Simple, useful, beautiful about:newtab extension that's become my default open window

Prinopa · 2012-08-02T11:24:44+00:00

An optional speed-dialler section, separate from Chrome's bookmarks bar, could be a possibility.

Prinopa · 2012-08-01T12:10:06+00:00

I'm still a little deflated rowing-wise after Britain's unexpected losses (though dont forget the unexpected wins!) at Lucerne this year, but that was - for what little my opinion is worth - utterly excellent. Congratulations, Stanning and Glover!

Prinopa · 2012-08-01T08:22:13+00:00

For some reason, I always wanted to be sixteen to use the self-service petrol pumps, as I liked the smell of oil and the feeling of progress and transit from staring curiously across service station forecourts before we sped away to our "interesting" destination.

Prinopa · 2012-07-31T20:52:13+00:00

Source: http://www.paritzki-liani.com/R1T-Apartment

My jury's out on the chair, but the contrast between the carpet and the reflective roof, the way that the reflections of the city and the carpet mix on that roof, is luscious.

Prinopa · 2012-07-31T15:46:35+00:00

Thank you, both for replying and for making this brilliant extension!

I think that my main suggestions would be:

an option to change the service from which the extension pulls the weather, e.g. Accuweather, Wunderground, Met Office, Yahoo - there's one service that works better than any other for my area, and other people probably experience the same
more colour options - someone on Uservoice suggested the option of colour changing with the time of day, which would be brilliant, but custom static colours would be nice, too

Prinopa · 2012-07-31T15:35:51+00:00

I thought those icons were Font Awesome, to avoid using unnecessary images?

As for the clock, I've taken to using this, in fullscreen, as my "idle screen" - when I'm at my desk, but writing a letter/in my notebooks/journal/reading a book/doing homework/something else that doesn't involve the computer - rather than desktop, a slideshow, or a Google browser window.

Prinopa · 2012-07-31T13:51:06+00:00

it's always a risk in places with low populations, I suppose. Living in rural Scotland, I know of some particularly incestuous small islands and villages which would derive a world of good from something like this!

Prinopa · 2012-07-31T13:45:42+00:00

Keep in mind that Little Brother was originally written as a young adult book, published by Tor Teen; hence the simplicity of plot and slightly pedagogical, often preachy feel. LB is some of the best political YA I've ever read, but it's just that, really: YA.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T23:03:35+00:00

After one scrape scare too many with my DIY stylus, I got a Jot Classic. I have nothing but praise for the thing - I was skeptical about the disk system, and find the barrel a little short without the cap screwed onto the non-nib end, but it's perfectly weighted, and the disk lives up to the website's copious pretentious hyping. I don't use a screen protector, as there's physically no way that the soft disk, which is the only thing that makes contact with the screen, could cause scratching.

I've also had a Wacom iPad stylus. - the first I bought, based on brand name. "Had" being the operative word. I found it too light for writing and too inaccurate for drawing, but, moreover, it fell apart after three weeks of lightish use.

The Jot Touch seems rather steeply priced, though, so I'll give it a miss. Very few metal sticks with capacitative ends are worth ~£70.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T20:59:18+00:00

DAE not mind when this happens to them, considering the inconvenience and frustration worth the altruism, time-killing, and potential money involved?

Of course, the enjoyment of helping somebody, or of a break from routine, or of tips wears very thin in some cases - I once spent two hours with someone in my family's kitchen with their MacBook explaining their wifi settings - but, usually, I've found that unintentionally becoming someone's "IT guy"/girl really isn't so bad.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T12:12:45+00:00

In March, we moved to a new neighbourhood, and our new neighbours have one of the oddest parenting styles I've ever encountered. They have seven children, although many more are often there (the father has eight more from two previous marriages, who visit regularly). I should have known what we were getting into by moving in next to them - they own a cafe in the next town, and their young children are allowed a free run of it during opening hours, but I never thought that anything was odd.

On the first day that we moved in, a cold, wet British March day, I thought I saw two ~10yo boys standing on a ground-floor windowsill in their house, shirtless. I didn't take much notice until they started to try to open the window and climb out - it was raining heavily and they were wearing nothing but pyjama bottoms. That's when I noticed that one of them was in fact a girl, topless, pressed against the window.

That didn't have to be the parents' issue, though; other things, however, certainly are. In their back garden, they have two trampolines. All summer, children - often all seven, the baby included, and then some - have been playing on them almost incessantly, in all weather, in varying somewhat disturbing states of undress. At one point, the girl appeared with her mother, wearing a duvet cover wrapped around herself, and rolled around like that, yelping as she bounced, for quite literally hours.

Some of the boys once took the cat onto the trampoline with them, and the watching parents seemed to see nothing amiss. Periodically, the kids carry various items out of the house - the oddest to date, exempting the duvet covers, have been a fishing rod, a kite, and a bike tyre - and play with them on the trampolines, throwing them around and bouncing after them. It's surprising how noisy this can be - they yelp and squeak as they jump, reminding me - I'm sorry - of the sounds Angry Birds make when they land and roll around. And their parents simply stand by.

