It started back in 2004, I was a fresh student straight out of high school. Ready to enter into the world of university-life. And here I am now, in 2008 as a fresh graduate (so long as those final assignments get marked positively – which they will). What a feeling it is!

Every day I was in constant thought of the final day. Now that it is here, well, now I have other things to worry about.

As was blogged/tweeted earlier, I’ve got a job in the fine city of Wellington with the folks at Trade Me (for those who asked, as a developer). I start on the 14th. Between then and now is wrapping up work at the University, and moving. I’m hoping the move goes really smoothly.

While in Hamilton I’ve met many great people, made many friends, and have lots of great memories. I’m going to miss this place. But the future is calling, and if I don’t leap now, when will I?

So, yup, I move. In over a week. Daniel’s Blog in Wellington. Join us!

An actual release time has now been announced, 10am PDT (California time). So that means that here in New Zealand will be 5am the 18th of June (tomorrow). When you wake up, you’ll find Firefox 3 all ready to download for your enjoyment

Extensions have already been busy updating, All-in-one sidebar, Greasemonkey, Firebug, etc etc. Firefox 3 will let you know which extensions are broken when it first starts so there shouldn’t be any troubles.

Expect to see Firefox 3 released tomorrow. Help it get into the record books for most downloads over 24 hours by hitting the image below,

Tomorrow I am off to Wellington up until Sunday.

Should be fun.

In Firefox 3, the location bar learns some new tricks. This has given in the unofficial name of Awesome Bar because it gives a lot more control. Here are some tips to using it,

Tags make it easier

Bookmarking has been made a lot easier thanks to the Star icon to the right of the location bar. Click once, and you’ve bookmarked it. You might not know that you can click again to change the bookmark properties, with a new feature known as “tags.” Fill out the Tag field with keywords about the bookmark. When you want to go back to this page, just type one or few tags in the location bar to see it.

Name and then some

I follow a forum thread which gets increasingly bigger, and I don’t want to subscribe to the forum. Creating a bookmark is useless as it would quickly go out of date as the thread is quite popular. But, as forum software tends to put the first post ID in the URL, I can use that to get to the page quickly. I could easily type in the web site name, but you can also type in parts of the URL and it will still match.

So, if I want a GP Forums thread, each URL contains the word “thread” in them, so I can type “gp forums thread” and it will give me all threads that I have been to on GP Forums, despite “GP Forums” appearing in the title, and “thread” appearing in the URL. I can add the word “gta” and then I get all threads that have “GTA” in the title.

If I want all New Zealand sites I’ve been to about Vodafone, I could go “.co.nz vodafone” and get a list that way.

Turn the frequent search terms into bookmarks

If you find yourself doing a rather common search, you can turn it into a dynamic bookmark that you can access from your bookmarks toolbar or menu. Just go to Bookmarks » Organise Bookmarks, and in Search Bookmarks type in your terms (i.e. “.co.nz vodafone”). Change your Search Area to History and you should get your results that look similar to the location bar ones (without the bookmarks though). Click the Save button and give it a name. It will automatically go into the Bookmarks Menu, you can drag and drop it to where ever you please.

What are your tricks? Comment!

Eagle eyed GPForum users were quick to point out a PlayStation 3 scam, due to the very poor presentation. If anything, this post should go into a “How not to scam people” book or something.

User meeekael posted a link to this TradeMe auction. Clearly set out to catch someone out who did not know much about the PlayStation 3, it was advertised as an 80gb PAL PlayStation 3, of which none exists (unless you change the hard drive yourself) and out of the list of games, one is a Wii exclusive and three aren’t even out yet.

After plenty of quizzes from TradeMe members, he quickly pulled it down, just to come back with a 60gb PS3 for sale. This time he wasn’t going to bother with any games, clearly he can’t do research and is out for a quick buck, so thought not to include a list of anything. Just a 60gb PS3. He even provided a picture, with his face blurred and a crudely cropped photo of a recent paper.

THIS IS FOR ALL THOSE WHO DID NOT BELIEVE ME WITH MY 80GIG. I HAVE TAKEN THE GAMES AWAY. TAKEN THE 80GIG CONSOLE AWAY AND GIVING YOU A 60GIG. YOU CAN THANK ALL THOSE WHO DOUTED ME. OH YEH THATS ME IN THE PICTURE THIS HAS BEEN SENT TO TRADEME HEAD OFFICE SO DONT BUG ME

After some hairy questions from GP members, someone commented,

Personally I think stuff him! If he wants a “legit” one from someone in NZ that he can go and see, then let him, or report him to TM for ruining yr auctions?

After getting the question answered, the same person asks,

Are they sealed in their boxes, sorry for many q’s but was scammed $665 outta some guy and no PS3 to show for it. Trying to not get caught again ya know….

Oh dear.

What is interesting is he says that “the console is brand new in the box” and “i have six units in possesion.” But, the picture?

Why does he have them out of the boxes, and why are there eight in the picture when he only has six?

Member farenheit,

Why is there a badly composited newspaper in that photo? If these are brand new, what are they doing out of their boxes?…Scam much? BAM!

The BAM!?

Hmmm, that looks familiar.

The person in that picture is actually Dr Frank Mueller, one of the people behind the PlayStation 3 cluster at North Carolina State University. Original find.

• GPForums thread

So, thanks to GPForum members meeekael and farenheit, TradeMe is a safer place. And watch out for seller naturallyforyou, apparently who’s selling things that are “good for you.”