jenn schiffer

Funny how we call them “spring semesters” when they start in late January. When I tell folks that I’m too busy to take on new freelance work because “I’m busy this Spring,” they get all confused and respond with “well, you can work on it now, right?”

This semester is my last as a graduate student. I had taken a couple of years off after finishing my coursework to take care of some thangs. Now that I’m back, I have just my culminating experience, ie. a project, to complete. It has only been 2 weeks, and I’m totally pumped about what I’m working on.

When I get excited about a project, it usually leads to a total code binge. I redid my entire portfolio, redesigned my 8-bit site, and I just activated the new theme I built for this site. It’s interesting how much more inspired I am to get this Master’s degree today than I was a couple of years ago. Of course, back then the job market sucked, people told me I was an idiot for going to graduate school, and h8rs made fun of my MacBook because for some reason they think you can’t program with one. Where does that idea even come from?

Here’s hoping that I (and you) stay inspired and get to keep working on cool stuff this Spring-but-actually-it-is-winter-right-now semester.

PS. I’m looking for an intern.

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You can anonymously complain about WordPress, or read what others are saying. Some of them are really funny; “Stop futzin’ around!” is my favorite, so far.

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Chrome has a Canary release (for Mac OS X 10.5+) that added an “Override User Agent” setting in its developer tools, allowing you to set the user agent for testing mobile sites. If you set it to iOS and go to montclair.edu, for example, it will be seen by Montclair’s web server as an iOS device and be sent to its /mobile directory.

What’s cool about this release is that you can install it and run it side-by-side with your usual install of Chrome – no need to overwrite it. A-O RIVER!

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Go2Shell (← iTunes App store link) is a cool little Mac app that lets you add a button to Finder that, when clicked, takes you to that same directory in Terminal.

Installation isn’t as straight forward as just getting it from the App store. After installation, you need to drag the app icon from your Applications folder to the buttons on a Finder window.

I hope that a future update will make the button the same size as the other Finder buttons in Lion, as it’s beginning to drive me crazy. Regardless, it’s quite useful, and it’s free.

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I did some much-needed cleanup of my server over the holiday break. One of the main tasks was removing this blog into a different directory and out of a former WordPress multisite network.

While playing around with the “new” site, I did some small changes that I’ve been meaning to do for months – changes as simple as adding my post’s permalink to the end of each post in my RSS feed.

You can do it, too. Just add the following function and filters to your theme directory’s functions.php file:

<?php 
 
// add permalink to end of each RSS post
function permalinksInRSS($content) {
    $content = $content.'<p><a href="' . get_permalink() . 
'" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to \''.get_the_title().'\'">[permalink]</a><p>';
    return $content;
}
add_filter('the_excerpt_feed', 'permalinksInRSS');
add_filter('the_content_feed', 'permalinksInRSS');
 
?>

You can change “[permalink]” to whatever text you want to show. For example, my feed now says “[View this post on pancake theorem.]”

I’m assuming there may be a plugin out there that does this, but I’m not down with OPP (other people’s plugins) when it’s as simple as this snippet.

Note: If it doesn’t work after adding the code, you should refresh your blog’s cache, (and re-ping it on Feedburner if you use it).

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Gourmet Gaming is one of my favorite Tumblr sites. She plays video games and creates real recipes from the food you encounter in them. Some of my favorites include Sims mac & cheese, the Streets of Rage roast poultry (pictured above), and my favorite: the repulsive sounding, but probably delicious, Sinner’s Sandwich from Deadly Premonition.

THIS IS A MUST FOLLOW, PEOPLE.

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This Google Image Search by Drawing web app is a really cool application of Google’s “Search by Image” functionality and HTML5 canvas illustration. Basically, you can draw an image, drag & drop an image, or take a webcam photo (Flash needed for that one), and submit to search Google Images that look like your query.

“Search by Image” isn’t perfect, but it’s great for when you’re not sure if your amazing logo design looks like hundreds already out there. I gave Enzenhofer’s app a shot by drawing a logo and seeing if it already existed:

I clicked “Search by Drawing” to see if anyone has already used my great logo idea for a new toy building brick I invented this morning, called “Lego.” You’re then sent to Google Image Search, where the app has automatically uploaded your canvas image to submit as a query:

UNBELIEVABLE. Someone already stole my idea.

You can find the the source of the app on Github, what fun!

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“First of all, if you’re leading your life in such a way that you never have to do math, congratulations, you are a donkey.”

So crude and vulgar, but so hilarious.

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I just started getting into Pinterest, even though I’ve had the account for a while. I wanted to start uploading the images I save to my desktop whenever I like something on the Web. My favorite “board” so far is my collection of vintage photographs of women and computers.

If you find any cool ones, let me know. I’m slowly researching each photo up to put a proper description, like identities of the computers and the women using them.

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This is what it used to look like:

This is what it looks like now:

Check it out. Let me know what you think. Happy New Year.

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