This morning, while browsing Amazon.com, I was annoyed (not for the first time) that Amazon didn’t have a link to add a book to your Shelfari.com shelf. Amazon has owned Shelfari.com for almost 3 years now, and every shelfari book page has links to but the book on Amazon.com, so this isn’t an unreasonable request.

My first thought was to search userscripts.org to see if there was already a script to do this and sure enough, there was. This is the way these things go. Luckily for me, it was broken and had been abandoned 4 years ago, so I got to do some coding!

If you don’t want to read all the blah-blah, you can get the script at userscripts.org or right here (direct install link).

Before I go any further, if you don’t know what greasemonkey is, crawl out from under that rock and scroll to the bottom of this page (and before you Chrome users start a Firefox flame-war, Chrome installs greasemonkey scripts natively!). And if you don’t know what Shelfari.com is, check out my short post about it.

The broken script, by “mathias”, puts the shelfari.com logo above the product image, and clicking on it links you to a shelfari search page for that book. I actually only had one small fix needed to make it work again. He was pulling the ISBN off the image url, which Amazon stopped doing a while ago. I updated it to use the ASIN embedded in every product page (as a hidden field).

After making the script work again, I noticed it was adding the link to every product detail page, whether it be a book, kindle, or cutlery set! That isn’t very useful within the scope of this script, so I added checks to make sure it only displayed the logo/link on book, ebook, and audiobook pages.

Clicking the Shelfari link will bring you to the book's shelfari.com page

This page comes up after clicking the link on amazon.com

Now, for those of you who don’t know what greasemonkey is you should definitely get familiar with it, as it is one of the coolest ways to customize websites to your liking. Greasemonkey scripts are small pieces of code that let you tweak websites exactly to your liking, sometimes adding tons of functionality. Its a Firefox add-on, and once installed you can install any greasemonkey script just by clicking on it, without reloading your browser. If you prefer Google’s Chrome browser, it installs greasemonkey scripts natively with no add-ons necessary!

I only did a small bit of work on this script, improving on another author’s work (as all good programmers should), but I think it’s immensely useful to shelfari users so I wanted to make it’s presence known. The next time some blog/article links you to an amazon page for a book and you want to add it to your “want to read” shelf, it’s only a click away!

Thomas: Its funny, people complain about twitter being pointless, but I have SO MANY people on facebook that update just as if it were twitter, all day long

John: i know

Thomas: they’re twittering without twitter basically lol

John: but the do more on facebook

Thomas: yeah. its cause they’re already on facebook doing tons of shit; playing games and stuff

John: right

Thomas: that was a brilliant move on facebook’s part

John: why do it on a site that just does updates then?

Thomas: exactly. They make twitter obsolete for lots of people.

What do you guys/gals think? Amirite?

Google’s API is quite easy to work with, and I’m very pleased with the results. For most people this map isn’t very useful, and at any one time there are only a few markers plotted on it, but for myself it will be quite useful, and it was a great learning process. You can view the Maine Power Outages map at http://euicho.com/power

Fortunately there are some great monospaced fonts that do scale up nicely. In my experience, it is important for me to use both my own favorite fixed-width fonts, and the great fixed-width ones below. This is because at small sized, most vector-based fonts like some below look fantastic at larger sizes, like on web pages or in print, but look fuzzy or blurry in the 8-12pt range in notepad++, gedit, etc. Conversely, my favorite bitmap based fonts only look good at one size, usually in the 8-10pt range, and are pixelated and blocky at larger sizes.

With that in mind, I present to you some smooth and delicious monospaced fonts that retain high legibility (slashed or dotted zeros, 1, l, I distinction, etc).

Inconsolata

The font that actually started me on this post was Raph Levien’s excellent Inconsolata. Spurred on by Luc(as) de Groot’s Consolas (below), Raph created a free and open source monospaced font that renders nicely at high resolutions, and looks great in print:

Inconsolata is still in development and lacks bold/italic styles, but is already in fine shape. Its major drawback is that it currently has no “hinting” support, so it doesn’t play well with Microsoft’s Clear Type technology. Everyone else should find it renders quite nicely, however.

Consolas

Developed by Luc(as) de Groot, Consolas is another nice-looking fixed-width font with good distinction between visually similar characters. Consolas is included in Windows Vista and MS Office 2007, and if you’re using only the included fonts on Vista its the only one with a slashed zero!

