The Processor

I learned how to prepare rice a few weeks back and frankly, it’s pretty easy when you see it being done by someone else.  I’ve seen my mom make it before and always thought it was easy but last time I was shown how to prepare rice, I paid attention.  By the way, I’m not talking about using a rice cooker, I’m talking about preparing it by boiling it in water.  It’s all about timing really.  In order to serve up excellent tasing rice, you have to know when it’s done cooking.   

So, on a mild December evening (last night), I was feeling hungry and decided it was a good time to make rice.  It turned out pretty well for a first time and I think I can blame the fact that it was a little soggy to the fact that I was watching a Leafs game while it was put on the stove.  I also couldn't find the strainer that mom uses to drain the remaining water out of the bowl so a bit of water was left over but in any case, I was able to eat it very comfortably.  At first, I thought I put in too much rice but it turns out that I put in just the right amount for two days worth.

Overall, even though some of the water boiled over and accumulated on the stove, it was a great experience! By the way, the Leafs lost...

Okay, so a few weeks ago, I wrote about my first impressions with a few Canon DSLR-based cameras and one Nikon DSLR-based camera. If you read that post, recall that I preferred the Nikon D50 over both the Canon Digital Rebel XT and XTi and at the end of that article, I mentioned the Nikon D40, which was announced but not yet released to the retail market. Well, guess what? The Nikon D40 came out close to the start of the month and I’ve been wanting to get my hands on it for a while.

So, seeing that it’s been over two weeks since the Nikon D40 came out, I decided to head on over to the camera shop close to work to get a hands-on impression. Turns out the store didn’t carry it but it did carry a Nikon 55mm-200mm lens, something I’d never seen in person before. Wow, it looked soo cool! Anyway, back to the point. The salesman was kind enough to check if the Eaton Centre branch had the Nikon D40 kit (camera + stock lens) and it turned out the the Yonge/Dundas branch had 6 of them.

Not wanting to go to the big store on Yonge/Dundas, I went to the branch that’s in the Eaton Centre, the same place where I tried out the Nikon D50. To my delight, they had a Nikon D40 sitting up on the shelf and I asked to get my hands on it.

The first thing I noticed was the bright viewfinder. It was something you have to see for yourself. By far, the brightest viewfinder on a DSLR-based camera I can remember using. It also felt much lighter than the Nikon D50 and I confirmed this feeling by asking the salesman to pull out the Nikon D50 to refresh my memory. I preferred the grip of the Nikon D50 but its viewfinder paled in comparison to it’s replacement, the Nikon D40. The LCD on the new model was large and of excellent quality and I also got to see the cool graphical representation of the aperture opening and shutter speed I’d read about in a review. It was cool but not as cool as I’d expected.

All in all, I think I’ll have to have another go at both cameras if I decide to buy one. Hmm…maybe I should try out the Pentax budget DSLR-based camera before committing to Nikon!

Never before have so many people I know gone for Hajj in one year. I can just imagine how amazing it must feel leading up to the day they leave for the beautiful journey. From what I’ve heard, it’s a life-changing experience, something that you look back and feel overjoyed about.

To those that are going, realize that Allah (subhanahu wa Ta’ala) has given you this opportunity and there are probably many people who wanted to go this year but have had their papers denied or haven’t been able to go for some reason or another. Hajj is one of the pillars of Islam, understand the importance of this and try your best to do everything’s that’s required in Hajj.

Please include me and my family in your du’as (supplications).

May Allah (subhanahu wa Ta’ala) accept your Hajj.

Now that’s a headline you don’t see in Toronto very often. We’ve been blessed with unseasonably warm temperatures over the past few days making it seem like April especially due to the rain today! That’s right, rain in November here in Toronto. I hear the weather is like this in Vancouver for most of the winter but guess what? Lately, snow storms have been raging through Vancouver and Victoria (cities in British Columbia)! Looks like we’re not the only ones in for a shocker when it comes to weather these days.

Anyway, rain doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’m someone who loves rainy weather. It’s just something about the aroma, the sights and sounds of rainy weather that make me love it. Not only is rain beneficial for plants and other things, it’s something that fills the world around you with amazing sounds. It’s truly a blessing from Allah (subhanahu wa Ta’ala).

