Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Linux.

• TimesOnline speaks to Margaret Atwood about her new book.
• Blogging Woolf on Alison Light’s new book about Virginia Woolf’s servant (New York Times review).
• Wired talks to Elisabeth Sladen about her Doctor Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures.
• Mark Larson posted his notes from a recent Umberto Eco lecture on how he writes.

Last week Apple announced that the newest version of their browser, Safari, was going to also be available for Windows. I’m not much of an Apple user. I used one as a kid, but these days the computers in my room either run on XP or Ubuntu Linux. After hearing about Safari being available for Windows, I became curious enough to download it. So did over one million other people.

I played with Safari for a few hours and I have to say it is very fast. That is, however, about the only thing it offers that stands out. Tabbed browsing is nothing new anymore. RSS integration is nice, but I read my feeds via Thunderbird. I’ve never found a web or browser integration I really enjoyed. The lack of plugins, like Firefox, or widgets, like Opera, really turned me off as well. My Firefox browser is deeply customized, and my Opera browser, via their speed dial feature, opens everything I use in it with a mouse click.

Safari also has some serious security issues. TechCrunch reports that there is a variety of known problems already. Wired goes as far as to ask who in their right mind would run Safari on Windows?

I uninstalled Safari the morning after I downloaded it. There isn’t any reason for me to use it; with good options like Firefox, Opera, and the new, admittedly nostalgia ridden download of, Netscape out there, Safari offer nothing that would compel me to use it.

Worth reading this weekend:

• This article from Wired highlights a lot of the stuff I hate about Myspace. Thankfully there is a Greasemonkey script to get rid of a lot of it.

• I had no idea until recently that Borges’ maid wrote a book about him.

• Torill over at the excellent Thinking With My Fingers blog has a great post about gaming and time. I am particularly interested in her thoughts on addiction.

• Tough Love by C.N. Winters is an excellent Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan fiction portraying the aftermath of a hate crime against Tara.

• Not only is Marjane Satrapi one of my favorite contemporary authors, she is also an excellent interviewee. This interview with the Star Tribune is no exception:
  
  Q So no superheroes, huh?
  
  A Not really. The problem with superhero comics is that most of the characters are men so there is no way that I can identify. And the woman always have big breasts and long legs. The only character that can be a little bit seducing is Catwoman, but she’s so mean. And then you have Wonder Woman, but you don’t believe with these big breasts she can go and make justice in the world.