My friend, Matt Sparks, today released libgithub (git repo), a javascript-based widget to show information (commits from projects, etc) from github accounts.

I have modified the CSS for libgithub and made my own compact version. Here’s a demo

How outrageous. I’ve been testing with a few different files and I’m finding it’s 30 or 31 files is the most you can use. Now you may be saying, “Nobody needs 30 CSS files anyway”. My two-part response:

1. Yes, this is horrible for performance and, in general, very poor practice - however:
2. The place of software vendors, browser vendors in this case, is to create a product that interprets standards and specifications correctly, not to dictate how those standards and specs are implemented.

   “Innovation” by browser vendors should come *outside* of that - in the non-standards-defined areas. Example: Firefox addons, Opera’s mouse gestures, etc.

For those survivalists / preppers out there: Emergency Essentials has a food storage analyzer. Basically calculates all the statistics about your food (nutritional value, etc) and tells you, based on your gender and age, how long you can live off of it.

You can put basically any product they have on their site in it as well as common grocery store items like canned goods. MREs are in it too.

It’s a clever little app. Only complaints is that the interface is a little clunky.. takes awhile to find which buttons do what and it’s not particularly intuitive. I was hoping for something that utilizes web 2.0-ish technologies to make the interface flow better and require me to work less to find the info I want.. Like, maybe the nutritional info could just be an on-hover thing or modal or something.
One big (and quite odd) thing that bothers me is that you can’t add the year supply units they sell as one big unit. From what I can tell, you have to add in each item you plan to buy or currently have, one at a time.

Also, try it out, review it (like I just did) and get $10 credit to beprepared.com. Hooray for free stuff!

Incredible. 21% in 2008. I’m not posting this as a sign of hard times.. I’m posting this in amazement of how much people spend no matter how the economy is doing.

Counting down the hours until payday? You’re not alone.

As the economic downturn trudges on, many workers are struggling with household budgets. About six in 10 workers — 61% — report they always or usually live paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet, compared with 49% last year and 43% in 2007, according to a new nationwide survey of more than 4,400 workers by CareerBuilder.

Thirty percent of workers with salaries of $100,000 or more report that they too live paycheck to paycheck, versus 21% in 2008.

60% living paycheck to paycheck - MSN Money Central

Dvorak, my favorite keyboard layout, has greatly improved my life in the regular full-sized keyboard world. I wish it were easier to do in the handheld world. Certainly not right now, but maybe soon enough.

I recently picked up some free stuff while side-of-the-road dumpster diving. One item was a PDA/phone from 2005. It’s worth about $120 today. I was just playing with it this morning, touching the keyboard and my thumbs immediately started typing Dvorak-style despite the QWERTY buttons. I quickly realized that I could be extremely effective at touch typing with only my thumbs and Dvorak, probably more-so than I, or anyone else, could be with QWERTY. Because of the closeness of the most common key combinations it is much easier to touch-type on what would normally be a hunt-and-peck scenario, even for seasoned handheld users. The reason being: Dvorak key combos are so close to each other that you can feel-out your position just like you would do on a regular full-sized keyboard. QWERTY, on the other hand, has alternating thumb combinations with letters far away from each other, forcing you into a hunt-and-peck methodology.

While one can certainly become fluent with a QWERTY layout on a thumb-keyboard enough to touch type, he will not be able to do it as readily as he could with Dvorak.

Some other observations:

1. OLED Keyboards and other technologies - The Optimus keyboard allows you to change the text that appears on each key because they are OLED-backed. Not sure if this can be squeezed down to handheld-sized keys, but that would certainly help cross-language, cross-keyboard-layout issues in the handheld world.
2. Dvorak alternate layouts - Dvorak is well known for its single handed versions. I’ve heard of people doing 50wpm+ using only one hand (better than what many can do with two hands). It may make sense to adopt a single-handed layout to phones, PDAs and other handheld devices that increases efficiency. Here’s a QWERTY concept device.
3. On screen keyboards - On-screens will (or should) obviously allow you to switch keyboard layouts with ease. The unfortunate thing with these is that most do not offer any tactile feedback (unless the screen is pressable). This would greatly reduce one’s efficacy with thumb-rolling key-combos in Dvorak because you will often skip-roll over a key. On a tactile-keyboard this isn’t an issue, but on an on-screen non-tactile keyboard you would hit the key you wanted to just roll over.