Consolas has full hinting instructions and works great with Clear Type.

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono is a variant of Bitstream Vera. It was designed by Jim Lyles and also has full hinting instructions. Bitstream Vera was released for use under an open source license agreement with the GNOME Foundation, so all you free/OSS developers are good to go!

I know Nyrath has his own custom made font, and it’s actually one I use frequently in notepad2 and notepad++. So, what are you guys’/gals’ favorite programming fonts? I’d love to know about any other monospaced fonts I’ve not come across yet.

By the way, euicho.com is currently not section 508 compliant, but it will be very shortly. Its something I’ve been meaning to take care of. In the meantime, at least it does render very nicely in lynx.

Starting at 1pm EST today, the OFFICIAL Firefox 3 release is in the wild!

This marks the start of Download Day 2008, an effort to break the world record for most downloads in a day, and spread the Firefox 3 love!

There are tons of cool new features in FF3, possibly the biggest is a totally reworked memory management system. Yes, gone are the days of firefox using 600MB of ram after leaving it open for a day or two with 8 or 9 tabs open. I’ve been using the beta for a month or so and I have to say I see a huge improvement.

Besides memory management, FF3 has lots of usability improvements that make it even more fun to use than version 2. Never one to rip off another site’s hard work, show Gina some love by going to lifehacker to see the Top 10 new features. They also have posts on the extensions you won’t need anymore, and more on smart bookmarks. Mozilla has some neat tips right on their website too.

So hurry up, you’re running out of time! Help set a world record by downloading Firefox 3 right now. If you’re reading this late, get it now anyway. You will NOT be disappointed and if you’re not tech savy, trust me: It only makes browsing the web easier.

Although I haven’t blogged about them much, some of you may know I have a somewhat-secret love affair with moleskines that has lasted for a few years now. Nothing quite compares to the feeling of undoing that elastic band, opening up to a fresh page, and writing down anything that comes to mind. One day when I was sketching website layouts in in my large moleskine I stepped back and realized that I needed to change my P.O.V.

The layout I wanted was sitting right in front of me! With that in mind I began making a list of the things I wanted on my desk and although I havn’t incorporated all of them (I wanted it to look realistic, but not too cluttered) I’m so far very happy with the initial results. If anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them.

This page is meant to have a non-fixed width, meaning you can shrink it down pretty far and still read entries, however you may hide the random goodies like the magazine (which is really meant to be a website title banner with a dash of fun and humor) and latest photo.

The challenge, however, was choosing the height. I assume nobody is using a height of smaller than 800px in this day and age so that was my minimum requirement and that is why you may be thinking that moleskine is awfully short. My laptop is 1280×800 so that’s not an unreasonable size, however on non-widescreen monitors it does look a little smooshed. I’ll likely make a toggle button to switch from widescreen to 4:3 sizes in the coming weeks. If you are using a smaller resolution than that, lets face it: you need to come join the modern age. If you’re on an iPhone your browser will scale the page, and if you’re on another moble device that doesn’t, use the rss feed.

I hope you all enjoy it, and as I said, if you see anything broken, or that you think needs to be added or changed, please let me know. All constructive criticism is welcome.

I think Celemony has just changed digital audio manipulation forever. Watch this video, its so awesome! They’ve created what they call “Direct Note Access”, which i call arpeggiation, or breaking a chord down to its individual notes. This may seem simple but was never possible before! We’ve always wanted it, but to my knowledge nobody had yet done it (or at least not in a consumer product with a simple GUI to boot!).

I recently came across a new portmanteau on Twitter called a “twoosh” (TWitter swOOSH)!

Coined by rentzsch, A twoosh is a twitter that hits the 140 character limit exactly on the nose. This is just one of those fun little oddities that people like to play with, but unless the poster follows up their twoosh with another post pointing it out, the twoosh goes unnoticed by all but the equally twoosh endeared… and those with OCD.

To combat both OCD and unnecessary tweets by users calling out their own twooshes, I’ve created a Greasemonkey script that indicates twooshes called Twoosh Spotter!

Example of a spotted twoosh

Quite simply, Twoosh Spotter places a little swoosh icon next to any twoosh on any twitter page.

