doomy doom

I’m sitting over here trying to get my Blog connected to my Facebook and to a Twitter account.  I want to be able to Tweet from the road, have it post on my Blog, then have that also post to my Facebook.  The things we do for technology.

I have a feeling tweeting might fill up my blog while I’m out and about, but oh well. If I find it insufferable while I’m testing it out I’ll change it so it stays only in the widget on the sidebar instead of actually making new posts.

This post is mostly a test to be sure it updates my Facebook accordingly.   Here goes nothin’.

This is AMAZING.

The Wacom Inkling. Whoa.  I am in awe.  And drooling.

There are two groups of people regarding most things.  There are the people who like the new, different stuff, and there are the people who are solidly against it for whatever reason.

The thing in question is the Address Bar in Firefox 3.  A good friend of mine is solidly against it.  I’ve been beta testing 3.x as they roll out the new betas, so I’ve just put up with it for the time being, but it is annoying.  I don’t need it to find absolutely every single link/bookmark/history/tab/wtfe.   I just want it to figure out what site I want because I’m probably typing the beginning letters of the site.

For example, I want to go to mail.yahoo.com.  I start typing m… and immediately the address bar will bring up any site in the arsenal that has a “m” in it.  And, it doesn’t even bring up “mail.whatever” as the first thing.  It may pull up “LOLcats.gov/archive/deceMber…” or it’ll search the titles of the websites in your history and pull up stuff like “The Psychological Effects of Winter: What Really Causes Moping” whaaat?!  Exactly.

Instead of wanting to deal with it, and after extensively searching for another way, my friend decided best course of action was to roll back to FF2.  Smart.

I, on the other hand…Noo.. I went on a mission.  I think he and I had this discussion a while back and I came up empty-handed.  Today, however, I have come to a good place – a balance, dare I say – where my FF3 address bar functions quite a bit better.  Since it took me nearly three hours of scouring and testing to find it all, I figured I’d post it here in case anyone else wants all the info of what to do in one place.  But Wait!  This does not change the algorithm back to FF2, it only makes the address bar act similarly to FF2. I’m not going to go indepth into the ‘this is what this function does’.  I’m just going to tell you the values to change.  If you want function information, check the Knowledge Base.  Onward!

First things first:  If you mess up your FF3 by doing anything I say, it’s not my fault.  You’re doing all this at your own risk. But I can tell you that this is how mine is set up, and it hasn’t broken yet, so carry on with your changes!

Okay, start off by downloading this Old Location Bar extension.  It makes the address bar look like FF2.  It doesn’t change the algorithm or the search functions, so that’s what we’re doing next. Don’t bother restarting FF after you install this.  One foul swoop, people.

Now, we’re going to be editing the config file for FF, so if you’re uncomfortable, call someone else to do this.  It’s really not that hard though.  Some of the things I do here may replicate or be double work to what the extension is also doing.  True.  I just want to make sure the values are what I want them to be.  Here we go.

In the address bar type “about:config” without quotes.  You now see all the config options for FF.  There will be a search bar at the top of the screen.  Type “browser.urlbar” without quotes.  You will now only see values that match what you typed.

• browser.urlbar.matchBehavior – double click this and set the value to 2
• browser.urlbar.matchRichResults – double click and set to some low number like 5.  That seems  to be plenty.

Alright.  Done with the “browser.urlbar”, so go ahead and erase that from the search bar.  Now type “frecency” (portmanteau word of “frequency” and “recent”).  You will now see the weirdness that is the new searching utility of the FF3 address bar.  I’m not even going to try to explain this madness.

• Find all the values that end with “Bonus“.  Change all their values to 0 (zero).
• Now find the following: .linkVisitBonus, .typedVisitBonus and .unvisitedVisitBonus.  Change all their values to 1.

I know, why’d I make you change all the ones with Bonus to 0, then change a couple to 1?  It’s easier to do that way.  Trust me.  It’s at least easier to explain that way.

Now you can restart Firefox (or just close it and reopen it, whatever).

