Can Programmers Party?

Are programmers too geeky and anti-social to party? That's a question that I had to ask myself as I hosted some of my co-workers at a party at my duplex. I think about 12 people got invited. Three would be a large number for a true introverted programmer, so this was.... huge. I like my duplex as a single person dwelling. As party central - well, it might need some work. Mainly because it gets a little cramped. Plus I'm terribly self-conscious about... well, everything. So I worried over appearances, food, etc.... Forgetting that this was a game night, and to get out all the games. I'm hoping people had fun - hard to tell with so many different people and personalities. Pretty much all techies (read geeks). To our credit, we didn't talk about work hardly at all. Unusual for us to not get together and just gripe about stuff. Nice to see we had other things to do and talk about.

I haven't played poker in years. That was fun. 5 card draw, 7 card draw, Texas Hold em.... I need to brush up on that. The game of trivial pursuit that ran until 1 am was better. Genus IV edition? Way too hard for people who'd been drinking. I never really get why you play getting wedges at the end spots only. Makes the game waaaay too long, but it was still a lot of fun. New catch phrases for people- "That didn't sound right".

I gotta have a better variety of food next time I think. There was chips and dip and about 20 different kinds of popcorn. I was getting sick off too much popcorn myself.

So have I answered the question as to whether programmers can party? Nah.

firefox extensions and version 1.5

Just to be in keeping with the rest of the programmers, etc.. who are posting their favorite extensions:

Thanks to MR Tech Local Install, here is a quick list of some of my enabled extensions


ColorZilla 0.8.2
Gmail Notifier 0.5.5.2
Html Validator 0.7.9
IE Tab 1.0.8
MeasureIt 0.3.5
MR Tech Local Install 4.2.6
SearchPluginHacks 0.1.3
UrlParams 2.01.00
View formatted source 0.9.4.4
Web Developer 1.0.2

My favorites by use: Web Developer - for debugging form submissions, checking table layouts and working with CSS. UrlParams is a nice extension (when I remember I have it) because it lets you change any of the parameters including hidden fields for debugging forms.

Next would probably be the ColorZilla, and MeasureIt for CSS color schemes and sizing/positioning. Colorzilla is a little eyedropper icon that runs in the lower left corner of the browser. Click that and cross hairs come up and you can click anywhere to grab the color. Button, image, text, it doesn't matter. The color displays as you hover, and when you click it displays the RGB, hex and css codes that get you that color. A right click and you can copy it for adding to your own documents. There are additional options for getting the coordinates of the color position found, hsv and dom-path. Really useful for matching colors when you can't remember what the css element you used, or you're trying to mimic another site.

Gmail notifier would be great if it didn't stop working about every month or two, due to whatever Google is doing, and require an update.

Search plugin hacks turned out to be very useful when I was playing with my own firefox search plug-in and needed to remove a bad version.

IE tab is new for me. Rather than remember that I'm testing things in firefox, start IE, search for the file, open that, then switch back and forth, left clicking on the lower right icon will switch rendering engines between firefox and IE for comparisons. On a three button mouse, the middle click will open the opposite engine in a new tab. For the IE version, I'm guessing it's whatever is currently installed on your computer.

That's all on my work setup. At home I've upgraded to Firefox 1.5.0.1, and am using the All-In-One Sidebar to a great extent along with some of the same extensions from work.
That's a nice little way to manage a lot of windows (downloads, themes, extensions, bookmarks, history....) I also have a blogger bar installed so I don't have to skip back to IE to blog when I land on a cool site, which happens quite often thanks to the StumbleUpon extension.

As for firefox 1.5:
Some things are a little hard to get used to in 1.5. I keep thinking the apply/use or options is missing from themes and extensions and whatnot, because that stuff is hidden under a gear button. A small nuisance when so much real estate exists in the toolbar that could easily fit the update, disable and option buttons too.

One thing I noticed after carefully preparing everything for the upgrade: backing up my files to retain bookmarks, extensions and their settings. I didn't need to do that. Everything was still there when I restarted. Extension options, bookmarks.

Automatic updates are now part of the package. They wait for you to install. I kinda miss the little update icon on the top telling me to install a new update. I haven't noticed a lot of other changes yet.

Discovery Channel :: News :: Computer Senses User's Frustration

Discovery Channel :: News :: Computer Senses User's Frustration


"if a computer senses that its user is agitated, it might tone down the background color of the screen, turn down background music, enlarge or reduce graphics, adjust the flow of information being presented to the user or simply apologize"

I'm wondering what the computer would do when I get frustrated by another last minute request to add a feature to an application. Blow-up? Inject me with a tranquilizer through the keyboard?

Niiiiiiccceeezzzzzzzz........

Automated Capture of Thumbnails and Thumbshots for Use by Metadata Aggregation Services

Automated Capture of Thumbnails and Thumbshots for Use by Metadata Aggregation Services

My clients have been saying they wanted more visual results in their search pages. This seems to back them up. I had issues with hundreds of results taking up a lot of real estate, and therefore a lot of time to navigate to find what you wanted. The load time could have been problematic too with wait time on images. If a user could switch back and forth between 'quick results' that just gave you briefest information (title say, plus short snippet) and a more graphical thumbnail view as outlined in the article, I could see the benefits.

'Vintage' TV

As the current news on the AOL Beta site states:

"With the AOL® In2TV™ Beta, hundreds of episodes from some of the most popular television series of all time are available online, exclusively on AOL®Video. The In2TV™ service will allow you, at any time, to stream full-length episodes from your favorite series, all free on-demand. Try AOL® In2TV™ today!"

You'll need an AIM screen name to access the material, and the list of shows so far isn't very expansive. Or vintage in some instances. Dark Justice (where a man can hide his identity with eyeglasses and bobby pins)? Histeria! ? I'd choose Schoolhouse Rock over that any day. I'll wait and see what else they add to it before I really judge it. The Brisco County Jr. episodes intrigue me....

I'd like to see how this all plays out with what iTunes offers in the Music Store. Their list of vintage shows is just starting. I'm torn, because I like what iTunes puts out, but I'd really like Schoolhouse Rock and paying 1.99 for a 3 minute animated song seems a bit much.