Opera 5 beta 1 finally came out for Mac OS X. Previously it had only been a "technology preview" which showed that it was fast though too many things didn't work at that time. I immediately downloaded it since I really want a non-Microsoft browser that works everywhere (you got to hand it to Microsoft's Mac division, they're good). Surprisingly, Opera almost fulfills everything I need.

It works with https just fine. Handled Sandbox's weird Javascript pages. Took it to work and used it on our complex html applications (we're slowly getting to the point where everything is html with Javascript, much better than trying to do it all in Java on the browser) -- and it worked as well or better than Internet Explorer. Doesn't run Java yet, but as I said we're moving away from Java at the browser so it's not that big a deal.

In terms of speed, most of the time it's very fast. Occassionally it's very slow. It renders pages pretty well, I'd say about as good as Mozilla. Default fonts are a bit big, or maybe the other browsers are a bit small. It has per-window history, a Netscape feature that I love. Still many things not implemented, though I don't notice them (not that many sites use HTML 4 Strict, let alone style sheets). It doesn't deal with cookies that have a bad "path" (such as what Steve Jackson Games uses for their internet store). It unexpectedly quits occassionally. But overall I'm quite impressed with this release. Certainly I'm considering buying it when it's officially released...

So later on that night I had dinner with Dave and Eric and his new girlfriend Barb(ara). We ate at Quinn's Lighthouse Pub, near Dave's place. It's a historic light house, moved to this location a few decades ago. Then it was sold and converted into a restaurant/bar. Relatively nice. I had the Gilroy burger, though I didn't really taste any garlic. Dave had lasagna. Lasagna is one of those "home-cooked" dishes that I can't imagine getting it at a restaurant. I can get it from my parents and when I go to a restaurant I'd like to get something that I usually don't eat.

Quinn's is a nice place. The first floor is a nice restaurant with greenery and brass. There's also a bar. Upstairs is the pub. A bar in the center and tables all around. Peanut shells all over the floor. A balcony with some tables. A few big-screen televisions showing sports games. It's a nice pub. A couple of pages on the menu with different beers. Three pages with various appetizers and foods. Not quite a family atmosphere upstairs.

Anyways, Dave is going to Singapore for a couple of months for a contract. And I though going to the East Coast was bad enough, but going overseas (and he's not coming back until his contract is over, because the plane trip is too long) is a truly horrible thought to me. He's not all that enthusiastic either but he'll probably adapt and have a fine time once he's there. Julie will visit him once for a week or two.

Barb. You know, she seems like a fine person and much more of a "guy" type of girl than Eric's last girlfriend, although I didn't a bad opinion of Sonia like other people had. And he seems to be happier, though once again I don't see Eric enough to really tell definitively. I don't know that much about Bard since I've only met her a couple of times (which is one more time than I met Sonia). She works for some sort of pharmaceutical or other O-chem type company. Hmm, maybe that's it. I'm so unobservant...

Later that night Dave and I tried to get iSpQ working. He could call me (or vice versa) and we'd establish a session, but audio and even text wouldn't go through. He was using his DSL account (PPPoE with NAT) and I tried first AOL (which really sucks nowadays, I think their firewall is blocking clients even since Opera wasn't working with AOL, and it's really slow). Then I tried using my PacBell dial-in (which is so much faster than AOL) and that still didn't work.

Definitely I can see it not working with an NAT router, since the router won't know where to redirect port requests to. Unless we set it up that way. Probably we need to get direct access to the Internet, which bodes ill since Shannon uses NAT also. We'll try it again when he's in Singapore. I'll probably have to dial-in and he can use a work machine I guess. From tests though it sounds like the voice quality is acceptable. Guess we'll see once we have a real connection going.