Ephyboy, The Epiphany Tomboy Extension

Back in the day when I used to use Firefox, I fell in love with the Tomfox extension. It allowed you to create a new Tomboy note using the currently selected text of the webpage you were browsing, using the title for the title of the note and referencing the url as the source. This was great for me to document all the code and Linux commands I'd find scattered around the net.

Eventually, though, I got tired of Firefox, especially it's load times, and switched to Chromium. You guessed it, Chromium sucked too. So back to Epiphany I went, and with the 2.30 version it is really quite a nice little browser.

Epiphany extensions are now done with Seed, the GTK javascript bindings, making it really easy to write new extensions. Plus, it has almost a complete GTK implementation via GObject Introspection. So getting my tomboy note maker dohicky back was really not that hard --aside from the lack of documentation ;) .

And thus, Ephyboy is born. It's really quite simple:

  1. Download the tarball, or zip.
  2. Install the extension.
  3. Enable the extension (no restart required!).
  4. Select some text to add in your note.
  5. Hit CTRL+Shift+B; Or, add the Tomboy Note button to the toolbar and click the button.

The extension will then create your note and open your note in Tomboy for review and/or further editing.

There is one thing to note. The extension works by making a DBus call to Tomboy to create the note so you have to have Tomboy open and connected to the bus for this to work. Usually not a problem as I have Tomboy start on log in.


Matt Read, Weblog: Oceanus v3

Version 3.0 of my theme, Oceanus, is now live. This time I went all out space age with CSS fonts and CSS text effects, like text-shadow and opacity. Inspired mostly by Chris J. Davis.

I also went for HTML5, which, obviously, required a little MSIE hack. I found the semantics of HTML5 well thought out; Can't wait till it becomes reality, especially the audio/video stuff. Goodbye Flash!

You'll notice the pinstripe background, which may make it harder to read, but this time I went for beauty over usability. Yes, I committed a sin, don't hate me please. I've played with some transparent containers for the content, but I think it looks better as is. Although, I still have a fluid layout and flexible font sizes.

I've also implemented a "notification area" at the top. Logged out, you will see the extra panes that include the less used stuff, that I would call clutter. Logged in, some additional things appear, like alerts for when you have comments awaiting moderation, etc. Sort of an admin bar built in.

When I get all the code sorted out, and the options pages going, I plan on releasing this revision of the theme. But don't hold your breath. ;)


Why You Should Never Trust Plugins

I apologize for this, but thought it would be fun. I hacked my own site! I must be good! I did this using an exploit found in a plugin for Habari. I plan on fixing this plugin very soon. If you are worried use my Contact Form to contact me about it, and I'll let you know which plugin it is. Even better, if you feel like fixing something, let me know and you can fix it for me :D .

Update 2: This has now been fixed in the AutoSave plugin. The exploit could allow any cracker to post to the vulnerable site without being an authenticated user. So if any anyone is using AutoSave, you should update now.


Why Playoff Hockey Is Better Than Sex

I always knew Hockey was important, just never realized how important; It's better than sex! From an Email I received:

  1. It's legal to play hockey professionally.
  2. The puck is always hard.
  3. Protective equipment is reusable and you don't even have to wash it.
  4. It lasts a full hour.
  5. You know you're finished when the buzzer sounds.
  6. Your parents cheer when you score.
  7. Periods only last 20 minutes.
  8. You can count on it at least twice a week.
  9. You can tell your friends about it afterwards.
  10. A two-on-one or three-on-one is not uncommon.

GMail, Almost Perfect

One of the great things about Google Apps for Domains is they run a mail server for you, and you get the GMail web interface for email. Not only that, but you get a fully functional IMAP server as well.

Unfortunately, GMail has a few annoyances.

GPG

The first annoyance is the lack of support for GPG. Fortunately this is easily overcome with the use of FireGPG extension for FireFox. FireGPG provides a simple easy interface for using GPG, including, but not limited to, digitally signing emails, encrypting email and attachments, and GPGAuth.

If your not into GMail, FireGPG can also support Rouncube Webmail. It also provides an easy mechanism to import GPG Keys, you know those big hash like things people paste on their sites; with one click you can import them.

Fixed-Width Fonts

Screenshot of GMail with fixed-width fonts.

The other major annoyance, which I find extremely annoying, is GMail displays all emails in a variable-width font instead of fixed-width. There is a "labs" feature that gives a toggle switch to change to fixed-width font, but you cannot make it the default. Fortuantely, again, FireFox comes to the rescue, with it's "user defined style sheets". With only a couple of lines of CSS you can haz your email in fixed-width fonts.

User style sheets are located your FireFox profile directory, and is named userContent.css. Any CSS you put in the file will be applied to each and every site you visit, so we can use it to get back our fonts. In Ubuntu it's located at "~/.mozilla/firefox/xxx.default/chrome/userContent.css".

Just add the following to that file:

/* GMail fixed-width font: see http://3cx.org/item/34 */

div.msg div.mb, div.ArwC7c {
    font-family: monospace !important;
    font-size: 12px !important;
}

div.yxEQwb {
    display: none;
}

div.ckChnd textarea, textarea.tb {
    font-family: monospace !important;
    font-size: 12px !important;
}

td.ct {
    font-family: monospace !important;
    font-size: 12px !important;
}

This will give you fixed-width fonts for all plain text emails, in the old and new, GMail interface, and it will hide those annoying "Sponsored Links". Also, it will give you fixed-width fonts on Google Groups. Awesomeness!

Customizing GMail With Labs

In the GMail Labs section there are a bunch of goodies to be had. My favorites are Tasks, Advanced IMAP Control, and Navbar drag and drop.

Tasks are very simple. It gives you a little pop-out at the bottom for which you can add tasks, mark them as completed, link them to corresponding emails, etc. Lovely little TODO list keeper.

Advanced IMAP Controls gives you the ability to Choose which labels show up in IMAP, turn off message auto-expunging, or trash messages when they're deleted from IMAP. I love being able to choose which label/folders IMAP can use.

Pretty simple, title says it all. You can drag around all the little gadgets to the order of your choosing.

GMail Almost Rocks

As long as you have FireFox, the GMail web interface is almost a complete replacement for those old and clumsy desktop mail apps. Hopefully we'll see some cool new Labs features roll out, like plain text/fixed-width only email ;) .

As long as I don't have to maintain a mail server, I'm happy with GMail.