Staticfree Blog

Firefox's slogan, "taking back the web" isn't just about blocking pop-up ads. One of the new features that comes in it out-of-the-box in version 1.5 is a way to add custom CSS to other peoples' websites (when viewed on your computer). This lets you fix the little quirks that may make themselves evident on websites that you frequent, but have no ability to fix.

One such site is my Livejournal friends page. When I view it in my normal 2-up browser mode (with 2 Firefox windows open, side by side each 640px wide), images embedded in the page often cause a horizontal scroll bar. This then causes the text to fill to fit the resized area and makes me maximize the window to be able to read it. While I can tweak the colors and such, I can't actually modify the CSS without getting a paid account (and I don't think I care that much).

My solution? Close Firefox then edit my ~/.mozilla/firefox/profilename/chrome/userContent.css file. Then add this block:

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://xxv.livejournal.com/friends/){
  img {
     max-width: 70%;
     height: auto;
  }
}

(If you are trying to use this, make sure you modify the URL for your username).

Now if I open my friends page in Firefox, it scales down all the images so they fit in the browser. If I want to look at one, I can maximize the window or open the image in a new tab.

userContent.css has been around for a long time to allow you to inject default CSS into all the pages that you view. Firefox 1.5 supports a special selector type @-moz-document which lets you match based on the current URL.

Being able to change the way you look at websites is really what "taking back the web" is all about. Platypus is another wonderful example of this, ultimately more useful than the hack mentioned above. With it you can change content in addition to simple style. Don't like an aspect of a website you frequent? Platypus lets you click on it and delete it, making it go away the next time you visit too.

Remember: a website is just text and links to images organized in a standard way. You can do anything to text, if you know how it's arranged and if you have control of what presents it. Could you do this in a closed, binary format such as Flash? No. Never.

Today I discovered NeuroCam. I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but it's based out of Melbourne, AU. It appears to be some sort of demi-secret international organization; only "demi" as many of the operatives have blogs. The weirdest bit yet: I've already met one two of their operatives, although I didn't know it at the time. I think this requires further investigation...

Many people have websites that have poorly-chosen font sizes and they don't even realize it. They use the unit of measurement known as "pt", thinking that it will make font sizes more consistent. This is akin to the people who make a website design and change the foreground color, but leave the background color to be the default. In both cases, the designer made bad assumptions about the reader's configuration.

To the point

Shown here is a popular website as seen on my small laptop screen. The text on the left window is much too large for the design. Compare to the window on the right that respects the browser's default font size.

You should not use point sizes for screen font sizes. Instead, you should use pixels, as no doubt the rest of your website is designed based on pixels. If it's not pixel-based and it's relative (yay!) then let the user choose (by using the default font size and relative sizes from that). This is because screen resolutions are not all the same and users generally know best when it comes to what font size they prefer reading.

In your site's CSS, instead of font-size: 12pt use font-size: 14px. These should look roughly the same on a normal, 85 DPI screen (see below for talk on DPI) but on a high-res screen (say, 141 DPI) 12pt text is 23 pixels high! If your site design is done in pixels - that's going to be a problem.

Nifty! Google's calculator can convert from pt to px at any given DPI. Just enter "12 points in inch / 85" (try it) in the search box and it'll give you "14.1666667 inch / 85" aka "14 pixels". You can do the same thing using the *NIX units program. If you know your DPI, you can just replace "85" with the appropriate DPI.

See more ...

Various tech blogs posted a link to a nifty technology for camera-equipped cellphones: Semacode. Semacode 2D barcode system for printing camera-phone readable URLs. There's a demo client for SymbianOS (Series 60 it seems) and a Java encoder. You type a URL into the Java encoder, press "go" and you have an image that, when you print it and stick it to things, can be photographed and turned back into a URL on the phone.

This reminded me of Anti-mega's previous post on a similar subject. The difference here is Anti-mega was talking about encoding RDF data itself in the barcode, not just a link.

This, of course, reminded me of another site that came across my radar recently: Placetime.com's WGS 84 Geographic Point URI Space. This provides a URI vocabulary for talking about geographic points in space (Geekhaus for example). Placetime offers a nifty service that will generate appropriate RDF for a given URI. Now, toss one of the geo URIs into a Semacode, print it, and you have a flexible, machine-readable way of publishing a geographic coordinate in meatspace.

Possible applications: a sign in a park with the barcodes printed on it. Embedded in the barcodes are URIs of geographic coordinates of landmarks. You could then take your cellphone/GPS/PDA/datasponge and wander around the park, checking out the points of interest without needing a physical map. Of course, it'd be better to encode the actual RDF in the barcode itself, but due to current datasize and camera quality, that's not entirely possible.

Maybe provide a more automated way of tagging in for urban-wilderness games like PacManhattan.

The main issues with Semacode is unrelated to Semacode itself. Most cellcams need to get better short-range focusing capability. As-is, it seems to take a 3-4cm image of the barcode to get my Nokia 3650 to read the barcode. That's a bit big when you're talking about a magazine-scale print medium.