It will also display the character count for any twitter in a timeline if you:

1. Right-click on the greasemonkey icon in your status bar and go to “Manage User Scripts”
2. Select TwooshSpotter in the left pane and hit the “Edit” button. This should open it in notepad or your default text editor.
3. Find the line that starts with “var show_count = false;” (line 33). and change the false to true.

Easy as 1,2,3! I debating turning this on by default but it may look a bit cluttered for some users so I went with the sleeker look.

So far this script seems to work great for me, but please do let me know if you find any bugs or strange behavior, or just want to make a suggestion. Also feel free to customize the script to your liking (but do leave mention of me in the source). If you don’t like my twoosh icon you can either make me a better one to distribute (please! I’m no graphic designer!) or just make yourself one and modify the script (replace that huge block of gibberish) to use your own.

To get twoosh spotter, go to http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13873.

It’s new, so I’m sure to find issues and update it frequently. If you have any problems, go back to the userscripts page and check if there is a newer version. If not, leave me a comment there or direct-message me in twitter at my username “euicho”.

Now, for those of you who don’t know what greasemonkey is you should definitely get familiar with it, as it is one of the coolest ways to customize websites to your liking. Its a Firefox add-on, and once installed you can install little scripts that add functionality or modify the way a page looks.

If you just can’t be bothered to install greasemonkey you can always use the Twoosh Spotter Firefox Add-On (You’ll have to save it then drag it into firefox to install it), but I suggest using the greasemonkey script instead as it is more light-weight and easier to modify.

Happy twooshing!

via torrentfreak.com

TorrentFreak contacted Ashwin Navin, President and Co-Founder of BitTorrent Inc. When confronted with the 50 times faster than BitTorrent claim, he said: “BitTorrent can regularly saturate your downstream capacity, which in layman’s terms means BitTorrent is as fast as you can get. The claim is indicative of the fact that BitTorrent is the global standard for P2P transfers, against which all others are compared. BitTorrent DNA took that standard up significantly, but we don’t run around making sensationalist claims to get buzz.”

note: link is to Slashdot for credit’s sake, but you can go directly to the article here, which is mostly about Louderback moving on to Revision3, a most excellent internet TV company that hosts 3 of my favorite videocasts: Diggnation, thebroken, and Systm. All definately worth the watch!

J: Well, you should develop your skills.

A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.

J: Alas, I’m busy and I have to leave soon. . . .

A: Do you think we’ll ever fool people into thinking we’re alive?

J: No.

A: Are you serious?

J: Very serious.

Read the full article at discovermagazine.com

I just came across a great little utility today, and am amazed I’ve not heard about it before now. Its called TCP Optimizer, and it’s greatly boosted my download speeds.

Why You Should Care

If you have a “broadband” connection, but it still crawls, or if your ISP advertises 2Mbps downloads but your *local* speed tester shows more like 900kbps, or if you just wish things would download faster, then TCP Optimizer can make you a happy little surfer. Now I’m sure you’ve seen annoying pop-up ads before telling you “your connection is slow, speed it up here!” or something to that effect; I know I have, and I also know they’ve made me skeptical of any free “speed improving” product. However, you needn’t worry my friends, for this little freeware util. is virus free and spyware free. Best of all, it really does work!

The Skinny

On most all Windows OSs (even XP) the network settings are configured for low-speed connections and devices. This increases dial-up speeds, but can greatly slow our superior broadband connections. TCP Optimizer works by tuning your TCP/IP parameters in the registry, mainly the networking related buffers, increasing your connection speed by as much as 200%.

The Simple Setup

TCP Optimizer is set up so that complete novices and power users alike can enjoy a faster connection. For novice users:

1. Simply download the program, run it (theres no installation), and for safety’s sake, click “File” > “Backup current settings” and save it somewhere. This will let you go back to your default settings just in case.
2. Set the slider to the speed your ISP advertises in kbps (kilo-bits, not kilo-Bytes!).
3. Choose your Network Adapter, or check to “Modify All Network Adapters”.
4. Choose the “Optimal settings” radio-button near the bottom of the program and click “Apply changes”. Reboot when prompted by the program.

