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  • Danny Dawson 4:48 pm on Monday, August 14, 2006 Permalink | Reply  

    Liveperson.net: Support to shoot yourself in the foot with 

    a.k.a How StartLogic.com Consistently Lets Me Down

    // This is a transcript of the second part of my conversation with Rob M. after our initial greeting was followed with a browser crash caused by the Liveperson.net Java Applet.

    Please wait for a site operator to respond.
    You are now chatting with ‘Rob M.’
    Rob M.: Welcome to “Startlogic’s” live chat service. How may I assist you?
    Danny: Hi Rob.
    Danny: we got cut off.
    Rob M.: Please give me the password for email account
    Danny: You have my permission to reset it on your end.
    Rob M.: No I will need it from your end.
    Danny: Sending my password in plain text via http to an unfamiliar URL is not something I’m confident in doing.
    Rob M.: Well this chat uses secure URL
    Danny: Excuse me..comfortable, not confident
    Danny: I don’t know about you but I’m on http, not https
    Rob M.: But your connect is directly from your computer within my chat software
    Danny: The connection from my computer is insecure because it’s over the http protocol. That said, even if it was over https, the URL I’m looking at is “liveperson.net”, which is not the company I do business with directly. If you are someone authorized to conduct business on behalf of Startlogic, you should have access to a contact at startlogic who can provide you with the necessary information.
    Rob M.: Well then you will get a reply for your issue through ticket once the issue is resolved, the ticket is still open
    Danny: I’d like to know why I haven’t received a reply yet.
    Rob M.: Because the ticket is still open in the support dept.
    Danny: And the lack of a receipt acknowledgement email?
    Danny: It’s been four days. For an urgent issue, this is unacceptable.
    Rob M.: Well the email you got with the ticket id was the acknowledgement email
    Danny: That’s an acknowledgement that the server received my email. Not a person.
    Danny: Is anyone even looking into the issue?
    Rob M.: Yes you will get a reply when the issue is resolved
    Danny: When you and I end this chat, you’re going to feel no contractual obligation to look further into this issue. What assurance do I have that I will receive a timely response?
    Rob M.: Well the issue is still open in the support dept and it will not be closed unless replied to you.
    Danny: That’s not reassuring.
    Danny: If your car breaks down and you bring it into the shop, how long do you expect to wait around until they let you know what’s going on and give you a time estimate?
    Rob M.: Well this issue is with level 2 techs and once they get it resolved, they will get back to you.
    Danny: aha! So it has been assigned to a technician?
    Rob M.: Yes a level 2 tech
    Danny: does the technician have a name?
    Rob M.: No
    Danny: if you would like to help debug this issue, you could try sending an email to [email removed]
    Rob M.: Sure
    Danny: You’ll get a bounce message describing the problem.
    Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
    Danny: Did you get the bounce message?
    // The next several messages came in very quick succession.
    Rob M.: Well it will take some time
    Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
    Rob M.: May I help you with anything else?
    Rob M.: Please contact us if you face problems.
    Rob M.: We’re available 24/7 via chat, email, or phone.
    Rob M.: Take care and thank you for choosing StartLogic, Good Bye !
    Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

    If you could change something regarding our service and/or products, what would you change?

    I would change the entire concept of subcontracted support. Your drones are completely powerless to *actually* help me with my problems, and they either don’t have the ability or they outright refuse to contact someone at the company with whom I’m *actually* doing business in order to resolve an issue when they are unable. I’d suggest you find a different line of work before the market for your services crashes entirely.

     

    • picardo 2:32 pm on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 Permalink

      Hi, I came across your post on WordPress forum about the error handling fix.

      http://wordpress.org/support/topic/54505

      You wrote that you would check with the wp hackers to see if there was anything forthcoming from them.

      (A quick check showed, this blog also exhibits the same error. You’d be the first to implement the fix no? Does that mean there isn’t anything??)

    • Danny Dawson 3:36 pm on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 Permalink

      The wp-hackers list pointed me to this bug report:
      http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1786

      which appears to have been resolved by using wp_die() instead of die() in the wp-comments-post.php file. I suppose wp_die() must be hookable.

      These changes made it into the wordpress trunk on July 5th, but somehow didn’t make it into the 2.0.5 release on October 27th. It looks like they still haven’t made it into the 2.0 branch, and thus probably won’t make it into the 2.0.6 tag, which was apparently due 5 days ago.

      Looking further into this, the wp_die() function is slated for the 2.1 release, which does not yet have a date on the official roadmap.

    • Barbie 1:28 am on Wednesday, February 14, 2007 Permalink

      You can find a lot of reviews about StartLogic on the website http://www.hothosting.info/en. Also, StartLogic is trusted by many of its customers. Obviously, there can not be a very perfect host, since these hosts are of many different features.

      The clients should buy a host which meets their needs perfectly. For example, if a person has some experiences with Linux, he or she may choose the host which supports ssh so that it can achieve its perfect performances. Moreover, the e-shop host users can choose a kind production which could provides more after-services.