If I’m ever outside after sunset and it is raining, I’m filled with amazement at how reflective roads are to lights. Have you ever paid attention to that? It’s a beautiful sight. Being a photography enthusiast, I often think about composing a photograph and think about how awesome it would be for a camera to capture what my eyes see. Then again, the feeling I get can’t be expressed in a photograph.

SubhanAllah.

So, since I got off work a little early on Friday, I decided to make my way down to the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto since I remember seeing a photography store in there close to the subway station entrance and I wanted to get a hands-on impression of the Nikon D50 (camera) I’ve been thinking about purchasing for the past little while.

Now, in case you’re wondering about why I’ve been thinking about that particular model of camera, wonder no more. The reason is that it was on sale at BestBuy last week and is probably the cheapest digital single-lens-reflex (SLR) based camera Nikon offers. We have a Nikon film camera and its still cared-for by my parents. It’s pretty solid and has gained quite some respect in my family (as far as respect for cameras go). Besides, it’s not just my family, photography professionals love Nikon because due to its professional-level camera lenses.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve given two other camera companies a chance. They are Sony and Canon.

Canon’s Digital Rebel XT camera is probably one of the most popular digital SLRs in the world and its one that I’ve usually kept an eye on in the weekly Future Shop flyers that we get around here. I tried out Canon Digital Rebel XT and the latest Canon Digital Rebel XTi at the Future Shop close to where I work a few weeks ago. To me, they felt uncomfortable. The grip didn’t fit my hand well and I walked away disappointed.

Today, I went into the Sony Store at the Eaton Centre and tried out Sony’s digital SLR offering. I know, it’s in a completely different price range but hey, I wanted to try out a few cameras to get a feel for how different they can get. Two configurations were on display, one being the body sans lens, the other with a gigantic lens. Both felt very heavy so that was the end of that.

Next up was the Nikon D50. It was by far the best camera I’ve sampled, both in terms of grip and overall feel. The body was solid, the controls were easily reachable and the weight was defintely less than the Sony’s offering. In other words, I’m pretty settled on Nikon.

I hear Nikon is set to release a new, smaller digital SLR dubbed the D40. I wonder if that means price drops for the D50!

Mm hmm, you read it correctly. That’s outside.

While perusing Google News today, I noticed a story about a boy who was born with his heart outside his chest. Apparently it’s not a medical first, but it’s the first time I’ve heard anything like it. The boy, Naseem Hasni, was born on October 31 at the Holtz Children’s Hospital in Florida and recently, doctors were able to put his heart back into his body. He’s expected to live a physically normal childhood although he does not have a sternum, which is the part of the body that protects the heart. Doctors are planning on taking parts of Naseem’s ribs and placing it where the sternum would normally be so that at least he’s got some protection in that area.

If you’d like to read the entire article, check it out here

Remarkable story eh?

I don’t know about you, but I’m someone who likes to know about stuff as soon as it’s announced. When it comes to news and technology-related announcements, I like knowing about it but don’t have the capacity to keep refreshing a news page or a tech rumour/announcements website. This is where RSS or Atom feeds come in.

RSS and Atom Feeds (they’re different but accomplish the same thing), in simple terms are things that announce the availability of something to someone provided that latter is subscribed to a feed. For instance, if you subscribe to the RSS feed on my blog, as soon as I add a new post, it’s “delivered” to you without you having to visit my site. This can also be done for comments on individual posts. Pretty cool eh?

Anyway, I’ve really gotten into RSS feeds after getting my iBook G4 since Safari (the default browser on a Mac) handles RSS feeds in a very convenient way. If you’ve ever used Mozilla Firefox’s RSS/Atom feeds, you know what I’m talking about. However, RSS/Atom feeds in Safari look cool mainly because they appear in the browser’s main window along with a multitude of filters and a search field on the right side of the browser. It’s a very cool setup.

However, while going through my Digg/Technology RSS feed, I came across a Top 10 Freeware Apps for Mac posting (there have been a whole bunch of Top-10-ish posting on Digg lately), and via it, to a program called Vienna. I’d heard of this program before but from what I gathered, another program called NetNewsWire overshadowed it.

