Peter Wooley’s Blog

So, as I juggled three separate projects about an hour ago, I realized that Firefox’s default handling of many tabs is just not there. Granted, Firefox has done a lot for the power tab user, but I required more.I believed I had seen a Firefox Extension that could group your tabs into folders and let you flip through the folders, but my search yielded nothing. However, I stumbled upon a great extension that did something I’ve always wanted. It’s called FaviconizeTab and its purpose is simple: reduce the size of a given tab to the size of a Fav Icon. This means the title is no longer visible, but if the website has a recognizable Fav Icon, you won’t need that title! This impressed me nearly enough to completely forget my original search—nearly.I continued searching and came upon another beautiful extension. This extension is called PermaTabs and its function is to keep selected tabs permanently open in your Firefox session. This can be helpful for a number of reasons, including: if you use the “Close Other Tab” to close numerous tabs or if you go on a Tab Closing spree, and accidentally close a tab you want left open. Granted, the latter can be solved using Firefox 2’s built-in Recently Closed Tab function. However, wouldn’t it be easier to never have closed the tab at all? PermaTabs does that!As soon as I saw it, I realized I could use them in tandem and my Tabbing life would get a lot better. I installed them both, restarted Firefox and got to customizing.Using either is quite easy, when you right click on a tab, both extensions are accessible there. First you can reduce the size of your tab by hitting the “FaviconizeTab” and then you can make it permanent by hitting the “Permanent Tab” (doing this action again on a tab will turn off either feature).Now you can move your perma tabs into a group (perhaps to the left-most side of Firefox) and your productivity can skyrocket (well, maybe not skyrocket).There was one thing that bothered me, and that was the color that PermaTabs gives to the Permanent tabs. I enjoyed the idea of coloring them differently, but the default yellowish color just didn’t match Firefox’s default theme. If you would like to change the color, you can go to Tools > PermaTab Options. There, you can select, from a limited color palette, what color you would like them to be. I couldn’t find one I liked, so I decided to do a little digging.If you point your browser to “about:config” you can see all the settings that Firefox is currently using (Warning: changing settings could cause problems, take care with about:config). At the top, you can filter out the options you do not want. So, type in “PermaTab” and the list will update to only showing PermaTab’s settings. At the top, you should see “extensions.permatabs.color”. In the value, you should see a Hex Value representing the color. In order to customize the color, simply edit that value (by double-clicking it) and enter your desired hex value.If you are not sure how to create a hex value, fear not! Head over to Colour Lover’s Color Picker, slide the color picker around and copy the six-digit text above the color picker. Now, just copy that value into PermaTab’s color option (be sure to keep the pound sign [#] before the six digits) and select “Ok”!Once you’ve entered the new value, you can make the changes visible by going back up to Tools > PermaTab Options and simply select “Ok”; see how your color showed up in the color palette, even though it shouldn’t have? It’s amazing!Once you’ve done that, the world of Favi’tizing and Perma’nizing your tabs is open to you!Here is a screenshot of what my current set up is:I chose to go with a darker grey to represent my permaTabs — making them look like concrete, because they’re permanent! Anywho, if you like the color, the hex value is: #c0c2c3.Hopefully this may help those who need more control and features with their Tabs. I’ll keep a look out for that elusive extension I couldn’t find, but I still believe it’s out there. If not, I could always try to make it, but not today!

Recently, a satirical movie was created and posted on YouTube, which captures the true essence of the world of online chat rooms. While I’ve formed my own opinion, I must agree with one YouTuber that it was “both utterly hilarious and deeply disturbing on so many levels”. The film is certainly not suited for children and while it takes a comical look at chat rooms, the irony inherit to a world where “no one knows you’re a dog” is truly seen in the last few moments — so if you watch, and don’t grow too offended, stay for the whole thing. But, be sure to come back when you’re done!YouTube: The ParlorThe worst part of the movie is how real it all is. While I can’t claim of taking part in homosexual affairs or berating fellow users, I can recall venturing into IRC or MSN Channels and seeing it happening. Often times, I spent my time in the ‘programming’ or ‘Christian’ channel, but as in life, titles are not always observed. The more and more the Internet grew, it seemed that chat rooms became more base—so much so that in 2003 MSN took down their chat rooms.I can’t help but think that these rooms have really become the underworld of the Web. I’m sure the conclusion has been drawn before, but it had yet to hit me until now. If the scum of the Internet is to be found anywhere, it would be where names are easily hidden, profiles are easily embellished and new, “helpless” users abound.Thankfully, I believe the onset of IM all over the place has helped new users focus on chatting with their real life friends rather than venturing off on their own to meet “DandyDan331″ or “mRsSwEeTiE” – not that either of those people are sure to be bad… it’s just questionable. Of course, it’s a great help now that it’s so easy for most people to get on the Internet; when your friends are actually online, it makes it easier to talk to them.I suppose I will always remember my first experiences with chat rooms, but then I also remember the time I ate grass to see how tasty it was.

In my last post relating to Basket Weaving, I explained that I had a term paper due in 12 hours. I didn’t get it done, like I thought, so I put it off again. I finally got started on it tonight at 9:00pm. At 11:00pm, I was sending the document to the printer. Thinking back, even now, I’m wondering how I did it.In order to get myself to even start it, I was scaring myself with thinking about not getting it done. That nearly always works, but in the case of this paper, if I put it of another week, I would only lose 20% of the total grade. Considering the class is not the most important class in my life, I could probably have squeezed by with that.However, I knew in my heart that I wanted to get it finished and not worry about it anymore. So, I started working on another project, one I could work for hours on and still want to work more. Then, all of the sudden, I stopped myself, right in the middle of writing a function and forced myself to work on the paper.For some strange reason, stopping myself in the middle of something else worked and I typed furiously on the paper for a full two hours; the whole time thinking about working on the project I enjoy working on.Being done, I have that great feeling of relief we all know and love. I still have a ton of work to do for school, church, work and home, but I fee like I might actually get it finished now!