Scott Watermasysk

Three Chrome Extensions For Twitter

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:50:18 -0500

I prefer using the the browser version of Twitter over native applications.

Here are three chrome extensions that make this experience much better:

ParrotFish by Embedly. See a preview of just about any link/image/etc without leaving your stream.
Tweet Filter. As the name suggests, this extension makes it easy to exclude tweets or people matching a pattern.
Buffer for Chrome. I am a big fan of Buffer and this extension makes it easy to access Buffer from with in Twitter (and any other website).

Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

ImageOptim

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:30:00 -0400

ImageOptim:

ImageOptim optimizes images — so they take up less disk space and load faster — by finding best compression parameters and by removing unnecessary comments and color profiles. It handles PNG, JPEG and GIF animations.

Crappy People

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 09:40:42 -0400

Crappy People:

When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy.

Javascript Grid Bookmarklets

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:56:46 -0400

Javascript Grid Bookmarklets:

Ever want to quickly see a grid overlay for 960.gs or Blueprint?

Kudos to Namecheap for a major price drop. I can now finally...

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:58:44 -0400

Kudos to Namecheap for a major price drop. I can now finally kick Godaddy completely to the curb.

I moved most of my domains to Namecheap a couple of months ago, but at the time their .me domain prices were still to steep for me…but not anymore.

The entire Namecheap process is vastly superior to Godaddy. I highly recommend them when you are in the market for your next domain.

If you're going to work...work hard

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:42:10 -0400

If you're going to work...work hard

Being right doesn't always have to be the goal

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:36:12 -0400

Being right doesn't always have to be the goal

Speeding up Rails startup time

Sat, 28 May 2011 10:46:34 -0400

Speeding up Rails startup time:

If you are using RVM, you should definetly give this a shot. I saw an almost 50% improvement in my start up time on rails.

Looks like some great work.

Installing PostgreSQL 8 via HomeBrew

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:52:13 -0500

The PostgreSQL formula for homebrew has already been updated to version 9.

Thankfully, with a little help from google, I found Adam Vandenberg’s 8.4 formula.

brew update
brew install http://github.com/adamv/homebrew/raw/versions/Library/Formula/postgresql8.rb

The cult of busy

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 08:46:28 -0400

The cult of busy:

…people who are always busy are time poor. They have a time shortage. They have time debt. They are either trying to do too much, or they aren’t doing what they’re doing very well.

ZSH and Rake Parameters

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:13:02 -0400

I wanted to pass a parameter into a rake task which uses a format like this:

task :name, :first do  |t, args|
  puts "Hello #{args[:first]}"
end

To execute the task:

rake name[Scott]

However, I kept getting an error that ZSH could not find the command. It turns out, I was tripping over ZSH’s globbing feature.

Thankfully, adding a simple alias resolved the issue for me:

alias rake='noglob rake'

I probably wasted an hour trying to figure out why ZSH didn’t like my rake task. Hopefully this post saves you from doing the same.

[Insert Technology Here] Can't Scale

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:36:35 -0400

[Insert Technology Here] Can't Scale:

If you’re having scalability problems and blaming it on a single technology, chances are, you’re doing it wrong.

Flexibility and Power

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:49:50 -0400

Flexibility and Power:

Flexibility is the ability to change how software works; power is the ability to do more with less effort.

Scarcity in Design

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:31:35 -0400

Great interview of Fred Brooks in the August 2010 Wired magazine (sorry, no link at this time).

The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you think that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scare; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what the scarce resource you’re optimizing.

"Your #1 competitor starting out will always be the BACK button, nothing else."

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:34:55 -0400

“Your #1 competitor starting out will always be the BACK button, nothing else.”

- Gary Tan

Lost Time

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:38:14 -0400

Lost Time:

The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work.

Derek Sivers - My Loss

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:01:33 -0400

Derek Sivers - My Loss:

We all underestimate our ability to massively change our life when it’s gone off track.

Reading PDF eBooks on an iPad

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:45:00 -0400

The recent update to iBooks added PDF support. Unfortunately, the reading experience is no where near as good as the epub experience.

This was a bummer for me since I own quite a few eBooks in PDF format (and converting them to epub does not yield better results).

Thankfully, a tweet from John Grubber lead me to SimplyPDF which makes the PDF experience much more tolerable by allowing you to focus on a particular area of the page.

Here are too screen shots to compare:

The Default View in SimplyPDF

The Focused View in SimplyPDF

While it is no way near as good as a epub in iBooks or mobi in the Kindle app, it does get the job done for now.

A really interesting look at the design decisions in FireFox 4...

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:35:40 -0400

A really interesting look at the design decisions in FireFox 4 for moving tabs to the top of the main window.

You are as Dumb as You Ever Will Be

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:18:04 -0400

A great line from Design Patterns in Ruby by Russ Olsen in talking about You Ain’t Gonna Need It (YAGNI):

Barring a sharp blow to the head, as you stand here today you are as dumb as you ever will be.

You get smarter every day. Your users (generally) understand your app and their needs better every day. Unnecessarily trying to solve future problems is really just guessing, so why do it if you do not have to?