New Moon

So a new Elliott Smith album snuck up on me. Some of the songs have been floating around the intranets for awhile and I know a few are pretty incredible (Angel in the Snow, Talking to Mary, Thirteen), but there are at least 10 I've never heard, which is about as excellent a Tuesday afternoon gift I could ever get. The 2 disc album is available on eMusic so if you're an Elliott Smith fan and don't already use eMusic this is a great reason to sign up.

My Greasemonkey script is on LifeHacker

Sweet. My Google Reader greasemonkey script got picked up by LifeHacker.com.

My downloads just about doubled in the last four hours (up in the 400's now). And I've got my first comment (a positive one at that!) from a complete stranger, so I'm pretty enthused. I have a few tweaks I'd like to make, but for the most part, I don't see myself adding many features.

Google Reader - Read by Mouse Greasemonkey Script

I wrote my first Greasemonkey script this week.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that lets you modify the way webpages look and function (on your computer). It's really cool. It uses client-side javascript tricks to alter pages after they get downloaded to your computer. If you want to change the way Gmail looks or create a keyboard shortcut for a certain button you click on all the time, there's probably a way to do it through Greasemonkey.

The script I wrote adds some functionality to one of my favorite web apps: Google Reader. I use Google Reader all the time and I've always wished I could skim through my (usually thousands of) unread items really fast with just my mouse. Google offers some nice keyboard shortcuts ("j" for next item, etc...) but for some reason I've always found their keyboard shortcuts make my arm uncomfortable after using it for any extended time. I think it's because I feel like I'm always just about to get carpal tunnel.

Anyway, I put together a Greasemonkey script that lets you toggle Google Reader in and out of what I call "mouse mode." When in this mode, left clicks move to the next item, right clicks move back to the previous item, and middle clicks are customizable (they either open the item in a tab, share the item, or star the item). You can set what you want the middle clicks to do with the supplied dropdown list. When not in mouse mode, your buttons work like normal.

I've been using Google Reader this way for a day or two and so far I'm loving it. After months of having thousands of unread items, I'm finally caught up. If you're not already attached to a certain reading style, I'd recommend giving my script a try.

To get Greasemonkey and user scripts working, you just install Greasemonkey like any Firefox extension from here. After you restart Firefox, go here to get my script. My script is hosted on userscripts.org (a place where greasemonkey script writers can post their scripts and discuss Greasemonkey-related stuff). You can read about my script and then click the "Install this script" button. A window will pop up saying that it's about to install. Click the Install button and that's it! Next time you go to Google Reader there will be a new button and droplist on the screen.


One cool thing about userscripts.org is that it shows how many times your script has been installed (as I'm writing this I have 57 installs). Another cool thing is that my script is already the top search result for "google reader mouse", which is awesome.

If you're a Google Reader user, give my script a try and let me know what you think. If you don't use Google Reader or know what feed readers are, check out my Nerd City column, Through RSS Colored Lenses.

More Mac love from this soon-to-be home owner

I recently started using Growl for OS X. It's a notification system that most OS X applications support. When ever something happens in a program that is running in the background that you might be interested in knowing about, Growl will popup a little notification window.

For example, this screenshot taken from Growl's website shows that Cyberduck (an FTP program) has finished downloading the Growl installation file.

I had heard of Growl over a year ago and was just not very interested. I didn't see how a global, standard notification system could be useful, much less something I could actually get excited about. I've used it for a month now and I have to say that it is really surprisingly great. Installing it takes no time at all and any application that supports Growl just starts using it automatically. You can have it do things like show the name of the song that just started playing in the iTunes and show when files are done downloading. These examples may not seem very impressive, for such a small investment of your time (it's free and installation is a cinch) Growl offers a great service and just works seamlessly with your Mac.

One thing I love about OS X is that you can install operating system-wide services like Growl and your system works just as fast as it did before (see QuickSilver). In Windows any time I install something that runs system wide I'm left wondering (because I've had bad experiences in the past with OS plugins like ones that add support for multiple desktops) how much slower or just worse in general my system will perform.

