Just right click that element.

1. element inspection: right click and there it is. Then the element you’re inspecting is clearly identified and it’s dimensions (margin, padding too) are easy to see.
2. easily view style inheritance and edit styles: when you inspect an element, its styles are at your fingertips. No more pixel pushing – if I need to fix a style, just make it look right and copy the new values to my style sheets.
3. javascript debugging: yeah FF and IE8 do that. Chrome does it best. I’ll get into the head to heads in a second. But I can javascript the DOM the same way I edit the styles using the console. And I can easily explore variable contents in the same place I call them up.

And the winner is...

So what about Firefox? Actually Firefox is a close second in this race. With plugins like Web Developer and Firebug it really isn’t bad. For me it just comes down to usability. Inspect Element opens Firebug in window so +1 click to pop it out (maybe I could change a setting here?). And the real killer for me in Firebug is the dedicated console tab. It kills me, if I’m playing with document or if I’m debugging the js, I HAVE TO GO TO ANOTHER TAB TO RUN JS? No thanks.

Then there’s IE. For IE7- I use IETester. It’s awesome for compatibility testing. But the debug bar doesn’t allow breakpoints. At least it shows computed styles and has a console when I’m looking at the available js functions. In IE8, MS finally got with it and provided the Developer Tools plugin (and I don’t know if this was/is available for previous IE versions).

I love borders! More borders!

First, there’s no Inspect Element context menu option. That’s the real killer for me. It edits the document and styles quite nicely and debugging isn’t too bad either. But the console doesn’t allow for navigating complex values like objects. They just appear as {…}. That means nothing to me, unless it’s an emoticon I don’t know about.

Let’s root my slide!

That’s right I finally got it to work. Here’s how I did it and what you might expect if you’re trying to root a myTouch Slide 3G from the fiends at T-Mobile (and HTC).

Why I did it:

1) I HATE THE BOOT SCREEN

2) regardless of battery consumption i wanted live backgrounds

3) that itch in the back of my mind that says: you don’t have full control of your phone

4) get rid of crapware from tmobile

5) get rid of the crapware from htc

6) froyo and apps to sd

My first attempts were using the “eugene” method. This seemed to brute force the phone and I could just never get the timing right. I found several .bat files that tried to automate this process, but they just never panned out.

I gave up for a few weeks until T-Mobile released an OTA update. I had to do the update manually because T-Mobile is a bunch of jerks and took forever to send it my way, but it worked out ok. I set out to attempt to gain root again when I stumbled on a root method specifically for that update. I tried it, and it worked – sort of. For some reason when I downloaded the rom from rom manager (after I had gotten root) it wouldn’t or couldn’t reboot itself. I ended up following the directions for the manual update and successfully installed the Cyanogen 6 stable.

Oops! I forgot to backup ANY of my apps. That was a long and arduous process. In addition, SWYPE (the reason that the sliding keyboard is only good for Emulator Games) was removed and irretrievable. I ended up purchasing Ultra Keyboard to replace it. I’m very happy with it to. My one major complaint is adding words to the user dictionary is clunky compared to swype’s sleek and unobtrusive suggestions.

Once I got all that back on, I was happily using my phone when I stumbled on a not-very-family-friendly picture in the cyanogen wallpaper library. So I had to dig into the forums again to figure out how to get that out. I found a good starting point and ended up having to add my own set of directions. The rooting and cyanogen ROM has been great so far. There’s two specific things I’m still trying to do: 1) While there is a new boot animation I still get the crappy myTouch splash screen. I’m trying to get rid of it still. 2) I had a good second thing, but I forgot it. Sorry.

Hello September!

Today Apple is having a big surprise ‘thing’, so no doubt there will be some kind of shiny new technology for everyone to coo over. I’m hoping they resurrect Lala and get rid of that Genius crap. I never bought a single thing on iTunes because of genius. Whereas on Lala my web (and some mp3s) library was up to date with the latest in what I was listening and what was in my library. I’ve never gotten relevant or interesting recommendations for purchase on iTunes. So mostly I just torrent mp3s. On top of that I’ve been floundering around trying to get my library streaming on the web. The replacement services never really matched up to lala’s awesomeness so I dabbled in home media servers. First I tried Sockso, and that was sufficient for awhile. The playlist and flash player system was functional, but mostly annoying and it was only for audio. It did a good job letting me share my library in a user by user way, but had no social plugins. Then I needed to share video with my xbox, so I tried out TVersity. That definitely worked when I needed to stream P90X from computer to home gym, but listening to music at work has been so bad I’ve ditched it almost entirely, returning with tail tucked in to Pandora. Don’t get me wrong, I love Pandora, but sometimes I like to dig into the recesses of my own library, and no ADS please. So there it is, my only wishlist item for Apple: bring back lala…. please….

Last night I went uninstall crazy. A good thing too, because at dinner last night Tom the Talking Cat was requested the cutesy parlor trick it is. I ended up taking Broadsides off too. I loved the game, the writing was phenomenal. I figure I reached the best and worst possible endings and was skimming most of it so I feel like I outgrew it. I’m ready and waiting for them to come up with a new story though! They did a great job on it. I took out Craps and Othello because I never really played them.

So here’s the games that I’m keeping for now:

World War is one of those MMOs that is points-as-turns based play. You represent a country and there is an ongoing count on which country is winning the pvp battles. Without other humans, you run missions and earn xp and money to build your army. It isn’t very engaging or interesting, but the idea of filling bars, doing missions, building an empire and so on is good for wasting time when i’m just hanging out. The company has a bunch of other games that are the exact same but with mafia, ninja, street racing or zombie themes. The war one is good enough for me.