      Go to http://www.hothosting.info/en and have a look, there must be some suitable methods for you in choosing the right hosts. You will know more about the web hosting!Enjoy!

  • Danny Dawson 9:55 pm on Sunday, August 13, 2006 Permalink | Reply  

    Perplex City and Magic Squares 

    I vaguely remember hearing about Perplex City when it was first launched, but I was too caught up in just about everything else to take too much notice. I do remember thinking that a worldwide puzzle/scavenger hunt game with an online component sounded right up my alley, but I was disappointed that the “crossover into real-life” events were centered in a country I had never set foot in.

    A number of times since then, I’ve been reminded of the game’s existence, most recently when I heard that Perplex City would be having its first official U.S. event right here in San Francisco…on a day when I already had obligations. In spite of my inability to attend the event, there’s been a resurgence in my interest, and last Friday while in Berkeley for a concert I picked up a few packs of “PC” cards from Games of Berkeley.

    Whoo boy, the good times are a-startin’. I love myself a good mental workout, and the Perplex City cards provide just that in diverse forms and at varying intensity. From pattern-matching to pop-culture knowledge, logic puzzles, physics problems, political trivia all abound.

    Probably my favorite aspect of Perplex City problem-solving so far is scripting solutions to some of the more complicated puzzles. When I was working on a solution for card #098 ‘Magic Square’, I came up with a script which can be used to solve any 4 by 4 magic square, where the rows, columns, and diagonals all add to the same number.

    My first attempt was far less than ideal: it randomly arranged the 16 numbers and then tested to see if everything added up properly (i.e. bogosort). When I let it run for ten minutes at a time, it would run through about 12-13 million combinations and not come up with a single solution.

    My second attempt used iteration to go through possibilites in a fixed order and guaranteed me a solution eventually…within the next 56 years (seriously, I calculated), if I let the script run constantly, it would check every possible arrangement of numbers for ‘magic squareness’.

    My third attempt is the one I finally found success with. Essentially, it’s a modified version of the second script where I run validity tests incrementally instead of all at once after a square is constructed. The spaces within a square are filled in a spiral pattern and rows, columns, and diagonals are tested the moment they’re testable, which results in maximum efficiency.

    Where the first script would have required hundreds or possibly thousands of years, and the second script nearly a lifetime, my third script only took about 23 minutes and 35 seconds to find all 924 possible solutions for a 4×4 magic square.

    As it turns out, there are 54 unique solutions to the Perplex City Magic Square card.

     

    • Oliver 10:18 pm on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 Permalink

      Hi, I’m a software engineer, and I find your approach interesting. I wrote a small code as an exercise to solve N x N squares on my spare time. My results for the 4 x 4 were different. I got 7040 solutions in 466 seconds. What i did was I iterated over all the possible permutations. I truncated the trees that will never arrive a solution checking only the partial array as necessary. I believe that you have ommitted a lot of the possible solutions. :)

    • Matt 8:03 pm on Thursday, March 6, 2008 Permalink

      Hey I am also a software engineer and I noticed that you are missing quiet a few answers one being the magic square of
      7 2 11 14
      12 13 8 1
      6 3 10 15
      9 16 5 4

      Else very interesting and good attempt

    • Marcel 8:20 am on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Permalink

      Hi,

      nice that you are also interested in magic squares and a nice attempt to find solutions.
      I see that your program finds 924 solutions for a 4×4 magic square. However, in reality there are lots more.
      But there are 880 unique solutions (a unique solution cannot be obtained by rotating and/or mirroring another solution).
      I wrote a program in Fortran which can find all solutions for magic squares of any length.
      It can be run under DOS or Windows.
      You can download it freely at download.com (the name is magic square generator 1.0).
      For 4×4 it will find all 880 solutions in about 5 minutes. My approach is comparable with yours by incrementing numbers and testing rows, columns and rows as soon as possible.
      However the order I incremented numbers was different (e.g. for 4×4, for other sizes similar):

      a b c d
      e h i j
      f k m n
      g l o p

      I hope you enjoy the program.

    • doggy 11:05 pm on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 Permalink

      Ummm….. I think its stupid because it didn’t really help me.

    • Chandrashekhar Joshi 8:15 am on Thursday, January 1, 2009 Permalink

      Hi:
      I was checking a magic square with following conditions:
      x x x 10
      x x 9 x
      x 8 x x
      7 x x x
      However I did not get any sucess using the formula given by you. Is there any solution which exists using this combination?

    • joshua meadows 6:37 pm on Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Permalink

      I found one you missed
      1st row: 1,15,14,4
      2nd row: 12,6,7,9
      3rd row: 8,10,11,5
      4th row: 13,3,12,16
      Thanks though, i like what your doing with this.

