Faviconize

The other day, I mentioned to someone (it actually may have just been myself…) that I wished there was a way to see just the FavIcon of some of my tabs in Firefox, because that’s all I need to distinguish things like GMail, GReader, GCal, and RTM (all of which I tend to have open the majority of the time).

And as if Lifehacker is listening to my conversations, they mentioned a solution in passing today!  FaviconizeTab is a Firefox extension which allows you to shrink a tab down to just it’s favicon (either by right-clicking and going to “FaviconizeTab” or by setting a shortcut like double-clicking)!  Now I can very easily distinguish between my first 4 tabs (which I always have open and know what they are from their favicon), and the rest of my tabs, which I actually need the first part of the title in order to know what it is.

Expanding Your Dropbox

I love Dropbox!  It is a really easy and convenient way to sync files across multiple computers and it makes it so I don’t need to worry about forgetting my thumb drive anywhere.

But my biggest complaint is that it only syncs the files in your “My Dropbox” folder.  That’s a major problem when I would like to have my PHP code from my htdocs folder shared onto other computers or when I don’t want to move all of my files into My Dropbox.

Lifehacker to the rescue!  They pointed me to this really easy-to-use tool for creating junctions – Link Shell Extension.  So I go into my htdocs folder, right-click a folder I want to copy (let’s say Pass2), and select “Pick Link Source”.  Then I go into “My Dropbox”, right-click in there, and go to “Drop As->Junction”.  Voila!  Any time I change a file in either spot, it gets updated in the other (and, therefore, also uploaded to Dropbox!).

If you haven’t signed up with Dropbox, I still strongly encourage you to give it a shot through my referral link to get us both extra space: https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTcwNzI1Njk .  To those of you who have used my link already, thanks a ton!  I hope you’re enjoying it too!

Dropbox

I had read things about Dropbox last year when they left beta in September, but hadn’t gotten around to trying it until my buddy Justin told me about how solid it is.

It’s a free 2GB thumb drive that you will never forget in a computer.  There is a really simple web interface, but the real strength is the desktop application which seamlessly uploads and downloads the files in your “My Dropbox” folder.  Also, you can share things with your Public folder, or collaborate with specific people through shared folders.

All of my school files are saved in my Dropbox, so every time I save a file, it is automatically uploaded and accessible from any computer with an internet connection.

If you sign up via my referral link, we both get an extra 256MB.  So give it a shot for both of us!

https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTcwNzI1Njk

YouTube Popout Bookmarklet

I was thinking about making this yesterday, then I saw this program on LifeHacker (DetachVideo) today, saw goodywitch’s bookmarklet, and improved upon it.

It’s pretty similar to Google Reader’s “Popout” feature next to embedded YouTube clips. It opens another window with the YouTube video embedded.  I used a couple regular expressions to turn goodywitch’s fixed size into a resizable window.  If you want it to be always on top, Matt Kruse has a suggestion for his bookmarklet which should work with mine.

Here it is!: http://www.personal.psu.edu/dri106/_PopOutYouTube.html

(Sorry about WordPress not playing nicely again…)

External Hard Drive Enclosure

My laptop has been acting up a little bit lately, and it’s been a little while since a reinstall, so I’m getting myself into the reformat mindset. I don’t want to lose everything on my hard drive, and I don’t want to burn 20 DVDs, so I started looking around for an external hard drive.

I started looking around NewEgg and TigerDirect to see what’s on the market.  I only really need about 100 or 150 GB, but it was looking like I’d be spending about $50 for that sort of size.  When I see 1TB drives (~8 times the size) for less than $125 (2.5 times the price), I couldn’t really justify getting ONLY 160 GB.  But at the same time, I don’t have $125 to spend right now.  So I was rather turned off of external hard drives.

When I remembered the dead computer sitting in my closet (I think it’s either a motherboard or CPU problem but don’t have anything to test that…), I realized that there is a 160GB SATA (and a 60GB IDE) drive in there, which I would actually like to get information off of as well!  So that’s when I started looking at external hard drive enclosures.

