Someone call Neil Gaiman

I've discovered a new fairy-tale punishment task: Picking up miniscule shards of broken glass out of carpet. Just lock someone up in an apartment with beige shag, smash a couple jars, and every once in a while, send a rat out to dump over the pieces your victim has already collected. Presto! Sorry, princesses, I only do it for my art.

Anyway, sure sucks having to wear sandals in my apartment now!

Another Firefox 2 post

Firefox 2 has a few slick improvements to the search box. You might have already noticed them, you might not have.

First off: If you click the search-engine drop-down menu, you'll see an option at the bottom called "Manage Search Engines." This will give you a window (actually a sheet on Mac--note that Firefox's sheets can be resized for convenience) where you can easily delete and re-order your search engines, as well as resurrect the default searches if you accidentally deleted one. I've found this super-useful; I can put my three or four most common searches at the top of the list, and just use Cmd-Up and Cmd-Down to switch between them.*

Secondly: This one's kind of subtle, but it's awesome. Maybe web-changing awesome. To check it out, go to Technorati or Wikipedia and take a look at the search-dropdown button. See how it's "glowing?"** Click, and you'll see an extra option at the bottom that lets you add a search engine for the current site.

Granted, it's of limited use until more sites start supporting it.*** But I was just over at Mycroft (had to grab some searches for Alibris and Abebooks), and I noticed that they have a glowing search box too. Two clicks later, and I have the ability to find new search engines right from the search box. Then I imagined that being available on every site I need to search sometimes, and I was like, "Yeah."

_____
* You remember the search box keyboard shortcuts, right? Cmd-K puts your cursor directly in the search box. Cmd-Up and Cmd-Down move up and down the list of engines. Opt-Down reveals the list of search engines, and lets you select one to use with the arrow and return keys. (On Windows, substitute Ctrl for Cmd and Alt for Opt. I think.)

** On New Pinstripe, it just turns the arrow green. He's still putting the finishing touches on the theme.

*** You do it with a <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="Mycroft Project" href="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/opensearch.xml"> tag; sub in your own title and plugin URL. If I'm remembering correctly, this is also the way MS Internet Explorer 7 does search discovery, and it definitely uses the same type of search plugin. Which is fucking awesome, and preemptively shanks the sort of incompatible bullshit we saw so much of in the last round of browser wars.

(no subject)

This actually looks pretty bitchin'. I like how the value-added data uses CoreData, but the base files and text that it's storing are just parked in the filesystem, like in iTunes. I'd been thinking I could use something like Yojimbo in my life, but I really, really didn't like the idea of locking my stuff up in some proprietary black box. I mean, I don't even know how long I'll be on the Mac platform, much less how long any given tool will be usable. I don't want to make any high-stakes gambles like that, you know? Give me a program I can bail from without punishment.

Open data formats, my friends. It's just like with drugs: before you start using any program, you should ask yourself what you're going to have to do when you decide to stop using it.

Everybody Walk

It's Dinosaur season again, and hallelujah. ( Here's lunch. )

Why I don't necessarily hate doing tech support for my sister

2ce: now things should sort of refresh in a while. go ahead and save the file in wordpad, then close wordpad
2ce: check the file on the desktop, and take note of its extension.
2ce: I suspect it of being txt. you want it to be html.

babiesforprofit: yeah, it's txt
babiesforprofit: or rather.txt

2ce: cool, rename it.

babiesforprofit: not txt.

2ce: regulars.html, or k_regulars.html
2ce: or something
2ce: something.html.

babiesforprofit: ok, message asking if I want to change extension, since changing may make it unstable

2ce: yes

babiesforprofit: change is good though, right?