// Internet Duct Tape

Weekend Reader – friendfeed, blogging, technology, programming, wordpress

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on May 25, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can follow this list of links as I post them on Friend Feed or on Twitter. Or you can get the weekly update by subscribing to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

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Weekend Reader – programming, lifehacks, code, blogging, funny

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on May 10, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can follow this list of links as I post them on Friend Feed or on Twitter. Or you can get the weekly update by subscribing to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

(more…)

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Delicious Links – 20 links – blogging, windows, codinghorror, amazon, shopping

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on April 26, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can follow this list of links as I post them on Friend Feed or on Twitter. Or you can get the weekly update by subscribing to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

(more…)

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Delicious Links – 20 links – friendfeed, lifehacks, blogging, programming, wordpress

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on March 24, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

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Delicious Links – 20 links – tools, gamers, workhacks, code, links

Posted in Best of Feeds, Technology by engtech on March 16, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

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Delicious Links – 17 links – programming, stumbleupon, blogging, windows, copyright

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on March 09, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

This Week at IDT Labs

IDT Labs is where I announce new software tools I’m working on.

  • [TUMBLR] Regular Post Digest of the Last X Days
    • Build a list of the last X regular posts from your Tumblr account in the past Y days. Useful for doing weekly digest posts with Yahoo Pipe Cleaner . Based off of a pipe by romzombie . IDT Labs is a blog for news announcements about software, tools or blog themes created by InternetDuctTape.com .…
  • [TUMBLR] Delete your Tumblr with TumblrCleanr 0.0.1
    • There’s one Tumblr feature that’s missing: how do you delete your Tumblr? At some point you might want to destroy all traces of your tumblr (privacy concerns, or you want to use it for something else) and there isn’t an option to do that — other than click the delete button on every…

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Delicious Links – 13 links – programming, lifehacks, productivity, geek, games

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on February 23, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

This Week at IDT Labs

IDT Labs is where I announce new software I’m working on.

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Delicious Links – 20 links – geek, twitter, sleephacks, design, programming

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on February 17, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

This Week at IDT Labs

IDT Labs is where I announce new software I’m working on.

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2 comments

Delicious Links – 20 links – programming, community, development, twitter, lisp

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on February 09, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

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Delicious Links – 20 links – blogging, programming, ruby, photography, copyright

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on February 02, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

This Week at IDT Labs

IDT Labs is where I announce new software I’m working on.

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Delicious Links – 20 links – writing, programming, javascript, jquery, testing

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on January 26, 2008

Weekly Links

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together for my blog on Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

This Week at IDT Labs

IDT Labs is where I announce new software I’m working on.

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Best of Feeds – 23 links – programming, music, photography, psychology, rails

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on January 13, 2008

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

This Week at IDT Labs

  • [WORDPRESS] Category Resizer v1.0
    • WordPress Category Resizer 2008/01/02 – v1.0 – BUGFIX: newer versions of WordPress.com broke this script – BUGFIX: will run on any WordPress install, not just WordPress.com – BUGFIX: now works when you have less than three categories – added automatic update check – Tested with WordPress.com…
  • [WORDPRESS] Comment Ninja v0.5
    • Comment Ninja v0.5 2008/01/02 – 0.5 don’t display comment ninja in mass-edit mode, since it doesn’t work on that mode wordpress.com added avatars to the comment display and they were being sent in emails on multi-author blogs it grays out the comments you can’t edit IDT Labs is a…

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Best of Feeds – 20 links – geek, movies, blogging, programming, xbox360

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on January 05, 2008

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

This Week at IDT Labs

  • [WORDPRESS] Category Resizer v1.0
    • WordPress Category Resizer 2008/01/02 – v1.0 – BUGFIX: newer versions of WordPress.com broke this script – BUGFIX: will run on any WordPress install, not just WordPress.com – BUGFIX: now works when you have less than three categories – added automatic update check – Tested with WordPress.com…
  • [WORDPRESS] Comment Ninja v0.5
    • Comment Ninja v0.5 2008/01/02 – 0.5 don’t display comment ninja in mass-edit mode, since it doesn’t work on that mode wordpress.com added avatars to the comment display and they were being sent in emails on multi-author blogs it grays out the comments you can’t edit IDT Labs is a…

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Getting Started With Ruby on Rails – Week 2

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Technology by engtech on November 28, 2007

Learning Ruby

I’ve fallen for the hype and started using Ruby on Rails for building database driven web applications. You can follow along with my weekly experience discovering gotchas with Ruby on Rails.