Thats all there is to it! Now don’t get snarky and set the slider to more than your reported speed, as it may actually lower your rate. For power users, there are options for setting your MTU (it will even calculate the largest unfragmented MTU size for you!), maximum connections per server, QoS, TOS, DNS error caching, and multiple-site latency. Now if thats all mumbo-jumbo to you, just use the novice steps above and you’ll be humming along in seconds.

Compatibility and Concerns

I suppose you’re now wondering what the downside to this is. Well… there are none. Seriously! Lets address some concerns you may have, and whether or not it will work on your system.

This program doesn’t slow your computer down, because it changes the settings then doesn’t run again. The settings stay through reboots, and you never have to run it after the first time. In fact, you could delete it once you’ve tweaked your connection if you wish, bud it’d keep it around, as you may want to change your settings in the future.

TCP Optimizer doesn’t install anything, and you can revert to the default windows settings with a simple click of a button. It works behind routers and firewalls, and supports Dial-up, Cable, DSL, 1 and 2-way Satellite, and T1.
Supported OSs include: Windows 95, 98/98se, ME, 2000 pro/server, XP home/pro/sp2, and 2003 server.

All in all, I cannot think of a single reason not to use this wonderful utility. It does exactly what I need it to, does it very well, and is as unobtrusive as you can get. I think everyone with a windows computer should use it to get their computer’s internet connection running at peak performance. Try it for yourself. I guarantee you wont look back. Do a couple speed tests at your favorite testing site, I strongly recommend speedtest.net, use TCP Optimizer as explained above, reboot, and try the same speed test again. I bet you’ll soon be telling all of your friends about it too!

For more information on TCP Optimizerview the documentation, and check out the FAQ.

Update: Speeding up BitTorrent Downloads

If you want to further speed up BitTorrent downloads, I strongly suggest you read these three great articles at TorrentFreak.com:
Speed Up Your Torrents
Speed Up Bitcomet and uTorrent
Speed Up Your Torrents II

I was on twitter and read the following on the public timeline (a list of all public updates):

“the song ‘so much’ by spill canvas is amazing”

I thought to myself, “I wonder what that song sounds like.”

Now, when I was younger I’d have to go to the record store and buy it to find out if I even liked the band. Today, instead, I went here, which brought me here, which gave me the song.

Three hops to sample the full song. And if I like it, I can buy the album on iTunes.

Don’t ever take this wonderful thing for granted, because it could be destroyed as fast as it came into being.

PS: Its a very good song. You can tell when a person feels real love. I know, because I feel it too.

The URI string could get very large very fast, however, so the converter limits you to 51200 bytes. It also takes a little finagling once the converter spits it out, as you have to take out the single-quotes, tabs, plus signs, and carriage returns. This is done pretty easily with a RegExp search-and-replace for: ‘*’ (replacing it with nothing). once you do that, you have to strip off some bits from the beginning and end, so it looks like this: Me.

Fun stuff!

I know the idea of Microsoft finally releasing a new OS is cause for celebration among some (though for the life of me I don’t know why…), you may want to wait untill its been out for a while, before going out to grab a copy. Though it doesn’t release to consumers until Jan. 30th, some institutions can get a copy now, but as Wired writer Bruce Gain says, you probably don’t want to.

Bruce sez:

Visual splendor is Vista Ultimate’s greatest selling point — the new operating system does offer a graphically intensive interface that differs greatly from that of Windows XP. Also, Vista dumbs everything down for you, streamlining the Wild West of complex OS software into a useful product… However, I encountered several bumps in the road during testing that show Vista is not ready for everyday use by millions of people just yet — no matter how pretty it looks.

It appears Vista’s cosmetic improvements over XP come at a price. Not only will many of your older programs not run on Vista, some of your peripherals may also experience incompatability woes. Plus, lets face it, new Windows releases are always buggy while the user-base ferrets out glitches and vulnerabilities that the beta testers missed, so you might as well stick with XP for now. Actually, unless your using an application that specifically requires XP and has no existing equivilant in Linux, and barring games or course there are VERY few apps of any kind without a par or better open source equivilant, you should be using Linux anyway!

I mean, think about this: why pay for an OS when there is a free OS that not only has an endless number of variations suited to any need you may have, but also supports an endless number of free applications that run on it? Its common sense people.

