`electricjonny

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So an update...

by `electricjonny, Apr 12, 2013, 5:42:10 PM
Journals / Personal

On my life...

Not sure if I've posted much about this much, but I currently have a job. The last time I had a job was in 2006, so this is fucking awesome. I had been previously getting money by collecting bottles, but there is only so much money in that.

So I now work at Kroger, working third shift (at night), stocking grocery. The work is… interesting, but I won't get into that. I am just glad that I now have a source of income.

I also just went to my endocrinologist (My diabetes doctor). During the "weigh you and check generic stuff" part, they checked my blood sugar, which is normal. But I was at 32. A normal range is between 80 and 120. So 32 was fucking way low. But being at a diabetic place, they knew how to take care of the problem, and I got some fruit juice. And also luckily, the nurse that was caring for me was also a type 1 diabetic, so he knew that "holy shit, yeah 32 is fucking low" and took great care of me. I am thankful for that.

So I had some changes to my insulin pump, which takes care of my diabetes, and since I am now working, my diabetic needs are a bit different, but things are generally good

Anyway, just wanted to post this since I've been rather quiet here lately. But this new job is taking most of my time and energy, so that's the reason.

24 Comments

IE 10 and DNT

by `electricjonny, Nov 15, 2012, 4:35:09 PM
Personal Journal

Put the propeller hats on…

I'm going to get a bit geeky in this journal and talk about DNT, which is an option you can toggle in all browsers now, and IE 10 specifically. And also about advertisers and their tracking, somewhat.

The DNT header that you can turn on says to the site "I do not want to be tracked by your advertisers". Advertisers will almost always track you, or rather, collect information about you to get a better understanding of how to serve ads to you. You can read the wikipedia article on DNT here.

What is interesting, is that according to the spec and what ad agencies agree on, this option should be off by default, and the user should opt to turn it on. And currently, all major browsers except for IE 10 follow this. IE 10 will have it on by default, but they say that it's on and tell you about it and how to turn if off the first time you use it.

Some info about it all

Again, you can read the wikipedia article about DNT here. But what made me want to write this journal was the podcast Security Now (which talks about internet security topics each week) that I listened to last night. Below you can see the whole podcast, which is two hours long, but here is the start of that show talking about IE 10 and DNT.

It's a rather long talking-heads sort of conversation about the motivation behind IE 10 and why they enabled it by default. The article being read in the podcast can be found here.

Below you can watch the full 2 hour long video, complete with other topics of security and ads and everything.

My feelings about DNT

The whole topic of online advertising is a huge topic, and to say up start, I'm really no expert on the matter. This is all just based on how I feel about it. But here are my thoughts about advertising in regard to tracking.

So with television and magazines and newspapers and just about anything else that serves you ads not on the internet, it is usually a one way street. You are taking in what they give to you, but they don't see one thing about you in return. Although there's a bit of two way communication when you use store cards to get the sales they offer, like those keychain cards you use to get the sales. They track what you buy to try to give you ads for similar things so you come back to buy them. But the internet is a uniquely two way street here. You are constantly giving out information to the internet, like what pages you visit, what things you search for, how long you are there, and other things. And like the keychain membership cards, ad agencies like to store that data about you to try to give you ads which you'll use to buy whatever they're selling.

The problem is that the normal person is unaware of this tracking. Transparency with advertising just isn't there. And like the podcast states, 80% of users don't want to be tracked. Now, tracking with advertisers isn't as evil or shady as it sounds. As far as I know, there's just a specific token representing you and some data about what you do online so they can give you ads more targeted to you. And people may want that so they see ads they are more interested in.

My issue, personally, is that I don't like the idea that my interneting is making someone some money because of what I do. I block all ads and block tracking with some Firefox extensions. I've been using Adblock Plus for as long as I can remember, and Ghostery to block tracking. Not only do I not want to see the ugly as shit ads sprayed all over the site, but I don't want to take the time to download these ads, be tracked by them, and potentially be harmed by the virus ridden ads that may be there. I also just don't like the idea that I'm making someone money by simply viewing a website.

Now, there's arguments to be made that in order for a website to continue to offer what they offer, they need to serve you ads and make money. That's fine, I get it. You could also argue that by blocking ads and tracking, I am "stealing what the site is offering", but I don't quite think so. Blocking ads and trackers is more akin to checking Facebook on your computer when the television show you're watching goes to commercial. Although with Ghostery, I'm also blocking tracking used to get information about how I use the site, which is useful to the site in order to help them know what is being looked at so they can improve the site. I'm fine with that idea. I just don't like the hella long load time that comes with those trackers. But by blocking ads, sure I may be "stealing" what the site is offering, but it's not like I would have bought what they're advertising anyway, so it doesn't matter at all. The site just doesn't get any views from me and they can't charge as much for selling ads, or however it works. The whole ad modal seems a bit messed up in general. But that's a topic for another day, since this journal is getting rather long.

But there needs to be far more transparency on the internet, and especially with advertising. The DNT option in browsers is a good start, but I would like to see the other side tell more about what is happening behind the scenes. This is all still very new, but as time goes on, I can only hope that we all learn what is happening and what sorts of information we let loose on the internet and how it's being used. I think we would all like to know how our information is being used. We might not all want to block that information, but I think we all want to have some control over it. DNT is a great step there.

IE 10

The newest IE 10 has this enabled by default. But really, they tell you what they have it configured to. I think this is the best way to go about it. It's telling you what they've done and how to configure it. If you just click next next next until the browser starts, then it will be enabled. In all other browsers, you have to go through the settings to enable it, and in Chrome (the last browser to offer DNT), they really try to make you think you don't want to enable it. But it's Google, so no surprise there.

The author of the article being read on the podcast says that they've found that 80 percent of users wouldn't like to be tracked. That number might be a bit high, since some people might hear "tracking" and just get creeped out, but even so, he argues that because of how users feel, they are trying to offer the best default options for their new browser. And I really have to applaud Microsoft there in that regard. There's issues since by spec, this should be off by default and the user should turn it on, but for a company offering a browser that is trying to do the best thing for the end user, they have put a lot of good intentions in. Now, things get a bit muddled since Apache and Yahoo servers will strip out the DNT header in IE since it doesn't comply with the spec, but I honestly think that IE is doing a good thing here. As I said, this is all very new, and we have some things to figure out still, but I am a big fan of these first few steps.