I love open-source software mainly due to its price (free) but also because it’s often feature-rich and very polished in terms of presentation. Since Vienna is open-source and free, I downloaded it. There is a free version of NetNewsWire, but it doesn’t have nearly as many features as NetNewsWire and so its aptly named NetNewsWire Lite. The only reason I didn’t download it was due to the its size, a whopping 6.4Mb. Vienna weighed in at around 2.6Mb, which is very comfortable. I don’t know, maybe I’ll try out NetNewsWire Lite, I’m pretty sure it’ll serve my very basic RSS/Atom needs.

Vienna is an amazing application. It is an RSS/Atom feed viewer and management application, and that’s all it tries to do. Sure, it got a built-in tabbed browser but it also has the option of letting your browser of choice handle any item you want to see in full, as opposed to the feed view. Now, the point of this post is not to review Vienna, but rather, it’s to let you know that I’m an RSS junkie. I kinda realized it before using Vienna but it really struck me since I loaded my subscribed feeds into Vienna.

Did you notice the screenshot above? That’s the Vienna icon and the number (149) is the number of unread RSS/Atom items waiting for me since this morning. Of course, most of those I’ve already read since I have almost the same subscriptions set up in Mozilla Firefox 2 at work. I started to realize that I’m an RSS/Atom lover after I noticed that most of what I saw on Digg/Technology, I had already seen via the multitude of feeds I go through prior to checking my Digg/Technology feed. It’s crazy.

I’m thinking of adding a few more feeds tonight, the theme of which might be news in general. I’ve currently categorized my subscriptions with names such as Technology, Mac, and Favourite Blogs. Guess another category couldn’t hurt…right?

I’ve been working on fixing up my Design Project from my final year of Computer Engineering studies at University of Toronto. My group consisted of two people, namely Salman Sayany and myself. To recap, it was a conference management system built using open source tools, the highlight of which was Ruby on Rails.

We were never really happy with the kind of work we put into the whole thing so I decided to continue with the project after school ended. While applying for jobs, I started to add features here and there and tried to give the application a new visual feel. I started with the Author’s page and then moved on to the Administrator/Chair’s page with a goal of using no images, only CSS. This gave me a great opportunity to dig deeper into CSS and discover how cool it really is.

Lately though, I’ve been working on beautifying parts of the application that the user navigates through without being logged in. This means the login page, the registration page and the forgot password page.

One thing I’ve learned about web design is that mockups are very important! Prior to this project I’d only done non-web-related software development so I never really thought about color, layout, typography and other things important in web design (and design in general) but I’m finding that without mockups, it’s very hard for me to decide upon a design. I often just code mindlessly thinking up designs as I go but not with mockups. They give me direction when programming and I’ve found that my mockup to development time has been greatly improving.

Anyway, I hope to post a few screenshots of my progress soon.

I still can’t get a hold of Salman online to show him the new design!

Apple Computer Inc. updated their MacBook line of notebook computers a few days ago, with the most obvious upgrade being that of the CPU that powers it. The new MacBooks now ship with Intel’s Core 2 Duo mobile processor which, according to Apple, makes the notebook 25% faster than its Intel Core Duo counterpart. Also of note is that all standard configurations except for the cheapest model now come with a 6x double-layer Superdrive, a welcome addition if you ask me.

Today, Apple Computer Inc. took the wraps off their new MacBook Pro notebook computers. Sporting Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor and a Firewire 800 port across all new models, Apple’s professional-level portable also received a memory and hard-drive upgrade. For all the juicy details, be sure to head on over to the official MacBook Pro site (Canada).

With portables from nearly all major computer companies such as Dell and HP already on the Intel Core 2 Duo scene, Apple’s offering was highly anticipated.

Personally, I found the upgrade rather mundane, considering that Apple took such a long time to get these machines out the door. However, due to the fact that the Intel Core 2 Duo is a 64-bit CPU and Apple’s next iteration of Mac OS X (Leopard) is fully 64-bit, I’d purchase the newer MacBook Pro over the old Intel Core Duo model. Quite frankly, I see 64-bit-ness as the only real reason to upgrade if you’ve already got a MacBook Pro. Then again, I’m not someone who benefits from a Firewire 800 port so take that with a grain of salt.

Now that the MacBook Pro has gone Intel Core 2 Duo, some consumers are now shifting their eyes towards the MacBook, which still touts the old Intel Core Duo processor. I wonder if they’ll be announced at the Macworld Expo scheduled for January 2007…hmm…

Today, ‘Eid-ul-Fitr was announced and celebrated in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This day marks the end of the blessed month of Ramadhan, the month of fasting and the beginning of the month known as Shawwal.

