Firefox, formerly Firebird, formerly Phoenix, was updated to version 0.8 today. It’s my preferred browser because of the optional Web Developer Extension (which actually doesn’t seem to install on the OS X version of Firefox, but if you installed it with Firebird, it still works) and keyword searching.

Update [Feb.12]: Okay, WDE wouldn’t install in my case because I already had a version installed, and that old version installed itself as read only. So when I tried to update from the old version to the new version, the old couldn’t be deleted so the installation failed. If you have an old version of WDE installed on OS X, find your profile folder’s chrome/ directory and chmod the webdeveloper.jar file to 644 (600 might work, too). You can then update WDE safely. Keep in mind that the new version will be installed read only, too, so you may want to chmod the new version to 644, too.

Web Developer Extension for Firebird & Mozilla — thanks to JtB for pointing this out. It’s a pretty amazing tool kit.

Clerks Cartoon Test Footage by Powerhouse Animation — nice Galactus head in the background.

The accompanying note says it was done primarily in Flash, which is interesting. I don’t know if there’s been a feature-length animated movie done in Flash. I doubt it’s 100% Flash. The blurring and smoke were probably done in something else.

Hopefully the movie’ll be better than the short-lived animated series. I saw both episodes that aired on ABC and I thought it was awful. I tried to get the DVD from Netflix but it got lost in the mail, so I took that as a sign that someone doesn’t want me to watch all of them.

Related: a good look at the upcoming Dogma InAction Figures (why is it in the “Apparel” section of the Previews site, and not in, say, the “Toys & Models” section?).

Today I signed up for KnowSpam service (the free trial, anyway). I had been using SpamAssassin on my mail server, and it was doing a pretty good job, catching on average about ninety percent of the spam I received. But in the past week it’s been less effective. When I checked my mail this morning, I had more than fifty emails, of which only 1 was not actually spam. SpamAssassin caught about thirty, which isn’t bad, but I have had enough.

I was reluctant to sign up when I first heard of the service a few months ago because I didn’t like the idea of making it more difficult for people to contact me, even if it was just one click of a link. But fuck it. This is war.

In the past four hours, KnowSpam has blocked about twenty junk emails, and let through the one piece of mail that wasn’t spam. So I guess it’s working.

Walter Murch: An Interview with the Editor of Cold Mountain — Murch talks about editing in general, and what it was like to edit Anthony Minghella’s $80 million picture using Final Cut Pro 3.

Related: Joel and Ethan Coen: Editing Intolerable Cruelty.

Mac OS 10.3.2, QuickTime 6.5, iTunes 4.2, Final Cut Pro 4.1.1, LiveType 1.1.1, DVD Studio Pro 2.0.3, and Xcode 1.1 have all been released within the past 24 hours. And there’s a Security Update scheduled for later tonight, too. iTunes must be downloaded, while the rest are available through Software Update.

Flash Player 7.0.19 is out.

BBEdit 7.1.1 Update — fixes my one complaint from 7.1: you can now manually refresh the HTML preview.

Mozilla Firebird @ texturizer.net — documentation, help, tips & tricks, etc.