I’ve been using Plazes for a while now to track my location as I wander around with my laptop. The concept is really cool. They have a desktop client that figures out your location based on a database of network ids and such. If it doesn’t know about the place where you are, it asks you, and the information is added for anyone else who visits that place.Earlier today, the client asked to be upgraded and I obliged. Moments later, the new interface appeared. The first thing that I noticed was that the window was slightly transparent. There’s no real reason for transparency here, so it struck me as another casualty of Apple making certain UI effects at bit too easy. (more…)
The AC adapter on my Powerbook started shorting out last week but I could usually fiddle with it and get it to work. Yesterday, in the middle of such fiddling, there was a little spark and it started to burn through the casing (and my finger). Having nothing much to lose, and not wanting to shell out $80 for a new adapter, I cracked open the case, cut out the offending section of cable, and spliced it back together.
Everything worked out and now I have a fully functional power cord once again. The electrical tape give it a kind of evil chic look. If anyone else has a similar problem with their power adapter, or if they just want to see how I did it, I put together an instructable of the process.
You’ve got 15 seconds to take a screenshot and resize it for use in a post, a Mac with a clean OS install, and a paper clip. You double click the file on the desktop and up pops your image in Preview. That’s no good, Preview can’t resize images… or can it?
Even though Preview doesn’t seem to allow you to resize an image, it can be done. Just zoom out a few steps or resize the window (Preview will fit the image to the window by default) and fire off a quick command-shift-4. That’s right: take a screenshot of the screenshot. Then, just open the new screenshot (the metascreenshot, if you will), save it in your preferred format, and upload away!
p.s. If you’re a little more patient and want a lot more power, there’s always the incredibly awesome Picnik.
I installed WordPress 2.1 today, eager to make use of some of the new plugin features only to find that there isn’t really any documentation on them. I’d like to echo the sentiment mentioned here and say that WordPress really does need stronger developer documentation. I want to be able to look to the documentation not to decrypt the innter workings of some new feature, but to get an idea of what is possible.
Problem: The Mac OS X version of the Flickr Uploadr (http://flickr.com/tools) automatically enters the filename in the title field. Contents of this field override title information that is already stored in the file’s metadata. This means that if you want flickr to read IPTC titles, you have to manually remove all of the automatically entered titles. (If you don’t know why this is a problem, you probably don’t need this script.)
Solution: AppleScript! Using the UI Scripting features present in Mac OS 10.3 and higher, this script will quickly flip through all of the photos in the Uploadr and delete the contents of the title field.
Usage:
1. Open some photos in Uploadr.
2. Once Uploadr has finished generating thumbnails, run the script.
3. Sit back and watch the titles disappear. (Seriously, sit back. Don’t switch to another application while it’s running because it’s going to be simulating hitting the delete key a lot. I take no responsibility if you don’t listen to directions and end up deleting things. You have been warned.)
In order for this script to have any point, you’ll need to have titled your photos and written the metadata back to your original files. I use iView MediaPro to do this, but there are plenty of things out there that can do this. If you happen to be be using iView, you can stick this script in its scripts folder (~/Library/Application Support/iView/Plug-ins/Scripts) and it will appear in the script menu. This offers a convenient place to run it from without having to enable the system-wide script menu.
If you experience problems, email me at uploadr [at] reidab.com.
Feel free to do whatever you want with this script. Hack at it, improve it, break it, distribute it. All I ask is that if you find a way to improve it, let me know (because I use it too) and if you start distributing your own version, take my email address out of it.
Inspired by, and based on, Harvey Ramer’s Autolink Attachment Plugin, this plugin lists attachments to a WordPress 2.x post in a list following the text. Only attachments that are not already linked to or displayed in the post text will be shown (this is mainly to prevent inline images from being listed).
Attachments are shown with an icon mapped to their file extension from Mark James’ excellent Silk icon set. The attachment’s title will be used for the link name and, if the attachment has a description, it will be shown below.
Update Feb 7, 2007: I’ve put together a new version that fixes the CSS typo (oops!), the post id issue Pete mentioned, and is now compatible with WP 2.1. There’s also a version available that just fixes bugs for WP 2.0 users.
This widget displays your WordPress archive as a dropdown menu. It supports dates, categories, and tags (if UTW is installed). Dates can either be shown in the default WP format, or in a hierarchy. The widget title may be left blank to display the menu without a title. To see what this looks like in action (showing dates in a hierarchy and categories) take a look at the bottom of this page.
To install, just toss dropdown-archive.php into your wp-content/plugins directory, activate the plugin, and add the widget to your sidebar.
As part of the redesign of this site I decided to implement my site search to support the ’search’ input type supported by Safari. It renders as the native OS X search field and can keep track of a user’s search history.
This widget is meant to be a drop-in replacement for the default WordPress search widget. To make sure other browsers aren’t confused, it checks the user-agent of the requesting browser and only serves the search element to Safari. Other browsers will get a standard text element. Optionally, this text element can be filled with placeholder text that is cleared on focus by javascript. If the widget title is left blank, no title will be displayed (which is ideal if using placeholder text).
To install, just toss safarisearchfield.php into your wp-content/plugins directory, activate the plugin, and add the widget to your sidebar.
Social calendar web app 30 Boxes launched yesterday and has been getting quite a bit of attention. The clean interface, tagging features, and sharing interface make it a joy to use but I have to say that its ‘killer feature’ is definately the ability to add events using a natural language interface (’fly to philly mar 21 6:04am tag travel springbreak’). While this makes entering events quick and easy, I wanted to make it even easier to access without breaking my workflow. I was considering writing a javascript bookmarklet when I realized there was an even easier and more elegant way to do it. I’ve long been a fan of AcidSearch, a Safari plugin that enhances the search field to access multiple search engines, and especially a feature that allowed easy access to these via a prefix to your search terms (for example, I can type ‘kg pine tar’ to go to the Pine Tar entry on the KoL Wiki). Since the process for submitting a search request is the same as submitting any other form, I constructed the proper query string based on 30 Boxes’ code and, I can now add calendar items simiply by typing ‘cal’ followed by my event description into the Safari search box.
Sometime after between April and late September of 1999 there was a dramatic increase in the number of unemployed little green magical elves. Millions of these loyal workers were unceremoniously sacked without warning. “But why?” you might ask. “What company would do such a thing?” Well, I’ll tell you: eBay.
Prior to this great round of layoffs, the elves dutifully managed eBay’s proxy bidding system. This is the system by which you can specify a maximum price that you are willing to pay for an item and have bids placed automatically at the minimum increment until either you win the auction or reach your limit. Nowadays, this is all handled by computers, but it used to be the job of the elves. An elf was personally assigned to each and every eBay user to act as their proxy in the great online bidding process.
Presumably, when eBay’s membership grew beyond a point that could be economically handled by the elfin workforce, the entire department was disbanded and the process was transferred to a digital system. Talk about your drastic outsourcing measures.
Don’t believe me? You don’t have to, there’s a full confession in the Internet Archive. Also mentioned are Umpa-Loompas that handle other operations at eBay. Presumably these fine workers have also been given the ax, as they too are absent from eBay’s present help system.
[This post comes from a combination of oregon-trail-fueled nostalgia and the release of Amazon’s mechanical turk.
