Happy Labor Day!
COOL APP: Folder Guide
If you’re like me, you spend an awful lot of time moving back and forth between a certain group of folders in Windows Explorer. I spend a lot of time in my “Music” and “Video” folders, in addition to server shares and temporary “download folders”. Going back and forth between them can be a pain, and that’s why I just love this new program I found called Folder Guide:
You simply install the Folder Guide software, then right-click on any whitespace in a Windows Explorer window. Choose the “Folder Guide” option and then choose “Settings”. From there, you can choose any folder on your computer (and an alias for it) to add to the Explorer context menu. Once you’ve added a few folders, all you need to do is right-click on a whitepace and choose Folder Guide > FOLDER to switch directly to the folder alias in question.
If you think that Folder Guide works a lot like the “Save Image in Folder” extension for Firefox, you’d be correct. Moving from one folder to another is as easy as pie with Folder Guide. Best of all, the program is free and doesn’t have a tray icon. In fact, Folder Guide only runs as a separate EXE file when you have its “Settings” window open.
I’ve been using Folder Guide for almost a week now and I love it! I especially love that it works within the “Open\Save” dialog box too… just right-click a whitespace in the dialog box and choose your folder with FolderGuide, then save the file just where you want it!
Read more about it (or download it) here.
Firefox Extensions Revisited
Just over a year ago, I wrote this post, which talks about some of my favorite Firefox extensions (plug-ins). A year has passed and Firefox 3 has come out, so let’s take another look at some of my favorite extensions:
AdBlock Plus – My all-time absolute favorite extension, AdBlock Plus blocks 99% of the ads you’d see in your web browser. Unlike a lot of other ad blockers, AdBlock also re-renders the page without any kind of “placeholders” for the ads, so all you get is the content you want. It also has an automatic list update feature, which keeps new ads at bay. I’ve gotten so used to this extension over the years that it’s jarring to use a browser that doesn’t have AdBlock.
Save [Thing] In Folder – These are the handiest Firefox extensions ever! There are two versions of this extension, “Save Image In Folder” and “Save Link In Folder”. Both work the same way, but on different objects. For example, you normally save image files in Firefox by right-clicking an image and choosing “Save Image”, then selecting a folder using the standard Open\Save box. With “Save Image In Folder”, you choose which folder(s) you want to save your pictures in. You then give each folder an alias, like “Default”, “Data Drive” and “Server”. When you see an image you want to save, simply right-click the image and choose Save Image In Folder > Default or Save Image In Folder > Server to save the picture. Save Link In Folder works the same way, but with hyperlinks. You simply right-click a link and choose Save Link In Folder > Desktop or Save Link in Folder > Server to save a linked file. It’s so much faster than the default way of doing things that I can’t believe that this isn’t the default way of saving files in Firefox!
LinkAlert – Firefox (still) doesn’t play nicely with PDF files. Clicking on a PDF link can slow Firefox down to a crawl. Thankfully, this handy little extension changes the cursor in Firefox when you hover over a certain type of hyperlink. Although it was originally created solely to warn you about PDF links, LinkAlert has been updated to include all kinds of icons, such as icons for music, image, compressed and script files. It’s not a vital plug-in, but it sure is nice.
It’s Finally Happened!
How bad are things in the airline industry? So bad the regional Canadian airline Jazz has decided to ditch life vests as a cost-saving move. Jazz can get away with it because Canadian regulations say that seat cushions are sufficient if the planes stay within 50 miles of the shore.
Jazz spokeswhore Manon Stuart said: “We used to carry both the flotation device, which is the seat cushion, as well as life vests. The nature of our operations doesn’t require that we carry both”. But Newfoundland politician Woody French disagrees: “They are going to save about 50 pounds [per flight]. Taking off 50 pounds is not going to make a hell of a lot of difference to the fuel consumption”. Mr French has been trying to get the Canadian parliament to pass a “passenger’s bill of rights” for beleaguered travelers in our neighbor to the north.
I can’t say that I disagree with him on this one. I just hope the American carriers don’t hear about this. The next thing you know, they’ll be taking out the oxygen tanks too!
Read the sad, sad tale here.
“Muphry’s Law” Strikes Again!
“Muphry’s Law” states that “if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written”. It is, of course, based on Murphy’s Law. It’s also known as Merphy’s Law, Skitt’s Law, Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation, The Law of Prescriptive Retaliation, Bell’s First Law of Usenet, Tober’s lor, Gaudere’s Law, Naruki’s Law and Greenrd’s Law.
I bring this up because I was going through my archive of World Wide Words RRS feeds yesterday when I found a dilly of an example of Muphry’s Law.
On July 8th, Stephen J. Dubner posted this article entitled “Dept. of Oops” on the New York Times Freakonomics Blog. In it, Dubner discusses the inevitable typographical errors that pop up in publications, especially online ones. His first example is this:
The Economist is, almost inarguably, a great magazine.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t make the occasional mistake. Consider this lead from a recent article about a huge Mexican mining company called Fresnillo, which was recently listed on the London Stock Exchange:
In the hills north east of Mexico City it is not uncommon to find Cornish pasties for sale.