And don’t give me that “I don’t know linux” or “Sorry Tom, we can’t all be computer gurus” excuse. ANYONE, even my grandmother, who has never used a computer, could install Ubuntu by herself. Yes, some distros are hard to get up and running, but most are not, and Ubuntu is the king of that domain. So do yourself a favor and instead of spending $300 on Vista, install Ubuntu for free, and dual boot it and windows. That way you can still play your Windows games and you won’t be dropped into an unfamiliar albeit user friendly environment all at once. Go ahead, wean yourself off the tainted teat of Microsoft.

Oh, and if you are really scared to install Ubuntu by yourself, here are a couple guides to make it even simpler:

Installing Ubuntu Linux
Video: Installing Ubuntu on a windows machine (Dual Booting)
and here’s another dual boot video.

Oh yeah, got a little sidetracked. Bruce goes on to say:

The Verdict
Vista’s power consumption superlatives aside, I would not recommend going out and buying Vista off the shelf or pre-installed on a PC when it becomes available. Users will likely suffer many headaches with missing peripheral drivers and a lack of backward compatibility with legacy software, and those headaches will not make Vista worth its hefty price tag.

If possible, wait a year or more after Vista’s launch to invest in the operating system. At least by then, numerous updates, hardware drivers and service packs will likely have been released.

One potential treat I hope to review in the near future is how game developers will take advantage of Microsoft’s DirectX 10 API, which Vista offers. Unfortunately, DirectX 10 games and capable graphics cards were not yet available when we ran our tests.

But… But… this time is different! Honest! You see, I just got a new job working technical support at UNET, the University of Maine System’s network that supports almost every school and library in Maine! It’s a great job and I get to play with routers in my shell acct. and help solve problems across the network. Today I took a 58 minute call, which was crazy, because it was only my second day on the phones. But non-disclosure and such, I’ll leave it at the fact that it’s a great job.

Besides that, I feel accomplished today. I fixed Madman‘s ftp issues (the username I have him wasn’t quite right), and installed WordPress 1.5 on his subdomain so he can now get to work on his photoblog!

That, however, is only half of it, because I also upgraded my site to version 1.5! You may have noticed my links and about pages being missing. Rest assured, though, that these will be resolved in the next couple of days.

The upgrade was painless, except for the fact that my posts wouldn’t show up in my template. After 20 mins of tweaking, I realized that I had not turned plug-ins off, like the directions specifically told me to. RTFM Tom. Just RTFM…

I was so procrastinatory (I don’t care that that is not a word) about upgrading because I had a lot of special formatting in my index.php file, which I thought would be lost. However after reading a straightforward tutorial on it at codex.wordpress.org, I realized it would only take a few simple steps. I know Jalb, you told me this way earlier this year, but you never imported your old style, which led me to believe it was a more involved process. Oh what a cop out, the truth is that I’m a horiffic procrastinator–a point I’m sure you all already know all too well.

I also upgraded my version of gallery, which needs drastic formatting changes. It’ll be done after I resolve my blog issues. Then I will update it with tons of new photos. For now, I’ll leave you with a halloween gift: Amme, her old roommate Becky, and I in our Halloween costumes. I’m wearing facepaint, going as a Dia del los Muertos style priest, Amme is a dark faerie, and Becky is a punker girl.

Update: I fixed my RSS 2.0!!!
The problem: A plug-in I was using had extra white space in it!

“What the heck is a TiddlyWiki,” you ask? Well duh! Its a reusable non-linear personal web notebook.

Please Read On…

“What does that mean?”

TiddlyWiki is a single, self-contained html file, like a web page. It is like a blog, but each entry is like a little index card, called a tiddler. Before I really lose you, this is what it looks like. Each entry in the center of the screen is a tiddler. Go play around with it, close and open some tiddlers. Your changes wont affect the website once you reload or leave it.

A TiddlyWiki is like a blog because it’s divided up into neat little chunks, but it encourages you to read it by hyperlinking rather than sequentially. So instead of reading one long page in a notebook to find something, you have a pile of index cards (tiddlers) that are searchable, tagged, and link to each other. Picture yourself selecting only the index cards you want to read, and laying them down in a column on the desk in front of you. That is what TiddlyWiki does with tiddlers on your browser. It’s like a wiki because anybody can edit it. Saving it is another topic.