    • Søren Blaabjerg 1:20 am on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Permalink

      I believe, that I myself (not using any formulas or with help of a computer) to have found (so far) no less than 1248 unique “perfect” 4×4 magic squares. The number of unique sets of 8 magic squares, where all the variants can be derived from each other by mirroring and rotation I have found to be 156. (156 x 8=1248)

      By perfect 4×4 magic squares I mean squeres where not only do both of the diagonals add up to 34, but so do the numbers in each of the small 2×2 squares at each of the corners, the central 2×2 square, and the sums of the 2 numbers in the middle of the top and the bottom row as well as the sums of the 2 numbers in the middle of the leftmost and rightmost columns.

      By the way, I am thinking of writing a small book displaying all of these solution (not dwelving into theories and methods though because it is meant primarily for enjoyment. Do you think, that might have any interest?

    • Jhansi 12:05 pm on Thursday, July 23, 2009 Permalink

      hi i found one more solution which is not available in your list of solutions..

      1 14 13 4
      12 6 7 9
      8 10 11 5
      13 3 2 16

      Thanks,
      Jhansi.

    • Søren Blaabjerg 7:27 am on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Permalink

      Since my comment above, I have myself found a lot more unique magic squares. I have not yet checked, if all of them are on your list. They might well be.

      By the way, I have found, that on your otherwise quite impresive complete list of 4×4 magic square solutions there are in fact repetitions (assuming of course, that magic squares, that can be derived from other magic squares by mirroring and rotation are only counted first time, they occur). At least I have found, that solution

      #388: is in fact identical to solution #120:

      14 1 8 11 7 6 10 11
      15 4 5 10 12 9 5 8
      3 16 9 6 13 16 4 1
      2 13 12 7 2 3 15 14

    • Søren Blaabjerg 8:52 am on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Permalink

      In the above comment I by mistake read the numbers underneath instead of the numbers above. Sorry? However I have just discovered another example of duplication. Please take a look at solution #30 and then solution #37!

    • Danny Dawson 10:05 am on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Permalink

      The 924 solutions I listed are indeed unique, but not rotationally or reflexively so.

      Also, as several commenters have pointed out, it seems that my list is not comprehensive. I haven’t taken the time yet to look back at my old code and determine why this is so, but at some point, I certainly should do so.

      Thanks to all of you for your comments, and especially to Søren for continuing to work on this puzzle. Even though I haven’t done any work on this myself in a long time, it’s still quite fun to think about. :)

    • Søren Blaabjerg 3:49 am on Saturday, August 1, 2009 Permalink

      Dear Danny

      I have just studied your list further and can confirm, that your list is far from comprehensive and indeed also contain quite a number of duplications (i.e. solutions that can be derived through reflexion and/or rotation of other solutions on the list). I you are interested, I might myself have a look on your code :-)

    • Lawid 4:02 am on Monday, August 10, 2009 Permalink

      Hi,

      I have set of 100 integers organized in 10*10 table. Only the sums of two rows are different by +1 and -1 compared to the sum required for the magic square. Can you help me in checking if we can get with these numbers a magic square table?

      Thanks

    • Søren Blaabjerg 12:22 pm on Thursday, August 13, 2009 Permalink

      Dear Danny

      I have studied your list a bit further and found quite a number of omissions and duplicates
      as well. In the end I decided to write a small computer program myself in order to find the complete list, and I have just succeeded doing so. As expected the conclusion was, that there are indeed all in all 880 unique solutions or 880 x 8 solutions if you count all rotations and reflexions. I made the program in such a way, that you can choose either and step through all the solutions displayed one by one.

      Most of the solutions are not particularly interesting though. For instance I find those, where both the 2 x 2 subsquares at the corners and the subsquare at the center add up to the same sum as the rows, columns and two diagonals particularly pleasing. There are quite a number of those, around 350 unique ones I believe.

    • gm 3:06 am on Saturday, May 14, 2011 Permalink

      Hey guys
      Have you been able to solve any EVEN number magic squares?
      eg: 6×6, 8×8, etc
      There are more than one solutions as for 4×4. Please have a go.
      gm

    • Leo 7:07 pm on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 Permalink

      I found a new magic square in my homework.
      1 14 8 11
      15 4 10 5
      12 7 13 2
      6 9 3 16

  • Danny Dawson 7:48 pm on Sunday, May 28, 2006 Permalink | Reply  

    Usufructuary: Hide and Seek in San Francisco 

    Come play my new game! In Usufructuary, you earn points by finding hidden objects around San Francisco. If you’ve ever played Guess Where SF, wanted to try geocaching, or just want a reason to become intimately familiar with San Francisco, then you’ll enjoy Usufru.

    I know I won’t always be able to keep up with the one-a-day posting on Usufru forever, so if you’re already a friend of mine or are willing to become one and you think this project sounds interesting, consider becoming a Challenge contributor. You only need a digital camera (preferably with the ability to take short videos) and a little time and motivation. I’d prefer that contributors are willing to commit to at least one challenge per week, but that’s not set in stone. If you’re interested, please send me an email or leave a comment below.

    If you just want to start playing the game, look at the Open Challenges page. There are three unsolved challenges as of this posting.

     

  • Danny Dawson 1:29 am on Friday, March 3, 2006 Permalink | Reply  

    Sanitizing MySpace 

    Note: This solution is outdated! I strongly suggest using this greasemonkey script instead.

