Happy people don't watch TV!

According to a new study, reported in the New York Times, happy people watch less TV than unhappy people.

Given that we didn't have a TV for the first 18 years of my life, does that mean I'm less happy now than I was then?!

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked..."

I thought this quote, quoted on the 37 signals blog was so quotable it was worth quoting here:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system. - John Gall

Train fares rise again

BBC News report that rail fares are set to rise by an average of 6% in the new year. Now where have I heard that before?

When will the government realise that you can't have a successful public transport system without serious public investment? Public services will never pay for themselves, that's the simple conclusion that countries like Germany reached years ago, and look at their public transport system.

Yet Britain seems intent on turning every public service into a profit-making business, even though the figures can never add up without either driving passengers off the trains (through sky-high prices), or cutting back the very service they should be providing (the policy Dr Beeching pursued back in the '60s).

We should just bite the bullet and realise that public money is the only way to properly pay for a decent public service.

Google SearchWiki

According to the official Google blog, Google are working on what could end up being the biggest wiki in the world - bigger than Wikipedia.

The idea seems to be that when you're logged in to Google you can basically add notes to items in Google search results pages as well as reordering the results. These changes would only affect your own searches, but there'll also be a "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link allowing you to see what other people have added. Essentially one huge wiki tied directly in to Google search.

This is pretty significant, as it could seriously redefine the way we think about and interact with the web. Search - and by definition, Google - have become central to the whole web esperience, but until now mainly as a simple portal into other sites. With the development of SearchWiki, the search engine will become far more than just a gateway, it will become a repository of information in itself. Its possible to even foresee a time when you'd do a Google search but instead of clicking on the links to visit the sites you'd just read what people have added to the wiki about the sites.

Is that a good thing for the web or not? It's certainly a good thing for Google, but we'll have to wait and see.

Gmail gets themes!

I know just about every techy blog out there (and probably quite a few not so techy blogs as well) have been buzzing about this for the past couple of days but I might as well add my bit as well!

For anyone who is reading this and doesn't already know, Gmail now has themes, like iGoogle. You get a choice of about 30 different visual styles, some of which are quite pleasant and some not so pleasant!

Windows Vista Sidebar on XP

Found this simple package for installing the Windows Vista sidebar on Windows XP on deviantART the other day. It's a doddle to install and works fine, although I did have to copy all the dll files from Alky's Libraries folder into the Windows Sidebar folder to avoid getting annoying alerts about missing dlls.

A lot of the gadgets are of very questionable quality (or usefulness) but a few are quite handy.

15 Helpful In-Browser Web Development Tools

Smashing Magazine have a useful article: 15 Helpful In-Browser Web Development Tools which does what it says on the tin really!

One additional point to make about the Colorzilla addon for Firefox, and something which many people seem to overlook or not realise, is that you can configure the status bar display to show various things in addition to colour codes, including the dimensions of elements, and, most useful of all I find, the DOM path (or reverse DOM path).

This latter ability is absolutely indispensable when you're editing the CSS of a page, particularly one you didn't create. Rather than having to trawl through the HTML looking for the relevant element, class name or ID, you can just click the Colorzilla tool and move the cursor over the part of thepage you're interested in and immediately see the current element, class, ID, parent elements etc.

Firefox Universal Uploader (Firefox addons)

Firefox Universal Uploader looks like another useful extension to try out...

From the Firefox Add-ons website:

"This extension allows to upload/download files from your favorite websites using a simple interface."

The list of supported sites includes Flickr, Picasa, Youtube and Facebook to name a few.

Amazon update

I don't know if anyone else has had this, but both my wife and I have both experienced the same problem with Amazon in the last few days. Essentially, it seems that Amazon have changed their order processing system so that you are now required to have exactly the same name on your delivery address as that on the card being used for payment. In the past you could have one saying 'Joe Bloggs' and the other saying 'Mr J Bloggs' but this no longer works.

The troubling thing is they haven't mentioned this anywhere. The first we knew about it was about 24 hours after placing our orders when we received an email from Amazon saying that the order had not been processed and asking us to update our details on the website.

Sure enough, upon logging in to our accounts, we were prompted to update our details and then retry submitting the order. In both our cases, simply changing the name on the delivery address was all that was required.

Now fair enough, if that's what they've decided should be required then so be it. But please Amazon, if you're going to make a change to how our orders are processed, then could you let us know beforehand or at least alert us on the website before we submit an order. If you submit an order without making any changes to your account settings, you expect, perfectly reasonably, that it will work, the same as it did when you submitted an order yesterday.

Anyway, just had to get that off my chest!

GMail Notifier keeps logging out of Google Reader

There's currently a bug in the (otherwise very useful) GMail Notifier extension for Firefox that logs you out of Google Reader every time it checks your email! Apparently the developer of the extension is aware of this and working on a fix, but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else had experienced the same problem and was wondering what's going on.

