Archive for June, 2006

Digg Repaired

By | 28 June 2006 | General | 15 Comments

After poking around with the CSS for digg.com, I finally came up with a nice solution for myself. After shrinking a variety of things, I got the site width down to 746px, which is roughly the width of browser windows I use. Granted that it isn’t perfect, it is very usable.

If anyone like me, uses long narrow browser windows you can apply the same CSS styles, which you can download here.

If you are using Firefox, you can apply the custom styles using Stylish, of just add the custom css to your usercontent.css file (just remember that you will need to include the proprietary domain encapsulation to my styles.

If you are using Safari, just swing over and grab Stand and point the custom CSS to the digg.css file.

Update: 13 November 2006

I have updated the css file to account for the “Set Digg Home” link not be obfuscated by text.

Also, in order for this to work in Stylish for Firefox, you need to encapsulate the text with the following:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain(”digg.com”) {

[styles go here]

}

Digg is Broken

By | 26 June 2006 | Rant | 5 Comments

I am not exactly sure where the inspiration for the redesign came from, but it has essentially made the site unviewable for me.

The biggest problem is the fixed width that is optimized for 1024×728 full screen browsing. I don’t use that. Since I use the OS X MDI I don’t have any maximized windows. They are all scaled according to how they best convey content in relation to other windows. Therefore, my browser window is closer to 800×1200 pixel (long not wide), therefore I am stuck with a horizontal AND a vertical scroll bar now. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that they moved the menu column to the left. If they would have at least just left that one the right side I could have read all the stories without scrolling.

If you like ads, you should love the new design, because it is packed. Why have white space when you can fill it with ads? That must have been their motto.

They claim that this is a revision “3″ although, it does not really do anything but break “2″ and add more categories. Hardly a full revision in my book.

I guess that I will have to go back to slashdot, or something to get my news. Digg is dead to me for now.

I Hate Email

By | 25 June 2006 | Rant | 5 Comments

For some reason, email seems to be the worst possible mode of communication known to man. Or, at least the one people feel the least obligated to respond to.

Over the past several days I have sent emails to many different people for various reasons, primarily because that is the only contact information I have for them. Now, I find myself sitting here day after day without a single response. Urgency appears to have nothing to do with the priority of people to respond to emails.

I have not received failure to deliver notifications. And, I know my inbox works, because I still get the daily spam load. So, this means that people have received my questions, and are just letting them sit and rot in their inboxes.

Unforgivable.

Dark Room

By | 21 June 2006 | General, Tools | 162 Comments

A few posts ago, I was talking about a pretty slick piece of productivity software named, WriteRoom. I have to admit that I had been using it quite a bit to accomplish quick burst writing. Unfortunately, a couple days ago I was forced to use Windows while I was working on some homework for Managerial Operations. I scoured the internet looking for a similar application for Windows only to find nothing.

The program itself is so simple; it is amazing that nothing like it exists. Actually, as far as fullscreen text editing is concerned, practically nothing exists. Granted, you can use Word and OpenOffice Writer to do a fullscreen mode that is somewhat similar, but the problem with those is that you are forced to use the traditional black on white, which is still pretty hard on the eyes.

I know there are any number of unpleasant fullscreen command line style text editors that are available, such as vim, emacs, etc… But, the problem with those is (from my perspective) that the text fills the entire screen. Now, trying to scan back and forth across the entire screen is a rather difficult and straining endeavor. Thus, one of the simple beauties of WriteBoard, it has a nice column in the center that you determine the width of.

The bottom line is there is nothing like it for Window. Or, I should more accurately say, there WAS nothing like it. :wink: I spent a couple hours yesterday, and a few minutes today developing an application that accomplishes the same thing. In fact, I am using it right now to type up this post and it is wonderful.

I have decided to make the application available to the world for download; however I am not releasing the source code, because I do not want to step on the developer’s of WriteRoom’s toes.

So, please use it and let me know what you think. There are definitely a few things that I am working on to make it the most pleasant experience possible. Perhaps the most nagging problem is the fact that I am not aware of a way to change the color of the scrollbar, so no matter what color combination you select, it is still the default color. I might just have to break down and write my own control. :???:

Anyhow, without further ado:

UPDATE: Dark Room has been moved to its own project page, which you can get to from the following link:

Dark Room Project Page

Getting Your Money’s Worth

By | 20 June 2006 | Rant | 2 Comments

I like to golf, but I am awful. :???:

This last weekend, I hit a par-3 and score a mere 44 strokes for the entire course. Now, granted you are “supposed” to get 27, but I think that my extra 17 strokes just helped justify the price of admission. Unfortunately, I don’t think the two some behind my foursome enjoyed our liberal use of strokes, because they would only wait until we made it to the green before they teed off, thus as we were trying to putt golf balls would be dropping inches away from where we were standing. How rude! :???:

Yesterday my brother’s and I hit the local Fruitport golf club. Now, I am quite proud to say that I scored a 77 on the course. Not bad you say? Well, keep in mind that, that is only for 9 holes :wink: . Par for the 9 was a measly 36. That seems like nothing when you consider that it cost more than $20 to golf there. So, I figure my extra 41 strokes was just to get my money’s worth. :wink:

I am going to be ambitious this Thursday and try to golf the full 18 at Evergreen. It should be the first time I’ve ever broken 100! Wish me luck. :razz:

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