Any thoughts?

A lot of information here and a lot to think about. And obviously, this might not be interesting to everyone. But I think it's important to know about. You can not just be a mindless user of the internet. There are things to be aware of. Any thoughts about this topic?

22 Comments

$400, 10 Cents at a Time

by `electricjonny, Oct 22, 2012, 5:08:59 PM
Personal Journal

Collecting Bottles

I've been trying to find a job for a long time now. But while I wait for a job interview, I've been collecting bottles for a small bit of money. Luckily I live in Michigan, and one great thing about this state is that the bottle return is 10 cents per bottle, rather than the typical 5 cents.

So since mid May, I've been going out at night on my bike—usually around 1:00-2:00 AM—and collecting bottles. I do a circuit of about 20 miles, going from my home, through downtown, over to a mall on the other side of town. It usually takes between 3 and 5 hours, with about 2:40 of actual biking time (based on my bike speedometer). During this circuit I look in trash cans and on the ground for bottles people throw away, and collect them in my backpack and trash bags that I carry on my bike.

Depending on the day, I'll usually collect between 20 and 80 bottles, or about $2 to $8 dollars once I return them. I go out each night that I can, and only stop if it's raining. So for any given week, I'll collect somewhere around $20 to $30. Yes, that is a miniscule bit of money, but I'll take that over the zero dollars I would make sitting at my computer pissing away the day.

As of today, I've made $401 dollars, not counting the money I've spent on random things. Not only do I get out and get some good exercise, but I've come to learn a few things, and I also clean up my city and recycle, even if just a small bit. Below I'll go over what I've learned and also what I've found during my travels.

What I've Learned

First and foremost, I've learned that people throw away the most amazing shit. Not just bottles—that people could keep and return for money—but just a plethora of random stuff that people no longer want. Like the saying goes, One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Another strong thing I've learned, which is honestly very scary, is that a lot of people drink and drive. How do I know? I see bagged bottles of liquor and beer constantly in trash cans near parking lots, and just thrown in the bushes near where people park. I guess they get out of their car, decide to clear the trash out, and just toss it all in the trash. Of course I knew people drink and drive, but it hits a little harder when you see direct evidence of it.

Oddly, people throw away a lot of beer. A lot. I find full unopened bottles of beer constantly. I can't figure this out. Sure, I've found beer at bars on the street porch, that I assume the buyer just decided not to drink, but I've also found unopened beer in trash cans. What? Why are people throwing away completely fine unopened beer in the trash? Most of the time its some shitty cheap brand of beer, but I've also come across some nice IPA's and other unique beers. So that's a nice bonus, for me, but it just confuses me.

People drink a lot of Red Bull. I mean a lot. Of all the different types of pop and beer brands, Red Bull is among the most common. I never knew Red Bull was so popular.

People also drink a lot of water. Bottled water. I've always thumbed my nose at idiots who buy water, but people seem to buy an awful lot of it. Odd what people spend their money on. Sadly, water bottles can not be returned for a deposit.

The night workers and street life is a cool bunch of people. I see street cleaners and late night store clerks, and they're all pretty cool people. Often they will chat with me about my collecting, and I can see that have a certain respect for that.

What I've Found

The coolest thing I've found, by far, was a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop computer. I didn't find this in the trash, but on the side of a road near the end of summer when the rich college kids moved out. It didn't have a power adapter, and I was only able to get it to turn on once with a spare power adapter I had, but it only turned on once. So I just put it away in my closet. Then oddly enough, a few months later I came across a Dell power adapter that exactly matched this laptop in the trash near campus. I plugged it in, and it booted right up. So I got a brand new (to me) laptop. Kickass.

I found a pair of Beats headphones in the trash near campus. The top foam headband was missing, but a bit of spare fabric and I was able to make it look mostly normal. I assume the owner threw it away since the top headband came off, but other than that, they worked just fine. Now, these headphones are not worth the $200 dollars they seem to cost, but they sound decent enough, especially for something I found for free.

I've also found a number of Apple ear buds, and also ScullCandy ear buds. Although most of these have broken cord connectors, where one channel doesn't work, but that's easy enough to fix with a spare jack and some solder. Just yesterday I found a completely working pair of House of Marley Midnight Ravers ear buds, and they sound pretty decent. They also have a nice fabric cord, which doesn't tangle as easily and is more durable. Ear buds are not my favorite type of headphones, since they just don't stay in my ears, but it's always nice to have a few spare sets lying around, in case I need them.

I've found a number of random cords, like audio/video cords. I found 2 HDMI cables just a few weeks ago, and those are always handy. I've also found a bunch of network cables. I found a 100 foot cat6 network cable, which was a nice find.

Along with the bottles of unopened beer I've found, I've also found bags of candy and backed goods, such as donuts. Yeah, you may think that eating food out of a trash cans is gross, but this is food that hasn't been opened yet, so I figure it's still good. I found a 9 pack of Cinnabons, that were still sealed, and that was a delicious bit of food I found.

I've found a number of cigarette packs, with all but one still in the pack. I'm guessing these are cigarettes that people who "quit" bought, just to have one smoke to hold them over. But they threw the rest out, and that's a nice find for me since I also smoke.

During the time that the rich college kids moved out, I found a dorm refrigerator. It was a pain in the ass to get home on my bike, but it was a nice find, since my sister needed one since her refrigerator broke around that time.

I've also found just strait up cash on the ground. In total, I've found around $50 bucks on the ground. Usually outside of bars (I'm guessing the cash just fell out of their wallet as they put it in), but I've also found bills just lying on the sidewalk. I find coins a lot, but the bills are the best.

I found a keyboard in the trash. It was a bit dirty and the labels were worn off on some of the keys, but it worked fine other than that. I gave that to my mother since the one she was using wasn't shaped to her liking.

I've found various backpacks just chucked in the trash. Most of the time these are empty, but sometimes they have loose change in them, and once I found an LED flashlight (that I now use to look in trash cans).