‘Eid-ul-Fitr is not only a time of happiness and gift-giving but also of seeking forgiveness from Allah Ta’ala.

May Allah (Subhanahu wa Ta’ala) accept our fasts, prayers, supplications and charity and reward us for our good intentions and deeds. May Allah (Subhanahu wa Ta’ala) give us the strength to hold on to any surge in imaan we felt during the past month and bless us with the opportunity to witness and benefit from many more Ramadhans. After all, there were probably many people who benefitted from Ramadhan and enjoyed the festivities of ‘Eid-ul-Fitr last year but are not alive to witness them this year. Make the most of your time!

‘Eid Mubarak to you and your family!

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced an update to its Lightroom application, moving the latest beta version number from 4.0 to 4.1. I love free upgrades!

That flower photograph is one that I took a long time ago and have touched up numerous times. It’s actually a full-colour image, but I thought it looked better the way you see it now. Anyway, back to the application, I noticed that the user interface in this updated version was slightly changed and it seems better than the previous version.

For a complete list of changes in version 4.1, register and download your free copy of Adobe Lightroom Beta v4.1 and check it out yourself!

I was listening to a khutba by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf entitled “Love Has Conditions (Part 1)” and thought I’d share bits of it in case you haven’t heard it (it’s available for free in the Multimedia - Audio section of zaytuna.org).

There are many people who claim to love Allah Ta’ala but saying you love and actually loving are two completely different things. In light of this, the following two points were mentioned and an excellent example was provided for each.

1. True love is unrelenting. William Shakespeare wrote:

   Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (Sonnet #116)

<li>The lover is obedient to the beloved:

There was a woman whom a man loved very much. This woman said to the man: "Tell me about the one who loves me. Don't detract and don't embellish, just tell me the truth."

The man, who was a poet, gave her the following reply: “His state is such that if he thought he would die from thirst and you told him not to drink, he wouldn’t drink.”

And finally, here’s something I was inspired to write after those amazing examples above:

Love is like the root of a tree, firmly planted. It is not affected by the lush leaves of warm summer days nor the barren branches of cold winter nights.

May Allah make us among those who are obedient to Him and among those who love Him and His Messenger Muhammad (Allah bless him and grant him peace).

In this day and age, people have little time to spend with their family, think about the way things were and reflect on the purpose of existence. Today’s busy lifestyle may give us more money than ever before but for some it’s eroding much of what our parents enjoyed, namely, a simple life, one in which people care about family relations and think about their community more than they think about themselves. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are probably still communities like that on this planet but they’re not as common as they should be and that is a sad thing indeed.

Many people are obsessed with money because they simply feel that with money they can buy things that will make them happy. They dream about the day when they have what they want and strive each day to come nearer to it. For some people this object is that brand new car for others those stylish designer shoes and for yet others that powerful computer. If they acquire the object of their desires they boast and rejoice only to later realize that their pursuit was in vain, for a few months later, another seemingly improved version of what they strived so hard to obtain is revealed. So then, the cycle repeats. Perhaps people obsessed with technology are more prone to this than others and it’s something that’s very hard to cleanse oneself of because it requires great changes in the way one sees this life. I pray that we gain appreciation for what we’ve been blessed with and realize that there are many people in the world who have much less than what we take for granted.

I remind myself and then you, oh reader, that our stay on this planet is brief. I’d like to end this post with a hikam (wise statement) from someone in the past by the name of Abu Hazim, translated by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.

If you seek in this world what suffices you, then you should know the least of this world will suffice you and if you seek from this world what will fulfill you and you are not fulfilled by what suffices you, there's nothing in this world that will fulfill you.

It’s an amazing statement…think about it!

A co-worker who sits close to a large window in the office alerted us all of what looked like snow outside! Of course, this caused me to immediately look towards the window and to my amazement, large white puffs were falling with great speed from the sky. The droplets were so huge that it looked like it was hailing outside (okay, maybe I didn’t get a good look, heh).

In any case, the event didn’t last very long which is pretty typical of the rain showers we have here in Toronto. In a few moments, it seemed like nothing happened at all. But then, later on in the afternoon it started again, packing powerful winds, causing quite a few of us to stop working and take a peek outside.