Previously: Getting Started With Ruby on Rails – Week 1

Emacs Rails-mode

Last week I complained about wasting time setting up rails-mode in emacs. I’m starting to find some real time saver though. The navigation short-cuts are absolutely necessary for navigating the file structure of a Rails application and I really like how the syntax highlighting can capture lines that don’t make any sense to Ruby. This is a great feature if you’re learning Ruby at the same time as you’re learning Rails. It has auto completion for “”, [], {} and ending function blocks and even picks up things like when you have one too many ends in your file.

Which files should be checked in?

I couldn’t find a list of what files are allowed to be checked in anywhere in Agile Web Development with Rails. The answer seems to be anything but:

db/schema.rb # easier to let your db:migrate control it
config/database.yml # because it contains database passwords
coverage/* # generated by rcov
logs/* # generated by server
tmp/* # temporary sessions files

Don’t overwrite the flash

Bad, no validation errors will be shown:

@model.save
flash.now[:notice] = "I saved it"

Better:

if (@model.save) then
flash.now[:notice] = "I saved it"
end

Will trap and display ruby errors as well as validation errors:

begin
if (@model.save) then
flash.now[:notice] = "I saved it"
else
  raise "Error saving"
end
# Do stuff
rescue Exception => e
  flash[:notice] = e.message
end

Keep controllers streamlined

I found myself creating one controller that had add/show/delete/list actions for multiple models. It’s much cleaner to have multiple controllers for the individual models.

Conditional Linking

link_to_if will put an unlinked version of the text if the conditional is false. This is much more useful than removing the link text completely for a lot of situations, because you don’t have to worry that the rest of the text around it will look weird. Don’t try to use html_options as a hash! I lost quite a bit of time to this because it won’t use the method parameter, but it doesn’t give you an error.

link_to_if (check_if_user_can_delete),
	"Delete Image",
	{ :action => "delete", :id => @image.id },
	:confirm => "Are you sure?",
	:class => "dangerous",
	:method => :delete

Generate validates_* off of database

I would have liked it if the generate script automatically generated validates_* helpers off of the database table. validates_length_of could be generated for :limit and validates_numericality_of could be generated for :integer.

Using the same partial to display create/edit/show

This is a neat little trick I found. You can use the same partial for your create/edit/show actions by using html_options and setting

{ :disabled => (controller.action_name == "show" ? true : false) }

for all the fields. It might not be useful for many public applications, but for an internal app it’s a great way to use the same ajaxy displays that you use for create/edit in show.

Polymorphic Associations

Are weird if you want to validate uniqueness. They might work better with has_many relationships than with has_one relationships. Or, I made it more complicated that it had to be.

Deploying sucks

It’s true. Played around a bit with capitrano and vlad the deployer but the both seem to assume you’re using subversion.

Free Tidbit: How crypt works in passwd files

I don’t know why this was so hard to find in Google: passwd files that use the crappy crypt mechanism use the first two characters of the expected password as the salt!

given_password = "hello_world"
encrypted_password = "ahga3sgj"
return encrypted_password == given_password.crypt(encrypted_password.slice(0,2))

and don’t worry, I’ll talk about something other than Rails later this week :)

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5 comments

Getting Started With Ruby on Rails – Week 1

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Technology by engtech on November 21, 2007

Learning Ruby

I’ve fallen for the hype and started using Ruby on Rails for building a database driven web application. If you’ve never heard of Rails it is a web framework using the Ruby programming language. Ruby is an object-oriented interpreted language, that’s often compared favourably with Smalltalk. [1] What’s a framework? A framework provides a structure and a set of tools usually for solving a particular type of problem. A programming language solves general problems while a framework extends a programming language to better solve a specific problem.

