QuickSilver is back!

It has been years since I last used QuickSilver, a quick launch (and so much more) utility for Mac OS X. Despite that, I still keep the icon in my Dock. Well, I accidentally clicked it just now, and before I could quit it, it popped up with a window saying it was downloading an update. And then proceeded to also update several of the base plugins.

I hadn’t even noticed that it had been open sourced in 2006. It was created in June 2003 by Blacktree Software, and received rave reviews. It was quick, unobtrusive, and extensible. Apparently, the project languished between 2006 and 2010. Then, development picked up again last year. I’m not sure when the current version was released.

If you have never used QuickSilver, LifeHacker has a brief tutorial. And here is another one with a list of common tasks that can be performed with QuickSilver.

1-bit Flickr

Flickr goes B&W for April Fool's. Click the icon in the lower right hand corner.

How to watch some Flash-based videos on YouTube without Flash

One of the larger annoyances of YouTube video producers is that they may restrict their video to Flash only. Even if you turn on HTML5 support, videos do not play. Here is a quick fix for some of those types videos if you use Safari.

 

The basic idea is that you change the user agent to "Safari for iPad". This makes YouTube think that you are browsing from an iPad, and it will serve up a non-Flash video.

First, you have to turn on the Develop menu. Go to the Advanced tab of Safari Preferences. At the bottom, check on “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. You will now have a Develop menu (between Bookmarks and Window).

Go to that menu, and pick User Agent. A submenu will show various browser types. Select “Safari iOS 4.3.3 – iPad”. The YouTube page will immediately reload, and in most cases, you will be able to watch the video.

I haven’t tried this trick in Chrome, yet, but will update once I do.

UPDATE: This also works to play music without Flash on Tumblr, except that you will have to select Safari iOS for iPhone.

UPDATE 2: Well, YouTube seems to have started blocking this work-around for Safari. It does seem to still work in Chrome: use the User-Agent Switcher extension.

Vim on iOS

Your favorite text editor is now on iOS. You know you want it.

RIP Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has died.

Last year’s bandwidth usage by month

So, I use the Tomato wifi router firmware, which gives bandwidth usage data, and even plots daily and real-time usage. Below is a summary of my monthly bandwidth usage. I used the Google Chart Wizard to generate the plot.

Phone data usage

I love graphs. The spike in May was probably due to a trip Boston to a wedding.

Skype Lite

If you have a feature phone, and it runs Java apps, you can still get Skype Lite even though Skype has officially discontinued it, and pulled all download links from their site. I found copies on Softpedia. They may have versions for other makes of phones, as well.

I did this because my Sony Ericsson W760a died -- the backlight does not come on. In their infinite wisdom, SE does not allow one to backup applications, merely data. The phone I got as a replacement is a SE C510a. It has a better camera: same resolution, but with auto-focus rather than fixed focus so it does focus closer than about 3 feet. Since I'm definitely getting an iPhone in a few months when my contract is up, I decided not to get either the C902 or K850i merely due to the admittedly small price difference.

Free books for the iPad

I just got my iPad 3G on Monday. It’s fun. The built-in iBooks store has free books. But you can also just download any ePub format book, say from Project Gutenberg or epubbooks.com, and then drag and drop the file onto iTunes.

The Amazon Kindle app also works just fine, and it is easier to find free books via Kindle ebooks store. THe downloaded books will sync to all Kindle devices and apps (including iPad and desktop computer).

My Tumblr

I may not have mentioned it, but I have a tumble blog (for quick, short posts and blog social networking) at http://drauh.tumblr.com/