Favorite site burning a hole in your head? Cskinner can fix it! It is an extremely useful GreaseMonkey script that places CSS control back in your hands so you can alter a site to your tastes. Sure, the web designer built the site to look like that, why mess around? Well, some site designs can literally give you a blinding headache without even reading the content. Ever try reading green text on a black screen? Yup, as soon as you look away all you see are little lines squiggling about like floating worms.
Metafilter is my nemesis in this regard. When I can tolerate the snarky backbiting and sanctimonious attitudes it can be a great site to trawl for links off the beaten path but the colors are enough to make me nauseous. To fix that I reskinned it to be black on a light gray:
body{background:#CCCCCC; color:black;}
a:link {color:blue;}
a:visited {color:green;}
a:active {color:#ffc;}
a:hover {color: green;}
.sidebar {background: #CCCCCC; border-top: 1px solid #fff; border-bottom: 1px solid #fff;}
.smallcopy {font-size: 10px;font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; color: black; margin-right: 20px;}
It’s not a beautiful redesign but I’ll save on aspirin and trips to the optometrist.
Oh, and it’s for Firefox only and if you’re not using it what the hell is the matter with you (I’m talking to you, Windows user!)?
To be straight, I am a tad nervous to do this next upgrade. Currently, the server is running Ubuntu 4.10 and I’ll be bringing it up to 5.04 and while much of it is handled nicely through Synaptic it is a massive undertaking all the same. My worry is that both Apache will break with regards to PHP support and MySQL will be left a smoking ruin. Now, it is likely that my fears are unfounded but nonetheless beads of perspiration are forming at my brow even as I type this.
To work through my worries I’ve put together a quick list of tasks:
- Take server offline
- Back up sites
- Back up databases
- Back up Apache configuration files
- Update repositories with 5.04 locations
- Run upgrade manager
- Cross fingers
- Pace nervously
- Fix snack
- Test Apache, PHP, and MySQL functionality
- Bring server back online
- Pray to the Penguin that everything works
Dropping the hammer makes the most sense this weekend since it is a long one. 
Well, the upgrade to Wordpress 1.5.1.1 was as easy as they said; quick backup of files and database, copy over the new files, and then run upgrade.php. Zip! Bang! Boom! It’s done. The nice thing is that it fixed the Pages bug where they stopped displaying if you went into one.
I also took the time to figure out why wp-scrobbler wasn’t working. Turns out that both the theme I have been working with (Plain Vanilla) and the plugin had used a variant of apostrophe that caused the code to be skipped. Once I cleaned that up my scrobbler stats started flowing in nicely and the place feels even more like home.
I sunk in close to 100 hours on the one for the Gamecube and my wife must have easily put in more than that; there was just something so inherently addictive about the gameplay. Sure, it revolved around shaking trees, catching bugs and fish, digging up fossils, and writing more letters than you could ever imagine but it was pure, simple, and zen-like. Animal Crossing DS could easily compel me to buy two DSes so that we can play head-to-head and maybe troll for other users to trade kitschy umbrella designs with.
Games like Animal Crossing are the reason why I love Nintendo so much; there is this desire on their part to create games that delight and amaze, these are games that reveal your inner-child. Sure Half-Life2 is an amazing looking and does create a sense of joy when played but that joy is reserved to elements of gameplay, like the emergent styles of play afforded by the gravity gun. On the other hand, Nintendo does an amazing job taking joyful styles of play and wrapping them into a cohesive whole whereby the game in of itself provides the the highest enjoyment. Animal Crossing is one such game where the company took the notion of communication as a method of play and built a highly addictive game around it, one that compelled me to keep coming back long after I completed many of the objectives.
Needless to say, Nintendo continues to have my vote of confidence as the market moves into the next round of consoles.
Don’t you think that if you are going to sell a Learning Linux CD you would also make sure that it would run on Linux as well? Maybe it’s just me. Linky…
Sure, I’m holding out for a DS, and yes, I already one a GBA SP that fits nicely into my fat-ass pants pocket but my wife would love a cutesy game device like this. Anyway, Joystick has a great write up about the latest GBA including some hands-on pictures. For what appears to be a tiny screen this picks make it look very legible and usable.