    Everyone’s got gripes about MySpace. I’m no exception. Here are the things I loathe most:

    1. Embedded audio, especially when it plays automatically. If you’ve got a song you want me to hear, link to it and tell me why you like it. I’ll decide whether or not I want to listen, thanks.
    2. Background images that interfere with the foreground text or are otherwise distracting. I hate not being able to read things that I’m meant to.
    3. Giant images that screw with the page layout. Can’t you create a thumbnail? In addition to the borked layouts, I hate having big distracting images on my screen that other people can see from across the room. If I want to see the original size, I can Right Click > View Image.
    4. Ads of all shapes and sizes. I hate banner ads, large and small, whether they’re little animated gifs that dance on my screen or big flash banners that make noise when I accidentally move my mouse cursor over them.
    5. Wantonly “dimmed” text and images. So you discovered -moz-opacity, eh? Don’t abuse it.

    So I did what I always do before I write a blog post – I fixed it. Now, there’s already a greasemonkey script out there that does some of this things, and more, in some cases, but to be honest: I don’t like it. Maybe it’s just the “Flash of Unstyled Content” that happens while the page is still loading and before the script triggers; maybe I think the script goes too far in what it takes out; maybe, in some areas, it doesn’t do enough.

    I decided to take a different route towards fixing the problem. Instead of a javascript solution, I opted for a pure CSS solution in the form of site-specific rules within a user stylesheet. My final version takes care of all of the things that bug me most, making MySpace usable again.

    It’s a cinch to install it yourself (requires Mozilla Firefox, of course):

    1. Download the MySpace Sanitizer Stylesheet and save it into your Firefox chrome directory in your user profile. Don’t know where that is? Mine is in C:\Documents and Settings\Danny Dawson\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\gobbledygook.default\chrome\. Yours is likely in almost the same place. If not, check C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\. I have faith in you.
    2. Restart Firefox.

    Keep in mind that this solution isn’t meant to remove all of the custom styles that people use within their profiles – just the ones that annoy me. That said, if you run into something really annoying, let me know about it and I’ll look into it if I have the time.

     

    • claudine 12:43 pm on Friday, March 3, 2006 Permalink

      Hmmm…
      Can’t seem to get it working yet. I’m wondering whether it conflicts with Greasemonkey, though I’ve disabled gm for the moment…

    • Danny Dawson 6:53 pm on Friday, March 3, 2006 Permalink

      Make sure to look first in Documents and Settings\*\Application Data\. Chances are good you’ll have multiple chrome folders, but the ones in Docs & Settings seem to be the more commonly-used ones.

      I aslo updated the .css file to get rid of <marquee> and <blink> elements, which I had forgotten about because, well, I guess I thought people knew better.

    • Melvin 6:52 am on Tuesday, March 7, 2006 Permalink

      Amen, my man! ‘Stumbled’ on your blogs from links on Flickr.

    • Stewf 5:51 pm on Monday, March 27, 2006 Permalink

      Sweet on. Haven’t tried it because I am not running Firefox daily until they are fully OS X savvy, but I applaud the effort to clean the MySpace mess.

    • Leo of BORG 2:03 pm on Friday, April 28, 2006 Permalink

      This is sweet! It probably works much better with the Firefox extension ‘Stylish’…

      I use this with multiple GM scripts to totally KILL all MyS crud. On Mac OS X. So, y’all should try this. Links:

      At userscripts.org: http://userstyles.org/style/show/185

      My blog entry on killing MyS crud: http://expat-leo.blogspot.com/2006/04/geek-monkey-is-not-happy-with-myspace.html

    • Mike Grabowski 4:13 am on Saturday, May 13, 2006 Permalink

      Hey, thanks for this great tip. I’m writing a small tutorial on how to use the firefox extension Stylish. And I’d like to use your CSS for myspace as a great example of how to use stylish to fix a webpage. The thing I like about stylish is you can easily turn it on and off, where putting it in the chrome is a little more of an always on solution. So with this, when you come across a bad myspace layout, you can click on your stylish icon and turn it into something that you can actually read. Thanks again, and let me know if you have any problems with me using your CSS.

    • Scott 5:04 pm on Monday, August 21, 2006 Permalink

      You sir, are a godsend. This is just the type of thing I’ve wanted for ages. Thank you!

    • Justin 5:48 pm on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 Permalink

      Thought about adding lines to disable the changing of the mouse cursor?

    • OWN-the-NWO 7:28 pm on Friday, December 1, 2006 Permalink

      Hey man I found one problem with the sheet, It kills the links to leave someone a comment. If you ever end up fixing that in the style sheet let me know so I can come get a new one.

    • Chad 1:11 pm on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 Permalink

      This disables the link to post comments and view all comments.

    • Danny Dawson 3:25 pm on Wednesday, December 6, 2006 Permalink

      Hmm…I’m pretty sure it didn’t used to do that, but to be honest, myspace comments are a feature I don’t use very often, if ever, so it’s possible this is something I overlooked.

