Maximizing Firefox’s tab-efficiency

There are a lot of add-ons for Firefox out there in the cyber world. And I mean a ton. Today, I’m going to just briefly mention two that anyone who uses Firefox frequently should have. I, myself, have been using these add-ons for about a month now, and I can’t remember using Firefox without them.

The first add-on is called “permatabs”, an incredibly useful utility made by developer David Morrison. Basically, permatabs allows you to, you guessed it, permanently store tabs! This means that you can’t accidentally close a tab, and the tab will automatically be there if you close and reopen firefox later. They are kept in the normal tab bar, but have a different, brownish color. The cool thing about these permatabs is that they don’t actually load until you click on them. So that means they won’t slow down load time when you open firefox for the first time in a session.

The second add-on is called “faviconize” and it basically just allows you to make tabs smaller. It gets rid of the title of the web tab and replaces it with only the sites tab logo, so you can still tell what site it is. Combined with permatabs, it allows you to have permanently open tabs that are out of the way and don’t take up much room! Trust me, it cleans up your firefox UI quite a bit!

Appul0us – The Better Tool for Pirating

Edit:  This article is out of date and no longer works.  If you want to pirate, you will need to install Installuos, not this.  Please do not use this, I am simply leaving it here for it’s own sake.

I don’t condone pirating.  I strongly believe (being a developer myself) that if someone makes a product worth buying, you should pay for it.  You should not be able to take things without paying the person who made it for their hardwork.  However, piracy happens.  In fact, a friend recently started pirating.  And while I don’t think it’s good, I hate it when people do it wrong.

That’s right.  “You’re doin’ it wrong.”

Appul0us is an application that does what install0us did.  Except better.  Much better.  I’m not sure if it is made by the same people, but it has a cleaner interface, looks better, and functions better.  If you are going to install any pirating app, make it this one.  Here’s how to do it right.

/Instructions deleted/

There is some additional configuration you may want to do once you have it installed.  Here are my suggestions.

/Deleted/

That’s it!  Good luck, and pay the developers, they deserve it.

No Atom Support in 10.6.2 – No one gives a shit.

Oh boooo hoooo.  You can hear the cries of thousands of retards as they install 10.6.2 on their netbook and find out for themselves that there is not atom support.

Wait a second, are we all retarded?

First of all, if you are installing any update without checking to make sure it’s save, you shouldn’t even have a Hackintosh.  All updates should be approved by those “professionals” in the hackintosh area.  (EG, anyone who knows what they are doing.)  And if you feel it is your duty to be the one to find out that 10.6.2 doesn’t have atom support, then you shouldn’t be complaining anyways.  Any update can break your computer, everyone that doesn’t is you just dodging the bullet again.

It pisses me off how big a deal the entire blogosphere made about “no atom support” because first of all, it’s all bullshit.  The moment the kernel sources are released, some intelligent person will put a patched kernel together that has support so you can run 10.6.2 in all your goodness.  Does it really matter if you have a vanilla kernel or not?  No, it doesn’t.  You’re still on a hackintosh, you still need to be very careful.

So please, for all you bloggers out there.  No one gives a shit.  A patch will come out, and all will be well.  The hackers always win.

iPhone Sensors

I was worried.  For a moment.  I looked at my iPhone and to the left of the earpiece I saw 3 interesting dots.  I thought it might be rain damage, or something else bad.  I was worried that my new iPhone was already damaged.

Luckily, that is not the case.  Google to the rescue.  After doing some research, I found that these dots (2 on older iPhone models, 3 on the iPhone 3GS) were sensors for the iPhone.  Refer to this picture for more information:

Yes, there are actual dots there.  Look closely.  I didn’t take the photo either.

College Job

Well, it happened.  I just got my first College job.  Being a Freshman, without prior real work experience, I was a little intimidated, and worried that I wouldn’t be able to get a good job.  I figured I could always end up in Food or something lame, but I wanted a good College job.

This is my Experience.

First thing, over the summer I browsed my college Student Employment site.  This showed me, in general, what was available, and what the options were.  In all honesty, it didn’t help that much, and I didn’t do any other “looking” until I got to campus.

RIT has a policy in which you need to get a Student Employment Card before you can apply for any jobs.  The Card basically verifies that you are a student at RIT, you belong in the US, and you are eligible for work.  For me, that entailed filling out a sheet and showing them my Passport and SS card.  Well that wasn’t hard.  However, if you don’t have all that then you need to give them your Driver’s License, your birth certificate, 2 forms of ID, your left Kidney, and your firstborn child.  It’s a pain in the butt.  My advice?  Just get a Passport.

So where does that leave me?  The possibility to get a job, but no actual job.  And I wasn’t looking too hard, but one day I came across a website that detailed a job here at RIT.  It was a tech job too, the only problem was the amount of work to apply.  I had to submit my schedule (not hard), my resume (didn’t have one at the time) and a cover letter.  All within 24 hours, because I found this one day before it was due.

