Well, I've had fun posting here on Blogger, but I've had my own website for some time now, and I've decided it's time for me to host my own blog. I'll keep this one up, but will no longer post here. From now on, I will only post at Dan's Musings, which is powered by the Serendipity Weblog System.
Any followers I have I hope will follow me to my new blog, which I intend to update more often than this one.
One of these days, I promise I'm going to write about something other than my Greasemonkey scripts. Today, however, will not be one of these days.
I recently subscribed to Twitter, which is a social networking site dedicated entirely to tell your friends what you're doing. Well, I decided it would be great if I could keep my Facebook status set to my Twitter status. I thought this would be a good idea because I can set my twitter status from just about anywhere (even Facebook). I began to search and found a couple programs (e.g. this really nice ruby script) that could be run in the background on your computer and would do exactly this. The only problem with them was that they all would log you out of another facebook login. This is fine if I'm not actually on my computer, but if I'm on my computer using Facebook, I wouldn't want this.
So I decided to write another Greasemonkey script for Facebook that would do it in your browser, with your already logged-in facebook session.
This script will check your Twitter status every time you go to the Facebook homepage, and if it's different than your Facebook status, it will update your facebook status with your current twitter status.
I hope you enjoy it.
Well, I have been programming like crazy lately. Just the other day, I promised to come up with a successor to my Facebook InfoBox script. Today, I am delivering that promise. Welcome Facebook Friend Menu.
This script has all the same features as its predecessor (plus a couple extra, of course), with a brand new design. Read all about it at the link above. I hope you all like it.
Well, here comes a new Greasmonkey Script for Facebook. This one was designed because I saw a lack in the new design of Facebook. I really didn't like that they took away the "My ..." links on the left side of the page. On the other hand, I really liked the new drop-down menus. So this simple script takes what used to be in the "My..." links, and puts them in a drop-down menu next to the Profile link.
Also, while I'm taking about Facebook scripts, I've updated my Info Box script. It broke when Facebook changed the design. I finally got around to fixing it. However, I've got a new idea for another script that I intend to replace the Info Box script. It'll be something like a drop-down menu, perhaps. Anyway, I'm getting tired of the Info Box design.
So, I've been pretty bored over the Christmas break (at least, until I got about ten new books for Christmas), so in my boredom, I came up with a great idea for another Greasemonkey user script for Facebook. This one was much more adventurous than my previous Facebook script.
I was inspired by the new popup box that Facebook is using for poking people. It even uses some Ajax, which is very cool. I decided I wanted to something like that, but even cooler. I was also partly inspired by another user script called inYOfaceBook, which has a popup of large profile images, when you hover your mouse pointer over smaller profile images (like you find in searches, the mini-feed, etc). I decided to combine the two, and add a few more features.
So, after installing this script, a Facebooker can hold down the Alt key, and hover the pointer over a picture, or a name (usually linking to a Facebook profile), and a box will pop-up with that person's picture, and various useful things to do (message, poke, view wall, etc). You can also click on the image, and it will cycle through the various sizes (mini-thumb, like you see on a wall-post, mid-size-thumb, like you see in a search, and full size, like on the profile). Soon, I'll add the person's Networks (or at least the main one) in the box too.
The other feature I'm planning on adding is being able to pop-up just the person's full-size picture, maybe by holding Shift, instead of Alt, and hovering over the link, or picture.
Here's a screenshot. 
Here's another set of Project Implicit results for me:
Your data suggest a moderate automatic preference for Accuracy compared to Speed. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic associations may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference (or identity)'.That seems to be pretty spot on for me. I prefer to do things right, than do them fast. And here's another set of results:
Your data suggest a strong association of Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts compared to Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts. If your performance is described as '(slight, moderate. or strong) association of Science with Male and Liberal Arts with Female' compared to the alternative pairings, it means you responded faster when Science and Male words were classified with the same key than when Liberal Arts and Male items shared a key. If your association was stronger for 'Liberal Arts with Male, Science with Female' you were faster when using the same key for Liberal Arts and Male items.I think these results must be the result of culture, rather than actual personal feelings on my part. Also, their definition of Liberal Arts didn't quite jive with mine. They included Music, which I consider to be a Fine Art, rather than a Liberal Art.
I recently signed up for a study being done by Harvard Research. It's called Project Implicit, and the point is to determine what certain people implicit feel. Here's what the site says:
It is well known that people don't always 'speak their minds', and it is suspected that people don't always 'know their minds'. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology. This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.The most common type is automatic preferences for one thing over another. On their list of demonstration tests, for example, they have tests that show if a person has an automatic preference towards light- or dark-skinned people (I have none either way), or if a person has a preference towards Judaism or other religions (I have a strong preference towards Judaism).
If one registers for the study, whenever they log in to the site, they'll be given a random test, and then given the results of said test. So, I decided it would be interesting to post some of the results of the tests I've taken. I'll just quote them exactly, and I'll put one result in a post. The following is regarding my preference for US places over Foreign.
Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for American Places compared to Foreign Places. Depending on the magnitude of your result, your automatic associations may be described as 'slight', 'moderate', 'strong', or 'little to no preference (or identity)'. How implicit associations affect our judgments and behaviors is not well understood. Also, the score described above may be in_uenced by a number of variables including your familiarity with the categories and the particular items used to represent the categories. As such, the score should serve as an opportunity for self-reflection, not as a definitive assessment of your implicit thoughts or feelings. This and future research will clarih the way in which implicit thinking and feelings affects our perception, judgment, and action.I'll post more results soon.