Rails is a framework for building web applications: stuff like blog software, instant messaging, to-do lists, web magazines, and your favorite web comic. Word on the street is that ROR is a resource hog but the resource consumption is balanced out by how much more productive it is to develop with. It’s easier to buy more computers to host a web application than it is to hire more developers. Computers get more powerful over time; developers not so much.

I’ve been developing websites as a hobby off and on since 1994, but I only learned CSS in the past six months. I’ve done some minor hacking of other people’s web apps that were written in ASP or Perl and they were always horrible messes of spaghetti code. I’m really looking forward to trying out a web app from scratch.

Choose Your Path

I run a Windows machine with a VMWare Linux box inside of it, so I can choose to do my Rails development under Windows or under Linux. If I use Windows then I can use InstantRails, which is a one-click installer that gives you everything to need to start coding ASAP. But I much prefer developing under Linux because you can’t beat the power of having a strong command line. The Windows command line console is a joke, and requires a ton of 3rd party utilities for stuff that’s already there under Linux. [2]

The downside is that there is no one-click install for Linux. Well, except for this one, which I didn’t notice until now :)

Installing ruby, gem and rails is simple and I was able to do it under my user account using the standard –prefix=/home/engtech install options.

Gotcha #1 – MySQL

I already had MySQL installed on my Linux box but it was an extremely old version that blew up the second I tried to use Rails to talk to the database. You need at least MySQL 4 to use Rails because it uses ENGINE=InnoDB for its calls. Older versions of MySQL don’t have InnoDB turned on by default, and once you do turn it on they only understand TYPE=InnoDB.

Mysql::Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'ENGINE=InnoDB'

Tip: Get the latest and greatest version of MySQL instead of whatever came with your Linux install. I needed the Server, Client, and Developer RPMs. MySQL was the part of the install process that required root access.

Tip: If you use a password for your MySQL root account, make sure you change config/database.yml to use it.

Gotcha #2 – Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Rails doesn’t come with a standard IDE, but instead gives you a wide option of choices. Aptana RadRails, based on Eclipse is a good choice. But I’ve already sold my soul to one editor for all my coding needs: emacs. Emacs is the “kitchen sink” IDE because it supports everything: you can find extensions for any programming language or task. The downside is that it has a learning curve like you wouldn’t believe.

There’s a tutorial on how to add rails support to emacs. It’s long and complicated. Using rails mode in emacs requires upgrading to emacs version 22 that broke a lot of my existing DotEmacs hacks. I eventually got it working, but in retrospect I might have been better off going with RadRails because I lost hours to this. I’m still finding emacs keystrokes that don’t do what I expected them to.

I’m unimpressed that there isn’t a quick reference print sheet for rails-mode, this is the best that I could find. So far I’ve only been using the syntax highlighting and C-c C-c g K and C-c Up / C-c Down to navigate between files.

Gotcha #3 – Development Server vs Production

When I was running into MySQL installation problems, I toyed with using SQLite3 instead for a while. Needless to say, make sure your development database is using the same versions of everything as your development and test servers. It’ll save you lots of headaches.

Initial Opinion

People weren’t lying about how productive programming with Ruby on Rails is. In the same amount of time it took me to write this blog post I was able to get a simple web application with user authentication up and running with a web interface that is probably “good enough” for final release. Which is ridiculous, compared to my previous experience hacking apps together using ASP or Perl.