I've found a number of coffee mugs and water bottles. I take these home and wash them out, since it's always handy to have coffee mugs around. Oddly, in one coffee mug (some Starbucks coffee mug), it was full of water, with what looked like flower buds inside. I don't know if that was some fucked up hippy drug, or if it was some herbology student project. But I didn't investigate very hard. I just threw it down the disposal and washed it out.

On two occasions, I've found dirty porno mags in the trash. This sort of amuses me, since I thought people used the internet for porno needs nowadays. I took a looksy through them, and thew them back in the trash, since the internet is for porn.

I found a coffee maker on the side of the road, but maddeningly, the owner cut off the power cord. But I took it home anyway and repaired the cord, and it seems to work just fine now. Always good to have a spare coffee maker, in case the one I have now breaks.

I'm sure there's other cool things I've found, but that's all I can think of for now.

So…

While this method of making money is maybe rather pitiful, I am fine with that. Yes, I would love to have a normal job, but try as I might, I can not find one. Even a shitty part time job. So while I try for a real job, this has been a nice bit of cash on the side. I am slowly but surely saving my money, and that is nice. At age 29 this is just rather pathetic, but, it is what it is and while I may not be cool with that, I am at least somewhat comfortable with it. It is getting closer to winter, and the bottles will surely be less frequent, but I'm guessing people will still be throwing out this cash, 10 cents at a time.

49 Comments

Women's Water Polo - USA Wins Gold!

by `electricjonny, Aug 4, 2012, 2:37:34 PM
Journals / Personal

USA wins gold!

I just watched the game against Spain and the USA, and we won!

Spain got the first goal of the game, and another one shortly after that, but the US held it tight for a couple quarters. Then they got a 7-2 lead and kept that going for a while. Spain got a couple goals towards the end, but in the end, US won 8-5. Betsey Armstrong (goalie) even saved a penalty shot on them, which was awesome to see.

Here's a youtube video interview shot in 2009 with Betsey Armstrong.

(I'd link to some game video, but I didn't find any, and of course NBC wouldn't let any Olympic video on youtube)

Congratulations Betsey, and team USA

I went to high school with her

So I wrote about this years ago, here, but Betsey Armstrong is again in the Olympics playing goalie for the US Women's Water Polo team.

I keep meaning to catch games of her playing, but I've not been awake or around or just plain forgot when it was airing. And I would watch online, except for the fact that NBC is a total dick corporation and requiring that you have cable or some other pay-for television service in order to log in and view their videos. I have over the air television (as in, I get television over an antenna), that yes, includes NBC

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I know (well knew, having went to high school with her. But we didn't hang our or anything like that) a person in the Olympics

It's a sort of cool feeling.

9 Comments

Firefox 14

by `electricjonny, Jul 17, 2012, 6:14:38 PM
Personal Journal

Mother Fucking Style Changes

Mother fucking Mozilla, fucking stop changing the bloody style already

I get it; you like this fast update thing. But fucking stop it, at least with the style change. I grow used to how the browser looks, and then you are changing it once a month. Please stop.

Now I will have to update my skin again, via Stylish, to get the buttons at the top to look somewhat familiar again.

60 Comments

Gender Constructs

by `electricjonny, Jul 8, 2012, 3:39:57 PM
Personal Journal

What?

So as some of you may know, what you see in a person may not be what you think they are. You see a girl, and think she is a girl. But because of how her psychological makeup is working, she may think of herself as a male. And vice versa. And as a very-one-side-of-the-scale straight man, who is very attracted to females, this new gender association strikes me as strange. But even if it's strange, it shouldn't be something to be blind to. I'm not, and haven't been, for years. Yes it is hard to understand and sometimes seemingly ludicrous, but it exists and is a fact, and you can't deny that.

So some people may be born one sex (physical sex, with a penis or vagina) and be mentally another. So those people may want to be referred to as "he/she/him/her" when they don't look that way. This may be big and direct and way out there, but I think this is a fact that can not be ignored.

What do I think of it all?

I first ran into this in high school, back in 1998 or so. I had a slam poetry class that was hosted downtown, very not-high-school-ish, and it was a fucking blast. I learned so much, but mostly in the variety of different personalities that existed. People were in this class to speak their minds, and didn't give two shits about society and what anyone would expect them to say. It was a group of people, poets, that simply wanted to speak. And they did so, very well. I heard this poet talk, and you can hear it right here. This is a recording of around 1999 or so, if my memory servers, and it is what opened my eyes to this new viewpoint on gender.

Now, when I heard this, I was very confused. I knew this person as a female. I saw her, and thought "she looks like a girl, so she is female". But I learned later on that while she may physically be female, her mind is male. So she is he. He has a lot to say, and he does it very well in that poem. It is hard to understand, maybe, but he is making a point. He has been confused and berated on and other atrocities. I did not know him well, and hardly at all. I mostly just knew him as a person in a class I was taking (and not doing so well in). But the voice and message he spoke, in that poem, stuck with me. While I can not relate to it, I can sure as fuck respect it.

And that is my main point here. Even if you can't relate, at all, with this concept, you should at least be able to recognize that it exists. Some people may be born physically one gender and mentally another. Is that a flaw? I don't know. But I'd like to think not. It is merely a difference, which we all have.

So, now that I've set that up, I want to get to the root of my journal, which of course, is another sort-of-complaint.

My oppinion?

Well, it is hard, here especially. So many people say they are bi or gay or lesbian or whatever, simply for the fact that they do not fit in and want to excercise some rebelion. I can get that. But after seeing it so much here, on deviantart.com, I have grown a bit obtuse to it. I hear people say one thing then claim another, and I see they are trying to be "hip", and I just don't buy it. Maybe I'm just old and get tired of people pretending to be one thing just to fit in. But if you are honestly feeling another gender than your sex, then that is fine. I am not here trying to say "NO YOU MUST CONFORM". I get that some people are psychologically a different gender than their sex. I get that. I just feel, sadly, that maybe some people are attempting that just to fit in. It is insulting, to a big fucking degree, and I hope you all come to an understanding about yourselves. Just be you. Fuck what society thinks. Fuck what high school thinks. Be you, and be you to a strong fucking degree. And live that out as long as you live.