Another OS X application I started using recently is Camino. It's a native OS X version of Firefox (it shares a lot of the infrastructure of Firefox, but the interface has been rewritten for OS X). It does run better than the Mac version of Firefox, and it feels much more like a Mac application than Firefox's Mac port, but Camino does not support Firefox's extensions which is some thing I really miss. I gave Camino a try after watching this really interesting talk given at Google by Camino's lead developer, Mike Pinkerton.

In other news, as of March 15th I will be a home owner! It's near MacArthur and 122nd. I'll try to have everyone over sometime soon. Actually, I'll be doing most of the moving the weekend of the 17th so if anyone feels like helping I'd really appreciate it. I promise I'll have everything boxed up and ready to go. It'll be easy and fun!

Also, we just launched the subscriber portal website I've been building the last two months at work. If you have Delta Dental of Oklahoma insurance, head over to https://www.deltadentalok.org/spotlight. Once registered (should be a quick and relatively painless process), you can log in and view your benefits and claims and print your insurance card.

Quitting myspace.

I'm quitting myspace. I can't believe how a site owned by someone the size of newscorp can be such shoddy quality - wait... they are the people that bring us Fox News. ba-dum ching!

Why am I quitting? Every 4th time I've tried to log in over the last year it will not let me. And then when I do get logged in, things load REALLY slow or just don't work at all.

So, as soon I as I can get logged in next time, I'm going to delete my account (if they let you do this). I realize this will alienate me from a huge chunk of the online world. As long as Grandpa Griffith posts their up-coming shows some where else along with myspace, I'll be fine.

I know myspace is growing at an incredible rate, but if they can't keep up and offer a decent service to their existing users, they should stop taking new users.

What has your experience been like on myspace.com? Am I the only one that is fed up with this? Do you get random errors every fourth time you do a google search or watch a video on YouTube? No. Most sites that try to be huge, popular websites are able to pull it off with out sucking. I really don't know how or why people put up with myspace.

UPDATE: It let me log in a few minutes after I started this post and I was able to delete my account. If you need to reach me and don't mind using archaic methods of communication (as opposed to new-fangled myspace messages, which are really cumbersome btw) you can email me at ryanbot at gmail dot com.

Wii Pre-Order - Oklahoma City 10/29/06

I got up this morning at 5:30 to meet Sam and stand in line outside of Toys R Us for a Nintendo Wii. I doubted we would get one for several reasons. TRU had ads about the pre-order in their weekly flyer which came out two days early. I thought for sure that there would be a ton of moms out there braving the cold to appease the wrath of their spoiled 9 year old sons. Also, it was a Sunday so there was no school or work to compete with. Finally, TRU was doing both the PS3 and Wii (and come to find out... TMX Elmo) pre-orders at the same time. To me this was just begging for Sony/Nintendo fanboy brawls to break out every half hour.

So all these thoughts were running through my mind as I turned into the Toys R Us parking lot around 6:15. Sam got there right at the same time with some Starbucks and had thought to bring some camping chairs. We got to the back of the line (there was only one line for both the PS3 and the Wii) and tried to get settled in for the four hour wait until the store opened at 11. We were just getting comfortable when a woman came out and started handing tickets to people just before 7am. By the time she got to Sam and me she had five Wii tickets left. There were two people behind us that got Wiis and I heard that some one got the last one before the TRU lady got back inside the store. There were only six PS3 tickets and at least a few PS3 hopefuls that had been there for over an hour got turned away empty handed. That sucks.

So that was it. No flying of fists or shedding of tears. It was really anticlimactic. They said we could go home and come back at 11:00 to put our $50 down so Sam and I went over to McDonald's for breakfast. By the time we came out 30 minutes later, the place was practically deserted. The people that were still there said that so far only two people had come by after the tickets were gone. It's pretty cool that they passed out tickets early. The girl in front of us said she called to ask if they would do this and they said they would not. I guess they changed their mind.

