Better Firefox bookmarks toolbar

I hate having "toolbars" under my address bar as it takes away real estate from webpages. Having said that, there are pages that I want access to with one click and not having to go to "bookmarks" and searching for them. I found a cool little way to have your cake and eat it to by moving the bookmarks toolbar items to the main file toolbar. They fill out the otherwise unused space between "Help" and your window controls.

• Enable your Bookmarks Toolbar under View, Toolbars.
• Go to View, Toolbars, Customize
• Drag the "Bookmarks Toolbar Items" from the Bookmarks toolbar to the top bar next to "Help"

Now you can change those items around to have shorter descriptions so they fit. I ended up removing the names and going by just the icons. When you bookmark something that you want in there, just add it to the bookmarks toolbar and it pops up there. Brilliant!

Dogs and new lens

Yesterday ended up being the last day we had Rascal as a foster. I was figuring it was about time he got adopted out, and I did just buy a new lens for my camera, so it was time to take some pictures.

The new lens is simply awesome. Its the 24-105L and its miles beyond the 17-85 that I had before. Instant focus and great contrast and colors. I had to adjust the photoshop workflow a bit as I no longer need to do anything to the pictures before posting :)

On the dog note, Rascal did get adopted out today, which made us a bit sad. He was an awesome dog and if not for the fact that I won't allow 3 dogs in the house, Cathy wanted to keep him. We got a new hound/lab/something mix, Jess, for the next few weeks, so we'll see how Zoey adjusts to having a new friend around

Google AJAX Libraries API

Kind of old news, but Google is now hosting the latest and greatest versions of the most popular JS libraries including jQuery, prototype, script_aculou_us, etc

Because of the gzip compression and fast response of google's servers, these files get to the users fast!

You can either use google's loader or just link to the permanent paths of the files.

The Ajaxian has a great article on this

"4 Wheeling"

Since it was so nice yesterday, we decided to take the Jeep out for a little bit of 4 wheeling. A few weeks ago, we scouted this area about 30 mins from the house, and there looked to be a good bit of fun trails. Anything from mild to "break your car".

This was my first time doing some serious off road and it was a friggin blast! The Jeep is way more capable off road then I thought it would be considering the mild lift/mods. In one spot, we got out of the truck to inspect the road and were both a good bit cautious about the coming up maneuver. After getting into the truck, it went through it in about 0.2 seconds. It was easy!

Now I'm really looking forward to 4th of July weekend as we'll be doing a lot more serious wheeling when some friends from Raleigh come down to visit in their newly lifted Jeep Unlimited

Camping

Over memorial day weekend we went to do some camping in the NC mountains. We tried a new spot, Fire Creek, next to Hayesville. While the hiking was great, the views kind of sucked. Hence no pretty overlook pictures. This was the first time out camping/hiking with Zoey and she had an absolute blast. She was a great dog off the leash and she had a blast playing in the streams.

The 4Runner also proved itself off road. We picked a far away camping spot, about 6 miles down a hole ridden gravel/rock road. Got the point the GPS had no idea where we were anymore :)

The pictures aren't the greatest quality, but it was a great time!

The Jeep has some new tunes

After driving the Jeep for about a month now with the crappy stock stereo it was time to upgrade! Out went the crappy OEM tape player and the blown paper speakers. In its place we installed a nice Kenwood CD player, Polk speakers, a hardwired XM Radio setup, and a Infinity Basslink subwoofer. I ran all the wires nice and neat under the dash and carpet and the install looks great.

We ended up picking the Basslink over a traditional sub in a box for the space saving design, as well as the integrated amp. It has 2 10's in that tiny box, and packs quite a punch. After hearing it in the open top Jeep, I went ahead and ordered one for my Mazda.

This whole setup works AWESOME. We got to the point that driving 50 on the road, you can't hear the road noise. Only awesome music. It can get to the point where it hurts your ears without distortion with plenty of thump. We'll be the ones pissing people off at stoplights :) Cathy loves it!

I also got off my ass and started to arrange the workroom that is right off the garage. I still have to get a "house tools" set to fill up that corkboard. At least now, I have a workbench to get some stuff done. Once we get the new cabinets for the kitchen, the old ones will go in here.

iUI is awesome

It looks like I will be an official iPhone convert here shortly. I've been playing with some iPhone looking pages lately at work, and got to use the iUI JS library that Joe Hewitt created.

This library is awesome. It lets you code a page in standard, plain HTML and then converts the CSS/JS to an iPhone look and feel. Also, it sets up your links to enable the "slide in" navigation to work correctly between your links. Plain genius and its oh so easy to use.

With this work and the new "Corporate Friendly" 3G iPhone that is coming soon, I'm hoping to be able to get rid of this POS Palm 700w that I've been cursed with, and go to the iPhone for my phone/email device. I'm very excited. We'll see what happens!