Updated 'Flickr All Sizes Menu' Greasemonkey script

The Flickr All Sizes Menu Greasemonkey script adds a dropdown menu to select which size to view when you hover over the 'All Sizes' button in Flickr. Only trouble is, it's no longer being maintained by the author and consequently doesn't work properly any more. However, the alternative (Flickr AllSizes+) is too complicated for what I wanted, so I decided to edit the original script. Turns out it was only the styles that were a bit broken, so here is a working version of the script. To use it, just install the original script from userscripts.org, then edit it (click 'Manage user scripts' in the Greasemonkey menu, select 'Flickr All Sizes Menu' and click 'Edit') and replace the contents of the .js file with the code below:

(function() {
var test = document.getElementById('button_bar');
if(!test) return;

//get image id
var divs, imgId;
divs = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
for(i = 0; i < imgid =" divs[i].id.match(/\d+/);" imgurl =" new" id="'" size="o'," id="'" size="m'," id="'" size="s'," id="'" size="t'," id="'" size="sq'" imgsizes =" document.getElementById('photo_gne_button_zoom');" newspan =" document.createElement('span');" sizemenu =" document.createElement('div');" innerhtml =" (">' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B0%5D%20+%20%27">Original</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B1%5D%20+%20%27">Medium</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B2%5D%20+%20%27">Small</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B3%5D%20+%20%27">Thumbnail</a></li>' +
  '<li><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%27%20+%20imgURL%5B4%5D%20+%20%27">Square</a></li>' +
  '</ul>'
);
newSpan.appendChild(sizeMenu);

//add stylesheet for the menu
var head, style;
head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
style = document.createElement('style');
style.setAttribute('type', 'text/css');
style.innerHTML = (
'#allSizes {' +
'  display: none;' +
'  background-color: #F3F3F3;' +
'  border: 1px solid #E3E3E3;' +
'  position: absolute;' +
'  margin-left: -49px;' +
'  margin-top: 24px;' +
'  padding-left: 0;' +
'}' +

'#button_bar > span:hover > #allSizes {' +
'  display: inline;' +
'}' +

'#allSizes ul {' +
'  list-style: none;' +
'  margin: 0;' +
'  padding: 0.3em 1em 0.5em 0.8em;' +
'}' +

'#allSizes ul li {' +
'  border: none;' +
'  margin: 0;' +
'  padding: 0;' +
'}' +

'#allSizes a {' +
'  background: none;' +
'  border: none;'+
'  display: inline;' +
'  font-size: 90%;' +
'  padding: none;' +
'}' +


'#allSizes a:hover {' +
'  color: #0063DC;' +
'  text-decoration: underline;' +
'}'

);
head.appendChild(style);

})();

Taskbar Shuffle

Taskbar Shuffle is a nifty little free utility for Windows (all versions) that allows you reorder taskbar buttons and system tray icons via drag and drop. Handy if, like me, you often have a lot of windows open and like to introduce a little more order to how they are arranged than simply the order in which they were opened.

It also allows you to close a window/programme by middle-clicking its button on the taskbar, as well as giving you a little more control about how buttons are grouped.

MozBackup

MozBackup is a simple open source backup utility for creating backups of many Mozilla products, including Firefox.

I currently have over 25 extensions installed (although I keep some of them disabled unless I specifically need to use them) - this might seem like a lot but I've heard of people having 60 or more!! I tend to be quite strict with myself about what extensions I actually keep installed. I'll only try an extension if it looks like it offers a significant usability enhancement, and even then, if it turns out to be less useful than I anticipated, I'll uninstall it again.

Nevertheless, 25 extensions, not to mention my browsing history, bookmarks, cookies, etc. is a lot of stuff to lose should things go wrong, so I thought it was about time I looked into backing up my profile. And MozBackup seems to offer a very nice, easy to use way of doing this - and of course, restoring backed up profiles.

Delay before action in jQuery

(pk)blog highlights a very easy way to simulate a delay before an action in jQuery.

Because setTimeout doesn't work in jQuery (at least not without some messing around) and there isn't a built-in delay() function (shame), the simplest method is to create the illusion of a delay by calling an action that doesn't have any visible effect.

For example, if you want a confirmation message to fade out after a certain number of seconds, you could use the following jQuery:

$('#message').fadeTo(4000, 1).fadeOut(2000);

The fadeTo method has no visible effect on the message box because its visibility is already 100%. However, the browser will still wait, giving the effect of delaying the fadeOut action by 4 seconds.

A neat little trick.

Ubiquity Firefox extension

The Ubiquity Firefox extension from Mozilla Labs, while still at a very early stage of development and as such labelled 'Experimental', looks like it has the makings of something quite special. I haven't installed it yet so I can't say much, but this article on Practical Hacks gives a taster and has persuaded me to give it a try when I next get a spare few minutes.

Sting on the lute

The BBC website has some video clips of Sting playing the lute, including this one where the former Police frontman talks a bit about the history of the lute and attempts to play a bit of John Dowland!

There's also a video of him performing a very mellow and evocative version of 'Message in a bottle' as well as a 17th century motet.

Love it!