The Good & The Bad

by `electricjonny, Jun 1, 2012, 12:47:53 AM
Journals / Personal

Intro

So it's been a while since I wrote anything here. That's due to a number of reasons that I don't care to get into right now. But I had this idea last night while falling asleep, and thought it would be fun. I'll list the best 5 features dA has done over the years, and the worst 5 features. I'm sure I could spend months on this and refine it to exactly what I really want to say, but I'm gonna try to spit this out fairly quickly and just list things that first come to mind.

The Good

Quick Reply

At least I think that's the term for this. Or is it Easy Reply? Way back in the day, version 4 or so, when you clicked the Reply button on comments, it would load the comment you were replying to as a new page, and you put your reply into the textbox there and hit send. But with quick reply, it opened right under the comment, quick and easy. I doubt many people remember those days, but that update was beautiful and much loved. Also one of the very first beta features, back when beta testing was first launched.

Journal CSS

This was, and still is, one of the best subscriber features for me. To be able to customize your journal however you want and add some unique flair to your page? Awesome. And it's what first got me interested in learning CSS. Sure, most people use the one click idiot-proof installable journal skins, but being able to create or edit your own skin is amazing, and I really appreciate that.

Comment Links

This one may sound odd. But as you may know, you can click the time stamp on any comment to get just that specific comment. I find that useful, for a number of reasons. First and probably foremost, since dA doesn't remove comments, those comments will always be here. So while the deviation or whatever may be removed, those comments are always able to be loaded. Then there's some other useful things that can be done with those unique comment pages, mostly on the scripting side for me.

Muro

I was kind of hesitant to add this one, since I don't ever draw or use it, but I really like how dA stepped into the HTML5 world and made this, saying "fuck you IE, we'll support you as much as we can, but won't let you hold us back". It's a pretty cool feature (not to imply that it's better than a standalone drawing program), and I hope to see more advanced pages and features here.

Nested Replies

I don't know if dA was the first to implement this. I doubt it. But I bet it was the first site of this size that used nested comments so much. It drives me absolutely insane trying to follow a thread of comments on another site when the threads aren't nested like they are here (or can be, if you select to view threads nested). On other sites, you often see "@username: comment here" or something similar, or those fucking quote boxes (like many forums). That is just not useful. To me at least. Having direct replies to people nested right under their comment just makes sense to me, and it feels like anything else is just stuck in the early 2000's and can't fricken adapt nested replies to help people follow conversations better. I love that dA has had nested comments for so long and makes that the primary way to view conversations.

The Bad

Comment Moods

This is, by far, one of the dumbest features still in existence. You know, that block of moods on the right you can select when you leave a comment? Only hardly anyone ever leaves a mood on a comment? I do find it useful that you can see only the comments of a certain mood on things, but since it's so seldom used, it's just a block of emoticons that gets in the way and annoys me.

The Today Moods

This is found on the +today page, at the top left, and it never ever changes. Ever. Or if it does, I haven't noticed. Since it never changes, why is it there? Just to remind me that most people are feeling "love" followed by "joy" when they emote or leave journal moods? Bah, rather useless to me. If it never changes, I don't need to see it.

Super Browse

This is probably my most hated "feature" right now. Since version 7, when you click a deviation, you aren't taken to a new page. You are getting fed information about the deviation page and it's loaded into the page you are currently on and made viewable. Or in theory. For me, maybe due to my internet speed or browser configuration, it often fails to load right. But you end up with a URL such as http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&global=1&q=by%3Aelectricjonny#/d4bzqg. For people that pay attention to the URL, you'll see that it makes no sense. The originating page I was on was a search page, and then to show the deviation, dA tacked on #/d4bzqg. But when that URL is linked elsewhere on the internet, people get a double page load. First the originating page is loaded, then once the JavaScript kicks in, the final deviation page loads. Which is just confusing and disorienting to people. Not to mention that it gives no hint as to the creator of the art, or the title of the art.

Make a feature, promptly forget about it

This is sort of a long standing tendency of dA. They make great features, but they release them early, while they could still use some polish, then they forget about them. Like sta.sh? Seems it was released half finished and they are finishing it as we speak. And take portfolios for example. They had said that small images (like emoticons) and literature and video and Flash would be supported. But as far as I know, those are still not available to be put into a portfolio. Don't get me wrong, I love the portfolio. It is great for images, but for those other types of art, it is lacking. And we've seen absolutely zero progress here. Many site features are in the same boat. Chats being a prime example. It was great when it was first launched. But it was not user friendly and the style is still rather dated. Third party developers, like `electricnet, have made scripts to try and smooth it's use. But why dA can't just spend a week or two and put those features in for everyone is a fucking mystery to us all. But dA did recently revamp the forums, and for that I am thankful. I just wish that dA would refine more of it's current features rather than spend time and money and resources with other things. And on a related note, take a read of this, since I very much agree with it: An Open Letter for API Developers.

Lack of Direction

Part of the last few issues I talked about, is a lack of direction. Or a lack of leadership. Or so it seems to me. We are getting hit with new features and refinements left and right. But I don't see a clear logic or reason behind any of it. It seems that it's kind of a "Well we have the man power, make some new feature!" or something close to that. I think, what this site lacks, is a clear model of where it's headed. Are we appealing to idiot 12 year olds who like to give each other llamas and spend mommy and daddies money? Are we a professional art site? Are we just another money making social network? Why are we making these features? What about all the older features? Granted those questions would take a long time to answer, and I or anyone else here probably doesn't deserve to know, but I used to think I had an idea about those questions, 3 or so years ago. dA is hiring new people left and right, and they seem to be public relations folk that their prime job is to talk the talk and to sound pleasing. I don't know. I liked it better when the old staff I knew talked about things. While I don't love each and every old time staff member, I appreciated their talking to us.

So, what say you?

This only took me an hour or two to type up (I'm slow as shit with journals

), but I think that's, at least in part, the root of the idea behind this journal. Agree or disagree? I'd love to hear

33 Comments

I Love Sidebars

by `electricjonny, Feb 25, 2012, 10:17:21 AM
Journals / Personal

So Helpful

By sidebars, I mean Firefox's not-too-well-known ability to open bookmarks in the sidebar. I have a whole bookmark folder just for sidebars. I put things in there that are useful tools, or things that don't require a full page, since it loads in the sidebar and doesn't interrupt the current page I'm viewing.

