I relabeled all of the bookmarks in my bookmarks bar today:
I know the usage of the symbols is non-standard, but I love looking at the beautiful text ornaments and the space efficiency. I know I’ve seen this concept somewhere else, but I just can’t remember where.
Mouse over so you may see to which link each symbol correlates.
☺
Update:
Looks like it comes from Merlin Mann circa 2004.
A while back I posted a bookmarklet (QTYouTube) to load H.264 versions of YouTube videos that the QuickTime plugin plays to avoid using Flash. It has proven very useful to some, but it turns out just recently a better solution has been introduced!
ClickToFlash version 1.4 and later includes functionality to automatically load H.264 versions of YouTube videos, without the need to do anything special.
ClickToFlash is a WebKit plugin that prevents all flash content from loading in Safari. This excellent software prevents runaway CPU usage, and if you’d like to see the Flash content, simply clicking it will cause it to load.
As of version 1.4 a feature has been incorporated to do exactly what the QTYouTube bookmarklet did, replace the flash with a QuickTime compatible H.264 video. With the default settings, control-clicking and choosing “Load h.264″ will load the QuickTime version. You can also go to the Settings (from the Safari->ClickToFlash menu) and choose “Load H.264 videos from YouTube” to automatically do everything for you.
I really want to thank Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch, Troy Gaul, and the rest of the team working on this for the excellent plugin and incorporating this feature!
Today I saw this link on Daring Fireball that presents a bookmarklet to add a link to the YouTube page to download a (higher quality) MP4 version of the video you’re viewing. This is great, but I dislike flash in general, so I’d rather not even watch the embedded version to begin with. I’ve crafted the following bookmarklet to replace the existing flash player with an embedded QuickTime player for the MP4 file. Go try it out on YouTube.
To install the bookmarklet, simply drag it to your Bookmarks Bar (in Firefox, Safari):
This has only been tested on a Mac. I expect it won’t work on some other OSes because it uses the <embed> tag rather than the <object> tag. I encourage someone fix up this bookmarklet to work on other platforms by using the <object> tag, and condense it a little–because it is rather long. I’d be happy to post an updated version if someone improves it. Additionally, a GreaseKit script would be great too.
Enjoy!
Update:
Seems to work in Firefox on Windows.
Update:
Comment from Kris below provides a Greasemonkey/GreaseKit Userscript.
Userscript
Update:
Comment from Jean below suggests enlarging the size of the video to accommodate the new wider YouTube format. I’ve done this to the link above, but kept the format at “18″, as “22″ is still not widely available.
Update:
Jean was also kind enough to let me host this very informative chart (pdf) of precisely the file sizes, quality, and formats of all downloading format numbers that he made. Lots of info here!
Update:
See ClickToFlash 1.4+ supports H.264 loading to automatically load H.264 video for YouTube.
Update:
A reader has come up with a Safari 5 Extension that replaces the functionality of this bookmarklet. If you are using Safari 5, please consider using the plugin instead: FlashToHTML5.
And my web browser of choice is Safari 3.0 for Leopard. Unfortunately this makes viewing TIFF images of the Patent Office’s website an absolutely abysmal experience.
So today in CS421 I found GreaseKit, a Safari Plugin that allows one to run Greasemonkey-like scripts on web pages in Safari. So I wrote a userscript: usptofix.user.js to change the <embed> tag to the <img> tag, resulting in success.
(original left, modified right)
I simply scale the TIFF to the page width, and everything is okay.
Unfortunately, it crashes Safari half of the time I load this page; I’ve reported a bug against GreaseKit.
It is probably better to just use Google Patents, but at least I learned something.
In order to make this blog post more useful, I will disclose first tips for skipping voicemail greetings. According to a couple of websites, one may simply press the appropriate key (varying by carrier) during a voicemail greeting to be instantly forwarded to the beep:
I have yet to try all these out. Additionally, “*” may work if these fail. If I would much appreciate comments if anyone has first hand experience of other numbers working with other carriers in the Chicagoland area, or corrections in order to make this the canonical reference for the midwest.
Hopefully this will save everyone lots of time in life.
But none of the preceding information has anything to do with San Francisco. I very much enjoyed my trip there for WWDC and am anxious to release some of the code I’ve been working on which utilizes Leopard technologies. It’ll have to wait until October. The trip was great for reasons beyond just the conference though, I had fun seeing Helvetica with Chad. I also bought a new Freitag wallet.
Though there were some low points to the trip. I was trying to play Taboo, but upon opening up the box I found the AA batteries had leaked, and I got some acid on my hand, leaving me with an unsightly acid burn. I also chipped my tooth.
Finally, while I was out there I had the opportunity to work on the Justin.tv widget a bit more. Look for a new version, supporting all the new channels soon.
WWDC kinda makes me wish I were writing exciting Cocoa apps 24/7. I can’t tell you why; it is a secret. But in my downtime, I’ve had the opportunity to add a new feature to the justin.tv dashboard widget. Version 1.6 adds support for all of the channels that have recently been added to the site. You can watch any stream by selecting your channel on the back of the widget, a much requested feature. Check it out.
 justinTV.zip |
This new version of the widget now saves the window size after restarting the Dashboard. Previously, the window would reset to default size after logging in/out, rebooting, or otherwise restarting the Dock. This was a minor annoyance that is now fixed. I have also tested the issue that is preventing the play/pause/volume controls from working in the widget, and it will be resolved in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
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justinTV.zip |
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