Tempus Fugit | TxFx.net | WordPress Hack: Notify Users of Moderation

By default, WordPress does not notify a user if their comment has gone into moderation. This hack will pop-up a window to let the user know their comment has been sent to moderation.

Hopefully this will eliminate cases where the user posts their comment multiple times because they think it got lost.

Tempus Fugit | TxFx.net | WordPress Hack: Notify Users of Moderation

Kitten’s Project Blog – Kitten’s Spaminator

A very useful addin if you’re using WordPress for your blog. Add it to your plugins, turn it on, and it does the work. A few options can be set in the script to control whether you get notification emails, and to define some explicit regex values.

The other filters are read from the WordPress options page under Discussion (for 1.2.1).

Kitten’s Project Blog – Kitten%u2019s Spaminator

According to comments I’ve read, this functionality has been incorporated into WordPress 1.3, so you won’t explicitly need this plugin when you upgrade.

Books for Sale

I have a number of books cluttering up my bookshelves that I’m not likely to read again, and would be happy to give away. If you live in the Toronto area, I can meet you somewhere. If you live outside Toronto, if you want them enough to pay shipping, I’ll gladly ship them.

Send an email to books at this domain and we can discuss it.

Image Zoom

Allows for easy zooming of images. Firefox (and other browsers) allow ‘zooming’ on text (i.e. making the text larger) via the view menu, and this extension provides something similar for images. Now you can zoom in on an image to see it larger. Obviously if you zoom too much, the quality degrades, but I find this feature handy.

The homesite for this extension is here

Tabbrowser Preferences

Provides even more level of control over how new windows will be created. Firefox 1.0 added some of this by allowing you to tell it to create new windows as new tabs instead, but Tabbrowser Preferences takes it to the new level. I have it set to open all new windows as tabs instead, in the background and have Firefox hopefully not take focus from the program that sent it. This allows me to click on links in email newsletters without having Firefox come to the front, but also without having to manually create a new tab for each one. I can now open all the links I’m interested in, and read them later.

And here’s the link.

Crashing at 60MPH

I haven’t done it, but a UK based auto show called Fifth Gear did. They bought two 10 year old cars, had them fitted with remote controls, and ran them at each other with each car doing 60mph.

I have extracted the relevant video so you can see the devastating results here. As noted in the video, a modern car would do better, but not enough to make a difference.

Keep this in mind the next time you’re racing down the street…

On a related note, here’s an interesting fact. If you were driving 50 km/h and came to a stop as fast as possible. Then place a pedestrian where your bumper is (i.e. just missing them). Now, begin stopping at exactly the same place with maximum force, but driving at 60 km/h (an increase of 10 km/h). How fast will you be going when you hit the pedestrian?

10 km/h?
15 km/h?
20 km/h?

Would you believe 35 km/h? Do the math and see for yourself…

IMatch script updates

I’ve made some minor changes to the Export IMatch info to IPTC script. It now puts the filename into Object Name (rather than the property Title). The categories are now put into Keywords rather then Supplemental Categories (since Keywords allows 64 characters and Supplemental Categories only allows 32).

Text Messaging your to-do list

I have a cellphone that I’m quite happy with, but it doesn’t have a to-do list feature. I have a PDA, but it’s too big for me to want to carry it around. Well, I’ve found a way of providing myself with a makeshift to-do list.

My service is with Rogers Wireless on the Pay-as-you-go plan. This plan allows me to receive text messages with no charge (I believe all plans allow for text messages to be received for no charge). Rogers is also kind enough to provide an online method of sending text messages. So now anytime I want to create a to-do list, or have a note for myself without having to carry a piece of paper, I send myself a text message. My phone will store quite a few messages, so I’ve found this to be very useful.

Find out who your long distance carrier is

1-700-555-4141

Just found out about this number. It will tell you who the long distance carrier is for the number you are calling from, and is no charge (although other 700 numbers ARE NOT!).

Also, appears that 500 and 700 numbers can be setup by your phone provider as ‘forwarding’ numbers. You create a 500/700 number and pay them a fee for the service. When someone calls the number, they pay for the call, but they reach you at whatever number you’ve defined as the target phone number. It appears some phone companies even allow a list of prioritized numbers to try, so it will automatically work its way down the list.

How did I find out about this? Just signed up for a Rogers bundle which includes relatively inexpensive long distance. They gave me the number, telling me to call it to confirm that my long distance was switched. Before calling the number, I did a search on Google, and eventually found a site that talked about this number (it was on the second page of my ’700 phone number’ search).

Product Recalls

An interesting article in Moneysense about recalls. How safe are we really?

Sounds like a number of government agencies that don’t communicate that well. Plus, if you’ve purchased a product used, or that isn’t registered with the manufacturer, they have no way to contact you.

Here are a few sites where you can find out about recalls.

  1. CBC Marketplace
  2. Consumer Reports – Recall information does not require subscription.
  3. Transport Canada Vehicle Recall
  4. Canadian Food Inspection Agency – Lists recalls and allergy alerts. Provides email alerts of latest news.
  5. Recalls.gov US recall database that is result of co-operation between 6 federal agencies. Remember that not all US recalls apply to Canada, but at least you can see them. Provides email alerts of latest news.

Firefox Tuning and Customization

Reading through my latest CPU magazine, and noticed some tips for Firefox. The biggest thing I miss from Mozilla is the Google search from the address line. After reading the article, I now know how to implement this feature in Firefox, and it’s even faster to use than in Mozilla.

By default, if a non-URL entry is put into the address line of Firefox, it will display the first entry from a Google ‘I Feel Lucky’ search. If you want it to do a standard Google Search, then first, put ‘about:config’ in the address line and press enter.

Scroll down until you find ‘keyword.URL’. Change the setting to ‘http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=.’

Restart Firefox and enter something that doesn’t look like a URL. You should be presented with a Google search using the words you entered as the keywords.

Also in the article was a reference to this forum topic:
Firefox Tuning – MozillaZine Forums

The article discusses potential performance improvements by making changes to various other items in about:config. Also included is sample entries that can be cut-and-pasted into your prefs.js file in your profile directory. On XP, this is under Documents and Settings{user name}MozillaFirefoxProfiles{some keyname}. You will see a file called prefs.js. If you copy the suggested lines into this file, and restart Firefox, you should/may notice performance improvements.

If it doesn’t work, or it appears to be causing problems, you can always remove the lines from your prefs.js.

I’ve put them into mine, but haven’t done any testing as of yet, so please be cautious!

ProcessLibrary.com – The online resource for process information!

Read about this site in Langalist (A useful newsletter with a free and paid version)

ProcessLibrary.com – The online resource for process information!. This site can be helpful when you’re wondering what a process is that is running on your machine. It doesn’t have them all (as I searched for a few in my list), but it knew about most of them, and provides the option to suggest new ones if they don’t have one you know about.