“I’m still not quite following you.”

I know, its a difficult concept to grasp, but stick with me here! Once you get your brain around the concept, it’s so easy to use, and so versitile!

TiddlyWiki isn’t just a blog with short entries, because YOU customize it as you use it. As for what it actually is comprised of, its just one html file. So go to this tiddler and follow the simple one click instruction to save your own blank TiddlyWiki on your computer. Then you can save your changes. Some people use TiddlyWiki as a webpage. They can easily edit it on their computer, and upload it to the web where it can be viewed in it’s own wonderful fashion, but not edited by readers.

It’s written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to run on any modern browser without needing any ServerSide logic. It allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext documents that can be posted to any web server, sent by email or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick.

“So it’s a personal wiki then?”

Almost. Though TiddlyWiki tends to follow Wiki concepts, it diverges in one key area: Presentation. Most Wikis are page-oriented: They present content and WikiWord links, but when you click on a link, the Wiki opens a new page of content. You view content a page at a time. To go back to the calling page, you click the Back button on your browser. This is very useful for long articles. The Wikipedia is an excellent example of this concept.

TiddlyWiki, however, is more element-oriented. TiddlyWiki presents content and WikiWord links, but when you click a link, the content pops open in its own space on the same page. The huge advantage of this is that you are seeing the linked content in context along with the content of the calling link. It really makes working with the content more intuitive because you see not only the related information, but you see it with what it’s related to. This is especially useful when using TiddlyWiki for Notes and Documentation. The caveat to this is that it doesn’t work that well for long articles. TiddlyWiki is more suited to MicroContent or short, related chunks of information.

“Ah, I see! So what use is it?”

TiddlyWiki has almost limitless possibilities:

• It works great as a documentation manager for products, software, etc.
• Do you have a desktop full of tiny .txt file reminders and notes? It can store little bits of information, reminders, and notes like that with ease.
• It makes a great FAQ page.
• Turn it into a todo list, with items as tiddlers.
• Some use it as a blog.
• Some use it as a website.
• Make it your own personal dictionary/encyclopedia.

Or, if you require more than TiddlyWiki can do, try one of the multitude of adaptations:

• Jacques Turbé’s TidliPo, in French
• Joe Raii’s Siglet
• Jároli József’s MagyarTiddlyWiki in Hungarian
• Yoshimov’s EncryptedTiddlyWiki
• Tiago Dionizio’s TsWiki using Tcl and SQLite
• Tim Morgan’s ZiddlyWiki based on Zope
• Steve Rumsby’s YetAnotherTiddlyWikiAdaptation
• Phono Hawk’s PerlTiddlyWiki
• Nathan Bower’s GTDTiddlyWiki
• Simon Baird’s homepage with various enhancements including a SortableGrid
• Geet Duggal’s PileTiddly
• Dan Phiffer’s TiddlyWikiRemote at http://phiffer.org/tiddly/
• Jonny LeRoy’s TiddlyTagWiki
• Jody Foo’s TagglyWiki
• Christian Hauck’s
• Tony Lownds’s TiddlyHacks
• Tim Cuthbertson and MattGiuca’s TiddlyWikiCSS
• Patrick Curry and GabrielJeffrey’s PhpTiddlyWiki
• There’s also Kevem Buangga’s TiddlyWikiClone

“Can I see some examples?”

Sure! Many people are using TiddlyWiki for many different reasons:

• Christopher James has compiled a comprehensive guide to TabletPCs at http://www.tabletpcwiki.net/
• Miguel Centellas has created an extensive guide to Bolivian politics at http://www.centellas.org/politics/politiddly.html
• Bruno Tiago Rodrigues has created a geocaching community site in Portuguese at http://travelbugrace.geocaching-pt.net/
• Charles Stross, a celebrated British ScienceFiction writer, has used TiddlyWiki for his ‘Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds’ at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/toughguide.html
• Kristoffer Nilaus Olsen, a member of the Danish Student Group of Amnesty International, has used TiddlyWiki to collate reports of breaches of human rights. His site is at http://www.resultat.dk/sg/tw/students.html
• Elise Springer, a philospher at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA, is using TiddlyWiki for her homepage at http://espringer.web.wesleyan.edu/
• Martin Silcock, an brand researcher working with Millward Brown, is using TiddlyWiki for his homepage at http://www.explorate.co.uk/
• Many people are using the GTDTiddlyWiki variant for personal productivity, and there’s been some interesting experiments in TiddlyWikiFiction

Help, Tips, and Resources

If you still can’t get your head around TiddlyWiki, just download the html file and play with it! You’ll see its easy as pie.
I suggest you check the TiddlyWiki website first, as Jeremy has really streamlined the TiddlyWiki homepage.