      To be perfectly honest, there are now a number of things that annoy me about the specific userstyles I chose, and I haven’t taken the time to tweak them. In addition, I’ve come to believe that this might be a job more suited to greasemonkey, which can easily traverse the DOM to remove extra style tags from places they don’t belong. When I get around to it, I’ll contact those of you who posted a comment using a real email address, and I will certainly update the blog.

      Don’t hold your breath, though. Personal projects don’t usually get pushed high on my priority list.

    • Danny Dawson 11:33 pm on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 Permalink

      Ha! Someone else did a perfectly fine job already. I highly recommend their script over my solution. Greasemonkey is without a doubt the right way to do this.

  • Danny Dawson 5:15 pm on Friday, December 2, 2005 Permalink | Reply  

    A plea for email etiquette 

    To: Myself
    BCC: A whole lot of people
    Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: Re: Slow Dance]
    Body:

    For an expose on this hoax, read here:

    http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/s/slowdance.htm

    If you would like to call Dr. Shields directly and ask him if he had anything to do with this email, please find his contact information available here:
    http://www.aecom.yu.edu/dmb/shields.htm
    If you don’t feel like clicking that, here’s his office number 718-430-2653, ext 3281.

    Forwarding an email without editing it for concision and deleting the list of past recipients exposes the email addresses of past recipients to everyone to whom you send the email, as well as anyone to whom the email may be forwarded in the future.

    If you truly insist on passing along a nice story, poem, joke, or some information you feel is important, please keep in mind the following three recommendations:
    1. Don’t expose the email addresses of others to other people. Delete unnecessary addresses from the body of the email, and use the BCC field whenever the email that you’re sending doesn’t require people to “Reply-All”. In case anyone is reading this is wondering how I got your email address – someone else you know forgot this step. You can’t find your address below? That’s because I deleted it.
    2. If “factual” claims are made in the body of the email you’re sending along, try searching Google for “hoax” along with a couple keywords from the body of the message. For instance: search Google for “Dennis Shields hoax” and you’ll find 51,800 results debunking the content of this email.
    3. Keep emails concise. If you just want to pass along a poem or joke, delete everything but the poem or joke. You already read the email when it was sent to you, and you know what parts of it are interesting and what parts aren’t. Delete the garbage out of courtesy to others.

    I’m sorry if you feel that I’ve wasted your time with this email. I’m sorry if you were merely an “innocent recipient” on the list and you already follow similar guidelines that you set for yourself, and thus you feel you have no need to have read this.

    But at the same time, someone you know doesn’t already have similar “guidelines of email etiquette” that they follow, and remaining quiet about it won’t change the situation. Someone else is taking liberties with your contact information, passing it off to others, likely without your permission.

    I, for one, can’t stay quiet about that forever, and I feel it’s inappropriate to complain about what I feel to be “a lack of manners” if I passively let every indiscretion slide. Here’s my attempt to do something about it.

    If you agree with me and would like to share these words with other people you know, in order to spread awareness of email etiquette and save a lot of word-weary email users some time in the long run, please do. (I’ll be posting it on my weblog at http://quasistoic.org as well.)

    But delete my email address from the body before you hit send.

    Thanks,
    -Danny Dawson

    PostScript – I love you, Mom.
    Post-PostScript – Racedrvr: My sincerest apologies to you. I did see the Snopes link you passed along about the email hoax, which I’ll include here for the sake of others:
    http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/medical/slowdance.asp

    On 12/2/05, My Mom wrote:
    >
    >
    > This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital .
    > It was sent by a medical doctor – Make sure to read what is in the closing statement AFTER THE POEM.
    >
    > SLOW DANCE
    >
    > Have you ever watched kids
    > On a merry-go-round?
    > Or listened to the rain
    > Slapping on the ground?
    > Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
    > Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
    > You better slow down.
    > Don’t dance so fast.
    > Time is short.
    > The music won’t last.
    >
    > Do you run through each day
    > On the fly?
    > When you ask How are you?
    > Do you hear the reply?
    > When the day is done
    > Do you lie in your bed
    > With the next hundred chores
    > Running through your head?
    > You’d better slow down
    > Don’t dance so fast.
    > Time is short.
    > The music won’t last.
    >
    > Ever told your child,
    > We’ll do it tomorrow?
    > And in your haste,
    > Not see his sorrow?
    > Ever lost touch,
    > Let a good friendship die
    > Cause you never had time
    > To call and say,”Hi”
    > You’d better slow down.
    > Don’t dance so fast.
    > Time is short.
    > The music won’t last .
    > When you run so fast to get somewhere
    > You miss half the fun of getting there.
    > When you worry and hurry through your day,
    > It is like an unopened gift….
    > Thrown away.
    > Life is not a race.
    > Do take it slower
    > Hear the music
    > Before the song is over.
    >
    > ——————–
    >
    > FORWARDED
    >
    > E-MAILS ARE TRACKED TO OBTAIN THE TOTAL COUNT.
    >
    > Dear All:
    >
    > PLEASE pass this mail on to everyone you know -
    > even to those you don’t know!
    > It is the request of a special girl who
    > will soon leave this world due to cancer.
    > This young girl has 6 months left to live, and as her dying wish,
    > She wanted to send a letter telling everyone to live
    > their life to the fullest, since she never will.
    > She’ll never make it to prom, graduate from high
    > school, or get married and have a family of her own.
    > By you sending this to as many people as possible,
    > you can give her and her family a little hope,
    > because with every name that this is sent to,
    > The American Cancer Society
    > will donate 3 cents per name to her treatment and recovery plan.
    > One guy sent this to 500 people! So I know that we can
    > at least send it to 5 or 6 —
    > (just think ,it could be you one day).
    > It’s not even your money, just your time!
    >
    > PLEASE PASS ON AS A LAST REQUEST
    >
    > Dr. Dennis Shields, Professor
    > Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology
    > 1300 Morris Park Avenue
    > Bronx , New York 10461
    >

