It was my birthday. I was given books. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Unsurprisingly, the author ruined what would have been a fantastic story by a failure of an ending. The story was intricate, the characters interesting. Dr Iannis died pointlessly, his tale left untold. Why the author chose to neglect that and write about the rather boring moaning of Pelagia for a third of the book is beyond me. Killing him like that was also…saddening. Iannis was much, much more interesting than his daughter protagonist, who spends most of the book lamenting the fact that every male on the island seems to want her. She is a blank, the book revolving around her, so maintaining the blank and killing off everyone else is illogical.

I also received a sketchbook. Not an off-the-shelf one—Bella actually stitched each page together by hand. It’s beautiful. There are few things I have been more proud to own, that make me happy to see and use. I must admit, my drawing skills are limited, but I still savour it. Presents are rarely as thoughtful as that.

Ndubz wrote a book. I had no idea he was literate…

I’m now using Last.fm to track my music habits. It’s beautiful, I must admit. I have been doing desktop wallpapers based on my favourite artists due to the amount of pictures they make available. Apparently I listen to Paramore a lot more than I thought. And I don’t know why Cobra Starship are on there. Cobra Starship are awful.

Joanna and I are still together, though why she settles is unknown to me. I find myself watching the Matrix (the third one, whatever it’s called). I’d forgotten how progressively bad the series got. This one is the merde du merde.

I’m rambling again. I’m too tired to care. Too. Much. Work.

Localize, Localise

The extension is rigidly American. I, as a UK citizen, could only look on in horror as my Google results pointed at results which have no relevance to me and my Amazon results came up in dollars! I went scouring through the localization page, which came up with one amusing command: amazonuk. What the hell is the point? Ubiquity’s main philosophy is the ability to use natural language—but here I am, using a weird command just to get results which are useful to ~61 million people? Hm, that seems a bit off, to me.

A better solution would be to put a simple radio button choice when you download it. All the change between US and UK people would be is a switch between .com and .co.uk. This way, you could completely modify the available commands for each country, and save people giving up when they see the hoops they have to jump through in order to get utility.

We Do Not All Run OS X

Another casuality of Mozilla’s apparent one-mindedness is the user interface of Ubiquity. It’s hard to miss the brushed-metal and engraved-text styles which are signatures of Apple—except really, really badly implemented. Yes, Apple designs beautifully. But I’m on Windows. I’m not going to change any time soon. What are you trying to tell me, Mozilla? Even Apple themselves have given up the vaguely traumatic UI of Safari in Safari 4 for Windows. Take the hint.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the other available theme, Simplicity, didn’t show so little information, though I do see that it’s pretty.

So please, Mozilla, écoutez-moi. We’re not all American Mac users. Open your minds.

I’m not just being mean, either. They admit it themselves. Firefox has gone far too long without an update to integrate itself into Windows in the same way that it’s integrated itself into our hearts. In fact, Windows 7 has just gone to RTM—equipment manufacturers are now able to get their hands on it—meaning that Mozilla has bypass an entire operating system.

What’s worse is that Firefox totally lacks any theming documentation. In all seriousness, it’s totally barren. And the type of person who can figure it out themselves is typically not the sort of person who can produce a tasteful theme (I do, though, realize there are a few notable exceptions.) So, I took the challenge.

With a proud heart and a wary mind, I can give you First Wave.

Screenshots

First Wave under Windows 7 open to a verified domain.

First Wave with 3 tabs open on a 4:3 monitor.

Installation Instructions & Requirements

1. You should be on a Windows PC, preferably running 7, Vista or XP. The theme will install itself under other OSes, but support isn’t provided and it’s likely to look quite odd.
2. You must have the Stylish extension installed.
3. Go to the theme page and hit “Install into Stylish”. Simple!