From what I gather, we might see freezing rain tomorrow too. That’s okay, because I love the rain [smile].

Finally managed to take the effort to post here again. Not too much to say at the moment, just that I’ve updated the ‘About’ page and plan on posting with more regularity so stay tuned!

After recently using Adobe’s Lightroom application, I’ve started to draw comparisons between it and my current favorite photo-organizing application, namely, iPhoto developed by Apple Computer Inc.

My first exposure to iPhoto was with version 5 that came with my iBook G4 when I purchased it last summer. It was an instant hit with me mainly due to its compatibility with my digital camera (Sony DSC-P10) and the intuitive interface among many other things. When iPhoto 6 came out, the most appealing feature to me was the addition of full-screen editing which is something that I’ve so used to that I kind of assume it’s present in any photo-organizing/editing application. In any case, iPhoto allows me to edit various aspects of a photo such Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Temperature and Exposure and I find it suitable for most of the touch-up work that I do.

Enter Adobe Lightroom. Now this application has an interface that is fresh and amazing. The three-column design is pretty fresh and offers a new way to look at the whole photo-managment workflow. For the purposes of my needs, I found it to be equally as good as iPhoto but if find the latter’s interface far easier to navigate through than Lightroom’s.

Having said all of this, I’ve come to Aperture, developed by Apple Computer Inc. What can this program do for me that iPhoto cannot? I asked this question to a couple of customer sales representatives at the Apple Store in the Eaton Center and the only answer I kept getting was that Aperture is more for professional photography. Now, I don’t know about you but I didn’t really get much out of that. In fact, all the representatives mentioned that iPhoto 6 has become so powerful that it’s a good place to start and I definitely agree. But really, what does Aperture offer that Lightroom or iPhoto 6 don’t offer?

Now this is an application I’ve wanted to try out since hearing about it. The reason behind this desire was not because I wanted to get more out of my digital-photography experience but mainly because, well, the application is free (at least for now). Up until late last night, I didn’t have the patience to download it from the Adobe Labs because I figured the file-size was going to be huge. However, after logging in, I was amazed that the entire application is only a 9.7Mb .dmg file! Of course, there was a souped-up version also available (consisting of sample photos) which weighed-in somewhere around 116Mb or so, also a .dmg file.

Perhaps I was prompted to visit Adobe Labs because the photo-workflow application broke headlines a few days ago because it was being made available to Microsoft Windows operating systems for the first time. Yup, Adobe’s Lightroom was exclusively available for the Apple Macintosh platform until that time.

So, Mac or Windows, what are you waiting for, join the Adobe Lightroom beta!

I might be posting up a review of this application so be sure to keep an eye open for that. My first impressions of the application are amazing despite it being a “beta” version. Then again, when it comes to quality, Adobe has proven itself to be one of the best in the business.

Wow, what an amazing summer we’re having here in Toronto. With weekend temperatures soaring well above the 30 degrees celcius mark and extremely humid conditions, I’d say summer is definitely in full swing. Although it seems like it’s been a very hot summer already, I happened to catch a glimpse of an article in the Metro newspaper about how only 4 extreme heat alerts have been issued this year as opposed to 14 at this time last year. Puts this year’s heat to shame doesn’t it?

In any case, I’m not complaining, I love hot, humid weather. I’d rather be sweating than shivering, hehe. However, I can understand why people such as seniors don’t enjoy it. After all, heat and humidity make it very hard to breathe even if you’ve been out for a few minutes. In fact, on my way to a job (QA Analyst) interview this morning, I felt very warm and even started to sweat a little. We’re very blessed here in Toronto that there’s air conditioning on the TTC, otherwise I’d probably be drenched in sweat by the time I reached my interview.

In any case, for those not enjoying the weather just think back to the winter we went through. Remember all that snow-shoveling, all those extra layers you had to put on just to throw out the garbage? Exactly. Besides, most of us probably have a fan or even an air-conditioner at home…that’s something that many people in the world don’t have. Worse comes to worse, you could step out of your house (!!) and go to a mall.

Be grateful for what you have and enjoy the summer!

