Been playing some more with Yahoo Myweb &c. (they need a new name, like, now). Coolest new thing so far is ability to import bookmarks from “RSS feeds” (read, del.icio.us). I managed to get the xml file from the del.icio.us API to look enough like a well formed RSS file (thank you Textpad) for Yahoo to accept it. Now, other than having a complete backup of my bookmarks — sans descriptions, Myweb doesn’t yet import them properly — I can’t really see what else to do with it. The community thing is being touted highly, but so far, and I hate to say it, but whoop-te-do.

Update: 360 is not going to remain the default relationship management tool for myweb, apprently. And Myweb is proving to be a lot cooler and more addictive than I ascertained at first glance. So forget I said all that.

The Supreme Court delivered their opinion on MGM et al v. Grokster today. They found for MGM, unanimously. This basically overturned the Court’s own ruling in the Betamax case, which held that as long as a technology had significant non-infringing uses, it cannot be ruled illegal in and of itself. ‘MGM et al’ will come after BitTorrent next in their quest to have any alternative media distribution model criminalized. This decision will be very helpful to them in that misguided quest.

The Court also refused to hear a case involving reporter’s privilege, a contentious issue that has been fought in the courts for decades. Many people have worked to get this issue before the Supremes, and apparently all for naught. The legal ins and outs of the arguments pro and con are fairly complicated, but in terms of pure right and wrong, and upholding the spirit of the bill of rights, this should be an open and shut case.

Considering their incomprehensible and downright dangerous decision in Kelo v. New London last Thursday to expand Eminent Domain, all in all, I’m not very happy with the SCOTUS right now.

I’ve updated the Flickr Photo Page Enhancer (see this post for more info) again. The previous version was a little hacky, in that it tried to extract a lot of information about a photo from the page you were on, and completely guessed at other information. Now the script does a simple call to the Flickr API to get all of that information. The user won’t notice much of a change, but the script works better and handles rare exceptions (like the photo has no medium size, the original wasn’t a jpeg) way better. Plus, I finally found a reason to play with GM_xmlhttpRequest and the Flickr API, both of which I’ve been meaning to look into. Gods, I’m such a geek.

It has been way too long since I watched primetime TV. Someone just said “skanky bitch” on CBS. C-B-fucking-Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman-S!

I’ve created quite a few Greasemonkey scripts for Flickr, and many of them are documented poorly or not at all, so I decided to create a permanent home for these scripts. They’re sorted roughly in terms of usefulness:

• Flickr Photo Page Enhancer (screenshot): This script does a lot of things, and is the result of a lot of feedback and collaboration with the great Flickr Hacks community. The script adds direct links to all of an image’s sizes, as well as a “Quick Link” box to quickly copy and paste the HTML for a thumbnail link. It also automatically loads your most used tags whenever you click to add a tag to an image. 1-Dec-2005: Now compatable with GM 0.6.4 & FF 1.5.
• Flickr: Thumbnails Enhancer (screenshot): adds the number of comments and notes to each photo listed in any list of thumbnails on Flickr (i.e. group pools, photos from your contacts, favorites, etc.). 16-May-2006: Updated for compatibility with Flickr Gamma.
• Flickr User Icon Enhancer (screenshot): Flickr provides links to view a user’s photos and to add the user as a friend, wherever you see a user icon, throughout the site. This script enhances that a bit, adding links directly to a user’s profile, their favorite photos, and to send the user a FlickrMail. 16-May-2006: Made redundant by changes to the way user icons work in Flickr Gamma, script is no longer being updated.
• Flickr Login Enhancer (screenshot): After you edit this script to include all the various Flickr usernames in your household, the default login screen will be replaced with a drop-down box, reducing the number of times per day you have to type your email address.
• Flickr Rich Edit (screenshot) Add limited rich editing capabilities (italic, bold, blockquote, link) to any input in Flickr where you can use HTML (comments, groups, batch edit). Updated 29-Jun-05
• Flickr: Return-to-Page on Login: This script makes it so that clicking ‘Login’ on any Flickr page will return you to that page after you log in. This is the default behavior on some Flickr pages (like Groups), but not all. This script makes it site-wide.
• Flickr Tag Quick Edit: If you have editing privileges on an image, next to the little [x] to remove a tag you’ll now find a link directly to the page that allows you to edit all instances of that tag. Added 2005-Aug-08

One word review of Batman Begins: yawn. A 2½ hour long movie about a story everybody knows already had best have something interesting going on, but alas, no. Also, Cillian Murphy continues to be really, really hot, albeit in a slightly creepy way.

jrhyley: So fresh, so clean…

jrhyley: I turned the air down to 55 so it’d be nice & crisp when I got out of the shower

jrhyley: Brrr…

jrhyley: I’m just kind of sitting here, naked, under the fan, contemplating whether to turn the air back up

jrhyley: I think I’m deciding on “no”

jrhyley: It’s the simple pleasures that make life worth living…

New rule: everybody egosurfs. Don’t talk shit about people on the web unless you feel like backing it up.

YouTube: the Flickr of video? (MeTube)

Whoa, Steven Johnson is hot and smart! I now suddenly care deeply about his fascinating book and the interesting theories expounded therein, despite previously thinking it was a simple, common-sensical idea and a tad bit overhyped.

*cough*

Oh gods, I am actually this shallow.

I hate doing laundry. Not the actual doing of the laundry, just all of the peripheral things that are involved when you have to use a communal laundry room. The weird social interactions.

Is that the dude whose laundry I just put in the basket so I could use the washer? Is he going to be pissed off? Could I take him in a fight if it came to that? Do his sartorial choices give any clue if he’s prone to violence? Is that even his basket?

I especially hate getting hit on in the laundry room. Not just because it’s invariably girls. I’m wearing the schlubbiest clothes I own because they’re all I have left clean, I haven’t shaved or bathed or brushed my hair today because I have to dedicate the entire day to doing laundry if I’m going to get it done, and you’re hitting on me? Really? So much for the metrosexual ideal. And meanwhile, you’re sitting there tying up an entire washer to launder your underwear, all three threads of it.

Another thing, why do I never get around to doing the towels? Why, at the end of the day, do I think about making one more trip just to do the towels and always end up saying to myself, “Self, fuck the towels?” So I end up with this perpetual pile of towels in the corner of my bathroom, sitting there accusingly when guests come over, shouting that we’re lazy, nasty, dirty dirty people.

It might have something to do with the fact that we have about four dozen towels, none of them matching, all given to us by people who had just bought cute new $30-$50 matching sets of bath linens. This is just another side effect of being the least trendy people in our circle of acquaintances. You might expect me to make some comment on the disposability of nearly everything in our whacked consumer culture, but I’m not. I just think it’s cool to get free towels. I do wish I had someplace to hide the pile, though.

New Greasemonkey userscript: Bloglines Continuous Update. One thing Bloglines is conspicuously lacking is continuous updates. There are lots of ways to keep updated as to whether there are new items for you to read, from a popup window to browser extensions to desktop applications (!), but why not have this functionality built in to Bloglines itself?

That’s what this userscript does. When in the “My Feeds” page, the script checks once a minute for new items, and if it finds them, it reloads the subscriptions panel (only, you don’t lose whatever you’re currently reading) to display them. It also displays the number of unread items in your title bar, so you can keep the page open in a background tab and easily see if there are new items. (See all of my userscripts, including unpublished and in-development scripts, here.)