I found this one at NewEgg.  It works with both SATA and IDE hard drives, it had good reviews, and for $37 with shipping & handling, it was certainly cheaper than buying an external hard drive.  I ordered it Sunday night (2 hours and 13 minutes before a $10 mail-in rebate started… I’m going to see if I can get that anyways..), and it got here this afternoon (I love NewEgg’s speed!)!  I popped in an old hard drive (for testing purposes), and it worked right off the bat!  Now I can access the files I haven’t been able to touch in 2 years… and I can get ready for a reformat!

For $20 from now until March 30, I would definitely recommend picking up one of these bad boys if you have any internal hard drives or plans to buy one!

Google Calendar Bookmarklet

A bookmarklet is a piece of JavaScript which you bookmark in order to add a little piece of additional functionality to your browser and make it easily accessible.  Bookmarklets can be used to do things like change the font size or style on a website, or they can help make a task simpler.

Just the other day, I found that RememberTheMilk (I blogged about the greatness of RTM back in August) has a task creation bookmarklet (they call it a “QuickAdd“).  Using that the past couple days, I realized how handy bookmarklets could be!

When I wanted to add the Penguins remaining schedule to my Google Calendar, I figured a bookmarklet could make the task easier.  After some Googling, however, I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted.  This article’s #4 was close, so I took it and modified it with some additional JavaScripting.

Without further ado, here is my first ever bookmarklet!

<edit>All right — WordPress won’t let me play nicely sharing a bookmarklet IN a link. So go here:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/dri106/_GCalIt.html

and do that.

Whenever you want to add something to your Google Calendar, click that bookmark and you’ll be at the New Event page.  If you have text selected before clicking that link, the selected text will get put in as the “What”, otherwise, a prompt comes up in which you can type a “Quick Add” such as “Dinner with Mike at 7pm tomorrow”.

Code (modified from #4 at http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/07/useful-google-bookmarklets.html):

javascript: var s;
//Figure out the selected text
if ( window.getSelection ) {
    s = window.getSelection();
} else if ( document.getSelection ) {
    s = document.getSelection();
} else {
    s = document.selection.createRange().text;
}
//If there isn't any text selected, get user input
if ( s == '' ) {
    s = prompt('QuickAdd');
}
var re = RegExp( '[AaPp][Mm]' );
if ( encodeURIComponent(s).match(re) ) {
} else {
    s = s + ' 1pm'; //if there isn't an AM or PM in the text, add the default 1pm time
}
void(
//open a new window with this information in the Google Calendar event creation page.
    window.open(
        encodeURI('http://www.google.com/calendar/event?ctext='+s+'&action=TEMPLATE&pprop=HowCreated:QUICKADD'),
        'addwindow',
        'status=no,toolbar=no,width=520,height=470,resizable=yes'
    )
);

THON 2009

I have been involved in the Penn State IFC/Panhelenic Dance Marathon (THON) each of my 4 years at Penn State.  THON is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world, and it is a year-long fund-raiser, with all proceeds going to the Four Diamonds Fund.  This fund helps to defray the cost of pediatric cancers for families who have children afflicted with the terrible set of diseases.  The money we raise pays for all of the cost of treatment that the families’ insurance doesn’t cover, it goes to gas, hotel, and meal vouchers for the families, and it funds some cutting edge research and first-class facilities at the Hershey Medical Center.  This year, despite the horrific economy, we were able to raise $7,490,133.87 for the kids!  (For more information about what THON is, please visit http://thon.org/whatisthon )

I fell in love with THON my freshman year, when I was involved in the security as a Rules and Regulations committee member.  Seeing the kids in these families enjoying themselves as much as they did during that weekend helped me realize just how awesome an organization THON is.  Shortly after that THON, the 2007 Technology Overall came into one of my classes asking for applicants — since then, I have been a Tech captain and have loved every minute of it!

This year, the major task that I took on was rewriting the system which is used to allow visitors of THON to visit their friends and family who are dancing.  One of the other two-thirds of “El Tres Friends” (as the three of us third year Tech captains call ourselves) helped me set up all of the tables in the database and we began coding before we were even selected as captains again.  Both of us as well as a very promising third addition were selected for the Pass Team, and the rest, as they say, is history!  We finished up the system, tested it thoroughly, and had it in place for THON Weekend!