Currently we see solar as one of many solutions to energy independence and a way to get off our fossil fuel addiction. Soon enough though, it may be difficult to even find older fossil fuel technologies. While we sit around trying to discard, destroy and otherwise rid our lives of fossil fuel devices such as gasoline engines, coal power plants and such, we may find in the near future a rush on these very products.

Solar is not infallible

Solar is not infallible. Solar is not invincible to control. While nobody may yet control the sun, there are certainly a few things that can still happen and a few new problems arise with solar:

1. Someone builds something that blocks your solar, legally - Many people live on small lots. Many businesses are also on small lots. In a non-grid-based system where one uses photovoltaic cells or passive solar technologies (true independence) it is possible that someone could erect a structure next to yours that would prevent you from collecting solar with current technologies. They may be able to do this in a completely lawful manner.
2. Outside control - In the case that you are using your solar as a sole means for energy independence and a way to get away from invaders or your own government and other domestic entities, you are far from invincible. A simple, cheap, thin anything to cast a shadow on your solar collection system would take away your energy. This is the equivalent of them being able to pull the plug on your house.
3. Something beyond anyones control blocks the sun in your area - While it would most likely be a severe disaster (natural or man-made) and power would be the least of your worries, it can certainly happen.
4. You can’t hide solar collectors - Current technologies require solar collectors to be exposed to sunlight. This means you can’t bury, hide, or otherwise well-shelter solar collectors like you could fossil fuel generators and such. This leaves your energy needs exposed to enemies and the elements.
5. You can’t store solar like you can fossil fuel - Batteries are cost-prohibitive for storing huge amounts of energy. They are also not 100% efficient and can lose charge over time. Most fossil fuels can store for extremely long amounts of time without severe degredation in energy yields. They can also store a vast amount of energy in a very small space.

Much of this list also applies to wind technologies.

These points are largely geared toward individuals collecting solar, but they can also apply to large solar power plants and the grids that rely on them.

The run on fossil fuel products

Many individuals, non-governmental organizations and government are seeking to get rid of fossil fuel technologies in the name of “green”-ness and currently, the “stimulation of the economy”. Many laws have been introduced, and many more will be, to make certain fossil fuel-related technologies unavailable and illegal. While the intentions are most likely on the side of good, the result is needlessly not on the same side.

I’m not saying all of this as a case against solar technology. To the contrary, I am an ardent supporter and fan of solar and other non-fossil fuel technologies. However, we must all realize that destruction of the ‘old ways’ is not the solution to independence. Don’t junk your fossil fuel stuff yet - it’s likely it will carry great value in the future.

As a web professional I cannot let this go unnoticed. Microsoft is claiming that IE8 has better security, privacy. ease of use, compatibility and manageability than both Firefox and Chrome… no mention of Opera of course. Regardless though, the claim is absurd. It’s amazing how companies can go for years completely avoiding the obvious truth.

Internet Explorer sucks. Period. Don’t ever use it if you don’t have to.

I was trying to get my EX-F1 to use the manual focus the other day. Couldn’t do it no matter how hard I pressed the focus button on the side of the camera. All the other buttons worked fine. I looked in the manual and couldn’t find anything relative to my problem. I thought I’d be stuck with auto focus forever.

Turns out you need to make sure to turn OFF the face detection feature in order to use manual focus. Hope this helps some EX-F1 owners.

My last camera, the legendary Fujifilm F31fd, broke while on a tripod that got blown over on a very windy day. I bought a new camera to replace it: the Casio EX-F1. It can do high definition video as well as slow motion. On my martial arts blog I have a video of the slow motion feature in action.

Windows XP powertoys do not work with Vista. Fortunately one of my favorite ones, the Image Resizer has been rebuilt and has both 32 and 64 bit versions available for download.