Borloz.com

From time to time, I'll come across a blog or article on the web where the person has chosen to remove the underline from their links and/or change the link color, but didn't make the color easy enough to distinguish from the body text. This seems to be especially common for links that have already been visited, because the default color for visited links is a dark purple, and most text on the web is black. I grew a little frustrated with this situation and thought it might be helpful to create a bookmarklet that highlights all the links on the page.

To use the bookmarklet, just drag the link below to your bookmarks bar.

Link Highlighter

When the highlighter is active, you'll see a "Remove Link Highlight" overlay at the top-center of the browser window. To disable link highlighting, just click the overlay text.

So far, it's been tested and working in Firefox 2/Mac/Win and Safari 3/Mac/Win.

Known issues:

• Does not work in IE - I keep getting a vague error message about an error at line x, char x and simply haven't spent the time to get it working right for lack of a decent way to debug JavaScript in IE.
• Does not highlight links in iframes.

Please leave me a comment if you find any issues not mentioned above. Be gentle - this is my first bookmarklet, so there may be other issues I'm not aware of.

Since this bookmarklet was created for personal use and currently meets my needs, I'm debating on whether to fix the above issues. However, if there is enough demand to fix them, I'll certainly consider it. Please leave a comment to let me know that you are using it.

Also, if anyone knows of a decent way to debug JavaScript in IE without purchasing Microsoft software (Office or Visual Studio), please let me know.

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My new TiVo arrived today, and it's not just an 80-hour unit, it also has dual tuners! This means I can record two shows at once, or watch live TV while another is recording. Woohoo!

Thankfully, I didn't have to go through the activation process again. When I setup my original TiVo, I had to bring it to a friend's house to use his phone line, since I don't have a land line. I guess since I had already activated my account, I didn't need to go through whatever requires the phone line.

So it's no more live TV for me anymore. Let's hope this one holds up a little better than the last...

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Just got an email from TiVo saying that my new 80-hour TiVo is on the way. Apparently, they really were out of the 40-hour units. Worked out to be a great bargain for me! All I paid was $10.99 to ship the old one back, and in a few days, I'll have one that's 2x the capacity!

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Remember that game called Memory (sometimes called Concentration) from when you were younger where you'd start with a grid of cards face-down and then flip them over two at a time until you had matched all the pairs? Well, my co-worker Paul and I were talking a few months back and he thought that it would be cool to create a web version of the game using your own digital pictures as cards. So, I got to thinking and realized that a lot of people already have a bunch of pictures on Flickr. I had wanted to check out the Flickr API anyway, so this was the perfect opportunity.

That night, I went home and started reading up on the Flickr documentation and began coding a game that allowed users to generate their own virtual "deck of cards" based upon the tags they entered and/or their Flickr username. I had the it mostly done, but then had other things come up and I dropped it for a while. It wasn't until last night that I finally ended up finishing it up.

So, here's the link to the game:

http://borloz.com/games/flickr-memory/

And here's how it works:

• Enter your desired tags and/or your Flickr username. (For example, if your photo URL is http://flickr.com/photos/lborloz/, then lborloz is your username.)
• Select whether you want to match "any" or "all" of your tags.
• Select your level of difficulty. ("Easy" will generate a 4x4 grid. "Hard" will generate a 6x6 grid.)
• Click "Play!"
• Try to match all the tiles in as few moves as possible. (A perfect game on the "Easy" setting is 8 tries. A perfect game on the "Hard" setting is 18 tries.)
• Have fun!

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My co-worker, Paul, decided that the world couldn't go another day without an update on my TiVo situation. So here goes...

After troubleshooting my broken TiVo and coming up empty, I decided that I would cancel my TiVo service for the time being and go back to watching good old-fashioned live TV. I logged on to my TiVo account online to cancel my service, but as I suspected, they don't make it that easy; they make you call and talk to a person so they can try to save your account. So, a little annoyed that I had to speak to a live person, because they are always soooo helpful (just a hint of sarcasm there, in case you didn't notice), I called TiVo Customer Service.

I waded through the typical automated system, and finally reached a real person after a few minutes. He went through a series of questions to verify I was who I said I was and then asked what I was calling in reference to. When I told him that I wanted to cancel my service, he asked if I was dissatisfied. I explained that I was not dissatisfied at all, rather my TiVo died and I didn't want to shell out the cash for a new one.

Not more than a few seconds passed after I finished explaining my story when he asked if he could place me on hold to speak to his supervisor. I agreed, half expecting to have his supervisor come on the line and try to convince me to spend a bunch of money on a new unit. Instead, the rep came back on the line and told me something to the effect that I was one of their premier subscribers (translation: I've religiously paid them $12.95 a month for the last 3 years and subscription fees are where they make all their money), and that he had arranged to have a FREE replacement TiVo sent to me. I was given an RMA number and was told that the new one would be in the mail as soon as they got the old one back. Awesome! I'm 2 years out of warranty and totally didn't expect a FREE unit!