    –
    Danny Dawson
    http://quasistoic.org

     

    • claudine 5:34 pm on Friday, December 2, 2005 Permalink

      Awww. My dad sends me these, too. I’ll send him some of your recommendations. :)

    • kathey benoit 9:55 pm on Friday, September 4, 2009 Permalink

      the earliest I’ve found is November of 1999–it’s ten this year..I just hope the girl with 6 months to live, lives as long as this message goes around. if in fact she exists.

    • long island magicians kids birthday parties 9:19 am on Thursday, December 1, 2011 Permalink

      Hey man I only wanted to take a moment to say I really like reading your blog.

  • Danny Dawson 4:06 pm on Friday, November 4, 2005 Permalink | Reply  

    Private Del.icio.us Bookmarklet Not So Private 

    In the last four days, the Private Del.icio.us Bookmarklet has been getting a lot of attention.

    I post this merely as a warning: the Private Del.icio.us Bookmarklet is misnamed. It really should have been named “The Anonymous Del.icio.us Bookmarklet”.

    If you’d like to see what people have been using the bookmarklet for, just visit the Private.Bookmarks del.icio.us account.

    You’ll notice I tested the bookmarklet on my del.icio.us inbox. You might also notice that a number of links are posted which require a username or password, or are otherwise unaccessible. My theory is that these links were never intended to be shared in a place where search engines could find them, which is exactly where they now are.

    If you want to be able to bookmark a link on del.icio.us without that link being visible to the outside world, this bookmarklet is not for you. If you want a way to anonymously bookmark an embarassing link on del.icio.us, send it to everyone.

     

    • Alex Bosworth 5:36 pm on Friday, November 4, 2005 Permalink

      del.icio.us robots.txt disallows search engines, but your point is still taken.

      only WHO posted them is private, not the fact that the URL exists.

      If you want really private bookmarks, there is an encrypted bookmark thing floating around, or pretty soon del.icio.us will ship real private bookmarks.

    • Danny Dawson 6:02 pm on Friday, November 4, 2005 Permalink

      or pretty soon del.icio.us will ship real private bookmarks.

      And that, sir, I eagerly await.

    • Lucanos 1:26 am on Saturday, November 5, 2005 Permalink

      An additional problem with the “private.bookmarks” workaround is that you are not able to delete bookmarks created through this service.

      For some reason del.icio.us allows people to send you links, but doesn’t let you (the reciever) remove the “for:XXX” tag from the listing.

      Kind of like letting people send you emails, but not letting you delete them from your inbox…

    • Alex Bosworth 2:18 pm on Wednesday, November 9, 2005 Permalink

      My problem with allowing you to be able to delete private bookmarks is that I have no idea if you actually own the account, so being able to delete private bookmarks would mean that anyone could delete them.

      Of course they would need to know the exact URL and user who bookmarked something, so maybe it’s ok.

      I have published the source now under gpl, so if you want to run your own private bookmarking service or build this feature in and send it to me ;) you can.

    • Mike 2:51 am on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 Permalink

      If private bookmarks are really important to you, you might like to try http://www.BlinkList.com. We fully support both private and public bookmarks. Mike

  • Danny Dawson 2:23 pm on Thursday, October 27, 2005 Permalink | Reply  

    Greasemonkey Del.icio.us Director 

    Updated 2005-12-15 to add trailing slash to list of included sites.

    As much as I love Johnvey Hwang's Del.icio.us Director, I got really tired of having to click his bookmarklet every time I loaded my del.icio.us links page, so I created a Greasemonkey script to do it for me. In all honesty, his bookmarklet was already optimized to become a greasemonkey script, so it only took me a minute or two to convert it.

    What took a bit longer was creating an easy way to share the GM script with others. With a little javascript/php/mod_rewrite action, I eventually came up with a clean, efficient method to generate user-specific scripts on-the-fly. To get your own, follow the directions below.

    (This script was tested on Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 and Greasemonkey 0.5.3. Your mileage may vary with other configurations.)

    If you haven't already done so, get del.icio.us.


