yhoologin.user.js

I share a computer, and we both have multiple Yahoo! accounts. This Greasemonkey script replaces the login form on any Yahoo page with a select box with your Yahoo ID’s pre-populated. The user has to edit the script to put their ID’s in there before it will work. (More of my userscripts.)

The ugly hack just got a little uglier, but bloggerDate.user.js works again. Note also that the directory is now browsable, so you can see all of my scripts in one place.

Why Google is like Wal-Mart: summarizing a lot of the things of late that have put a dent in Google’s warm-and-fuzziness factor. The article doesn’t really touch on their largest similarity, however: both companies are better at what they do than anybody else, and because of this, they get away with pretty much anything they want.

The blogger date enhancer is broken again, and I can’t figure out why. Maintaining this script is taking a lot more time than I thought (read: none), so I’m de-listing it from the user scripts repository. If I get around to fixing it, I’ll make it available for download again. Right now I don’t have the time or inclination.

Things to do:

• Find a way to hide style declarations from browsers that don’t support data: URLs, or find a way to test in javascript for data: url support.
• Try to actually care what my website looks like in Internet Explorer.

Well, duh. Figured that first one out rather quickly once I thought about it. Put the styles you don’t want IE &c. to see in a <link> tag, and set the href to a data: URL itself. Naturally, a browser that doesn’t support data: URLs won’t see styles imported in this way.

Still working on that second one, though.

I don’t know precisely what part of ‘always-on’ Comcast doesn’t understand. I’m pretty sure it’s the &#8216always’, though.

My user script bloggerDate.user.js fails miserably in Greasemonkey 0.3. And y’know what? F*ck it. I’ll worry about it when 0.3 is actually released.

Update 4/13/2005: Thanks to some quick help from Tony Chang on the Greasemonkey mailing list, bloggerdate.user.js now works with Greasemonkey 0.3.

For the curious, the problem was that a change has been made which keeps variables created in scripts seperate from the document. I needed only alter the function declaration from function setPostDate(blah) to window.setPostDate = function setPostDate(blah)

Cool. Very, very cool. [via]

Vox Googli: continuing a long tradition, some interesting google queries and their results, with no commentary whatsoever.

• “world war II memorial” hideous 1,750 results

• “world war II memorial” ugly 738 results
• “world war II memorial” tacky 291 results
• “world war II memorial” travesty 198 results

At this point, does anyone need another reason not to shop at Best Buy? My mama taught me from a very young age that the only appropriate reaction to consistently bad service is to stop paying for it. This advice has served me well over the years, and I can’t imagine how much undue stress it’s saved me.

bloggerDate.user.js

I finally got around to fixing the Blogger date input. It now accepts a freeform text input for the date.

Expect more of my old archives to be resurrected soon. I’d been procrastinating because it was so irritating having to deal with all of those select boxes, but now I have no excuse, for better or worse.

I found a suprising amount to talk about in this satellite photo of my child hood home.

Picked this up from my local library (actually, they didn’t have it, but I was able to arrange an IntraLibrary Loan via their web site — I love the internet) based on Corey’s recommendation. I’ll give it a three out of four stars.

My quick searches:

• The obligatory Google (g)

• Google this domain (gd): use google to search the site you’re currently at.
• Merriam-Webster (d)
• Wikipedia (wp)
• IMDb (db)
• Amazon (az)
• Netflix (fx)
• tinyURL (t): type the keyword in front of a long URL to get a tinyURL.
• Flickr (fl): Search for photos on flickr.
• Reverse Directory (rd): look up phone numbers—cheap caller ID.
• Urban Dictionary (ud): look up slang.

I love these things, obviously. Why have a honking big search bar or search sidebar when the browser comes with a space for user input already, namely the address bar? I didn’t even know this until researching this post, but in Firefox you can actually just right click on any GET form to create a quicksearch. Genius.

fixBloggerEmStrong.user.js

Background: Blogger’s posting interface allows a sort of simple GUI that allows you to do common things like inserting a link, bolding or italicizing text with a keyboard combo or a button. For some reason though, Blogger inserts a <span style="font-style:italic;"&gt instead of a simple <em&gt, and similarly for bolded text. This script fixes that behavior, making your HTML that much prettier.

Update: Michael Kennan wrote a user script which basically does the same thing, and also demonstrates how to create your own keyboard macros within the Blogger post interface. So use his instead.