The weekend went amazingly, and our system was a huge success!  All-in-all, every bit of work we put into the system over the past 10 months paid off tremendously, and it was one of the best feelings in the world to see it working as well as it did!  If you ever want to know more about THON or want to hear some stories from me, I love THON and sharing it with others is one of my favorite things to do, so just ask!

Oatmeal Sundae

One of the coolest things about being a college student is that I just made an oatmeal sundae for breakfast with no one saying anything other than “That’s awesome!!”

<edit> A lot of people asked (and by a lot, I mean the 3 people that read this…) — “What is in an oatmeal sundae?”  I meant to say this this morning, but was too excited to be blogging again.  I woke up and wanted oatmeal, and I saw my mom’s homemade cookies laying next to the oatmeal, so I broke apart a couple cookies into my oatmeal.  Then it looked rather chocolaty, so I decided to add some chocolate syrup on top of that.  At that point, it was basically an ice cream sundae, so I topped it off with some whipped cream and a cherry.  Had I had any sprinkles here, they absolutely would have made the whole shebang complete.</edit>

(My mom is great and wouldn’t have said anything against me eating an oatmeal sundae, she just wouldn’t have encouraged it.)

Also – I just wanted to give a heads up that the blogging will potentially be resurrected now that my life has settled down after THON!  Keep your eyes (or your Google Reader feed) open!

Facebook Can Be Useful

(Sorry for the lack of posting.. you knew it was going to happen though.  Name one time when I blogged decently during a semester!)

This semester has been pretty chaotic for me.  With my 14.5 credits requiring much more work than I anticipated, taking lead in the development and organization of Pass 2.0hMyGoodnessThisIsAmazing for THON, a brand-spanking-new relationship, and the job hunt, I haven’t had the free blogging time that I did over the summer.  Blogging isn’t the only thing that I haven’t been doing, I also haven’t been Facebooking very much!  But on Thursday night, I was in a crunch.

Eve 6, one of my favorite bands from back in High School, had a free show Thursday night at the HUB.  I found out about this on Monday, and picked up a couple tickets (yeah.. a free show with tickets..).  And come Thursday evening, I hadn’t yet found anyone who wanted to go.  But then, I realized that in Facebook, the popular social networking site, you may list your musical preferences.  I did a simple search for “Eve 6″ and found several of my friends who are also interested in the band.  I was able to find a buddy who wanted to go with me, and we went!

The show was awesome!  I hadn’t heard anything from Eve 6 in a few years (mostly since they took a break), but this concert was terrific.  They only played 2 songs I hadn’t heard before (one of which they specifically stated was a new song — Little Tiny Everything).  All of the other songs were ones which I already knew well and loved.  I was so happy that they played Open Road Song, Think Twice, On the Roof, and Promise.  I’m definitely going to keep an eye on their future tour dates, because I would love to see them again!

So the moral of the story is: although Facebook may be a great time-wasting procrastination site, it also does have some practical uses.

A Programming Game!

Max Power is the man — last night he sent me a link to this Light-Bot game.  I didn’t get around to playing it until just a little while ago, but I played it now, and it’s so awesome!

In the game, you program a robot to move around a grid (forward, left, right, and jumping) in order to light up the blue squares.  The first couple levels get you used to the concept of the game (how to move, how to jump properly and light up the squares), and it seems easy enough.

But when you get to level 10, the number of moves available really limits you.  If you had 100 slots, any level would be really easy — but you only have 12 slots in the main method and 8 in each of the 2 “functions” (misnomer — they don’t return anything…).  So you have to start re-using the methods and figuring out where you can put extraneous moves that will be useful in one case but ignored in the other.

After completing level 12 (the last level), there’s a little “Congrats, you should think about programming for real!” message and it tells you how many total moves you used — my first time throgh – 189.  Leave a comment with your number of moves (or complaining about a specific level that got you stuck).