Category: Web/Tech

Five Years Ago

Five years ago today I started a web log called “Coffee and Oranges.” Blog software was still quite primitive or seemed difficult to install on a web host, so I created my own using a handful of Perl scripts. In July of 2003, I volunteered to be a beta tester of the new TypePad service and started a web log called “Five Acres with a View.” I decided to install Movable Type when the beta was over a few weeks later and kept the name of my TypePad blog which seemed more appropriate than a Wallace Stevens quote. I moved to WordPress when forced to stop running Movable Type by my web host in May 2004. I have been running some version of self-hosted WordPress since then.

If my web log was a child, it would be old enough for kindergarten in the fall. Where do the years go?

WordPress 2.2

This morning I installed WordPress 2.2, which has been available for about a week. I decided to try WordPress Widgets, which meant I needed to use a Widgets enabled theme. For now, I am trying a theme called Twister 1.0. WordPress Widgets, which enables the easy rearrangment of sidebar items, are very slick. Update: Decided to use Mandigo instead. Let me know if you see any problems.

Snap Links Firefox Add-ons

Snap Links, a Firefox Add-on, does something I’ve been wanting for some time.  It allows me to draw a box around an area on the screen, and then will open each link within the box in a separate tab.  I assigned the middle button of my mouse to draw the box, since I found it awkward working with the right button, which was the default.

Better Gmail Firefox Extension

About three weeks ago, I decided to see if I could use Gmail as my full time mail client.  I had been using Google Reader as my feed reader for some time, and decided to give Gmail another try.  (I had been using Gmail to archive stuff, but only used it to read my mail when I was traveling.) So far, there are just a few things that I have found that I don’t like as well as the way kmail worked, and the experiment is a success so far.

One tool that I recently started using to improve my Gmail experience is the Better Gmail Firefox extension from Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.  She incorporated a number of <a href=”http://www.greasespot.net/”>Greasemonkey</a> scripts into one, easy to install Firefox extension.  I like the keyboard macros, which extends the set of keyboard controls that are built into Gmail.