super-cooper

I had been reading about del.icio.us for quite a while now, and about how cool it was. Last week, I broke down and gave it a shot. Wow. It’s pretty slick. For those of you out there you haven’t heard of del.icio.us yet, it’s a social bookmarks manager. You get an account (it’s all free), and when you find a site or web page you like, you post it to your del.icio.us account, just like you would bookmark it in your browser. The beauty of this is that it’s all public, you can view your bookmarks from any machine, others can view them, you can share them, you can see who else has the same pages bookmarked as you, you can get feeds of other’s bookmarks, the list just keeps going on and on.

So this got me to wondering. Was there perhaps a way to import all of my existing Firefox bookmarks into del.icio.us so I could have my work and home bookmarks in sync? That would be nice, would it not? So off to our ole buddy Google I went. Well, I didn’t find a way to import bookmarks into del.icio.us, but I did find Foxylicious. And oooh what find it is. Foxylicious is a Firefox extension that syncs your del.icio.us bookmarks into your Firefox bookmarks. And it will do it for you automatically everyday if you want. So now, I just post bookmarks to del.icio.us, be it at home or work, and let Foxylicious update my Firefox bookmarks for me daily. So I actually have all of my bookmarks in three places, one of which is still public. How cool is that? Very cool, I say.

Tags: computing

Her name is mod_rewrite. Ever heard of her? She’s an Apache module, and man is she gorgeous. We first met last year. At first she really confused me and sent me mixed signals. On one minute, off the next; you know, like code or something. Always leaving me wondering “Is this really going to work?” Sometimes, if I do just the wrong thing, everything comes crashing down. It doesn’t take much. But once I figured her out, it’s amazing what I’ve gotten her to do for me. Things like redirects, URL rewrites - I’m getting chills just thinking about it. Oh, but don’t anyone tell my wife about this, she’ll kick mod_rewrite’s ass.

Tags: computing

Let’s face it. New toys rule. Especially when they are geeky new toys. We got a new HP DesignJet 800PS 42 inch plotter at work a few months back, and I’ve been dying to use it. Hell, I’ve been so busy with other stuff, I never got around to printing anything on it. But I finally got mapped to it on the network and decided to put her to test with this map (200KB) of mine I made last spring. It has several very large rasters, tons of annotations, and lots of very small text; all good trials for any plotter. I must say, I am very pleased with the results and the speed of this plotter. One thing I don’t like about it is that the paper roll loads from the rear, which is pain due to the fact that our plotter is located in a glorified closet, so you can barely pull the plotter far enough away from the wall to get back there and change the roll. And man, has loading paper into plotters come a long way in the last 5 years. Hell, my 2 year old could load paper into this, if he could only lift the roll of paper. All in all, I’m very pleased with this plotter so far. But then again, I haven’t gotten any cryptic error messages on the front panel yet.

Tags: computing

As I write this, across the hall from my office, there is a professor giving a PowerPoint presentation to his class. His choice of font? Comic Sans. What kind of example is he setting? He should be taken out and flogged in public. Okay, maybe that’s too severe a punishment, but you get my point. That font sucks.

Tags: computing

Just when you think that there is no one out there that cares about you, all you have to do is go to your Inbox. Here are some emails I have received lately from some very generous and caring people (subject line followed by sender):

1. Dirty thoughts of you - Britney
2. Horneeey wifes - Joey
3. Solve your erectile problems once and for all - Lana Britton
4. Get vicodin and much more here - Barbara
5. breastplate - Reyes
6. i love you - Mitch Winslow
7. Buy cheap Viagra through us - Cleo E. Pope

Right now I would like to take the time to respond to you all, since, regretably, I don’t have the time to do so on an individual basis:

1. Britney - Perhaps I just don’t remember you, or maybe I was drunk? At any rate, I wouldn’t let my fiancee find out about these so-called “dirty thoughts” of yours, because honestly, she would whoop yo’ ass.
2. Joey - First off, at least learn how to use plurals. Secondly, I’m not interested, thank you (also please refer to the reply to Britney above).
3. Lana - Right now, I’m good. However, please feel free to contact me again in, oh, say 35-40 years.
4. Barbara - I told you, I will contact you, dammit!
5. Reyes - WTH are you even talking about?
6. Mitch - Sorry dude, but I’m not a switch hitter (also refer to earlier replies to Joey and Britney).
7. Cleo - Please refer to above reply to Lana.

Damn spammers.

Tags: computing

To quote the old man from the movie “A Christmas Story”: “It’s here, it’s here, hot damn it’s here!”

My new second monitor finally got here today! Now I have dual 18-inch LCDs, and it is truly a beautiful thing. Except now I just have figure out how to get twice the amount of work done.

<scratches chin with right index finger and thumb> Hhhmmmmm </stops scratching>

Tags: computing