They meant to write “pastries” but, considering that miners work really hard, they might also be hoping to encounter the kind of people who go shopping for pasties.
Ummmm, no. As the majority of the 88 comments left for the article have pointed out, Cornish Pasties are a very real food. They’re a type of handheld pie that originated with tin miners in Cornwall, England… hence “Cornish”. They are usually filled with diced meat, sliced potato and onion, although sweet varieties do exist as well. In fact, the miners would sometimes get a pie that was “half and half”: beef and potato on one side for lunch, the other side filled with jam or apples for dessert!
The good folks at The Economist were apparently amused by Dubner’s error, as they went him a genuine Cornish pasty so he could taste the deliciousness himself.
Cool Post on Mad Men Blog!
I just wanted to post a link to this cool article on the Mad Men blog about some of the women’s fashion on the show. Although most of the post wonders what modern designers characters like Bobbie Barrett and Betty Draper would wear today, there’s some interesting stuff near the end of the post about Joan’s wardrobe:
– The bras that Christina Hendricks wears on the show are based on an actual 1960s bra found at a thrift store in New Orleans. The costume crew bought the bra and, once they knew it fit Christina perfectly, carefully took it apart, and used the “bra parts” as a pattern to make several new ones for the show.
– Most of Joan’s clothes are genuine vintage dresses. However, the costume team usually buys dresses that are five to six times too large for Christina. This gives them a lot of extra fabric that they can play around with while altering the dress.
Enzyte Guy Gets 25 Years
Breaking news from The Consumerist:
Steve Warshak, the founder of the company that makes (made?) Enzyte, a male enhancement “drug”, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined $93,000. Additionally, Warshak’s company has been ordered to refund $500 million to consumers ripped off by the company.
Everyone I know assumed that the product didn’t work. After all, if it did, they’d be selling it at every convenience store and pharmacy in the United States. The thing is, Warshak knew it didn’t work from the very beginning. It was an out and out scam, and Warshak and company made it as difficult as possible to get a refund. According to a former VP that testified against Warshak, the company would go so far as to require notarized documents from a doctor proving that the customer had small genitals in order to get a refund; knowing that few men would willingly go to a doctor and ask them to sign a note saying they had a small penis, the company was able to bilk millions of men out of millions of dollars.
It’s too bad Enzyte doesn’t work. Steve will need it where he’s going!
Read all about it here.
Download Internet Explorer 8
On Wednesday, Microsoft released beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8. You can check out their official Internet Explorer 8 website here, or go for the gusto and download the beta directly here.
I’ve installed in on a virtual machine and am pretty impressed so far. It’s a lot snappier than Internet Explorer 7, and has a few neat new features like Compatibility View (which allows you to view sites coded only for IE 5 or IE 6 “correctly”), Accelerators (which allow you to right-click a word or phrase and act directly on it, such as defining the word via Google or looking up an address via Google Maps), Web Slices (which allow you to turn almost any part of a web page into an updatable “feed”), InPrivate Mode (known online as “Porn Mode”), and the SmartScreen Filter (an updated take on IE 7’s “Phishing Filter”).
Microsoft, it seems, is serious about taking on Firefox, and IE 8 will apparently do much to close the functionality gap between the two browsers. I’m pretty impressed so far – especially with the stability of this release. Remember that this software is still in testing mode, so it might be less stable than the finished product on your system. If you’re the adventurous type, you’ll probably want to check this out!
The Internet Explorer 8 beta is available for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP only.
The World’s Worst Photographer
In the market for some boudoir pictures? Whatever you do, don’t call this guy (NSFW WARNING: although there is no nudity at the site, there are pictures of girls in lingerie). Click any of the “Artistic Samples” links.
I personally can’t decide what the worst thing about these pictures is: the hideous, corn-fed Midwestern girls, the godawful lighting, the cheesy and out-of-focus backgrounds, the stiff poses, the awful quality of the scans or the lame Frederick’s of Hollywood knockoffs.
All I know is I need to wash my eyeballs with bleach after looking at those pictures!
Bourdain Interviewed
The Times Record News (of Wichita Falls, Texas, of all places!) has posted a great interview with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain here. In it, Bourdain discusses the places he visits, how the show is filmed, what he thinks is wrong with American cuisine, and even talks about how he’s tired of bashing on Rachel Ray.
Here’s a brief excerpt, where he’s asked what he’d do if Rachel Ray came to him and asked for his help with her cooking technique:
Q: So if she came to you and said, “Tony, help me get better,” what would you say?
A: She doesn’t have to ask me! Read (expletive) Julia Child or Ina Garten! You know, it’s not like she doesn’t have a template here. Just take a half hour and tune in Ina Garten. I may not want to hang out with Ina all weekend, either. We’re not the same kind of people at all. I have nothing in common with her other than the fact that when Ina Garten cooks, she’s cookin’ correct.
Read the interview in full here.