I was a little nervous about my first console pre-order experience, but so far everything has been easy. Now I just need to put down my $50 later this morning and then go pick up my Wii on Nov 19th. Hopefully those two steps will go as smoothly as this morning went. I imagine they will.

OKC Lips Concert

Last night the Flaming Lips were here in OKC. Visually, it was the coolest show I've ever seen. The music was pretty good too.

I didn't get too many good pictures but these kind of show what it was like once things really got going.

There was a huge UFO thing hanging above the stage (it's that red thing glowing near the middle of the picture) . When the Lips started the UFO flew down and Wayne climbed out the top and got in this huge plastic bubble and then walked carefully (we were hoping he would roll/jump) off the top of the UFO into the crowd and walked around on the crowd in the bubble. It was pretty cool. Also, the two greenish screens on either side of the stage showed a weird microphone cam view most of the show where all you saw was Wayne's mouth singing.



As they really got started the UFO tipped back and became part of a really extravagant light show. Here you can see that there were a ton of people there (I'd say easily over 10,000). They shot out tons of confetti and there were balloons flying around pretty much the whole show. I predicted that the balloons would get progressively bigger and fewer and this is basically what happened. Near the end of the show Wayne inflated a balloon above his head until it was about 7 feet wide and exploded in a blast of confetti.

There were probably 35 people on stage throughout the show. Besides the band, on the left was your standard baker's dozen of Space Groupies (girls in really short dress things wearing strange green hats) and on the right were, of course, your Santa's Helper Girls (wearing Santa Claus suits). They would kind of stand around swaying until the songs reached high points at which time the lights would explode and they'd all start jumping around and dancing in unison. It was awesome.

Overall, it was a most enjoyable experience.

Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds

A pretty effective way of introducing a band to some one who's never heard them is to name a band that has a similar sound. In the case of Final Fantasy this is a no-brainer. Creed. That was a joke. If I had to try to make a comparison I'd say Final Fantasy (who's mostly one person - Owen Pallett) is what you get when you mix Sufjan Stevens and Andrew Bird and throw in some gay and canadian for good measure. In the end, it makes for a really interesting (and with a few exceptions) nice sound.

He Poos Clouds is a pretty strange and unapproachable name for an album. And on your first few listens these words, strange and unapproachable, could describe a few of the songs on the album as well. In the end it's one of those albums, like a lot of good ones, that you really have to give a chance (like listen to it several times a day for a few days) before it starts growing on you.

It would seem easy to drop Final Fantasy into that category of "bands that you're supposed to like just because Pitchfork or some one gushed over them," but I think that this would be a mistake. There isn't a single "radio friendly" song in the whole lot (this isn't a bad thing) but here are some really great sounding songs.

The Arctic Circle - Maybe it's on account of my stoic tendencies, but I like it when musicians put serious/sad lyrics to beautiful music (Elliott Smith did this a lot).

She's got a heart that will never melt.
Shields up! Shields up! Bar the door, and keep your dukes up!
Tell lies, tell dirty lies, tell diggory lies, until you're lying in his bed.

This is set to some really nice music and harmonized vocals. Final Fantasy does this sort of thing in most of their songs.

He Poos Clouds - I'm trying to understand this song. The "only boys he's ever loved are digital" and he "moved them with this thumbs." Then at the end he makes what I'm sure is a reference to the Zelda video games so it would seem that he feels that he connects with his video games more than he ever will with another person? While I can't tell you exactly what the song's about, I can say that the music is awesome. Huge tympani drums and brass sounds and just epicness in general.

This Lamb Sells Condos - A sad story (set to bouncy Charlie Brown-like music) of a realtor who's life has become meaningless and whose marriage had dead-ended. The happy kids choir near the end just adds to the hidden darkness of this song. It's probably my favorite song.

These are the best songs on the album, but there are some other ones that are pretty interesting (Many Lives 49 MP, I'm Afraid of Japan) and a few other ones I don't think I'll ever get into.

I've heard that Final Fantasy puts on an interesting show with Pallett recording and looping a bunch of violin parts by himself (they're going to be at The Conservatory here in town in a few weeks).