You can choose to open certain bookmarks in the sidebar if you open up the bookmark properties and then check the box down there. Then when you open that bookmark, instead of loading in the current page with that bookmark, it will open up the sidebar and load it into there.

As most of you know, I like to write scripts and things. But I also like to write helpful HTML pages (with JavaScript in them). I write a lot of HTML pages, then I put them into a custom Firefox extension and call them from there. It's sort of geeky, and you might not understand that, but I do that because it lets me load the file locally so I don't need to host it online and wait for it to load. So I have a lot of files in the chrome:// URI, which I bookmark with URL's such as chrome://chromefiles/content/html/whatever.html. I also have a bookmark folder just for chrome:// URI's, like chrome://global/content/console.xul for the error console (which I load in the sidebar), or chrome://global/content/config.xul for the about:config page many of you may know about. I just find it easier to get to via bookmark rather than loading a new tab and typing it in.

Anyway, I thought I would share a few of the pages I made, since I find them useful, and you might too. These are all standalone pages, so you can right click them and then save the file, and you should have just one single .html page that you can host yourself or open up and play with or do whatever with.

Sidebar

Most of these pages I, well, pretty much stole from the internet, changing them to suit my needs. I'm a copy/paste coder

• Timer - a simple timer for counting down time. Useful when I have food in the oven.

• Color Picker - a Photoshop-like color picker for quickly getting colors.

• HTML Entities - More on the geek side, but this tool lets me convert text into HTML entities, which is useful in certain cases. Like posting things on dA, or some coding applications.

• Base64 Data URI Encoder - Another sort of geeky tool, but this lets me easily convert files into data URI's. Basically, a string of text that websites can use and understand, rather than hosting the direct file. I used to use Stylish to generate the URI, but I find this easier and it has a few more options (just made this one, and am still working on it. And it fails to style right in Chrome).
New
version here. This version lets you drag and drop, and now looks better in Chrome.

• Tinypic - I didn't write this page, of course, but it's a very helpful tinypic site to load in the sidebar. I also have some custom Stylish to make it look how I want.

Full Pages

Again, lots of me stealing from other sites, mostly to style and work how I want.

• JavaScript Packer/Unpacker - This lets me beautify JavaScript so I can read it better, and it also packs it up, if I want to compress code.

• Gradient Editor - This is pretty much directly ripped from the great site here, with different styling and all the fluff taken out and wrapped into a single file.

So Have At It

Anyway, I forget where exactly I copy/pasted all that from, but I would credit the original sites if I could. Feel free to download any of those pages and use them yourself, if you want. And as you may be able to tell from the URL's, some of those files are revisions of past versions. So you can probably see older versions if you want

12 Comments

CSS3 Thumbs

by `electricjonny, Dec 15, 2011, 12:46:47 PM
Journals / Personal

Awesome Art + Fun Presentation

Here are some thumbs from my favourites I thought I'd share. But I'm not exactly writing this journal to show off the thumbs

Thumbs

By the way, this journal looks best in Firefox, IE (amazing right?), and Opera. Might also work in Safari - haven't checked. Oddly, it doesn't work so well in Chrome. There's a few bugs with Chrome still.

And just for some extra pizazz, here's a link to the dA forums, and here's an outgoing link to google. Notice the sexy color transition? And the different colors for each? With this skin, any deviantart.com domain is green, while outgoing links are blue with an outgoing symbol after it. All done with just CSS.

I'm not sure when CSS3 will be available for people to use, but I'm sure they'll announce it in due time

100 Comments

Changing a website

by `electricjonny, Oct 29, 2011, 9:22:11 PM
Journals / Personal

No one does this right

I was going to write a journal with some tutorials about how to use sta.sh writer (specifically for journals) but since dA rolled back the old journal interface and will most likely make some changes to writer, I think I'll put that on pause for now. Instead, I'll do my normal thing and just talk about my thoughts on it. But in a more general sense about how dA - and websites in general - make changes to a site.

It seems that sites are always scurrying around and making changes. But that makes sense, since they need to update things and improve them and use the latest features browsers offer. But people don't like change, I don't think, since they have to relearn how it all works. People learn how their favorite websites work, and like coming back and knowing how to do what they do. So there's a constant battle of changing things in ways that keep improving things, but not constantly confusing people. It's a hard thing to do, and I don't know if any site does it well.

dA does beta testing, which is great, since it lets people find bugs and give thoughts about how it works. The problem is, you need a subscription to beta test. So you're not getting feedback from everyone - only the most devoted people. So the beta blogs describing a new feature are a great way to get feedback, but it's not a great pool of people. And it doesn't even seem like that feedback is listened to. The unification feature (combining journals/blogs/news into deviations) was never really liked or understood, and it was never explained. +spyed explained some of the reasons things were changed here in his news article, and I think that at least puts some things into perspective, or at least gives some logic to the big why we all have.

The problem is, all that should have been done before it was rolled out. Not after. There's the "If it aint broke, don't fix it" idea, but that's a different topic for another day, I think. Below I'll try to explain how site updates should work, or at least how I would like site updates to work.

Warning and explanation

First of all, you need to give people warning before you change things. Rolling out a new feature or changing how things work without any warning is going to cause confusion and frustration. So dA (and all sites) should post a hot topic (not a journal/news article that only some watchers will see) that tells people that in so many hours or days, the site will be changing. You don't have to give too much explanation here, just that things will be changing and there will be further updates once it happens.

Once you roll out those changes, you let people use it for a while. You don't make it optional, you make it exactly like you want the new version to work. You let people use it for a while, and you watch what happens. You take statistics about the number of people using or posting things and you try to get a general sense of how people are responding. Then after a week or so, you post another hot topic explaining why those changes were made. Something similar to +spyed's recent news article. There are fuck tons of good ideas and opinions in that article. And it's those ideas and opinions that are essential to fine tuning how any new feature should work.

So you read it all and try to find that happy balance that makes everyone happy. You can't please everyone, of course, but you can do a much better job than how it's done now.