You should now have a sensible address bar at the top of your screen.  It isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t get around the weird algorithm FF3 implemented, but it’s somewhat better.  And, as always, make note of the changes you’ve made.  You’ll want to know what you changed later when you break something and try to blame me.  I want proof that you did it exactly how I told you to.  

Friday to Sunday have been pretty good days.

Friday I stayed home to get some things done and recover from my rather tumultuous middle of the night fainting adventures.  I had posted on Freecycle that I wanted some herbs, and one of the ladies in the group had a couple!  I drove over to her house around noonish to pick those up.  Mint and thyme and chives, oh my!  I had picked up some basil at Trader Joe’s the other day on a whim and these are adding to my plant fervor.  Specifically, herb fervor.

I realized I would need to have pots to plant these in, so I called up mah good buddy Poppy and asked him if  it’d be cool if I picked up some of the pots I left at his house.  He said it was, so I drove over.  Little did I know that he was sick with a brutal cold.  He blamed me.  I denied it, then went to the store to pick up some odds and ends to make him feel better.  Someone’s gotta take care of these poor boys.  That done, I loaded my truck with a couple pots and headed home.

Shortly after arriving home who should be knocking on my door but the UPS guy!  Oh, UPS Santa, what did you bring me?!  Why it’s the monitor and SATA drive I ordered!  Joy!  I am now the proud owner of a very sexy 22″ monitor.  I realized that if I wanted one, I’d just have to break down and get it.  My dual monitor set up at work was getting to me.  I’d come home to a puny little 15″ and cry myself to sleep at night.  That’s no way to live.  A solution was at hand, and now it is on my desk.  Brilliance.

But that’s not all.  No siree, Bob, that is not all.  I had contacted a fellow about a desk/table on craigslist that I thought showed promise.  I’m trying to figure out a better computer desk situation here.  The drawing table I’ve been using as a desk these past couple years has begun to annoy me.  It might have something to do with me living on the Lifehacker site and seeing everyone makeover their office space.  It probably has everything to do with that.  Regardless, my roommate and I ran up the coast to acquire this awesome new piece of furniture.  So far it’s proven quite useful.  I wish it were just a bit taller, but if I were to use it for it’s real function, then it’d be perfect.  I’ll either adapt it, or figure something else out.  In the mean while, it’s a snazzy new thing that I’m pretty stoked about.

Saturday was nice because my roommate and I went to a bbq one of his friends was throwing.  The weather was lovely, the food was delicious, the music was very chill, and there were at least 5-8 dogs running around at all times.  It doesn’t get much better than that.  That was probably the best bbq I’ve been to in a long time.  Granted, I didn’t know very many people at all there and was a bit shy, but I think the dogs helped me out with that.  At the end, it was a beautiful day and we all had a good time.

Today has been technically productive.  I’ve been playing with my Gmail filters and labels to create some awesome hierarchical structures in my label list.  If you’re not at all sure what I’m talking about, check out the following articles:

Gmail Labs Feature: Filter Import/Export – This is the idea we’re starting with.  Importing.  Well, export your current list of filters first as a backup.   Then we import.

Ten Must-Have Gmail Filters – This is Lifehacker’s list of some pretty cool/productive filters.  I find them to be a smart group.

Maintaining Gmail Filters with XML – In case you’re a bit more savvy, you can load up an XML Editor and play around with these.  I ended up doing that to fix the labels and other randomness.

Better Gmail 2 – This is a FireFox plugin for your Gmail.  It’s rad.  One of the cool things you can do that Lifehacker’s filters nod at is the ability to have hierarchical label lists.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve got a crapload of labels that I have to scroll for days to see all of them.  This way you can change the labels to have hierarchy.  It’s a brilliant system.

Gmail Advanced Search – Operators that might give you an idea of how to arrange your XML filters.

So, all in all, good weekend.  Hopefully you’re having one as brilliantly lovely as mine.  Ta ta!

I’ve noticed that not all sites accept the smith+cool@gmail.com variation.  The plus sign flags as an invalid email address.  Disappointing, as some of these sites are the ones I’d definitely like to use it for.  Le sigh.