[Music] Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007)

It's seems strange to think that Luciano Pavarotti, world famous tenor and opera singer extraordinaire is actually dead. He died at the age of 71 after a length battle with pancreatic cancer.

I have my gran to thank for exposing me to the likes of Pavarotti as part of my informal education in the arts by her hand. She made me listen to various records and albums of the great tenor to better appreciate his gift and to understand why his much vaunted "High C" is so amazing. I always figured that she'd one day pay to see the great singer live, but sadly she did not live to see that dream become a reality.

Pavarotti's Nessun Dorma remains a true classic in my memory - no one will ever be able to sing that piece quite like him. Sure, we all swooned over Paul Potts' rendition of the classic piece but still Pavarotti was a true master.

I'm thankful that my father, Ricky, managed to gather my grandmother's Pavarotti CDs after she died. With his death, these CDs have now been passed on to me and I think this weekend will be devoted to a personal tribute to this great man.

Photo linked from Il Primo Uomo's photostream.

[Browsers] Everyone is Out of Beta!

In the weeks that I've been away from the Geeky Guide, it appears that all the major browser contenders have come out with their next generation products, so to speak. You know what I'm talking about - the new Firefox 2, Opera 9 and Internet Explorer 7.

Personally, I'm a Firefox user and I had already been testing out the release candidates that had come out prior to the official release. On the whole, I'm glad for the improvements but nothing is really overwhelming in terms of this particular product. I guess it's really hard for them to do something truly innovative since most people throw their own recommendations in through the extensions they develop. A lot of the new features in Firefox 2 mirror things that one could have through multiple extensions and the like.

I've yet to get around to trying Opera, and to those Opera fans out there I do apologize. I know people generally say it's a very good browser that is better than Firefox in many ways, but then again given the market share more sites and web services put more effort into remaining compatible with Mozilla compared to Opera.

Don't even get me started with IE7 - what everyone seems to be calling their catch-up version where they took some of the most popular features from all the other browsers on the market and put it into IE7. I've gotten so used to living outside of the IE universe, I'm in no mood to go back. With luck, products like Google Dos & Spreadsheets might eventually help me leave the Microsoft universe as well, haha.

I'll post more information as time permits and I get the chance to really put these new toys through their paces.