  • Directory structure - Clean, clear, and everything has it’s place.
  • Naming conventions - One of the best things a framework can give is enforcing a standard way of naming things. It takes a while to learn it, but it becomes second nature that if a class is called X, the database table is called Y and the tests are called Z. If you leave it to themselves most developers create small inconsistencies in naming conventions that waste time — especially if more than one person is working on the code.
  • Don’t Repeat Yourself - I really like the way Model/View/Controller separates the code and keeps it becoming a mess. Inheritance and helpers/partials are great for keeping you from duplicating code.
  • Succinct - Wow, you really do get a lot done with very little code writing. They weren’t kidding when they said you could write blogging software in under 15 minutes.
  • HTML / CSS / XML – I really love that it doesn’t try to hide the HTML, CSS and XML under a lot of programming calls. There are helpers for doing common things, but you’re free to write your own web code.
  • Development / Test / Production - In my limited experience with web apps, I’ve never worked on anything that had more than 20 users. Testing was all done manually, and the production server was the development server. It was a mess. Clean separation makes it much easier to work on code independently and only push it out to users once it has been rigorously tested.
  • Migrations - We use to build our database tables using a PHPMyAdmin web interfaces. Needless to say, doing it through scripting where you can tear down, reassemble, and rebuild the database tables is much cleaner because everything is reproducible from scratch.
  • Rake, rdoc, and test - One of the things I like most about Ruby is that it has all the fixings I expect from modern languages: the ability to automatically generate documentation off of the code and a built-in unit testing and build framework. I’m always amazed when I see a language that doesn’t natively support these facilities.
  • Religion - The big downside to Ruby on Rails is that it feels a little bit like a religion sometimes.

Conclusion

I should have tried Ruby on Rails a long time ago. I spent entirely too much time setting up my development environment compared to when I could have been developing a web application. I could have been up and running in less than an hour if I had:

  1. Used InstantRails
  2. Used Aptana RadRails

Footnotes

1 – Did you know that Smalltalk inspired the Macintosh GUI? Smallpark was yet another example of the magic that was going on at XEROX PARC in the 70s. These are the guys who invented the mouse, colour graphic, windows/icons for a GUI, WYSIWYG text editors, Ethernet (how you talk to other computers on a network), and laser printers. Programmers at Work featured interviews with some of the people from PARC.

2 – I’m always amazed that people can program without easy access to diff, find, grep, perl, etc. All of these things are available for Windows for free, but they never work quite the way I expect them to.

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Programming Best Practices: Profiling

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Programming and Software Development, Technology by engtech on November 14, 2007

Programming Tips

My first task coming back from my work stress blogging hiatus is to finally fix problems with Akismet Auntie Spam that Lorelle reported over a month ago — if your Akismet spambox has over 10,000 spam comments then Auntie Spam is going to crash hard. Viewing that many comments at once will make Firefox use eight times more memory than normal web browsing, even without using Auntie Spam [1].
This means it’s time to do some code profiling [2]. In programming, profiling means to measure your code and find out which parts are using the most time and the most memory. Profiling gives you performance analysis measurements so that you can optimize your program for speed and/or memory.

“Don’t prematurely optimize” is a programming Best Practice, and it can be summed up in the words of my grandfather: “measure twice and cut once”. You can guess at what parts need fixing, but it is much more effective to measure how your program performs so that you can focus on the worst parts. They have the most room for improvement. Without profiling you could easily spend several hours optimizing a loop that executes in negligible time and ignore the three lines that copy huge chunks of memory for No Apparent Reason. Get it working, and then use your profiler to get it working fast.

Profiling is a Skill

I’ve been creating Greasemonkey scripts using javascript for a year now, and this is my first time firing up any kind of javascript profiler. It really struck me that I waited too long to do this. Don’t prematurely optimize, but also don’t waste any time learning how to run a profiler on your code and interpret the results. If you’ve never gone through the process of optimizing code in a language you regularly use, then you’ve been relying on all kinds of bad habits [3]. Learn how to integrate a profiler with your program as soon as possible so that performance analysis doesn’t become one of those “I’ll get around to it” tasks that never happens.

Another good rule is to always test with large data sets. Ideally you want a fast case for rapid prototyping of new features, and a worst case for stressful testing of that new feature. To often we use small sets of data for development and testing. We never realize how badly our code performs in real world conditions. Speed and responsiveness play a greater factor in whether or not someone becomes a regular user of your program than you might realize.

