Author: Steve

Alachua County Library Bookmarklet

 

Whenever you’re on a page with an ISBN in the URL, like Amazon or some other bookish site, activate ACL to pop-up a search for that book within the Alachua County Library Catalog.

This was generated with the LibraryLookup Project‘s Bookmarklet builder, which can build a similar bookmarklet for any library using one of 16 popular web catalog systems. Very nice. People are also turning these into Greasemonkey/UserJS scripts so you don’t even have to click; when the page loads, your browser queries the library and adds a link to the page like “This book is available now at the library!”. Some even report back how many copies at which branches, etc..

The great thing about bookmarklets and userscripts is that with a tiny bit of code you can force independent systems to work together for your benefit. Um..also because I can save these crazy YouTube videos the kids seem to love.

Feeling better, thanks

 

Wednesday morning I came down with a cold/virus/something and for three days my temperature bounced between 97 and over 100. Wed evening I had terrible abdominal pain and was paranoid it was some sort of appendicitis or something so we spent two hours at the Shands emergency clinic until I just couldn’t stand to sit there anymore (we heard some people had been waiting 5 hours). I took a triple dose of Advil and went to bed. Thursday was dull, I don’t remember much other than being supremely frustrated not being able to sleep from coughing. I came to the conclusion that I’d just have to sleep sitting up somehow. I tried this in bed, on the living room sofa and finally made it to sleep out of pure exhaustion, but only after Kathleen gave up trying to get any sleep next to me and she slept in the guest bedroom. Fed up from my 3 hrs of sleep, Friday I went to a walk-in clinic, where they tested for the flu (negative) and sent me home with antibiotics and cough medicine with codeine. I’ve been able to sleep, but I have to admit regular old Nyquil knocked me out better than the codeine has.

And now it’s a cool Sunday night. Kathleen and her mom are doing something in the craft room, Evey is roaming trying to figure out who to hang out with. Laundry’s spinning, The Last Beautiful Day is sounding great as ever. I rearranged my office desk a bit and I don’t know if it’s more attractive or comfortable, but it’s at least different and a step away from the standard level of mess. Over the weekend Kathleen finished painting the office and we finished watching season 1 of the sci-fi series Farscape. I upgraded to WordPress 2.0 and finally took my Jazzmaster to a friend to have the new bridge and tailpiece installed. We’ve loaded up the van with a bunch of equipment that we’re glad to see out of the house. Today’s been a nice time of checking off todos after a mostly wasted week.

Click2Zap Bookmarklet 1.1

 

Use Click2Zap to remove elements from the page for printing (remove text/images to save paper/ink) or reading comfort purposes.

Note: MyPage can do this and a lot more.

Get it

You must enable Javascript! (right-click, add to favorites or bookmarks)

Features

  • click2zap panel fixed to the top right of the window.
  • as you rollover elements, they are highlighted with a yellow background.
  • click the highlighted element to remove it.
  • click undo to replace elements (unlimited).
  • disable allows links to work (though you can always right-click a link)
  • use the print link on the click2zap panel to hide the panel and print.

Caveats:

  • The page author’s print CSS will still be used, so elements may already be removed for you (do a quick print-preview to find out what you still need to remove)
  • All element onclick handlers are overwritten, so you may need to reload the page to re-enable these.
  • Plug-ins/embedded media players can’t be removed, but you can try to remove elements containing them.
  • Undo sometimes shifts layout.

To Do:

  • Have a zap/keep toggle. When in “keep” mode, all surrounding elements are remove on click: potentially easy. (thanks Brian)
  • Activate print styles onscreen to see what will print by default: unknown difficulty
  • Record removed element ids in a cookie and allow one-click removal of all of them when you’re on the same site: easy-ish, but cookie code adds bloat and you could only record elements with ids.

