by coders in basements.

Which brings me to this new idea for a Wikia search engine, propounded by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. It uses a fully open source algorithm for an Internet search where people, instead of machines, will actually rank pages, and things like Googlebombing will probably vanish.  Who knows, maybe three years from now, my homepage will be set to "http://wikiasari.com" (that being the likely name for the engine) for most major searches; and I will not cease to wonder.

Third Time Lucky?

If I recall correctly, I have tried writing a blog twice before now. Both times have ended up in husks of text that would appear to be written by the quintessential bunch of monkeys with typewriters trying to type out Shakespeare.

 

Hopefully, this one doesn't end up like that; or at least ends up being one of the more meaningful scripts in the same simian/machine scenario

Anyway, to introduce myself -- I'm an electronics engineer studying at BITS Goa, a university in India that mostly focuses on engineering and technology. I'm interested in a bunch of rather eclectic stuff, ranging from digital filters to Renaissance art. This blog will probably mostly consist of scattershot outpourings about vaguely interesting things.