Web on Sirius Stuff

siriusventures.com is now running on Pelican 4.11.0

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:04:04 -0700

I had tried upgrading Pelican once or twice over the years and had problems that I don’t remember anymore. Today it went surprisingly smoothly but instead of starting with my existing setup, I installed Pelican 4.11.0 using uv to a new directory, then copied over my markdown files. I edited the new pelicanconf.py file with a few things from the old one and we were up and running.

The toughest part was getting Netlify to stop looking for Python 3.7. More on that in the next article.

Google Reader - Colorful List View

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:12:12 -0700

If you’re like me and like to read your feeds sorted by tags, you’ll find yourself jumping from blog to blog. Some Greasemonkey styles for Google Reader drop the feed name to save space, making it hard to tell articles apart.

Color is an efficient way to cue people that things are changing. Unless you’re color-blind, I guess. But since I’m not, I appreciate the Google Reader - Colorful List View script because it makes it simple to tell that there’s different feeds.
Note: updated to show correct script

OS X Style Google Reader

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

I’d referred to using CSS to make Google Reader look better.

If you’re using Google Reader, OS X Style Google Reader makes it much more usable. The font’s better, it’s much prettier in layout, etc., etc. Great stuff.

Google Reader Optimized

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

I’ve been using Google Reader more and more. I’m not thrilled with the layout, so I was really pleased to see that I could modify it either using the Stylish FireFox Extension or via Greasemonkey Google Reader Optimized

I started out with Stylish but am trying to cut down on the number of extensions I have. Of course, whether it’s better to have it as a Greasemonkey script seems more open to problems than an extension. You’re one level away from the scripts and they don’t go through the official Mozilla check-in process.

Bookmarks Power up Firefox with keywords - Lifehacker

Wed, 23 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

I have this working on my laptop. But I have to remember to get it going on my desktop machine. That’s the only problem with having two machines - even with Google’s browser sync it’s hard to keep the FireFox configurations absolutely identical. Bookmarks: Power up Firefox with keywords - Lifehacker

Hack Attack - Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarking

Wed, 23 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Another article on FireFox and bookmarks. Firefox and the art of keyword bookmarking

Firefox - Open diverted links in new background tab instead of new window

Tue, 01 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

I really like to be able to click on links while reading an article but not have to deal with the links until I’m done. I’ve got enough ADD issues without tabs popping up. So I was very happy to find this reference to making tabs work better (for me, anyway): Firefox: Open diverted links in new background tab instead of new window

It’s kind of an adjustment process because FF is relatively “quiet’ - the tabs are opening all the way to the right and not grabbing attention. Just the way I’ve wanted but it’s a little unnerving - I’m checking to make sure the tabs did open.

20 must-see Greasemonkey Addons(No Technical Knowledge Req.)

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 04:04:04 -0700

I love the way that Firefox and Thunderbird can be extended by extensions. But I’ve been somewhat concerned about the reliability and stability of Greasemonkey scripts. There were a couple of features that I wanted to try (more on that later) so I broke down and installed it on my laptop.

Wow. I’ve been very pleased with how well the scripts worked. I’m still cautious about installing them, since they’re not looked over anywhere near as much as extensions on the official Mozilla site are. But the Userscripts site lets you look over info from the author and comments from people before installing anything.

Excellent case study and analysis of HotOrNot

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:11:11 -0700

Nisan Gabbay has an excellent analysis of the site at HOTorNOT.com Case Study: Mixing free and premium services

My wife and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary a few months ago. I’m happily married, so I haven’t visited HotOrNot in years. I was fascinated by the description of the dating service, which I don’t think they offered when a friend first told me about the site.

“Thus HOTorNOT was able to fill some pretty basic human needs in a way that no other online service had before. This would later translate into financial success once HOTorNOT offered its premium dating service because their cost of customer acquisition was so low - zero. The largest cost associated with operating a traditional online dating site is the cost of customer acquisition, which even for successful sites can be 50% (or more) of revenue. Because HOTorNOT attracted users with its free rating service, it could offer its dating service for the low price point of $6 per month. This is a price that traditional dating sites can’t compete with because it generally takes $15-$30 to acquire a subscriber for a traditional dating service.”

Nice article on using Google Notebook

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 08:08:08 -0700

Get Organized With Google Notebook is a nice article that talks about working with Google’s fairly new notebook.

I like the notebook more than I do Google’s calendar or Gmail. However, the problem for me is that Google is mixing together different types of services and trying to use one Google login for all of them. I don’t want to use one login for AdSense, AdWords, Gmail, etc., etc. so I’m faced with having to logout and log back in just to check stats or to make a note. Or run two browsers, one for personal use and another for business.

Top 10 unintentionally worst URLs

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 07:07:07 -0700

It’s tough coming up with a decent domain name - all the good ones are taken. But you have to wonder what some people were thinking when they came up with these domain names:

Who Represents? - www.whorepresents.com
Pen Island - www.penisland.com

and 8 more worst company urls

Neat extension for revealing FireFox passwords

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 06:06:06 -0700

I love how easy FireFox makes it to enter passwords and forget them. But sometimes it turns out to be a problem when I need to remember them. Like when I’m using a different computer or want to change my password.

Today, I found Unhide Passwords, a FF extension that will show you your password when you roll the mouse pointer over the password field. It’s easy to disable when you don’t want passwords revealed but it’s already proven useful twice today.

Great post on web design - Yahoo vs Google

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 06:06:06 -0700

Really liked the article Is Google Badly Designed? on Google Blogoscoped. He talks about the design considerations with Yahoo and Google and their home pages.

I thought it was interesting that Google was viewed as “friendly” because of its simplicity. Clearly Yahoo puts a lot of information on its page but it also feels very corporate.

From what I read, Google is having trouble getting people to use its other features. It’d be interesting to know what to degree this is because they’re not displayed the way that Yahoo’s are …

Changes in home pages for Google & Yahoo

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 06:06:06 -0700

Just ran across two articles showing the graphical changes to the home pages - www.yahoo.com for Yahoo and www.google.com for Google - over the past few years.
It’s neat to see this. One of the things that I find personally frustrating about the real world is driving past a place … and seeing a vacant spot where a building used to be. What was there? I can’t remember.

So it warms some of my neurons to see the old pages and say “Oh, yeah, I remember that …”

Good summary of what Google Base means to vertical web sites

Tue, 23 May 2006 05:05:05 -0700

Bill Burnham has a nice summary of what Google Base in general and the real estate section in particular might mean for vertical web sites like Trulia.

It’s not a lot of fun competing in a section where Google is competing. I can vouch for that first hand.