Volasail

User of Google Reader?  Tired of constantly loading the website to check for new items?  Found this trick while cruising the interwebs yesterday:

1. Visit http://www.google.com/reader/i/ — the mobile version of Google Reader
2. Using Firefox, bookmark the page (you are using Firefox, right?).  Throw it into your Bookmarks Menu
3. Go Bookmarks->Organize Bookmarks and single click the bookmark
4. Click the “More” button at the bottom of the window
5. Check the “Load this bookmark in the sidebar” button
6. Double-click the bookmark and watch as a Firefox sidebar gets tacked onto your browsing window.  Now you can just refresh whenever you want without having a separate window or tab open.

Enjoy!

(Tip o’ the hat to David Griffiths)

i’m a PC - and i do boring, ordinary, every day things.  please make me an operating system that works like I do.  make it boring, ordinary, and lacking in innovation. oh, and let is SHRED my hard drive on startup, too…i LOVE that. oh, i almost forgot! could you make it somewhat stable until about 3 months of heavy usage — then let all the applications start colliding in registry hell. oh and let it take 5-10 minutes to boot up then, too. that’ll give me time to drink the crappy office coffee before i can actually do any work

First off, the article says “3 Steps”, but look a little farther and you’re realize that “converting the engine to one powered by solar panels” should not be considered merely one step.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/29/gas-powered-lawn-mower-gone-solar-via-3-step-mod/

But the kicker?  The mod costs $1500.  What?!  You’ll never spend that much on gas for that machine in its entire life.

Silly.  Just silly.

Came across this great site today while needing to do a quick and dirty menu tree.

http://www.opencube.com/

Click on “Online Visual Interface” and create your own menu.  The themes come first — when you’re done there, click “Customize Menu” and you’re off.  When you’re all done clicks the “Save” button on the top for the full code printout.

Very slick and super fast.

David Billingham has put together an awesome PHP class full of Twitter functions:

He provides a few examples of usage in the source file.  Here’s an example of using the class to post a direct message with a little extra error output:

$message = “your direct message”;
$t= new twitter();
$t->username= “yourtwitterusername”;
$t->password= “yourtwitterpassword”;
$res = $t->sendDirectMessage(”directmsgrecepient,$message);
if($res===false){ //if there is a Twitter error
echo ‘<span class=”style7″>Something went wrong!</span> <br/>Twitter said: <span class=”style5″>’ . $t->errmsg . ‘</span><br/>  Please try again.’;
}else{
echo ‘<span class=”style3″>SUCCESS!!  TWEET SENT!</span><br/>’;

}

Use dreamhost?  Use wordpress?  Want to post PHP code inside a “<code>” tag and it’s not working?

1. Visit your web panel (panel.dreamhost.com)
2. Go to the manage domains panel (https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=domain.manage&)
3. Edit the domain you’re using
4. Turn OFF “Extra Web Security?”

Wow, that took me a long time to figure out.