Posted by geetarista August 23, 2008
I like to be informed. I like knowing what is happening in the world, especially when it comes to technology. Lately I think I have been receiving just a little too much information, though. My current Google Reader subscription count is 1,141 feeds. From those 1,141 subscriptions, I have read 20,559 items in the last 30 days. I don’t know if Google planned on people having that many descriptions since I can’t even see them all on my subscriptions page:
That black space goes all the way down to the page so I cannot even see any of my subscriptions past this point. My main problem is that whenever I find something that I like on the web, I subscribe to that feed since I’m sure I’ll like whatever they post in the future. Alas, that is not always the case and I become too overwhelmed when I have so many things to read. I love information and I love to read, but this is just going too far.
Posted by geetarista May 21, 2008
I discussed previously that I switched over to DreamHost for this website and I have been very happy with them so far. Something that made me even happier was their announcement of DreamHost support for Phusion Passenger. This is huge for both Ruby and Rails since DreamHost is a major hosting provider and will provide a cheaper solution to other Rails hosting providers. Using Phusion with DreamHost is super easy and I tried it out just to see how easy it was.
I first started on their Passenger wiki page which gives just a few steps to get a Rails app working. This is literally all I had to do to set up an installation of Typo:
- Transfer over my typo folder to my server
- Set up a sub-domain with the Passenger option pointing to my typo/public folder
- Set up the databases
That was literally all I had to do. Check it out. I will probably try and convert this site over to a Rails blogging system soon.
Posted by geetarista May 08, 2008
There are many solutions out there to style cool-looking tooltips using css, javascript, or a mixture of both. Usually people try to go with CSS-only solutions since they degrade nicely and are more accessible. I have seen really nice tooltips that look really nice, but it makes me wonder about something. Most of these implementations use a class on elements that are basically created to act as a tooltip. So why does CSS not have the ability to style specific HTML attributes such as title, alt, etc.? Default title attributes look exactly the same in most browsers and there is obviously a way for browsers to style those attributes. CSS3 adds to the possibilities of creating good looking tooltips, but it still does not offer the ability to style the browser’s own tooltips. I really wonder why since this is so much simpler than most of the hacks out there. Is this something that can be done with Greasemonkey? I understand that most people create their own tooltips for effect, but this type of application could help with design and accessibility as well. Think about a site that uses mostly yellow in its design. A standard title tooltip would obviously be difficult to read.
Could this also open up more possibilities for the rest of the HTML attributes? I know I am raising several questions here, but I do not see why this could be so hard to implement. Maybe there is an obvious answer out there, but I have yet to find it.
Posted by geetarista April 04, 2008
I have been watching the progress of Firefox 3 and I have been very happy with the results. Since the 5th beta was recently released, I decided that it was time to take the plunge and try it out.
The most important thing that I have been waiting for are improvements in speed and memory use. I use Firefox for almost everything, so it can get pretty heavy when I’ve got 50 tabs open and trying to do so many things. Since switching over to beta 5, everything in Firefox has been so much faster! Usually when I start opening a lot of tabs, Firefox gets real slow and I have to wait before opening the next tab. Now I can just keep opening tabs without any lag whatsoever. Since the JavaScript engine was improved as well, almost every website that I visit has had noticeable speed gains.
I really love everything else about Firefox 3 and I think that it will be a great step for Mozilla. There are so many changes and improvements that I would not even possibly begin talking about them. The only issue I have so far is that half of my plug-ins do not work, but I’ll just have to wait for those plug-in developers to get up to speed. Overall, I think Firefox 3 is going to blow away Internet Explorer even more than it already does.
Posted by geetarista March 30, 2008
Wordpress 2.5 has been out for a little bit now, so I have decided to upgrade. Everything went surprisingly well and I luckily did not run into any problems whatsoever.
I really like the new interface as it seems much cleaner and easier to use. My favorite new feature is the ability to upgrade plug-ins with just one click. After upgrading Wordpress, I realized that I had a ton of plug-ins that were way out of date. Before this I had to download each individual plug-in and manually upgrade it to my Wordpress installation. Not anymore!
Overall, the upgrade went very well and I recommend that anyone that uses Wordpress do the same. Not only is it worth doing so for aesthetic reasons, but for security as well.
Posted by geetarista March 25, 2008
I previously wrote about an alternative to Quicksilver in Linux, but I think I have finally found what I’ve been looking for: Gnome Do. I previously saw Gnome Do when it was in its infancy and haven’t really taken a look at it since then. However, Gnome Do has greatly improved its functionality and consequently many plug-ins have been created. It still has quite a way to go to until it has the full capabilities of Quicksilver, but this beautiful app is definitely on its way.
To install in Ubuntu, just add the following two lines to your sources.list:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ubuntu gutsy main
Then just run:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-do gnome-do-plugins
And you’re set! Just add gnome-do to your session and it will start up every time you log in. To use it, just hit Super (Win) + Space and start searching! Then head over to the plug-ins page to add additional plug-ins that meet your needs.
Posted by geetarista March 19, 2008
I really love Google Reader and all of its wonderful features. However, I do have only one small issue that really drives me crazy: slow starred items. No matter if I only have one starred item, Google Reader will sit there “Loading…” for sometimes up to five minutes before it will switch over. I really rely on starred items as those stories that I do not have time for immediately and want to save for later. Every other feature of Google Reader works very fast for me–impressively fast, actually. I know it is not my computer either since I have tried this on several different computers.
Has anyone else had any issues like this with their Starred Items? I have searched around but have not seen anyone else with this problem or a solution for it. Until I figure it out, I’ll just have to (un)patiently wait.