I've noticed a number of "beta" websites popping up recently. Friendster, Orkut, Flickr, Peopleaggregator, and Plink just to name a few.

Now, beta websites have been around for some time. Cute little animated construction equipment icons used to be all the rage. "this page under construction" (only about 5,250,000 hits for "under construction" on Google) generally accompanied the icons. But, this "beta" seems to be a bit different: all the sites are related to social networking and only are of much value if a critical mass of people can be reached.

Is "beta" used to entice people into thinking they can be amongst the specially-invited few who (like Orkut and Friendster) get to participate in the website? Or is it simply a disclaimer warning users of potential instability? I can only imagine a bit of both - especially with Orkut which used invitation-only exclusivity to lure users in. They remind me of the those, "you might have already won! [but in all probability you didn't]" snail-mail ads - it's the little phrase that gets your interest.

I hope this trend fades soon and these services come out of beta. Either that, or they accept the notion that the world is still in alpha and hasn't even gotten to beta yet.

I keep on drawing myself back into the internet, into its warm folds and snuggles of people caring and exchanging energy and voices and laughter. I wish to be a part of this flowing mass all the time because I feel such a lack of real connection in those near me. I more than anything wish for someone nearby to connect into on a daily level...

*smiles and gets back to coding reality-augmenting technology*

This is perhaps the funniest video I've seen in a long time. Disco never dies. The best part is that the song at the end is something that Geekwad showed me way back in high school. [from BoingBoing link-fu]

The cult classic that spawned the wall coverings of many-a-college dorms is now available, legitimately, from Archive.org. Download Reefer Madness and enjoy the wonderful 1930's propaganda against "the other tobacco".

edge.org has a good article on life laws and what famous minds' laws are. One of the ones that directly applies to me (at least recently):

Sterling's Law of Ubiquitous Computation

First, your home is a constant, while the Net is a place you go; then the Net becomes a constant while your home is a place you go.

Or, perhaps, the 'net is the home, while the place-of-residence is just a place to sleep? "Oh how times are a-changin'".

A flash-based web meme, the snowman creator! I'm mainly noting this here as their gallery seems to have died and I was quite proud of my fractal snowman. I was going to iterate it a bit further, but then I realized that I'm drawing a bloody snowman fractal. And life goes on.

Grouphug.us came across my radar recently. It's a site where people can post anonymous confessions. As a minister, I feel it my duty to hear some confessions every once in awhile. It's more than that, though: it's intriguing. You get to hear what people feel is bad in their life, what they deem to be wrong. Things vary from having wild, drunken sex with relatives behind their SO's back to confessing that they aren't honest and true to their friends.

I don't know how much is truthful, but it doesn't really matter. Like The Dead Letter Office, it's a small, penetrating look at a portion of a random someone's life that is often hidden. Or what they want people to think about it anyhow.

I have a morbid fascination with these sites which I'm sure many people would deem unhealthy. I think quite the opposite: I can reflect on them and see how I stand against a random set of individuals. I can look at their seemingly unsolvable problems and I can ask myself how I'd handle it. I can look at myself and say, "I'd never do that; I'm better than that" and ask myself if that's really true. It's a strange sort of thing that I like to call "my daily hate", for without the bad, the good loses all its contrast and definition.

MozCC is a nifty plugin for Mozilla-based browsers that lets you view, at a glance, the Creative Commons copyright information embedded in the page. It puts little icons in the lower-right corner of the status bar that show what you're required to do if sharing the work. See this post which has a bunch of other nifty CC toys, including a CC validator.

FOAF is a keen system for creating distributed social networks. Think of it as a distributed Friendster, where social connections are tied together by URLs and email addresses.

How do you play? It's simple! Go over to the FOAF-o-matic, fill out the form, and put the generated code on your web page. Once it's online, hop by the FOAF Explorer and see who else is available. A more complete getting started guide is also available.

My FOAF file is available if you want to poke it for some reason. I'll be adding more friends as more people start using it. So... use it! There's a bunch of nifty things you can do once you put one together. This is one of those "critical mass" toys that isn't so useful if only small number of people use it. Unlike Friendster, though, it's not nearly as viral as it should be. Tell you friends!

Awhile ago, I found this site on some memeblog: The Church of Virus. It's an interesting site that talks about organized religions as memes for spreading ideals. I'm a firm believer in this and this site tries to play upon that, being a meme in itself. I believe the site says it best:

Goal

Virus was originally created to compete with the traditional (irrational) religions in the human ideosphere with the idea that it would introduce and propagate memes which would ensure the survival and evolution of our species. The main advantage conferred upon adherents is Virus provides a conceptual framework for leading a truly meaningful life and attaining immortality without resorting to mystical delusions. (source)

"Somebody had to put all this Confusion here!"

I had found it before, but here is a Discordian Coloring book. It's remarkably well-illustrated, for such an eccentric thing. I only wish someone would publish it on cheap paper so I could discretely leave them in Dr.'s offices around the country. The thought of a little kid scribbling over an apple with ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΙ inscribed in it is just.. awesome. "Mommy, what's she doing to him?"