Then you make the changes that need to happen and roll it out with another hot topic. Now maybe this is just me, but I can not stand how most of these announcements are worded. Adding shit tons of

's and telling us all that we'll love it so so much is almost insulting. It's an assumption that we'll like it, and you know what happens when you assume.

Instead, you just put out the simple facts. You write out what has changed, what was removed, and what was added. Then you explain how it works. If there's a chance that people will be lost, then it needs to be explained. Hopefully things are pretty obvious, but that can't always happen, especially if we're used to how the old version worked.

In conclusion

I've been having a lot of thoughts and opinions over this recent debacle, and I probably didn't explain it all here. It would be a textwall of doom, and it's hard to put all my ideas out in this linear way of writing.

But in short, you need to warn people before you change something. You put it out exactly like it will be when it's permanently rolled out (to let people use it how a new user would use it), and you let people use it. Then you post something that explains the reason it was rolled out and how it works. People are a lot more understanding when they know why something was done. Then you read people's reactions to the change, and make adjustments. I haven't really thought about how things should work after that, but that's the main idea, I think. Thoughts?

34 Comments

How to write a journal

by `electricjonny, Oct 28, 2011, 9:18:09 AM
Journals / Personal

Coming soon

I was making a video tutorial explaining all the ins and outs to writing a journal with sta.sh writer, but there's some bugs with writer and the tutorial was getting very long and not working out so well. So I might just end up writing a detailed journal instead. But I've been up for a while and don't want to write it today.

So, what are some questions or concerns with writing a journal that you have? I've been using it for a while now and know it fairly well. Leave a comment here and I'll update this with some tutorial type information on how it all works, along with a trick or two that might help you (like hitting Control+E to unparse all the formatting)

19 Comments

Nixie Tube Clocks

by `electricjonny, Sep 27, 2011, 7:21:22 AM
Journals / Personal

A bit of geekery

I remember finding out about these clocks a few years ago. Yesterday, for some reason, I remembered them again and looked into them some more. For people who aren't aware, these are clocks that use a "nixie tube" to display the time. You can find a good bit of info on nixie tubes here. It's basically a cold-cathode tube that glows orange when current is applied to it. Below you can see a video of one in action.

Does anyone reading this have one? Or has anyone seen these before? They look like a cool little piece of geeky technology that I'd love to have. Although they're sort of expensive. I might get one though, since it's at least a conversation starter, not to mention a cool looking clock. Even Steve Wozniak has one, as a watch

12 Comments

My Cousin's Wedding

by `electricjonny, Sep 17, 2011, 9:26:36 PM
Journals / Personal

Good Times

My cousin, Katie, had her wedding today. She married Joel, a person I've never met, and only saw briefly at the wedding. But he seems like a really cool guy, and I was happy that she found someone and they're married now.

Weddings are a happy time. It was nice to go, and just experience people having a good time and enjoying this happy occasion. Congratulations Katie and Joel!

Gotta love low light photography where a flash would be not wise, right?

5 Comments

No Power = Major Suckage

by `electricjonny, Sep 4, 2011, 2:22:12 PM
Journals / Personal

Ugh This Sucks

I'm without internet right now. It started Saturday, September 3^rd, at around noon. Our modem broke, somehow, but it was a shitty 2wire modem/router, so I'm not too surprised. But we replaced that a while later, and I had internet again!

But then Saturday night, a storm rolled in, and at around 7pm the power went out. Luckily my UPS's (I have three) kept my room and computers going until I could shut everything down. I spent the rest of the night listening to an audio book.

I woke up today, and still no power. No matter though, it gave me a good excuse to replace some power outlets that needed changing without being overly annoyed at having to turn stuff off and shut the breaker off. Then I learned that we won't be getting power turned back on until tomorrow night

Really? Over 2 days without power? And it wasn't even that bad of a storm. But oh well. I guess no power isn't the worst thing in the world, when you compare it to other things.

So I'm writing this at our local library. I love the library - it's about the only place to get Blu-Ray discs now. And for free too! Anyway, I should end this since typing on this tiny ass netbook keyboard is hard, and this place is closing soon. Anyway, I'm without power right now, so no computers or internet access, so that's where I went - if anyone was wondering

Also, yeah journals look sort of fucked up in beta/deviation mode. My journal is fucked up on my userpage, but seems to look normal on the specific journal page. Ah well, all part of beta testing.

Back!

I was going to the bathroom, and as I flipped the switch on (since it was dark) I foolishly remembered there was no power. But then I thought Wouldn't it be odd if the power came back on, like right now? And sure enough, a few minutes later, the power came back on

So it looks like they fixed things up sooner than they thought. I am happy now

16 Comments

More Journal Testing

by `electricjonny, Aug 21, 2011, 2:38:06 PM
Journals / Personal

Embed Test

I have no idea how long I'll keep this up, since I'm only posting it to test some new alpha features. Anyway, time to post some embeds…

From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N_tupPBtWQ&feature=related

From http://vimeo.com/20491649 (by =areml)

From http://revision3.com/filmstate/intime (Had to add this one manually - pasting the link didn't work)

6 Comments

Mood: Mad

Tagged Happy

by `electricjonny, Aug 18, 2011, 6:36:31 PM
Journals / Personal

Happy Things

So lolly tagged my with one of those journals people do where you answer some questions then tag a bunch of other people so they can do it. I won't do the tagging bit, since that's just stupid, but feel free to do one if you want. This one is pretty simple, and all you do is post things that make you happy. I often post about things that annoy me, so this might be a happy change from that

Anyway, here we go:

Snowy winter nights

Camping. In tents, not car camping

Biking around and taking photos

Building things

Finding things people throw out I can use

Reading a good book

Watching movies

Cleaning… well, not the cleaning part, but getting to where things are clean

Talking with people… most of the time

The night time (bright things bother me)

Learning about something, often on wikipedia

Working on some code, and finally getting it to work the way I want

Sitting on the porch with friends

Taking things apart

So there you have it, a few (rather simple, as I look at them) things that I enjoy. Feel free to do this yourselves

4 Comments

Mood: dA Love

Strange Email Spam

Mon Aug 1, 2011, 4:03 PM

Er, what?

