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Hackday – Native TweetDeck

By on May 11, 2011 in Programming, Web/Tech

Here’s what I made during today’s HackDay @ TweetDeck. Our illustrious leader is uploading the rest now on the @iaindodsworth YouTube page.

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Dropbox authentication: insecure by design

By on April 8, 2011 in Linux, Mac / OSX, Operating Systems, Web/Tech, Windows 7

I have tested this, and can back up what Derek is saying. It is more than a little worrying – but also easy for the Dropbox guys to fix.

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Browser Power Consumption

By on March 30, 2011 in Mac / OSX, Operating Systems, Random Rants, Web/Tech, Windows 7

Ignoring the IE9 propaganda – just for a second… LOOK CHROME REALLY DOES SUCK. Google really have their work cut out there. As more and more people get laptops, the battery usage of the browser needs to be looked at more closely. Also of interest how Safari fairs on Windows there – someone should do the comparison of browsers on Mac.

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Staying flashless with Firefox 4

By on March 22, 2011 in Web/Tech

As mentioned previously – I’ve gone flashless. Firefox 4 makes it quite hard to do that. It has an annoying missing plugin nag-bar (another dick-bar). Well, we can get rid of that:

  1. Enter about:config in the URL bar
  2. Heed the warning then press the button if you want to continue
  3. Type ‘missing’ in the search bar within the “page”
  4. Set plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin to true
  5. Close the tab

Right, that’s that done. Now what about open in Chrome? Well using a slightly modified AppleScript:

set oldClipboard to the clipboard

tell application "Firefox" to activate

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "l" using {command down}
    keystroke "c" using {command down}
end tell

delay 0.5

tell application "Google Chrome"
    set URL of active tab of window 1 to the clipboard
    activate
end tell

set the clipboard to oldClipboard

Yes it sucks a bit that I had to bounce via the clipboard. Bit of a quick fix, but it does work. I’m definitely open to a better script. Also, Mozilla – please please fix it for me what when I open Firefox after changing my monitor configuration, it doesn’t screw up the window.

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Making Twitter more secure: HTTPS

By on March 15, 2011 in Random Rants, Web/Tech

This really should be the default. If you use Twitter, you want this.

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Going Flash-Free on Mac OS X, and How to Cheat When You Need It

By on March 15, 2011 in Mac / OSX, Operating Systems, Random Rants, Web/Tech

I have now done this on my Air and I’m more than happy with it. Safari is a dream. DF is updated with a few recent update for things like Chrome linking etc.

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Web Chat in 12 lines of code – NowJS

By on March 15, 2011 in Programming, Web/Tech

Thanks to @rcomian for the tip. Awesome use of Node.js.

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The 960 Grid System Made Easy

By on March 14, 2011 in Programming, Web/Tech

Read this on the way in this morning (thanks @Paul_Kinlan) it is a really good overview of 960.gs.

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The mix up with tickets and Joyent

By on June 17, 2009 in Open Solaris, Operating Systems, Random Rants, Web/Tech

I think the first thing to say is this post is not a slating of Joyent. They are an amazing company and I have never had a problem beyond little things like back end network routing and the like.

So, about two weeks ago, I raised a ticket:

We would like to shut down the accelerator mentioned above as it is surplus to our requirements.

So. The ticket referenced an accelerator with an ‘i’ in it. We got a nice reply that confirmed the request:

I’ve just set xxxxi to be closed on the 17th.

So that’s all good. I verify against my spreadsheets and ensure that it’s all correct. It is, so I think nothing of it. Until this morning! This morning xxxxl (obviously the x’s are censoring the exact numbers/letters) was turned off! Obviously, as we have a large amount of accelerators with Joyent, I picked up the Batphone and gave them a call.

The reply was:

xxxxi was shut down as requested in ticket xxxxx

But xxxxi was up. xxxxl was down. Nope they’d shut the wrong one down. I can imagine what happened. The ticket system is disjointed with the system that manages the accelerators. Somebody typo’d the entry of which one to shut down.

I guess I’ll find out more when it’s not 3am in the morning. Easier to discuss this stuff when people have had a good night’s sleep! Now to try and explain it all to the big boss man!

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Be* Mixes Toolbar

By on September 1, 2008 in Web/Tech

When we made Mixes at work, we made sure that we built it in a RESTful way. This has a few cool advantages. Not least because one of the guys I work with, Lloyd Pick, made a quick toolbar up for Firefox to view the status of current matches.

It’s a very simple affair. The grey men change to green men as the server fills up and you can click to go to the page and get yourself on that server.

I’m loving it during the beta. It means I don’t have to sit on the page waiting for a game to get going, I can see instantly as I browse round the web that something’s going on.

Good job Limi, let’s hope Mozilla Addons get it out of the Experimental bin.

Mixes Toolbar @ addons.mozilla.org

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