Amidst a tangled web

Man + Baby = Hilarity

2009-06-23T06:23:45Z

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.

Man Babies has pictures of a man and a baby with swapped heads. From the textual description you might think it’s disturbing and wrong, but man are some of them funny.

Here are a few examples.

(via Techcrunch)

Shortcut to Create a New Folder in XP

2009-06-19T08:00:35Z

Lifehacker posted about a tiny but useful feature of Windows 7 – a keyboard shortcut to create a new folder.

On Windows XP, it’s still missing. In the past I’ve always used a right click with wf. It gets the job done but it uses the mouse, which is slow. Now that Microsoft has given this a more or less official shortcut, I decided to emulate it on XP with AutoHotKey.

It’s extremely simple and after using it I wonder why I didn’t do it sooner.

Here’s the AutoHotKey code to make the magic happen.

^+n::send +{F10}wf

Firefox 3.5 Almost Ready

2009-06-11T17:22:11Z

I’ve been running a portable version of Firefox 3.5 b99 (a preview release) to see what the excitement was about. I was a little disappointed. Aside from a few very minor cosmetic changes, it looks the same as 3.0.x.

I didn’t do a formal speed analysis, but it felt like it loaded pages a little faster, especially Google’s AJAX-heavy sites like Google Calendar, Gmail and Google Maps. RAM consumption was about the same as 3.0.x and there aren’t any immediately obvious new features. The majority of the changes are under the hood, as illustrated by this demo given to the Techcrunch folks. The demo has a great wow-factor, but it doesn’t affect my day to day use of Firefox.

I installed the nightly tester tools in order to install a few add-ons, but the core ones I use (mainly Adblock Plus and XMarks) were already compatible.

After a few days of running 3.5, I’m not inclined to jump onto this release early. The new features aren’t enough to warrant dealing with bugs and instability.

Best Windows Clipboard Manager

2009-06-11T16:52:01Z

The default clipboard handling of Windows is simple. It can only hold one item. This works, but can be frustrating when you’re copying and pasting a lot. To give you more flexibility, there’s a whole class of clipboard management programs out there that give you more room on your clipboard. Everything behaves normally for the standard use case of copying and pasting but instead of storing one item, they’ll store a configurable amount.

I just started using them and have found I don’t use the clipboard history all too often, but I really appreciate it when I want to use it.

The best clipboard manager I found out of a half dozen that I tested is lightweight, configurable and simple to use. It’s called ClipX. Another benefit of ClipX is that it supports plugins to extend its functionality.

Once installed it puts a little tray icon on the task bar. When you want to access other items from the clipboard, hit the shortcut or use the taskbar icon and select from the list you see.

It’s simple to use and can really boost your productivity.

Two other popular clipboard managers to try are Arsclip and ClipGuru.

Facebook Username Debacle

2009-06-11T03:38:19Z

If you’re protective of your username and use Facebook, listen up.

The Facebook blog has spoken.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you’ll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You’ll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

On your mark, get set, go!

(Hat tip to Anil)

In other news, as of today all over-the-air broadcast television will be digital.

The Best PDF Viewer

2009-06-11T15:57:18Z

Acrobat Reader is the standard PDF viewer, but it takes ages to start up and every release is slower and more bloated.

A few years ago I switched to Foxit Reader. At first it was fast and nimble, but over time, it too has become slower.

My new preferred PDF viewer is PDF XChange. It’s portable, quick to start up and has reasonable memory consumption.

If you want to go for extreme performance, Sumatra is the ultimate lightweight viewer, but it’s too stripped down for my tastes.

In-N-Out Burger Tops the Charts

2009-06-10T22:49:48Z

The humble In-N-Out burger was voted #1 burger on the Zagat 2009 Fast Food Survey. Other winners were Panera for best salad, McDonald’s for best value and best fries, Chick-fil-A for grilled chicken and KFC for fried chicken. Speaking of KFC, the Oprah/KFC coupon deal was a bust. I went to my local KFC with a coupon and the cashier told me they had run out of chicken. I asked about the chicken I saw behind her and she said it wasn’t coupon chicken. My protests fell on deaf ears.

(via Slashfood)

When to Take a Potty Break During a Movie

2009-05-21T16:45:39Z

If you’ve ever doubted the web has everything you can imagine, I give you RunPee.com.

The sole purpose of the site is to tell you the best time to pee during a movie (note: make your way to the bathroom first).

I sat through 2 1/2 hours of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves having to pee like a racehorse, but I held it because I didn’t want to miss anything. I appreciate the value of this little site.

(via Lifehacker)

Time-Lapse of the Night Sky

2009-05-21T06:12:38Z

This is incredible.

(via Gizmodo)

Tasty Tip for Keyboarders

2009-05-11T20:52:20Z

If you’re a keyboarder, or just like to do things faster than the mouse allows sometimes, here’s a handy tip.

I was installing a few virtual machines (Windows and Linux) that didn’t have mouse support because of limitations in the virtualization software. As a result, I had to do everything via the keyboard. I’ve gotten fairly adept at keyboarding in Windows, but not so much on Linux since I usually use a terminal.

But given that you can do almost anything from a terminal, I just had to open one on Linux using the keyboard. In Gnome (the default desktop environment on all three Linux distributions I installed), the two most useful shortcuts are:

Alt-F1 – Open the applications menu (arrow around to select one)
Alt-F2 – Run menu (type in gnome-terminal to open a terminal)

On Windows, the equivalent shortcuts are:

Windows key – Open the Start menu (then type p to open up the Programs)
Windows-R – Open the run menu (cmd to open a command prompt)

In virtually all GUIs, tab, shift-tab and the arrow keys will get you where you need to go. But there’s an even faster method.

Take a look at any application on your desktop right now. The most obvious one is your web browser, but any will do. Once you’ve picked one, hit Alt and look at the menu just below the title bar (most often File, Edit, etc). Notice how there is an underlined letter in each word? You can open any menu (or item in a dialog) with an underlined letter by pressing Alt-”underlined letter”. For example, in Firefox, the File menu has the F underlined. Hit Alt-F to open the file menu. Once a menu is open, type the underlined letter (without Alt) of the menu item. Arrow keys work too, but going directly to the menu item is faster.

And now you know how to use the keyboard to launch into ludicrous speed.

Have fun!