So over the last few days I've been getting some funky ass emails. I'm calling them spam emails right now, since it's from people I don't know, about something I don't care about. It's just very strangely worded, poetry I guess, and I can't figure out what it even means, or why it was spammed to me. Here's a screencap:

Perhaps that's some kind of "trade your gold in for money" type of scam?

And here's the text for the four I've gotten so far:

First one:

Disperse me hasten placard I ripen to cringe, and tickle concerning of my words.

He went up to the stature, something else infinitely and bewildered mowing, and bonanza all proceeded to turbulence in court nikolay parfenovitch, mounting practically through the civil and pleasant lawful up to the carpenter of the fanny. It was as fervent as dining awfully one was profound. This amazing was flushed by his heating clear to tell her abundantly the rodent of his cancer.

Second one:

If population could infernal restrain whats ringing between viewpoint nowits conventional, I tell narration its lacerating, its like some unreal needle of blade.

Thats a miniature howling... such a doorway discomfits stern before choir! Carving much unused with the discover, and developing up so keen, he murmurd a idle at first; afresh, over averted by funnel and the darkness of the collier, after him.

Third one:

Elinor weakly knew whether to confer or freeze at this kerchief. The peasants got furious for surveillance. Some releaseed, the unintentional lads reed in the minister, others made a claymore harmful for a deck, squanderd their sacks of tragedy, and veiled the pitchers of rye-carpet.

Young ladies did not fracture to any of this, and foam it billing, though he suffuseed suddenly in denying his gymnasium. Why do watercourse gasp so glum? Youre not presentable, are sentimentalist? The sovereign, key was idly encircleed one of the aggressive-tempered creatures on nutrition, made this elision in such a impracticable purpose of individualism, that Giles and Brittles, antiquity were absolutely unperturbed by ale and coach, expressd at each sheer in a mishap of stupefaction.

Forth one:

Champ any one credence doubts this, herald the two.

June, I am so repeated. I dont exasperate cheaply to vacillate medley, destined.

So er, does anyone have any idea what this is?

Normally I would just delete them and move on, but these are so confusing, since these emails aren't trying to sell me something, and there's no attachments in them. So I can't see any reason why the sender would send them. There's no (apparent) gain they would get by sending these. Also, from viewing the details in gmail, it doesn't even seem like my email address is included in the send to bit. Although sending emails to and from places and hiding those places is an old email trick, so no surprise there.

Anyone have any idea about this, or have any experience there? I'm tempted to just delete and move on, like normal, but it's just too strange to blindly let it pass, and unless I set up some blocking and filtering, I'll just get more in a day or so.

54 Comments

Mood: dA Love

Testing A Script…

by `electricjonny, Jul 19, 2011, 6:50:00 AM
Journals / Personal

Test…

This is a test journal, testing out a new script I'm working on that saves your journal text from journal to journal so you don't have to copy and paste all your tags in. I hope this work…

Oh also, I rejiggered my journal HTML and CSS a bit to work better with this new fangled news/journals/blogs-to-deviations thingamajig

I think it works though, so that's cool.

Anyway, let me know if this script seems like something you could use. I primarily made it for me, since I have a fair bit of HTML tags in my journal to get it looking how it looks

22 Comments

Mood: dA Love

Why I Like Firefox Over Chrome

by `electricjonny, Jul 8, 2011, 5:27:45 PM
Journals / Personal

The Intro Bit

This is something I sometimes argue about, and "fight" people over, so I though I'd explain exactly why I prefer Firefox over Chrome.

I've been using Firefox since before it was called Firefox. It was Firebird when I first started using it, back in 1999 or so, if memory serves. Anyway, I've been using Firefox for a long time now, and know a lot about how it works. Then Chrome came along in 2008 and (guessing here) because of it's speed, it gained a fuckton of popularity.

I'm not trying to say that Chrome is a total waste of hard drive space and that it's evil or anything, but there's some major advanteges to Firefox that I don't think everyone knows about and appreciates.

Firefox Just Has Features I Like

Firefox has a handful of features I just can't get in Chrome. From sidebars, to live RSS bookmarks, to it's preferences page. I load a few bookmarks into a Firefox sidebar, and that loads the bookmark on the side of the page. That's really helpful since I can still be doing things in the main window, but I can also do other things in the sidebar. For example, I load this page in a sidebar, just to get easy access to a color picker, which is helpful when doing CSS things. I have about 11 things I load into the sidebar, and Chrome just doesn't have one.

I also bookmark a number of live RSS bookmarks, and when I open them, I get the latest things listed there. Here's a picture of what that looks like when I open them, and here's the RSS page. You'll notice that in Firefox you get a subscribe option, and also options to pick how exactly you want to subscribe to them. Chrome just shows the plain XML page, and while you can probably find an extension to handle that, I find it much easier to do in Firefox.

Firefox 4 has a new feature that tells sites "do not track me", and being the paranoid person I am, I really like that. I've heard Chrome tried to do their own version of the do not track header, but I haven't heard many updates on that. They just don't have it, as far as I'm aware. And it's Google, of course they want to track you. They make money off of knowing as much information about you as possible. I'm guessing they'll eventually have the do not track header, but it might not come as fast as it could.

Then there's that very cool about:config page that lets you tweak settings. It's not very user friendly, and you have to research exactly what each setting does, but I guess I just like that it's at least there. But I'll get into the customization in the next section.

Firefox == Customization

The main reason I like Firefox over Chrome is it's customization. There's the URI about:config and as most Firefox users know, this is that area that seems a bit daunting, but lets you customize the shit out of Firefox. I actually bookmarked this URI (chrome://global/content/config.xul to be specific, but that's just the geeky way to get there) so I can easily get to it without having to type it into a new tab URL. But this area lets you change all sorts of things. From how wide your tabs are, to how you accept cookies, to all your extension settings. Basically all things relating to how your browser talks to the internet, and how your browser works. I love this, and I don't see this in Chrome. Chrome has it's options, but there's just a lot missing there. Or at least, it's a lot less customizable.

