internet

EDIT: SomeScript development has halted. Heh, didn't even last the week.

SomeScript is a simple JavaScript whitelist add-on for Firefox. You can read all about it on the GitHub site, or install the very very very early version from the downloads page.

SomeScript is just YesScript backwards: instead of allowing JavaScript and blocking it on selected sites, it denies JavaScript by default and only allows it on selected sites.

The question on everyone's lips: why?

I hate to break the nice bout of silence here, but I can't stay silent on this. From the Adblock Plus blog:

For years, NoScript has been using a trick to prevent Adblock Plus from working on its domains.

[...] at some point I suggested that EasyList should be extended by a filter to block ads specifically on NoScript’s domains.

What followed was a small war — the website would add various tricks to prevent Adblock Plus with EasyList from blocking ads, EasyList kept adjusting filters. Then, a week ago a new NoScript version was released. A few days later I noticed first bug reports — apparently, Adblock Plus "glitches" were observed with this NoScript version, especially around NoScript's domains (but not only those). When I investigated this issue I couldn’t believe my eyes. NoScript was extended by a piece of obfuscated (!) code to specifically target Adblock Plus and disable parts of its functionality. The issues caused by this manipulation were declared as "compatibility issues" in the NoScript forum, even now I still didn't see any official admission of crippling Adblock Plus. Clearly, NoScript is moving from the gray area of adware into dark black area of scareware, making money at user's expense at any cost.

There was a Stack Overflow blog post today about Hacker News's lack of downvoting, and how that was bad. There's a great discussion of it over on Hacker News. As a matter of fact there is downvoting, but it's not very evident from a cursory glance.

Both Stack Overflow and Hacker News feature user voting. Users can vote on links, questions, and comments posted by other users. The votes add up for the user, which in turn lets them do more with the site. With the vote systems, the community can decide what's on and what's not. It's community moderation.

I got a netbook, so naturally, I spend a lot of time on the 'net with it, which means Firefox. A lot of Firefox.

The netbook I have is an Asus Eee PC 901, with a resolution of 1024 * 600. The width is perfect for web browsing, but occasionally the 600 vertical pixels puts things under the fold when I don't want it to. To get around this, I use Firefox's fullscreen F11 mode.

Fullscreen mode will occupy the whole screen, GNOME panel be damned. It hides the title bar, window decorations and the browser controls.

It also hides the status bar.

ATTENTION: If you have an account with one of these sites, you can sign up at my site (and in fact any Drupal site) without a username or password:

AOL

openid.aol.com/screenname

Blogger

blogname.blogspot.com

Flickr

www.flickr.com/photos/username

LiveDoor

profile.livedoor.com/username

LiveJournal

username.livejournal.com

Orange (France Telecom)

http://openid.orange.fr/

SmugMug

username.smugmug.com

Technorati

technorati.com/people/technorati/username

Vox

member.vox.com

Yahoo

yahoo.com

WordPress.com

username.wordpress.com

That's from the official list, so check that for the most recent info. There's also another very important one that ain't there:

Google

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id

If you have an account at one of these places, you've got an OpenID.

What does that mean for me?

Presenting... Tiny Cannon ML!

Move with arrows/WASD, shoot with Ctrl/Z/N, slow with Shift/X/M.

The Japanese make the best shmups.

I love watching Firefox forever display "Looking up www.example.com...". I love it when it says it can't find a server, even when I can ping individual IPs just fine.

No, actually, I hate it.

Why doesn't my machine just remember which IP matches which domain name, even if the router or my ISP craps out? Well, looks like somebody else was thinking like I was, because that's exactly what pdnsd does: it looks up domain names, and remembers their matching IP addresses.

So here's how I set it up for myself.

WATCH DR. HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG

An evil villain musical, split into three 15-minute pieces. Musical, hilarious and quaint. You'll watch it at the website, and you'll like it. Or you'll be weeping quietly when it's pulled off the intertubes THIS SUNDAY.

So watch it RIGHT NOW.

Okay, the disappearing forever bit isn't quite true: it's up on iTunes, and will be released on DVD, but it won't be free.

Can't believe I didn't find out about this until now. Also, stickin' it to the man.

Damn. I just had a helluva time setting up the projects section.

The site is meant to be arranged so that there's three major elements:

1. the blog,
2. the method of feedback (forums in this case), and
3. the projects section.

First, I tried putting all projects into a projects sub-menu, which I would then link to in the primary links menu along the top. Only problem?

Moving here now. The old site didn't cater to my code-show-offiness needs, or my formatting needs, or my automatic login needs. Good riddance.

My even older site is right where I left it, just in case you need it. I'll be porting that stuff over anyway at some point.