GalaxIR is a fun casual game that has a near identical counterpart: Galaxy Domination. I’d recommend Galaxy Domination over GalaxIR because the simplified graphics make it run like a dream. But GD uses a great multiplayer (free version limits your time on its network) system, has more difficulty settings, lets you control the percentage of ships you attack with and has other nice control tweaks.

Abduction was the first game I ever played on an Android system. It’s a fun, addicting, casual game where you control a bouncing cow going up to space via floating pads of earth. I’ve never bought the full version – I simply don’t play it enough. But the campaign mode is beginning to itch my curiosity, so I may eventually make the jump.

There are several clones of this: Air Traffic Control and Flight Director. I’ve only tried Air Control and Flight Director and so far I’ve stuck with Air Control. Basically you have a bird’s eye of an airfield and direct oncoming planes or helicopters to their respective runways. Flight Director includes fancy graphics and uses sat images of real airfields, but their tweaks to the speed of the plans and other small game dynamics really didn’t please me. Air Control keeps it simple and makes it a little competitive even by keeping your percentage ranking against other Air Control players. I definitely recommend this little gem.

There’s a bunch of these type of puzzle game clones and I have only tried this one. They all play the same, I just chanced on this one. One thing I like about it is that it shows you progressing through the difficulty of the puzzles and shows you how you rank to the minimum moves need to finish. I’ve loved this puzzle since I was a kid and I love to dig into this one when I want to tickle my brain.

This is the second time I’ve put taskswitcher on my machine. This would be a helpful app, but I need it to overtake the homebutton longpress. The current options of search longpress and home press simply don’t work on my phone due to the genius crapware from T-mobile that I haven’t been able to root out.

This looks like it could have been a pretty powerful app for contact list management. There are two problems. One, it took me on a contact by contact odyssey that I just don’t have the patience for. And two, I have come to the realization that the contact access on the phone is good enough that I don’t really care about duplicates etc. I need to just stop being attracted to all the OCD contact management apps

This probably could be a great grocery list manager. It purports to sync family lists, it organizes items by category and store and well, it’s a list manager. I’ve got SpringPad to do that for me. I realized it just as I finished the install and I immediately just deleted it off my phone for the precious space. Sorry.

I also removed Financisto, Google Sky and my weather widgets to make room on the system memory. Financisto looked to be an awesome finance app, but I already have one (mvelopes, which needs an app version). Google Sky is mostly a parlor trick app for me. It was fun for the double moon night, Friday and when I’m hanging out on the back porch with friends and brews. But it isn’t really worth it day-to-day for the size it costs. I’m still looking for the perfect weather widget since I switched to launcher pro and can’t use the HTC widget. The one I just removed did weird things with time and location that I just didn’t feel like dealing with, twice.

http://www.appbrain.com/

http://www.appbrain.com/my_apps

In addition to learning how to build apps on android, I’ve also gotten my very own android based phone. I found appbrain to be the best alternative to the Android Market. It syncs my apps and tracks them in a shareable way. I find that its recommendations are terrible and never really changing, but I do love the “hot” listing. It changes frequently and I’m always finding new.

My other new awesome app for your desktop is the Vista Switcher: http://www.ntwind.com/

I used to use the XP advanced switcher when I was on XP, and then Vista’s tab switcher was OK. I recently found this in one of my software feeds and I’ve really liked it. Moving forward it will be my new must-have switcher.

Hi all, some banal updates from yours truly.

First off – I’m on twitter as prodaea. Fun little microblogging piece of software that you can update from anywhere and basically do anything you want with it. Some sites that I like to use with twitter are:

• twtrfrnd.com - for those times when christi1987 is following you and has NSFW pics.
• tweet stats - nice graphs etc.  to let you and your friends know just how much you tweet.
• twanalyst.com - brings you one of those personality tests – based on some twitter stats algorithms. is fun.
• twitpics.com - by far the most useful you can email or txt twitpics and it will post a short url for that pic to your twitter account.
• twitter.grader.com - gives you a grade out of 100 based on how you’re networked and some other stuff that i never really took the time to care about. i got a 70.
• www.twibes.com – is a system for group management and group tweeting based on the # thing that some genious came up with. i’m in a twibe, but i’m hoping twitter just integrates groupings.

I’m sure there’s a ton more that I’m not aware of, but I use these fairly regularly. Also you can plug twitter right into your facebook status. is fun.

Finally get involved in politics using twitter. Starting with Mr. Obama, there have been many politicians to get into Twitter. Some are good and informative – even responsive, some suck. Here’s  a great aricle I found that highlights several and let’s you know how useful they found them to be.

Ok, I’ve been a blog slacker, but since my wife is making me post at our new family site : Talk Is Sheep, I’ve been more apt to write interesting things.

I’ve started using some new fun software that I thought I’d fill you in on.

Digsby – Multi chat client that also logs into social services like facebook and twitter, putting all that stuff in one fun place. Also has a nice proxy and account setup system which makes it great for going from my work computer to my home computer.

Songbird – they say it’s an iTunes killer, but I’m holding my breath. Mostly because I’ve moved my media to the cloud using Lala, and I get my music recommendations from Pandora (despite the ads, its still my favorite for music discovery).

Dropbox – this thing is a life saver. Its software that syncs a file on your computer (up to 2GB) over the web. You can install it on multiple computers and if you can’t install it, you can grab your files over the web. I’ve also heard rumor of a portable version that would allow you to have a thumb drive that synced with dropbox. I need to get a big enough thumb drive, but don’t worry, I’ll get there. Currently, I’m using it to keep my working files in a convenient location.