Much thanks to Troels Jakobsen’s Bookmarklet Builder

Lilys interview

 

A brief history of one of my favorite bands. It’s hard to describe to non-musicians how Kurt’s music stands my ears on end. Of course there are the straight-up hooks for the kid in me, but there’s also the complex harmonies for the music geek in me. A piece like “The Tennis System (And It’s Stars)” is like a dozen Pet Sounds tunes rolled into 7 minutes, but little traces of ingenuity spill out subtlely throughout the albums. For further proof the world is small, two of my friends from Gainesville are now Lilys members supporting the new album. Can we finally get a FL Lilys show, guys?

The Convincer!

 

The Convincer
This contraption is genius. Designed to “convince” spectators of the importance of wearing a safety belt, the Convincer carries an unlucky participant down a sled that stops abruptly, painfully. Sandi captured this moment: the officer’s grin, the woman’s trusting smile. A moment later the woman was convinced right onto a stretcher and taken away for minor injuries.

War on spam

 

Today I had 531 comments awaiting moderation. I just moved my suspicion words (put in moderation if the comment contains) into my blacklist (delete, I don’t wanna see it) so now if you wanna talk drugs and casinos with me you’ll have to e-mail me I guess…

My Opera 8.5 Review on CNET

 

As this Opera 8.5 review took awhile to put together, I might as well post it here as well. I’ve been an Opera user since v6 after being fed up with reinstalling Mozilla and its extensions. Firefox has a lot going for it these days, but it still doesn’t feel as nimble as Opera to me, and the default install still doesn’t cut it feature-wise, so I always have to go dig for extensions that invariably muck the install up. To be fair, there’s plenty about Opera that could annoy/confuse some users so I try to cover both sides.

Pros

  • Undo (ctrl-z) opens closed tabs (since Opera was opened!) with full history. This is the handiest feature.
  • Close Opera and restart where you left off with all tabs loaded (or don’t, it’s up to you). If Opera crashes? Just reopen, everything’s there.
  • Advanced features power users expect, like mouse gestures and the two above, Just Work out-of-the-box without worrying about extensions. Search the web for how many FF users have had to uninstall, manually scrub their registries and Program Files, reinstall and redownload all their extensions. I suffered through lots of this with every Gecko product before sticking w/ Opera.
  • Install new versions over the old ones, or start fresh in a new folder and run em side-by-side. It Just Works.
  • Super customizable with the best skinning in the business. 1) click skin (it shows what your browser will look like with all your menus/toolbars instantly) 2) keep it or don’t.
  • Dead simple panel usability. It’s just a bookmark in a frame, put anything in there. I have my TaDa list in front of me every time Opera opens.
  • Instant print preview with fit-to-page. IE users are used to neither..
  • Notes is the perfect web researh tool. Copy page text to a note (it remembers the URL) then add your own text. Double-click the note to return to the page.
  • Javascript: Fastest engine on Windows, excellent bookmarklet capabilities, User JS without the vulnerabilities of Greasemonkey, and Opera allows access to it’s JS console so JS authors can get fancier JS errors in a panel.
  • Lesser target for evil than FF and IE. Of course, no ActiveX.
  • Great download manager that remembers source URLs.
  • Helpful forums and users
  • Now free and ad-free :)

Cons

  • It can’t install advanced 3rd-party extensions that dig into the chrome, etc (though bookmarklets may do the job).
  • Non-savvy web users used to IE may be overwhelmed or disable cookies/JS/images/CSS and forget how to re-enable them. If dad is used to clicking "the blue e", FF may save you some tech support calls.
  • Some sites needlessly hide features from/block it. Savvy users can usually get around these and Opera handles everything fine, but others might find it very frustrating.
  • Older versions lacked full AJAX support (used in Gmail). This fact contributes to the problem above.
  • Embedded Quicktime and RealPlayer plug-ins sometimes are a pain to get working, and may still fail if the site used incompatible HTML.
  • Opera’s error-correction is a bit different than IE and FF, so sites made by amateurs that "made it work in IE and FF" may render differently.
  • Like any highly customizable app, Opera gives you the power to really mess it up (though it can always be fixed).
  • Lacks IE/FF’s in-browser rich text editing interface, though these are mostly common in CMS’s.
  • Like all non-IE browsers, lacks ability to verify signed executables you open off the web (though signed doesn’t necessarily imply safe).