And the problem is certainly not confined to my Mac, as OS X Daily recently got Safari to use up 7,909.9 % of its CPU. No, that’s not a typo, they caught Safari using up almost 8,000 % of CPU in what they call an “epic freakout”. Check out the proof below:

More often than not, the culprit is not actually Apple’s Safari browser, but actually Adobe’s Flash plug-in. Oh Flash, can’t browse with you, can’t browse without you. Or can you?

Frack Flash

Sure, many would say just ditch Flash and be done with it, but then you’re also shutting off videos, siFR fonts, and web applications that rely on Flash.

The solution?

ClickToFlash.

Like many Apple applications and plug-ins, ClickToFlash is simple, elegant, and damn useful. Since installing it, Safari loads within 1-2 bounces and doesn’t crash and doesn’t throw up more beach-balls than a rock concert, baseball game and 4th of July party combined.

So, what is ClickToFlash?

Good question. CTF is a plug-in for Safari that prevents any and all Flash from loading. You’d be surprised how often Flash pops up on a site, until you download and install CTF and see that it literally litters the web.

But CTF doesn’t stop there. As it’s name shows, the beauty of CTF is that it enables Flash by clicking on the graphic it uses to mark Flash zones. One click, and your YouTube video, siFR fonts or what have you load up and play like normal. You can spot Flash areas with this nice, pleasant placeholder image:

More than just a Flash blocker

But, ClickToFlash doesn’t stop there. It goes a step further and allows you to load .h264 videos on YouTube instead of Flash, which leads to higher quality. Other features allows you to whitelist sites and load Flash for an entire page, all with one click.

If you don’t have ClickToFlash, do yourself and your web browser a favor and install it now. Seriously. It’s free and has zero downsides and plenty of up.

I’m now using CommentLuv on this blog, and we also use it at The 42nd Estate and are planning on installing it at We Demand Videos! and at the freshly launched OTIBR. I know several of my readers also use CommentLuv and I want to make sure everyone knows of a contest going on at WPMU.org to choose the best wordpress plugin. If you use and love CommentLuv as much as I do, please head on over to WPMU.org and vote (once!) for CommentLuv as your favorite plugin.

Oh, and if you don’t like CommentLuv, well then your vote’s not welcome! Just kidding, but seriously, what’s not to luv?

Due to the Saturday Sezwho Server Shenanigans, as well as two other issues, I’ve decided to remove the Sezwho comment rating system from this blog. Hopefully no one will miss it too much and remember bloggers, you can still get your commentluv here!

The other two issues I had with the Sezwho system were the CSS popups and the “Who Am I?” link that proved near impossible to remove. The CSS popups were very tacky and annoying in my opinion and combined with today’s server outage proved to be the nail in the coffin for Sezwho on this blog. Honestly, I wish Sezwho and any bloggers using their system the best of luck.

It’s a good step for this blog, in my opinion, to minimize 3rd party services on this site in order to prevent future outages. I’ll be working on a site architecture issues over the next few days to make this site a lean, mean, blogging machine. Aside from today’s issues, this site seems to work well and is improving. In other words, to borrow a quote from one of the greatest books ever written, Don’t Panic!