     

    After submitting the above information, a pink-highlighted link should appear below. Right-click this link and click "Install User Script...". To finish installing the script, click "OK" on the dialog that appears.

    Once all that's done, every time you visit your own del.icio.us page, the Director should auto-load.

    If you experience any problems with the script generator, or have questions or suggestions, I welcome them in the comments. I'm notified via email anytime someone comments on my weblog, so I will get back to you eventually if you include accurate contact information.

    Technorati Tags: , , ,

     

    • .derek 8:44 pm on Friday, November 4, 2005 Permalink

      Awesome job! I was getting a little tired of clicking the bookmarklet as well.

      By the way. You’re anti-spam measure for comments reminds me of those old “choose your path and turn to page blah blah or blah blah”.

    • Quick Online Tips 11:22 am on Monday, November 7, 2005 Permalink

      Your tool is now listed on the Absolutely del.icio.us tools

    • Joshua 6:45 pm on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 Permalink

      This doesn’t seem to be working in Firefox 1.5 beta. I installed the script, but when I go to delicious it just sits there like always.

    • Justin Bitely 11:40 pm on Tuesday, November 8, 2005 Permalink

      Not working for me in Firefox 1.5rc1 with Greasemonkey 0.6.3

    • Danny Dawson 11:28 am on Thursday, November 10, 2005 Permalink

      To be honest, you’re a little too bleeding edge for me to support right now. When Firefox 1.5 and Greasemonkey 0.6.2 get their wide releases, then I’ll look into supporting them, but I can’t make any promises beforehand. Sorry.

    • Danny Dawson 2:28 pm on Thursday, December 15, 2005 Permalink

      Hmm…the GM script works just fine for me in Fx 1.5 with GM 0.6.4. Anyone else having any problems?

      I did notice, however, that I wasn’t adding trailing slashes to the list of included sites, which might have been causing a problem for a number of people. In effect:
      http://del.icio.us/quasistoic
      would match, but
      http://del.icio.us/quasistoic/
      would not.

      This has been fixed on my server. Feel free to generate yourself a new script if it’s been bothering you.

    • drink 9:17 am on Thursday, May 25, 2006 Permalink

      I’m using 1.5.0.3/Win (1.5 is long past wide release now…) and Greasemonkey 0.6.4 and it doesn’t work for me, either. the director does work fine when I run it manually.

    • Danny Dawson 9:28 am on Thursday, May 25, 2006 Permalink

      Drink: I’m using the exact same setup and it works fine for me. Make sure that you’ve entered your del.icio.us username correctly, and only expect it to activate on your own del.icio.us page.

    • José González 3:42 am on Thursday, August 17, 2006 Permalink

      del.icio.us seems to have changed the way it authenticates users, so this script is no more valid. Instead, you should point your browser to https://api.del.icio.us/ (you will see a page that looks like an error, don’t panic) and then execute the direc.tor script. If you aren’t logged on, your browser will prompt you for your user and password and you will enter the direc.tor (del.icio.us now works with HTTP basic authentication over HTTPS). So now there is no need to customize the script for a particular user, you just have to use the following:

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name Del.icio.us Director
      // @namespace http://www.quasistoic.org/ts/archives/gm-delicious-director/
      // @description Auto-Loads Johnvey Hwang’s Del.icio.us Director upon visiting jgongo’s del.icio.us links page
      // @include https://api.del.icio.us/
      // By Danny Dawson – modified by Jose Gonzalez
      // ==/UserScript

      (function() {var element=document.createElement(‘script’); element.setAttribute(‘src’, ‘http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/dboot.js‘); document.body.appendChild(element)})();

    • thadk 9:20 am on Monday, August 6, 2007 Permalink

      Just so people don’t find themselves pounding their heads on walls figuring out why the updated script is not working:
      It uses the type-setted version of the ” ‘ ” symbol. The blog must convert it. You will have to retype it in the script when you copy and paste. Enjoy.

  • Danny Dawson 6:33 pm on Wednesday, June 22, 2005 Permalink | Reply  

    Flickr/Shutterfly Integration Greasemonkey Script 

    A friend asked me recently if she could print some of my graffiti photos to hang on her wall. I was honored and thrilled, and I decided I wanted to make it easier for her. In doing so, I thought it would be nice to offer this tool to everyone else as well.

    Through collaboration with Jason Rhyley, the two of us were able to create a Greasemonkey script for Firefox which adds Shutterfly print ordering capability to Flickr.

    What does that mean? That means you can now order prints of your Flickr photos (or anyone else’s Flickr photos) with just a couple clicks.

    How to get it working:
    1. Install Firefox and Greasemonkey, if you haven’t already. (If you’ve just installed Greasemonkey, you’ll need to restart Firefox once before moving on.)
    2. Right click the link to the Flickr/Shutterfly Integration script and click “Install User Script…” When prompted, click OK.
    3. Go visit a photo page. Down in the bottom-right, in the “Additional Information” section, there will be a link that says “Order Prints”. Click it.
    4. If you want to add more photos to your order, repeat step 3.