What the hell, right?  I decided I would sit down and do it.   Called up my brother and grabbed his Resume, and then made mine to look like his.  Professional, clean, and effective.  Well, that’s what I was going for.  It was only 1 page, which apparently is what the employer is looking for.  I also had to write up a cover letter, which I did for the first time.  Again, Google was a great help.

And then, after re-reading it a hundred times for typo’s, I submitted it.  And then I waited.

And waited.

About a week, and then I got an email.  I was to go in for a “casual interview,” just a basic talk.  Apparently, this was to weed out those who had no idea what they were doing.  So I went in for mine, (casually dressed), and talked to the Student Manager.  He was nice, it was a pretty straight forward talk, basically about why I was applying, what I wanted to do, what I knew… actually, it was a lot more detailed and formal than I wanted.  But it was over pretty quickly, and he said he would get back to me for another interview if I passed… or something like that.  It was a basic screening.

I passed.  I got another email, for another interview.  This job process was intense.  Because the thing is, this is a college job.  I can’t believe how hard it was to get, perhaps I would have been better off in food or something…  For this next interview, I had to dress up nice.  So I put on pretty pants, a shirt and tie, and went to the interview.

This interview was intense.  It was done by 3 people (third person came late though) and they asked me questions about my experience, my leadership, and a whole slew of other things.  It took about half an hour.  But then, when I thought it was over, they brought me to the practical portion of the interview.  I was brought into a room and given 5 computers, all of which were “broken” (Purposely so).  I was to fix them.

I’m actually not going to detail what was wrong with them, in case someone is reading this and is applying for the same job later, but it was awesome.  At the end of it, I had fixed them all, or at least I knew how.  And then I left….

And waited…

It took an entire week for them to get back to me, and I had gotten the job!  Best email I ever received.  After that, the hard part was over, now it was just relax and have fun.  Well, not really, but I now have an income, which enabled me to buy a new toy… my pretty iPhone 3GS.

Konami Ninja

So I found an interesting thing out about Google Reader today during my music class. If you enter the konami code while on the reader page (while logged in), then a ninja will appear in the left hand side. Then, if you enter it again, the ninja will disappear.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Konami Code is a combination of buttons that, if hit in a certain sequence, will unlock hidden easter eggs. Facebook, for example, has an egg when you input the konami code and then click anywhere.

Needless to say, if you are ever sitting through a 2 hour-long seminar on the structure of Beethoven’s 5th, the Konami Ninja of Google Reader is the way to go. I spent the whole lecture making him appear and disappear. Class well spent, if I do say so myself.

Speech Recognition and Google Chrome OS

My roommate and I went out to dinner.  We discussed some interesting topics, from viruses to OS’s.  On the subject of OS’s, I speculated how Google Chrome OS could in fact be almost entirely voice controlled.  Google has been working on perfecting it’s Voice Recognition for a while now, such as for the iPhone and other mobile platforms.  It allows for searching to be done quickly, and the better they get, the happier the users.

Well, why not put that into the OS?  Have an option to use a traditional keyboard and mouse, some users would need those, but why not have an option to have the entire OS voice controlled?  Perhaps not completely, voiced controlled, because that is very difficult in places (what check box did you want pressed?  Which button on the page to hit?), but have the Voice Commands always on, always waiting.  Writing becomes dictating, Searching is as simple as saying “Search for:  Google Chrome OS.”  It could intergrate (like Google Desktop) web search and desktop search.  Google has the entire platform layed out, so why don’t they do it?

It’s hard.  That’s why.  Voice recognition, while getting better, is simply not good enough.  After dinner, I returned to my Mac and immediately enabled Voice Commands.  It was interesting, configuring the Microphone volume, learning how to say things clearly so it understood, and watching as shit went down.  But in the end, I disabled it.  Why?  Because it just wasn’t good enough.  The computer doesn’t learn, it doesn’t offer enough leniency.  If you ask something wrong, it simply waits for you to ask it correctly.  It doesn’t pop up and say “Did you mean?”  And learn it for the next time.  It needs to learn, it needs to have some sort of AI.  Otherwise, asking it to do the same thing over and over again becomes tedious quickly.  Also, it wasn’t diverse enough.  Sure, it could switch applications, but it couldn’t Google search, it couldn’t browse deep into folders, and it couldn’t Dictate (that requires another program).   Also, it wasn’t fast enough.  For all the reasons above, simply using a mouse is faster, and more efficient.  If the program messes up as much as I mess up typing, then that’s fair; but if I have to repeat myself many times, that’s too much.  I’d rather time and see progress than need to repeat myself every 3 seconds to get the program to get it correctly.

But this too, Google has been practicing.  Indeed, they have everything covered, they now need to integrate it into 1 glorious system… one glorious OS.  They have been working on Dictating using Google Voice; you can have voice-mails translated into text for you and sent as email.   I dare say they are probably getting pretty good at it too.  So now they have the Searching down, the dictating down, voice commands down…. they just need to put it together, and Bang!  A voice controlled OS.

Is it coming?  I don’t know.  It is definitely something we should be seeing in the future, and perhaps sooner.  Once voice recognition gets good enough to compete with the Mouse and Keyboard, why not?  It would simply be another option for people, and options are good.

