bamatone.net

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/293320.html

Shortening URLs is a popular thing these days, especially for use in Tweeting. You've only got 140 characters to work with, so you can't be linking URLs that use up all your space. Some Twitter clients will shorten URLs for you, but sometimes the client won't do it if your tweet is already over the maximum 140 characters, which is pretty dumb.

The route for a lot of people is to manually visit a URL shortening web site like tinyurl.com or bit.ly, paste the address, then get the shortened URL. But there's a much easier way. Do it directly from the address bar in Opera.

One of the most underrated features of Opera is the ability to create custom searches. In this case, we want to create a custom search that doesn't search at all. First, go to Tools --> Preferences and click on the Search tab. Here you can see some of my custom searches. For example, by typing gi alabama in the Opera address bar and hitting enter, I can do a Google Image search for "alabama."



Click Add to begin adding our new custom search. You can name it anything you want. Here we'll use is.gd URL Shortener. I decided to use the letter u (for URL) for my keyboard shortcut. You'll want to use http://is.gd/create.php for the address, and URL=%s for the query string.

If you're wondering how I came up with that, I simply reverse engineered an already shortened URL from the resulting URL. Or maybe I did a right-click Create Search from the entry field on the is.gd web site... I don't remember anymore!

Anyway, this is what you end up with:



Click OK and that's it! From now on, shorten any URL by pasting u (URL) into the Opera address bar and hitting enter.

For example, I want to shorten a Jason Whitlock column located here: http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/10084588/NFL-Truths:-McKelvin-deserves-Bills-fans'-boos.

So all I have to do is put this in the address bar: u http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/10084588/NFL-Truths:-McKelvin-deserves-Bills-fans'-boos and hit enter.

The result: http://is.gd/3o8MG



Don't have Opera? Download it for free here: http://my.opera.com/community/opera/get/.

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/278305.html

I somehow got addicted to SimAquarium, an Opera widget. (Maybe this will get me off Mob Wars on Facebook.) Here's what it looks like now:


I've got freshwater angelfish, clown loaches, and fairy cichilds. I had guppies, but I accidentally sold them all off. They don't make any money anyway. Plus certain types of fish don't like more than x number of other fish in the tank, and it's tough to keep a crowded tank with the fairy cichilds. (They end up fighting each other!)

Before that I had zebrafish and guppies:


I also had water plants instead of the underground cave scenery. And in between there was coral reef. As you get better scenery and lighting, the fish become more "comfortable," and thus breed more quickly.

In the beginning, you breed guppies (worth $12). Then when you have better scenery, lighting, and filters (to handle the pollution of bigger and larger numbers of fish), you can move on to fairy cichilds (worth $224). I'm finally to the point now where I'm breeding freshwater angelfish, worth $1,792. The only catch with them is that they grow a lot more slowly than the other two types and consume a lot more food. The clown loaches take forever to mature, but they look nice.

I've got the most advanced filter and the best lighting. Next I'm working on the pirates' treasure scenery, then seashells! After I've made a shit ton of money, I'll put in some goldfish and maybe some sea turtles and dolphins. They're just to look at, though. They breed extremely slowly.

Isn't my life awesome?

Original URL: http://bamatone.livejournal.com/196765.html

Just a quick note to say I finally published my first article for Opera Watch last Thursday. It was just an announcement that Opera 9.5 Beta 2 had been released, but it was a damn good annoucement!

For those of you who think all this stuff is "too technical" (Lisa), there's a "guided tour" video of the new release linked at the bottom of the article. And even if you still don't get it, it's fun to listen to the Norwegian accent.

http://operawatch.com/news/2008/04/opera-95-beta-2-released.html

So anyone who reads this LJ knows I'm big into the Opera browser. And you might have also read when I became Member of the Week back in June. Then, in September, Espen asked me to write a blog post about the My Opera Community reaching a million members. I did, and he used it for front page Community news.

I've also been in contact with another Opera employee named Lawrence for a while now - ever since he contacted me about my Opera Web Browser Facebook group. It's linked on the Choose Opera blog and was featured a couple of times, like when we ran a contest. I called it a "great success" because more than 400 people joined during the week of the contest. We boasted 610 members in early June. We're now at 843 members. (Lee: Dangerously close to 1,000! Watch out!)

Now, I told you that story to tell you this story.

I'm going to San Francisco for four days. For free.

Here's how it happened. Opera Software is having a product launch party at a nightclub in San Francisco on Thursday, October 25. The first official beta of Opera 9.5 for desktop computers will be released, along with the newest beta of Opera Mini 4, which is free for mobile phones. I think there's probably going to be something else announced, but they're being super secretive about it...