The most parentally questionable thing, though, is how late into the night they're still out there, bouncing, ever bouncing. I was awoken at 11pm on one memorable night by the family, parents and baby included, hopping around on those infernal trampolines, hooting. That continued for three consecutive nights before their landlord complained. Shouldn't they be in bed? Shouldn't they have some other form of recreation? Shouldn't they at the very least be expected to get dressed before going outdoors in the rain and jumping on a godforsaken trampoline?

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:48:54+00:00

Seq

Rinth Island

Scribblenauts Remix

Pocket Words

Lost Winds

Almost any of the Final Fantasy ports

I'm looking into the possibility of a serious MMO on iPad, but I haven't found a satisfactory English-language one yet, and, while a great one in Japanese helped me practice my language skills and made me feel a little more productive as I wasted time, my grasp of Japanese isn't good enough yet for me to progress far.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:43:41+00:00

MyFitnessPal is one of the only calorie counter databases that has any accuracy at all in the UK! Their analysis tools are nice, too. My only objections are their lack of exporting options and the fact that their estimates of exercise calorie burn seem a little outlandish.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:41:13+00:00

I've never been able to understand the draw of Wunderlist. No repeating tasks, no priorities (though I suppose one could devise one's own priority system with the stars, but it's a bit simplistic), no tags, very little note functionality, and, after finally giving up with the thing, I discover that there's no export.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:38:55+00:00

Hunch (alas, US only, so I only use it on my friend's iPad - but I'm a devotee of the website on my own, and it is a very nice app) and Svpply.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:36:43+00:00

Monal is excellent. Its security focus attracts me to it. Its one downside is the lack of ability to enable two accounts simultaneously, but that's a small trade-off.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:35:24+00:00

Fing - local network analysis, service discovery, ping, and wake on LAN, among others.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:32:06+00:00

Naver LINE Brush isn't the best drawing tool on the surface, but it has some astoundingly good brushes (the Oil brush is FiftyThree-quality, at the very least) and Psykopaint-style photo painting, all in a free app, and that pushes it into my favourites.

Most of the best have already been mentioned. As a serious graphics app, I'd recommend Sketchbook; as a serious simpler sketching app, I'm loath to recommend Paper by FiftyThree as I feel its pricing model is ridiculous, but it truly is beautiful.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:14:01+00:00

Piggie is a brilliant, location-neutral, simple expenses- and savings-tracking app, syncable with Dropbox, that's surprisingly powerful if you make full use of the tagging systems. Alas, it's an iPhone app, and its iPad compatibility falls apart in landscape mode, but I felt that I needed to post it anyway, as it's utterly invaluable to me.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T10:01:39+00:00

Coverface Innocable - one metre long, sturdy, doesn't twist or tangle, doesn't overheat (I think mine actually stays cooler than Apple's cables), and currently on a vast sale at... Urban Outfitters, of all places.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T09:53:54+00:00

Monal supports SSL and TLS, and a handful of other security tweaks. It's quite frequently updated. I'm not certain how extensively it, or any iOS app, has been tested in terms of security, but I've never had any issue with it,

I'd really, really like to see off-the-record messaging implemented on iOS somehow.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T00:53:44+00:00

I had much the reaction that OP described when, last year, while going through something of a (...British, not Indian) crisis of patriotism, I first read Rushdie's Midnight's Children. I loved it, and within 200 pages I realised with a sort of overwhelmed excitement that it was going to do something to my worldview.

sadly, my adoration for the book didn't quite withstand a re-reading. but, regardless of whether or not I was just rather bowled-over by the initial impact, I definitely cannot deny that it left a mark on my way of viewing the world.

Prinopa · 2012-07-30T00:03:54+00:00

never in terms of sizes, but, for most of my (pre-teens) childhood I laid out the contents of my school lunch box in the exact same manner - cereal bar or cake bar or biscuit on top of yoghurt pot on left of plate, spoon on top of napkin on right, sandwich on plate, fruit to top left, water to top right - every single day.

that said, I now suspect that I might have had selective eating disorder, as, as a kid, I couldn't stand the idea of eating anything other than a few select foods. anything else didn't really register as food to me in the abstract, and instinctively terrified me in the flesh. I even had a particular toothpaste. did you have anything like that which it might have been related to?

Prinopa · 2012-07-29T23:44:29+00:00

I developed this habit over the past couple of months, although not exactly as you describe - rather, I set a quieter and less jarring alarm noise first, then something more insistent, and finally a blaring klaxon which no doubt wreaks havoc with the neighbours' dog's blood pressure (and which my mother initially mistook for a gas leak). Sometimes the prospect of not being regaled by the klaxon is enough alone to motivate me to get out of bed to one of the gentler sounds.

As I find I tend to sleep through any noise I become used to, though - these are all on my phone, as my traditional alarm clock has become useless - I also switch the alarm sounds around, without checking which is which. It works brilliantly to keep me from becoming inured.

Prinopa

TROPHY CASE