It gets even better though...

Since my TiVo is about 3 years old and they don't make the 40-hour model any more, he said that most likely they'll be sending me an 80-hour model as a replacement. I've had an 80GB (80-hours of TiVo capacity) hard drive that I've been meaning to put in my TiVo for about 2 years now, so I guess I don't have to worry about that any more.

Once again, I stepped in a pile of sh*t and came out smelling like roses. I'm not sure how I keep doing it, but I'm feeling pretty lucky right now.

The old TiVo gets shipped back tomorrow. I'll post again when I get the new unit...

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I accidentally discovered a useful keyboard shortcut in Firefox today. I was trying to open a new tab by pressing Ctrl-T, but instead I hit Ctrl-Shift-T. Instead of opening a new blank tab, Ctrl-Shift-T (Command-Shift-T for Mac users) opens your last closed tab. If you keep pressing this key combination, it will step backwards through your closed tab history and reopen your tabs one-by-one.

Of course, you could always use the 'Recently Closed Tabs' menu item by going to History->Recently Closed Tabs, but if you're like me, you'd rather use a shortcut than click through the menus.

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Well, I just got done doing the last bit of troubleshooting I can do on my ancient 40-hour TiVo. It's been a reliable unit for the past 3 years or so, but I came home the other night to find it stuck on the "Powering On..." screen.

I checked various online forums and came up with a few things to try, so I cracked open the case and started going through the steps one-by-one: First, I checked that all the connections were solid... nothing was loose. Next, I replaced the IDE cable... no luck. Then, I took the hard-drive out and connected it to my laptop via an external USB drive bay.... powered up and reported all its partitions fine.

The problem could be that all the partitions are intact but the operating system is corrupt, I suppose. The OS X Disk Utility told me that it couldn't read from the drive. I'm not sure if it's because the data is corrupt or it has a different file system. I'm guessing the latter, but I don't know of any way to tell for sure. The only other possible cuprits are parts that I don't have access to replace myself, like the power supply and motherboard.

At this point, I see myself having a few options:

1. Replace the hard-drive and hope for the best. I found a few places online that sell drives you can pop right in and you're good to go (assuming that the hard drive is the point of failure, which I'm still not sure of). But, the preloaded drives are almost as expensive as replacing the whole unit, so I don't really see that as much of an option.
2. Buy a new TiVo. I could replace my current unit with one of the same model for a little over $100, but I've been wanting to increase the capacity for a while, so I'd be back in that boat all over again. I could also spring for one of the new upgraded units, but these cost more than I want to spend for a fancy VCR.
3. Try to convince Apple to make the Apple TV do what it should have been able to do from the start - act as a DVR! I know this isn't really an option, but I've always wondered (now more than ever) why Apple ignored this feature set in a product that seems so well positioned to provide it. There are some technical issues with the current encarnation of Apple TV that would need to be addressed, such as adding a coaxial input and a way to encode/decode the video, but these don't seem like insurmountable tasks. What Apple would end up with would be a unit that provides a lot more value to the consumer, not just another way buy stuff from the iTunes store. I would never buy an Apple TV in its current form, but I probably would if it was a DVR as well! And you know it would have a beautiful interface and be a breeze to use because it's an Apple product!

So, here's to hoping that Apple realizes what Apple TV could be. I'm sure I'll break down and do something before Apple does, but until then, it's back to watching live TV and sitting through commercials for me.

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Up until this point, whenever I heard someone from Microsoft start talking about standards, I couldn't help but laugh while thinking of how badly IE has butchered them in the past. Standards compliance was somewhat improved with IE7, but it sounds like Microsoft has finally agreed to step up to the plate and make IE8's standards mode actually standards-compliant.

MS has fought standards-compliance as the rest of the world knows it for several iterations of IE, knowing that it would break a lot of old sites that were specifically targeted towards IE's faults. With IE8 they will admitedly break sites that do not specifically request a special http header/meta tag to trigger IE7 standards mode. It will be quite interesting to see how many sites this affects. I'm guessing a VERY large number.

Since some (but certainly not all) of the rendering differences between IE and standards-compliant browsers have been due to a certain degree of ambiguity in the W3C documentation, Microsoft's definition of "the most standards compliant way possible" may be far different than that of Firefox or Safari. It would be nice if they just used Firefox and Safari's interpretation of the W3C standards, but I'm sure that Microsoft will come up with their own creative way of interpreting them.

So kids, this is why you code to standards and make IE the exception, not the rule. For those who ignored the standards evangelists, let the fun begin...

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