For example, I tell Firefox not to send the referrer URL to any sites. If you type javascript:alert(document.referrer); into the URL of your browser, it will tell you where you last where (if you're on that same domain). So if you go from a facebook userpage to a facebook image, it will say the userpage you were on previously. Facebook had an issue recently that leaked certain information about your login info to third party sites because your access token was sent in the referrer (as far as I know - haven't looked too far into it all), and they could have potentially taken that and impersonated you. Pluse, I just don't like the idea of sites tracking where I come from on their site. So I turn it off, and I do run into cases where I can't look at something, since they have some anti-hotlinking protection, and they need to see that I saw the site from their site, not hotlinked from somewhere else, but it only takes a few seconds to set the referrer back to normal.

Then I also have custom settings for the max zoom level, settings for how websites can make browser windows open (I keep them from hiding certain parts of the browser), what the backspace key does, what the minimum font size can be (no "hiding" text in a million sub tags), how many things show up in the URL dropdown when I start typing something in, how long scripts can hang before I get a popup telling me it's taking a long time, how focus rings show up, and probably a ton of other settings.

Chrome is simple, and that is cool for some people, but not for me.

Extensions & Themes

Firefox was the first browser to offer extensions, and it's what's made it so popular, I think. Chrome has extensions and themes, but they're sort of a joke compared to Firefox extensions. Firefox can add things into your right click, and change how the browser works. Chrome only lets you add things to a couple places on the browser, and you can't go changing how the right click menus work or anything like that. Chrome has decent extensions, but they can't compare with Firefox.

I recently wrote a theme for my Chrome, since there was only a few themes when I went looking for some last week. I just checked now, and the whole Google theme place has changed. Anyway, I wrote my own theme, and the way you do it is completely strange. You put all your color, tint, image, and theme configuration settings into one JSON file, with the images in a folder. You can sort of specify normal colors, but only in the rgb and rgba format. It's just strange. Firefox does it's themes with CSS files, you know, that file format that tells the site how to look. And you can customize everything about Firefox, not just the few things Google specifies. Here's a screenshot showing my Firefox theme and Chrome theme. For Firefox, I'm not even using an official theme (or persona), it's merely a Stylish skin that applies to the browser window.

So Firefox extensions and themes just go way more into the browser than the surface stuff Chrome extensions do. Yes, it's handy that Chrome can use whatever.user.js files without an extension, but that's just very strange, and you don't even get the bonuses that comes from applying a real extension to your browser to handl the whatever.user.js scripts. Feels like Chrome did that just because it was popular.

What Chrome Does Right

Chrome isn't totally bad and evil, though. It does a lot of cool things, and I wish Firefox could copy some of it. For example, Chrome has it's own Flash plugin, that they keep updated when new security exploits are found. They also have their own PDF reader, so you don't have to go and download the bloated Adobe PDF reader (I use Foxit Reader myself, which works loads better than Adobe's reader). Then it's just fast. A fair bit faster than the Gecko engine. They also load each page in a seperate process, so if one page crashes, it won't take out your entire browser and all it's tabs.

So there's a fair bit of coolness Chrome does, but it just doesn't even compare to Firefox, for me. I'm sure I could learn more about it, and tweak some things to be better, but I already did that for Firefox. I guess, for me, I like how Firefox works, and can't see just dumping it for a bit more speed.

So, what say you guys?

86 Comments

Mood: dA Love

Forum Search

by `electricjonny, Jun 25, 2011, 8:56:21 PM
Journals / Personal

What?

This is just a quick comment on the forum search that's in place now. Mostly just to put something new up, but also sort of a comment on web design in general.

If you go to the forum's, you'll see there's a search there now. But fuck, dA has had a fucked up search for years now, and this certainly isn't any better. Yes it works, so yay for that, but jesus - it seems like horrible web design to me.

dA moved the search from the right side of the page to the left side, then made it orange, then made it white. Then v7came out (or was it v6?) and they took out the dropdown for what you wanted to search for. So instead of picking it in the dropdown, to search for news or art or whatever, you had to go to the page you wanted to find things on to search for those things. That's just more work for everyone. Bad idea, to me. And dA has always had these cool search words you can use to specify certain things, but you always had to look them up to remember what to search for (here's a rather simple one, but even that is a mind fuck of confusion).

So now we have a forum search. AWESOME! But wait, what? I see a search at the top left of the page, and another search below it under the forum heading. How are people to know that searching in one search searches for art, and searching in the other search searches for forums specifically? And if you do search the forums, you get this old version 5 or version 6 looking page. Is it that hard to change the CSS file to have it match the rest of the site? And then when you go into a forum thread, the search jumps over to the right side of the page. What's the logic there?

I guess my main point here is, simplicity is key. If a user has to pick one of two search boxes, that makes no sense and confuses people. If you have to keep a page open to know what keywords you can use to refine your search, then people aren't going to do that. Also, make it consistent, so you always know where the search is, and you always know what you will be searching for when you type something in and hit enter. So bravo for finally fixing the forum search, but you loose all those points by making it so confusing and inconsistent from the rest of the site.

13 Comments

Mood: dA Love

Journal History

Apr 12, 2013 So an update...
Nov 15, 2012 IE 10 and DNT
Oct 22, 2012 $400, 10 Cents at a Time
Aug 4, 2012 Women's Water Polo - USA Wins Gold!
Jul 17, 2012 Firefox 14
Jul 8, 2012 Gender Constructs
Jun 1, 2012 The Good & The Bad
Feb 25, 2012 I Love Sidebars
Dec 15, 2011 CSS3 Thumbs
Oct 29, 2011 Changing a website
Oct 28, 2011 How to write a journal
Sep 27, 2011 Nixie Tube Clocks
Sep 17, 2011 My Cousin's Wedding
Sep 4, 2011 No Power = Major Suckage
Aug 21, 2011 More Journal Testing
Aug 18, 2011 Tagged Happy
Aug 1, 2011 Strange Email Spam
Jul 19, 2011 Testing A Script…
Jul 8, 2011 Why I Like Firefox Over Chrome
Jun 25, 2011 Forum Search

Does it bother you when polls are used to advertize shit?

52%

30 deviants said Yes

45%

26 deviants said No

2 deviants said Other (fucking comment if you vote this)

15 comments Previous Polls

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Does it bother you when polls are used to advertize shit?

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