I’ve been working on a conference management system using Ruby on Rails and there are so many things I’ve learned about Ruby and Rails that I wanted to share with all of you so I decided to document a little bit of my happiness and frustrations on a brand new blog. Since I couldn’t think of a name for it at the time of publishing, I’ve decided to name it (brace yourself), “Tranquil-Pro”. Yes, yes, I know, how creative but hey, gimme a break!

Anyway, without further ado, check out the blog here

What a weekend for sports!

I was channel-surfing last morning and to my surprise landed on the Wimbeldon Men’s Tennis final! This year’s contenders were the brilliant Roger Federer and the amazing Rafael Nadal. What an awesome matchup. By the time I started watching the match, the two were two sets into it, with the first set looking like a clean (6-0) sweep of Federer over Nadal but things started to get heated up in the tie-breaker of the third set.

I love watching Roger Federer play his game. He’s got so much composure and he seems very humbled. Oh and he’s got amazing skill to boot, heh. This was actually the first time I actually saw Rafael Nadal playing a game as opposed to watching him in the hightlight reel of most newscasts. He’s got a lot of skill and it’s always nice to see talented young people rising up the ranks.

Tennis is such an amazing game. It’s simple enough that anyone can just pick up a racquet and play but also complicated enough for players like Roger Federer, Pete Sampras and the like to show us amazing control and spin. It really is a refined sport, there’s a lot of prestige involved (especially at Wimbeldon), there’s a rich history, there’s tennis etiquette and so much more that I feel makes the game special. Moreover, the tournament is international, attracting players coming from all over the globe which undoubtedly calls for fierce competition and a great experience for the tennis viewer.

By the way, Roger Federer won the match 6 sets to 3 leading him to a fourth consecutive Wimbeldon title…wow.

Mac owners may be pleased to note that Apple has released an update to their Mac OS X operating system. With the update, the version number becomes 10.4.7. For a complete list of fixes in this update, click the appropriate link on Apple’s Support Downloads page.

I don’t know about you but I love an update!

The Camino Project has released the latest version of Camino (1.0.2). Some improvements over v1.0.1 include security fixes and a fix allowing Camino’s bookmark metadata to be added to Spotlight’s ‘Privacy’ tab.

For those who haven’t given Camino a chance, now’s a great time to check it out!

For all you Opera (browser) fans out there, if you haven’t already heard, Opera 9 is now available for download on the official Opera-browser site (opera.com). Some new features include mini-applications called “widgets”, tab thumbnails and BitTorrent support built right-in to the browser. Check out the official Opera-browser website for more information on new features.

Having tried out Opera 8.5x, I didn’t really see a reason why I should use it compared to Safari but I’ve installed Opera 9 since it was publicly released. Perhaps I’ll write a little mini-review of the browser like I did for Shiira.

Until next time,

Happy Browsing!

I’ve come across a new browser for the Macintosh platform called Shiira. I heard about it a while ago but since then I’ve opted for Camino and enjoyed it as an alternative to Safari. After using Shiira, I think I’m going to uninstall Camino!

There are so many cool features in Shiira. One of the best is the ability to perform an expose-type gallery of all your open tabs. What an awesome feature! I’ve also looked at the Omniweb browser and liked their tab-thumbnail feature but I prefer Shiira’s expose-style gallery of tabs a lot more. It saves a lot of screen space over a page-thumbnail/sidebar implementation and that’s a big concern for me since I don’t like my 12.1-inch iBook screen to be filled with one application.

Speaking of sidebar, there’s one in Shiira too. The sidebar has vertical tabs titled: Bookmars, History, Download, Page holder and RSS. The Bookmarks tab allows you to manage bookmarks. It even allows you to import your Safari or Firefox bookmarks! The Download tab allows you to see all active downloads and pause/stop them and the RSS tab allows you to read and search all of your RSS feeds. The RSS tab is amazing. It took a while for me to get used to it because adding RSS feeds wasn’t as simple as doing so in Safari. The feature that makes it so amazing is that I don’t have to load the RSS feed contents in the main browser window. The RSS tab consists of two windows: A list of RSS feeds and a corresponding RSS article viewer. Simply click on an unread article and the contents are displayed in that part of the sidebar. I haven’t played around with the Page Holder tab yet so I can’t offer any comments on it.

I recommend Shiira to anyone who’d like to try out something other than Safari. Although both browsers are great in their own right, Shiira is definitely one of the best browsers I’ve ever used.