Footnotes

[1] One thing WordPress does wrong is it includes all of your comment spam in their WordPress export files. One friend saw his export file decrease from 83 MB to 8 MB once he deleted the comment spam.

[2] The best way to profile Javascript is with FireBug, but it doesn’t recognize Greasemonkey scripts unless you embed them in the page so FireBug can find them. Wikipedia has a list of profilers for popular languages.

[3] Some of the bad habits that were lurking in Auntie Spam:

  • I was using a custom getElementsByClassName instead of an XPATH call. XPATH can be so much faster that walking the DOM.
  • I had too many innerHTML assignments instead of leaving HTML as a string and then giving it to the web page to process as a final step
  • Inefficient regular expressions
  • Too many copies of the comments in memory
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How to Profile Greasemonkey Scripts with Firebug

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Programming Tools, Technology by engtech on November 13, 2007

Programming Tips

Running performance analysis on Greasemonkey scripts can be a pain in the butt. They aren’t part of a webpage so standard tools for analyzing web sites don’t work… or do they?

The Goal

Profiling Greasemonkey scripts with Firebug

What You’ll Need

  1. Firefox
  2. Greasemonkey
  3. Firebug extension

The Trick

#1: You need to remove all of the Greasemonkey GM_* functions from the script you want to profile. This is easier than it sounds because all of the functions can be performed by plain ‘ole javascript (except for the open in new tab function and register menu command).

#2: You need to embed your Greasemonkey script inside of the running page so you can analyze it with Firebug’s profile tool. I have a function below that can embed a function inside the current web page.

#3: You’ll need to call the function either using unsafeWindow or by embedding a call to the function in the page.

#4: Litter your code with calls to Firebug’s console.profile() and console.time() functions.

Sample Code Template


(function() {
  function embedFunction(s) {
document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('script')).innerHTML =
s.toString().replace(/([\s\S]*?return;){2}([\s\S]*)}/,'$2');
 }

  function myKickassGreasemonkeyScript() {
    console.profile();
    // Put everything you need for your Greasemonkey script in here
    // Don't use any of the GM_* functions!

function kickass() {
      console.time("Block1");
      // Block of code that might take a lot of time
      console.time("Block2");
      // another block of code
      console.timeEnd("Block2");

      console.timeEnd("Block1");

    }

// more cowbell

console.profileEnd();
  }

  embedFunction(myKickassGreasemonkeyScript);
  // Method 1: embed the function call into the current page
  document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('script')).innerHTML = "myKickassGreasemonkeyScript();";
  // Method 2: directly call the function using unsafeWindow
//     window.addEventListener("load", function(e) {
//                   unsafeWindow.myKickassGreasemonkeyScript();
//                   this.removeEventListener('load',arguments.callee,false);
//                 }, false);

 })();

Firebug Tutorial

Michael Sync has a tutorial on using Firebug that describes the console.time() and console.profile() functions. The official website has a nice list of Firebug keyboard shortcuts and a brief description of all the console.* functions.

Related Posts

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Best of Feeds – 30 links – programming, google, tips, agile, facebook

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on October 20, 2007

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

  • How I Use Google Reader
    • “How I Use” is a new series I’m starting about the software I use on a day-to-day basis. I want share tips and tricks and to learn tips and tricks from readers sharing with me in the comments. Google Reader is a web-based RSS reader. Because it’s web-based I can access my Google…
  • The Attention Age: Accelerando, Software Agents, Filters and Gatekeepers
    • Last night I finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross. Like many of the books I read these days, I heard about it from another blogger. It feels like a spiritual sequel to Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, John Brunner’s the Shockwave Rider and Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan. It is…
  • Blog Action Day: Save Paper when Readers Print Your Blog
    • Today is Blog Action Day with a focus on the environment and I’m going to teach a quick CSS trick for how to save paper by reducing what gets printed when someone prints an article from your blog.
  • Coworkers Considered Harmful
    • I hit a realization this weekend that I’ve hit many times before. There’s an inordinate number of times when I’m in the office late not because of my own time management failures but because of the people I work with.
  • Best of Feeds – 26 links – programming, webdesign, javascript, design, tips
    • Tags: blogging, design, fun, javascript, lifehacks, programming, rails, tips, usability, web2.0, webdesign, writing

