I’ve rediscovered the Firefox Bookmark Synchronizer and it really rocks. I’ve got it to save on close and reload on open so all of the computers I regularly browse on will always have the latest and greatest and greatest bookmarks. I can use bookmarks for cross-computer notes and to-read lists now, too. Another killer app for Firefox. Update: Link updated, should work now.
Category Archives: Tech
Firefox Spell Checker
SpellBound, a spelling checker for Firefox. Allows you to spell check any text input field.
The Weather
It is definitely a stay-at-home and drink-hot-chocolate kind of day here in San Francisco. And I’m totally okay with that. Now if only I could get the 64-bit Windows installation disk to recognize my SATA controller, life would be good. I’m not a fan of Linux for desktop usage yet (I’ve tried it about once a year for 4+ years now) but I might be pushed in that direction, ironically, because of better hardware compatibility. This might be easier if I had a non-USB floppy drive, but I’m not inclined to go out in this weather just to get one.
Raptor Drive
The WD Raptor drive got here yesterday, now all I need to finish up this new workstation is to pick a motherboard/CPU combo. (And get matching memory.) Can’t decide whether to go P4 or Athlon 64.
Welcome 2005
At midnight I hope to be no where close to a computer, so I’ll post this now because I’m sure it’s 2005 someplace already. Thank you, everyone, for such a wonderful year and I wish you all the very best for the coming one.
Here are my resolutions for 2005:
- Build up my piano chops — On some level I always wondered how things would be different if I stuck with piano instead of switching to sax. I’d like to learn a lot more piano.
- Read more — I got some great books for Christmas and I think more offline reading would be good for me.
- Release more — I let releases build up too long, I think most things I’m doing would benefit from a shorter development cycle. I also still have a lot of code I still need to clean up and GPL, more for the *Press family perhaps.
- Write more — I’ve been happy with my code output lately, but my regular writing has suffered and I haven’t composed or arranged any significant music in about two years now.
- No more mental roadblocks — For any of the above it would be easy to say “it would be easy to do X if I had Z” but this year I’ve learned that Z is just holding me back. Physical or habitual crutches may be more comfortable, but comfort is a terrible thing when you’re trying to push the envelope.
PHP Smackdown
The PHP homepage has a phpBB smackdown, but unfortunately no permalinks. Apparently the phpBB asserted that the problem was due to a bug in PHP (which I had heard as well) when in fact it was a input validation error in phpBB. More snark!
Yearly Tasks
As the year draws to a close, and it has been a wonderful year, I find myself drawn to a few tasks that always seem to catch me around this time:
- Updating copyright years on sites that don’t use the PHP trick.
- Archiving old mail and logs to local server.
- Checking none of the low-traffic stuff broke without me noticing.
- Backing up.
- Cleaning out old/dead accounts, consolidating where possible.
- Putting everything remotely versionable into Subversion (new for me this year).
- Writing notes to old friends.
- Organizing music.
- Making lists (much like this one).
What catches up with you at the end of the year?
SlimServer
Slim Server is “powerful and free Open Source software. Not only will it power Squeezebox, but it also serves the SLIMP3 network music player or any software MP3 player on your network. SlimServer runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD and Solaris.” I’m going to set up the software a little later, and the Squeezebox looks pretty sweet too. Something for the wishlist. Might be the answer to my multi-room audio problems.
Fewer Bugs in Open Source
Research proves what open source folks have been saying all along: “An analysis of the 5.7 million lines of Linux source code shows that it contains fewer bugs per thousand lines of code than commercial counterparts.”
Planned Anarchy
No street signs. No crosswalks. No accidents. A fantastic Wired article about how removing the artificial safety nets we set up for ourself actually makes us safer. The illusion of safety is a very dangerous thing. This is totally applicable to software design too. If you put up a big notice saying “Don’t do this” people won’t read it, you have to design the interaction to encourage people in the right direction.
Venture Capital
TextMate PHP Completion
PHP command completion for TextMate, tres cool. Maybe I can do more coding on the Mac now.
PHP Caching
Just a shared memory PHP caching link to check out later. Has anyone used something like this? Is the Turck shm stuff better? Something from Zend? We shall see.
Best Software Essays
Best Software Essays of 2004 over at Joel on Software.
Post-Dinner
Bloggercon dinner was a lot of fun. It was incredibly noisy coming in, apparently bloggers like to talk. Who knew? Met a lot of new interesting people and a old buddies. I’m never going to remember all the names. I came up with Cheyanne and MJ which was fun. Carpooling is excellent, espescially with such beautiful people. Finally met Dave as well, albeit shortly, and he offered a few words on enclosures. I’m sure there’ll be much more talk on that this weekend. I had someone compare me to Dave the other day, I guess because we both have done blogging software, have strong opinions, and my site can look a bit like Scripting News when there are lots of asides.
In SF
I’ve been in San Francisco for a few days again and seen a lot of older friends like Tantek, MJ, Dave, and Dinah but also met some very cool new people like Toni, Jeremy, the lovely Cheyanne, and MJ’s sister Amy. Note that Amy’s site is Team Monkey, not T-Monkey or TeaMonkey. My flight to Houston is delayed a few hours, but thank goodness for wifi and Powerbook battery life. Finally getting around to setting up Dovecot locally on OS X.
Dovecot
Drupal.org gets a make-over | drupal.org
Tungsten T5
Palm launches the Tungsten T5 Handheld with 256mb storage and Bluetooth. Neat, can function as USB drive.
OS X Loves Memory
Thanks to the fine people at Buffalo Technology my Powerbook is now equipped with the maximum 1.25 GB of memory. The difference is amazing, like night and day. My efforts to completely switch my everyday tasks to the Mac have been hindered by the lower screen resolution of the 12″ and the sluggish performance. The screen size has pretty much become a non-issue with some monitors I inherited and Synergy, I assumed the performance problems were due to it just having a slower processor, but all my Mac friends assured me that OS X just needed memory to breathe. They were right. I want to open every program on the system just to watch it.