What Works for Me

I like the ir_black theme for Vim and TextMate, but I really like the ir_white version of this theme. The only problem with this situation is that I usually use Vim, and Vim has no ir_white (cue wailing and gnashing of teeth).

I’m particular enough about the Vim colorscheme I use that I finally decided to venture into the jungle and make ir_white for Vim on my own. My efforts are posted here:

Download: ir_white for Vim!

Note that I only wrote this to be meant for GVim, so I have no idea how this looks in a terminal; I assume it just inherits the default terminal colors.

I based the layout of the theme on the ir_black theme linked to above, and I based the colors of the theme on the actual IR_White.tmTheme also linked to above.

Please enjoy, and post your comments/suggestions!

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Firebug uses different colors to highlight different element attributes (i.e. width, margin and padding), but there is no documentation on the Firebug site that allows you to interpret these colors, so I’ve posted them below.

Firebug color key

• Blue: Width and height
• Purple: Padding
• Yellow: Margin

Uncategorized firebug, programming

Have you ever seen an XBox 360’s power supply? Look at this thing:

(Note my hand straining to hold this thing up long enough to take the photo.)

Seriously, what the hell is inside this thing? It looks like a vital component of the Death Star.

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I think the fact that sex feels good proves that we have free will.

I mean, if the most important procedure in all of life - reproduction - has to provide us with an incentive (the fact that reproduction feels good) to further our own species, then doesn’t that prove that we take our choices very seriously (several elections notwithstanding)?

I mean, sometimes I agonize over the most trivial decisions. I have literally, in my life, on more than one occasion stood in a cereal aisle for so long that I burn out my reasoning faculties and wind up at home eating cereals called things like “Peanut Butter Bumpers.”

Uncategorized choice, free will, religion, sex

There is a problem in our country that’s too often overlooked — even by people who struggle with it every day.

The problem I’m referring to is “Shattered Finger Syndrome,” and it can effect everyone: Though anecdotal evidence suggests that most of the people with SFS are those who also suffer from Inconsideritus, it can happen to any of us.

The symptoms of SFS in victims are as follows:

• Inability to respond to IMs in a timely fashion (even though, tragically, the person is often sitting right in front of their computer).
• Reading emails that require a reply, not replying, and then, when asked about the email in person, saying “Oh yeah, I saw that.”
• Never answering their phone. Why do they even pay for it if they’re never going to answer it?

Ancillary symptoms of sufferers may include:

• Responding to emails by calling you on the phone.
• Walking up to your desk and starting a conversation, even though you’re working.

The only known cure for those with advance-stage SFS - those who never answer their cell phones, even though you know they’re right next to them - is a complete Assholectomy.

Uncategorized, fun, real life

Do you like Achewood?

Are you tired of the Achewood RSS feed, that doesn’t include the actual comic?

Well my friends, be tired no longer! I’ve hacked together an RSS feed that will give you not only the comic, but also the alt text (the tooltip that displays when you hover over an image) for each comic!

Point your sweet little RSS reader at this URL.

Uncategorized, fun, software

The other day, I was considering putting something on Twitter rather than my blog. I considered this because what I had to write was pretty short — a sentence or two. But when I thought about it some more, I don’t think length alone should determine whether something should be put on Twitter, or whether it should be put in a blog. What matters is how long you intend the information to be valuable.

Twitter has a function whereby you can see someone’s entire posting history. I suggest that this feature is not used that often, and when it is used, only the first page of someone’s history is usually all that is looked it, so that the user can determine if the other user’s content is worth reading on a day-to-day-basis.

I really only ever look at someone’s Twitter posting history for one reason: To see if they’re someone I want to follow.

I never go through someone’s Twitter history and read old things they’ve wrote. I do, however, occasionally read old blog posts.

Why is this the case on Twitter? I don’t know if it’s the connectedness (e.g. via SMS, IM, etc.), the brevity imposed on messages (Twitter posts must be 140 characters in length or less), or what, but I do believe that Twitter is usually used - and best-used - to communicate things right now, and if they don’t get read by someone, they just float by in the river.

Many of my posts on Twitter (are you going to prove me wrong and read all of them? ;)) are jokes, or references to life events that are going on right now. I believe that the category “References to things happening right now” makes up the majority of posts by people actively participating in Twitter (e.g. know several people on Twitter, and participate in back-and-forth dialog on Twitter).

So, I guess my point is that sometimes you may see small posts on my blog, and if they’re there, it’s because I think they’re worth posterity

Uncategorized, real life, software

I’ve created a site that allows you to view RSS feeds you subscribe to in a “river” format.

A “river” format for RSS feeds takes a bunch of feeds, and displays the items from all of them, showing the newest items at the top.

So, if you subscribe to the BBC News RSS feed, the New York Times RSS feed, and a Twitter RSS feed, you’ll see items from all of them jumbled up, sorted by date — with the newest items on top.

Here’s what a river looks like:

(Note how new items appear with a big blue asterisk next to them!)

Feel free to give my site a shot! You can set up a list of feeds you want to subscribe to, and let the good times roll!

Here’s how:

1) Set up an account at http://river.pinkblack.org/user/create
2) Add feeds at http://river.pinkblack.org/user/feeds
3) View your river at http://river.pinkblack.org/river

That’s it! Enjoy! And please leave comments with suggestions and bug reports!

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Klaus’ Cookie plugin for jQuery is great, but it has what I consider to be a bug: By default, when you go to save a cookie, there is no default path specified. This caused confusion for me because, when I read a cookie, it was retrieved just find, but when I went to update that same cookie, the changes didn’t “stick.” I’ve updated the source code to make this functionality work.

Now you can really do the following, out of the box:

$.cookie(”MyCookie”); // Returns whatever’s in the “MyCookie” cookie.
$.cookie(”MyCookie”, “ChocolateChip”); // Puts “ChocolateChip” into the “MyCookie” cookie.
alert($.cookie(”MyCookie”)); // Displays a message that says “ChocolateChip”.

Download my updated jquery.cookie.js here.

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I think GridMove is a rad program (and I thank Jeff Atwood for calling my attention to it).

And nowadays, I like having my applications maximized. However, I miss my beautiful wallpaper! So I made a .grid template file for GridMove, that leaves 30 pixels of wallpaper visible on all sides of your otherwise-maximized windows.

Preview:

Download:
fullscreen-wborders.grid (zipped)

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