    Known issues:

    • If a really large picture is added to the cart, the image dimensions might not pass correctly. If this happens, remove the picture from the cart and try it again. The image should take less time to load the second time around because Firefox will have cached it, and adding it to the cart now should work just fine. This will be fixed in a future release. Fixed. See below.

    I will update this blog post with changes in the future.

    I would also like to strongly recommend Jason’s other Flickr GM scripts. He’s a wizard.

     

    • Saurabh 5:54 pm on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Permalink

      Let me start by thanking you for taking the time for this much needed script to support the ability to order prints from FlicKr.

      I installed the latest version of GM and that seems to have broken your Flickr/Shutterfly script (perhaps due to the usage of GM_xmlhttpRequest). I was wondering if you could update your script to reflect the changes made in GM.

      Thanks.

    • Danny Dawson 3:52 pm on Thursday, August 4, 2005 Permalink

      Saurabh: Jason yet again beat me to the punch and updated the script to work with the most recent version of Greasemonkey (0.3.5).

      Not only did he fix the gm_xmlhttpRequest issue and an issue for when only the “Large” image size is available – he also introduced a couple new little features:
      1. A cancel button
      2. The title and photographer credits are now passed along to Shutterfly to be printed on the back of the photo.

      Rumor has it (Stewart Butterfield being the rumor starter) that Flickr plans to roll out print-ordering capabilities by the end of this month, but it’ll still be nice to have the script around for those who want to stick with Shutterfly or just prefer the simple interface.

    • Jean Gionet 6:27 am on Monday, September 19, 2005 Permalink

      Hi Danny,
      first off.. GREAT script..

      I was just wondering if you script could be modded to include other print sites?
      Since I’m in Canada I’m REALLY interested in getting it going with http://www.walmartphotocentre.ca/walmartcanada/main.jsp
      can this be done?
      thanks a million
      -JG

    • Jon 2:58 pm on Saturday, December 10, 2005 Permalink

      It seems that as of the new versions of Flickr, Greasemonkey, Firefox, etc., that this script is no longer working. Is that correct? It seems the rumors you spoke of were correct, and indeed Flickr’s ordering system is quite nice, and yet they take a long time to send prints, whereas Shutterfly is rather speedy. I wonder if anybody would care to tweak this for Greasemonkey 0.6.4 and the new Flickr?

    • Danny Dawson 10:18 am on Monday, December 12, 2005 Permalink

      Jon,

      I have noticed (since I installed Fx 1.5 and GM 0.6.4) that this script is broken, and if anyone would like to contribute fixes for the depricated functions (which I haven’t yet looked into), I would be happy to post them here.

      I do plan to update the script at some point in the (hopefully near) future, but I can’t make any promises for deadlines at this time. When I do update it, I’ll post another comment here and send you a Flickrmail.

    • Phung Purzycki 12:31 pm on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 Permalink

      Respect,

  • Danny Dawson 2:32 pm on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 Permalink | Reply  

    ShurlThis! 

    I got tired of the gigantic prompt that my last version of this bookmarklet made, and I figured that I might as well go ahead and fix the browser compatibility issues and give it a catchy yet descriptive name…

    Here’s version 0.2 of http://shurl.org/?url=&quot; + escape(location.href) + "&type=advanced&name=" + escape(Nm).replace(/ /g, "+"); void 0">ShurlThis!
    (More …)

     

    • naser 11:59 am on Thursday, November 3, 2005 Permalink

      Hmm..i just stole your bookmarklet and will use it as a blummet on blummy.

  • Danny Dawson 10:39 am on Thursday, June 2, 2005 Permalink | Reply  

    Customized Short URLs in one click 

    This is an outdated version of this script. There is a newer version available. Read about version 0.2 of ShurlThis!

    I love shortcuts. I can’t tell you how much I love shortcuts.

    I also hate long URLs.

    And I love customization.

    Thus, I present the Custom Shurl Bookmarklet. Just drag and drop it onto your Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox. Hell, it might even work in IE or Safari. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t tested them. Edit: Works in IE 5.2 on the Mac, but not in Safari. It also doesn’t seem to work in IE 6 on the PC.

    There are two ways to use this bookmarklet:

    1. Highlight a word or two on your current page and click the bookmarklet. You’ll be taken to the advanced Shurl result page with a link generated using the highlighted words.
    2. Without highlighting anything, click the bookmarklet. You’ll be prompted to enter a word or phrase which will be used to generate the link.

    Still don’t understand? Just test it out by clicking this link: Custom Shurl Bookmarklet

    I’ve changed all the references above to link to my post with the newest version, but just so I can remember how hilarious it was, here I’ll preserve version 0.1: http://shurl.org/. For example, if you enter ShortcutsRockYeahBabyYeah into the box below, the resulting URL will look like this: http://shurl.org/ShortcutsRockYeahBabyYeah',''))};if(Nm)location.href='http://shurl.org/?url='+escape(location.href)+'&type=advanced&name='+escape(Nm)">Custom Shurl Bookmarklet

     

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