This Week at IDT Labs

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1 comment

Best of Feeds – 26 links – programming, webdesign, javascript, design, tips

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on October 14, 2007

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to //engtech to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

  • What I’m Playing: PC, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360
    • I’m on day 10 of “one of those weeks” so I haven’t had time to fully develop the usual cornucopia of rainbow-coloured blog post ideas. All of my time has been spent on work and family with a smidgen of video game playing to decompress my brain. This isn’t one of those…
  • The Holiday Spread – Group Weight Loss Game
    • This past weekend was Thanksgiving (aka Turkey Day) in Canada, which means seeing your family and eating a lot of food together. One of the favourite pastimes at any holiday is pointing out who’s gained weight and who hasn’t. This got me thinking: one of the principals of successful dieting…
  • Best of Feeds – 34 links – programming, google, lifehacks, ruby, funny
    • Tags: blogging, estimation, free, funny, google, gtd, javascript, lifehacks, productivity, programming, rails, ruby, rubyonrails, search, seo, tips

This Week at IDT Labs

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Best of Feeds – 34 links – programming, google, lifehacks, ruby, funny

Posted in Best of Feeds by engtech on October 07, 2007

RSS feeds are like cookies (that are good enough for me). Best of Feeds is a weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet this week. They’re saved on delicious and stumbleupon and cross-posted to Twitter and Tumblr as they happen and then collected together on Saturdays. I don’t blog on the weekend so read these links instead.Subscribe to Internet Duct Tape to see this every week (or get it by email).

Legend

  • saves – number of people who bookmarked on http://del.icio.us
  • inbound links – number of blogs who linked to it (max 100)
  • diggs – number of people who dugg on http://digg.com

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

  • Distraction Free GTD: 32 Todo List Web Applications
    • Web Runner is a tiny site-specific web application that runs using less resources than Firefox or Internet Explorer. The whole idea behind a site specific web browser is that you want to access a web application without being tempted to access other sites. You want to access a site without being…
  • Magazine Review: October 2007 Issue of Inc. Magazine
    • I came to a rather startling discovery in the past month: magazines are just blogs with the added luxury of being able to read them while on the toilet or in the bathtub (but hopefully not both). I picked up the October issue of Inc. magazine because Joel Spolsky of Joel On Software has joined the…
  • Blog Tip: Create a Link Post in 3 Seconds
    • One question I’m frequently asked is “how do you build those Best of Feeds weekly links?” The way I do it is pretty complicated, but I’ve found a much simpler way that I want to share with you all.
  • Digest for September 2007
    • Every month I publish a digest post collecting the best of Internet Duct Tape.
  • Best of Feeds – 30 links – programming, productivity, code, socialsoftware, socialnetworking
    • Tags: adsense, advice, blogging, career, code, design, development, firefox, gtd, lifehacks, productivity, programming, ruby, rubyonrails, socialnetworking, socialsoftware, tips, web2.0, webdesign

This Week at IDT Labs

  • [AKISMET] Akismet Auntie Spam v2.04
    • Our favorite Auntie has a new version. 2007/10/04 version 2.04 – Fixed (some) memory problems with v2.03 – Still slow, I need to get it working with a profiler, none of the hacks for Greasemonkey + Firebug seem to work.
  • [DELICIOUS] Delicious Link Builder
    • Build a list of links using your delicious account to bookmark them. Works great with my Yahoo Pipe Cleaner script . Example : [BOOKMARKING] toread – an email-based bookmark service Simple service to use to track stuff ‘to read later’. They store the top 10 for each day. It’s like…
  • [RSS PIPE] Stupid Credit Builder
    • This is a clone of Stupid Feed Rewriter that backdates the entry to January 1st, 1970. Useful for adding a credit link at the end of a list.

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