They're making this party a huge deal. It's being held at a nightclub called The Rickshaw Stop, and two indie rock bands are playing: The 88, and The Binges. Some very important people from Opera Software are coming all the way from Norway for this thing, including (I believe) Jon von Tetzchner, the CEO.

I didn't know any of this a few weeks ago. Lawrence caught me on AIM and asked me if I would be free the weekend of Oct. 25. I glanced at my calendar and said that I would. Then he invited me to this thing in San Francisco. I still didn't know what was going on - just that it was Opera related, and that the flight and hotel weren't going to cost me anything. Needless to say, I jumped at the offer!

So we got everything worked out, and behold, I have in my hand a printed out itinerary with flight and hotel information. (It's real. It has my name on it and everything. ) Next Thursday, I will be flying out of Birmingham at 6am (ouch) and on my way to San Francisco (with an hour long pit stop in Houston). The party is that night, and then I get spend Friday and Saturday exploring the city. I'll probably spend all my time eating awesome Chinese and seafood. I fly back Sunday morning.

So that's my exciting story for this month, and probably for this year. I want to thank Lawrence especially because he's the one who made this happen for me. Espen gets a shout out, too. He's pretty cool for a server .

Here's some more info on the Rock Opera event itself. There's also a nifty press release that sums it up quite nicely.

Oh, and did I mention it was open bar?

From Opera Watch:

Once you've been tagged by someone, share your list (on your blog) of 5 things you'd like to see in Opera, and then tag up to 5 other people who will then post their own lists and tag up to 5 more people. Feel free to list the things you'd like to see in Opera on the desktop, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, and/or Opera on the Nintendo Wii.

Lawmune tagged me, sooooo here I go! My list, in no particular order:

1. Auto-deletion of RSS feed articles older than "x" number of days, where "x" is set by the user. RSS feeds are really a part of M2, Opera's mail client. As such, feed articles work pretty much just like mail items. If you don't manually clean out your inbox once in a while, you end up with too much mail to manage. I don't want to have to go back and manually clean out really old articles. One other RSS feature I'd like to see is auto-discovery of feeds on a web site. Currently, I use this UserJS to find feeds in a page, but it's kind of ugly. No offense to shoust, the author. I just recently found out I can do an import/export of RSS feeds from Opera. Previously, to copy over RSS feeds, I had to backup the entire mail folder in my profile directory. File --> Import and export --> Export newsfeed list is much easier!
2. Integrated auto-update. This would be much like the way Firefox updates itself. Patching a few files downloaded directly from the update manager is a much better way of upgrading than Opera's current method, which takes you to opera.com/download and forces you to download the entire browser exe file. Granted, Opera's setup exe is much smaller than Firefox's, but it is still more of a pain than patching specific files through an update manager.
3. Simplified backup procedure. This is probably the most important feature request. A nice, clean way to back up the user's profile is needed. It should be similar to backing up bookmarks and feeds (see above). Currently, I have to manually back up my entire profile directory when I format Windows, install a new major release of Opera, or if I decide to install Opera on another computer and use the same settings. My suggestion would be to make it just like how feeds are backed up: File --> Import and export --> Export Opera preferences. From there, a list of items would pop up and the user can choose what kind of stuff to back up: skins, current toolbar layout, bookmarks, cookies, custom mouse gestures, etc. It would also back up all specific preferences set in Tools --> Preferences and in opera:config.
4. Overhaul the bookmarks system. A lot of people disagree with me, but I'd like to able to right-click bookmarks, rename them, and get to the properties screen. Currently, I can rename a bookmark or update its address two different ways: 1) Click Bookmarks --> Manage bookmarks, find the bookmark in the appropriate directory, right-click that bookmark, and go to properties. 2) I can open the bookmarks panel (on the left), find the bookmark in the appropriate directory, and right-click that bookmark. For a lot of people, option 2 is not difficult because they use the bookmarks panel as their primary way of accessing bookmarks. I do not. I have all my bookmarks filed into 10 main folders, all of which I have shown on my Personal Bar. (In Firefox, this is the same thing as the Bookmarks Toolbar. In Internet Explorer, it's called the Links folder.) I suppose that specifically, I am asking to be able to right-click bookmarks from the Personal Bar, which is not currently possible.
5. Overhaul the IRC client. IRC works fine in Opera, but it leaves much to be desired. While I recognize that it's not really competing with a more robust client like mIRC, there are a lot of small things that could be better. Nick highlighting and auto-logging are two of the more commonly requested features. A more complete wishlist can be found here.

Those are the big 5 I came up with. There are lots of other smaller items, such as "lock tab and url," "delete private data on exit," and "re-enabling the 'right-click - detach' menu for tabs in Windows." But those are not so big that they should fall into my top 5 issues. Now, without further ado, I hereby tag Kilu, G-off, H82typ, Nerak, and Michelle.