http://www.msfirefox.com/

Hillarious!

Basically, like many others, I use comments to signify the start of each section - but with a twist. For instance, I might have something like this:

/** Home page
**********************************/
	some styles...

/** About page
**********************************/
	some more styles...

/** Signup page
**********************************/
	even more styles...

Take note that the start of the comment has the forward slash, followed by an asterisk, just like a standard comment, but also includes an additional asterisk. That single extra asterisk separates the section comments from regular comments and is what’s going to make your life a lot easier. Here’s how:

Let’s say you have a stylesheet that’s 600 lines long. Instead of scrolling through, looking for the section you want to edit, you can just do a “find” in your editor for “/**” and then jump a section at at time by clicking “next”.

You could even take it a step further and use “/***” for major sections and “/**” for sub-sections. Or, if you prefer, you could use “/*/” as the start of your comments. It really doesn’t matter as long as whatever you choose starts with “/*” because anything after that is treated as comment text.

As of the last year or so, the major TV stations have started providing their shows on their websites, but I like the idea of having it all in one place. This means that I don’t have to navigate different site structures to get to the video, and then download different media players and codecs in order to be able to watch the video.

If you have a HTPC with a web browser, you can watch directly on your TV in your living room.

The other day a co-worker showed me a cool little setup that will allow you to test in IE5, 5.5, 6, and 7 on the same physical Windows XP machine. I suppose this would also work on a virtualized copy of Windows XP on a Mac, but since this solution involves virtualization, you’d be running a virtual machine inside of another virtual machine, which means you’d need a heck of a powerful system.

Assuming you are running Windows XP, you should already have a copy of IE7 installed. One IE down, 3 more to go. So, here’s how to get the rest of them:

1. Download VirtualBox and follow the installation instructions.
2. Grab the .iso for your choice of Linux distro (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Suse, Mandriva, or PCLinuxOS should work at the time of this writing) . I used Ubuntu in my setup.
3. Launch VirtualBox and setup a new virtual machine for your Linux distro.
4. Start the virtual machine and follow the prompts in the First Run wizard, making sure to set your media source to the Linux .iso you just downloaded.
5. Click Finish at the end of the wizard and your Linux distro should start the installation process (this process will vary depending on your distro of choice).
6. Visit the IEs4Linux website and follow the instructions to install cabextract, Wine and IEs4Linux.
7. Once you’re done with the install, you should have icons on your Linux desktop for each of the IEs that you installed. Just double-click and point them at the URL you want to test!

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.

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…

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 4×4 grid. “Hard” will generate a 6×6 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!

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…

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.