How To: Force Snow Leopard to start in 64bit mode

This is a trick I’ve been doing for a while.  The boring way to start Leopard in a particular mode is immediately after turning the computer on hold down:

3 and 2 – Boot into 32 bit mode; or

6 and 4 – Boot into 64 but mode.

Because Snow Leopard boots into 32 bit mode by default, if you want to have it boot into 64 bit mode all the time, it gets a little tedious remembering to hold down the 6 and 4 key.  Luckily, you can force Snow Leopard to boot into 64 bit mode all the time by editing a particular file.

1. Open Terminal and type in the following command:
2. sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
3. It will ask for your password; enter it.
4. There should be something that looks like this:  <key>Kernel</key>
   <string>mach_kernel</string>
   <key>Kernel Flags</key>
   <string></string>
5. After the “Kernel Flags” change the <string> value to arch=x86_64.  It should look like this:
6. <key>Kernel</key>
   <string>mach_kernel</string>
   <key>Kernel Flags</key>
   <string>arch=x86_64</string>
7. Save by hitting “Control O”  (And then enter)
8. Exit by hitting “Control x”
9. That’s it, you’re done!

I must note that not all computers can boot into 64 bit mode, so make sure your computer can.  To check what mode you are in, go back to the terminal and type :  uname -a

If you are in 32 bit mode, you’ll see many “i386.”  If you see “x86_64” then you are running in 64 bit mode.

If you fuck up your Mac, it’s not my fault.

How to: Python on the iPhone/iPod touch

So, with my recent adventures with my iPod, I decided I wanted to do something.  I wanted to run Python on my iPod.  Turned out, that is not too difficult.  What’s more, I also found a good way to write Python scripts on my iPod, and then run them too.  My iPod has turned into a beast mobile programming platform.

Okay, so not really.  The screen is still pretty small and Python is only on version 2.5.1.  3.x code runs on 2.x, so all my programs still work.  Also, the mobile python doesn’t have Turtle.  But, if you want to start programming Python on your iPod/iPhone, read on!

1. Your iDevice must be jailbroken, there is no way around this.
2. Your Filters in Cydia must have been “Developer,” aka, no filters.  Otherwise this will not work.
3. Go to Cydia and Search for “Python” without the quotes.  There is a package called “Python”, select it.
4. Hit Install in the top right corner.  This is a big package, weighing in at 17-ish MB.  So make sure your iPod doesn’t go to sleep and lose internet while downloading and installing it.
5. After installation, you won’t notice anything different, this is because it’s a console package; you need a console.  Go back to Cydia’s Search and type in “MobileTerminal.”  Select MobileTerminal.
6. Install MobileTerminal.
7. Now you almost have all the tools you need; to be truly set though, you need a text editor.  Go back to Cydia’s search and type in “iEdit.”  Select iEdit.
8. Install iEdit (requires 3.x)
9. You may now exit Cydia.  You should now have up to 2 new icons on your Screens, iEdit, and Mobile Terminal.
10. Open iEdit.  I found that putting documents in /private/var/mobile/Documents/ is a good place because you can easily get to it and it’s not cluttering up the file system.  To make a new file, simply tap the “+” in the upper left corner.  If you are making a python script, make sure it ends in “.py“.  To save, hit “minimize” and then “save” (in the bottom left corner.)
11. After making and saving your file, exit iEdit.
12. Open MobileTerminal.  (Terminal)
13. type:  cd Documents
14. type: ls
15. You should see the file you made, as long as you saved it in this directory.
16. To run a python script, type in:  python file.py (Where “file.py” is the name of your file.)

That’s all there is to it!  Many of these instructions are very exact, but you can have a lot of fun.  For example, in iEdit make a file called “test.py” and for a command simply type in:

print(“Hello World!”)

Then in Mobile terminal, move to the directory (cd Documents) and then type python test.py And see the beautiful results!

How to Install Python 3.x on Leopard or Snow Leopard

So, I’m starting to do a lot of College work here at RIT.  For our CS class, we are using Python instead of Java.  It has it’s quirks, and I could go into many details about why Python is dumb, and why Python is really cool.  But that is for another day.  Today, I am going to explain how to get Python running the quickest on Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Why?  Because the Python that comes with Leopard and Snow Leopard is out of date, and it doesn’t get updated with the system.  While you can use Xcode to code in Python, I’ve been using IDLE, because that is what the class is using.  Trust me, I’d like to use something else too, but I’m not.

So, here we go.

1. Go to the Python Download page and go to the newest version page, (at the time of writing, that was Python 3.1.1)
2. Download the Mac Installer Image.  (Here it is for 3.1.1).
3. Mount the DMG file and install “Python.mpkg.”
4. After installation, go back to the DMG and right click on “Python.mpkg” and hit “Show Package contents.”
5. Navigate:  Contents -> Packages -> PythonApplications-3.1.pkg
6. Install “PythonApplications-3.1.pkg” (or whatever version you are using).
7. You’re done!  Now if you go to your Applications folder you will find a folder named “Python 3.1” or whatever version.  Open it, and you can run “IDLE” that gives you the command prompt for Python.