There are many resources for Tiddlywiki, a lot more than when we first wrote about it anyway! A great beginner’s guide is at TiddlyWiki for the Rest of Us. For a good guide, check out the TiddlyWiki Guides wiki, or TW Help

If you have a specific question, check the TiddlyWikiFAQ by the Bairds, or drop me a comment! And if you’re looking for formatting help (embedding images, making text different colors, etc.) then check out the TiddlyWiki Cheat Sheat provided by Dmitri Popov, or the formatting guide at TwHelp.

For fun tips, check out Jim Barr’s TiddlyWikiTips.com site. And lastly for plugins, extensions, macros, and styles, see Jeremy’s list of content publishers.

I do hope you give TiddlyWiki a try. Its really fun to play around with, and has still, two years later, completely changed the way I save small bits of information on my computer.

PS: The Official Euicho.com Tiddlywiki is Here.

Welcome to Google Earth.
Google Earth is a 3D globe on your pc. It allows you to type in any address, or coordinates, and it zooms from space down to the address. On my PC (and 4Mbps cable connection) it takes several seconds for the image to come into focus as it streams the data from Google’s vast satellite image aquisitions, but it’s well worth it when done, especially in metropolitan areas where the resolutions allow you to make out the models of some cars on the streets (sort-of…).

With the controls, one can zoom, rotate, and change viewing angle. I personally like to hold down a rotate button and get vertigo until I fall out of my chair.

To get to places, there are Fly To, Location, and Direction searches. Once viewing an area, one can toggle pointers for lodging, road labels, terrain, dining pointers, borders, and building pointers. Once can also set custom placemarks to mark areas of interest for future reference.

Local search lets you search for restaurants, hotels, and driving directions. Layers make it easy to layer multiple searches, save results to folders, and share them with other users. Some current layers show parks, schools, hospitals, airports, and shopping.

Google touts the program as being useful for planning a trip, getting driving directions, finding a house or business, or just exploring the world. I’ve used their satellite imaging on maps.google.com in the past to find NIKE and GLOBECOM sites around Maine, and this will definately make it easier and more fun to do things like that.

These are just a few of the features in the program. I strongly suggest downloading it now (completely free, no registration).

via earth.google.com

The idea is simple. It’s a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route. We invite you to try it now.

Google Earth is free for personal use. You may (optionally) choose to upgrade to Google Earth Plus.

Google Earth Plus gets you:

• GPS integration – read tracks and waypoints from your GPS.
• Higher resolution printing (greater than screen resolution).
• Customer support via email (not just web).
• Annotation – adds draw/sketch tools for richer annotations (can be shared as KML).
• Data importer – read address points from .csv files.

Google Earth Plus is aimed more at cartographers and map enthusiests.

While how to obtain pirated goods, and how to stay out of trouble, are common knowledge to most every power-user, even some technophiles don’t know how that content gets to the networks they download it from (ie: P2P networks).

Most people today believe that when the latest album or movie shows up in the search results of their client of choice, it is because somebody bought said medium, and ripped it and shared it on the network in exchange for others doing the same thing. This, however, is not quite how it works in the real world.

To find out how it really works, and where you’re pirated content really comes from, read this excelent article by Wired about The Shadow Internet. It is a must read.

see also:
Profits from Piracy
Piracy Paranoia Proves Counterproductive
Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution

I re-drew a design I’d come up with a while ago, but it doesn’t convey the attitude I want to get across, its too emo/AFI, so I’ve scrapped it. So far that makes 4. I like the personal dingbat idea Andrei talks about. They have a simple elegance and universality about them. I have 15 tabs open in Firefox as I am writing this (blasted A.D.D.), and every one of them has their own logo/dingbat and corrisponding favicon. This, I must attain.