Cleaning up Firefox's data

My Firefox's profile data is really huge, I have two profiles, both are over 100MB. If I switch History tab on and try to search for something, it takes quite a time to get results.

Clear Data

Go to Tools/Clear History, I only choose Browser/Download History and Cache. Don't forget to choose time range to everything.

Delete urlclassifier*

Close all Firefox windows first. It's for blocking phishing sites. There are two files, urlclassifier3.sqlite and urlclassifierkey3.txt,
you can read more about it on MozillaZine Knowledge. (I didn't disable the features but deleted directly and didn't see any side effects.)

After you start Firefox, the file will be recreated but much smaller. However, it grows back quite fast.

Vacuum Databases

Close all Firefox windows first. If you use Linux, you can run the following command to do the job:

for fn in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/*.sqlite ; do sqlite3 $fn vacuum ; done

Mozilla Link had a comparison before/after vacuum.

Adding Retweet button to Twitter webpage

I have been wanting for a Retweet button for a so long time on official Twitter webpage, but it never happened. Today, I spent an hour or two to make a simple script. One click on bookmarklet can add a button below the Favorite and Reply buttons. Check out the picture below, you should have a better idea.

The red arrow points at this new Retweet button. If you click on this new button, it will bring the retweeting tweet into status input box. This script should work on your Twitter home page, someone's profile page such as mine, @livibetter, tweet status page, or search results.

At home page, if you click on more button at bottom of page, then you only need to click on bookmarklet once more. That will add Retweet button to new tweets.

The following is the bookmarklet, drag and drop it onto your bookmark toolbar.

Retweet

If you are interested in the source code, you can view it at Google Code, the code is licensed under the modified BSD license.

Updated on 2009-10-20: Added button to tweet status page, such as http://twitter.com/twitter/status/1234567890.

Better URI for your Google Profile

Just knew that Google Profile gives us better URIs [via TechCrunch]. The old (but still work) URI is http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/115422682039760465813, which is awfully long and you can't guess who's that by seeing the URI. The new one is like http://www.google.com/profiles/livibetter, which is the same username of Gmail box. So, you probably want to put a dot in if you use your real name, for example, you can have http://www.google.com/profiles/livi.better as if you can do for your Gmail: livi.better@[gmail]. That also works.

Go to edit profile, scroll down to bottom, you will see the option to have new style of URI. If you click on see more options, you will also have an option like http://www.google.com/profiles/115422682039760465813, but I doubt that anyone would use that.

Life before the computer

This is possible an old joke at the time when 3 1/2" still be the most awesome portable storage media. Stronger than 5 1/4". I searched for this joke and I found more complete version:

An application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano!

Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank account
And if you had a 3 1/2 inch floppy
You hoped nobody found out!

Compress was something you did to garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You'd be in jail for awhile!

Log on was adding wood to a fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode!

Cut - you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider's home
And a virus was the flu!

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead!

Before I first experience of computer use, I could not speak any English at that moment. I was about 8 years old. Since then, my vocabulary bank started to grow up, but it's in very limited and special way. I only know the meaning of computer field and barely can pronounce them. Until now, many words in my head are still strong bound to computer terms. Sometimes, it's hard for me to think outside of computer.

It's interesting when you look back on this joke. Many things have changed after this joke being written. I think the best time of 3 1/2" has past about a decade. If another decade passes, how many in this joke would remain?

Now livibetter.mp is my new index.html

Months ago, I decided to use Google Sites as my index.html. Now livibetter.mp is the new one. Chi.mp looks like a profile plus little scale of FriendFeed. You can give visitors your contact information, activity stream and many other things. Chi.mp designs well, though there is still some small things are not perfect.

Once you signed up, you can get the dashboard. From there, you can update your status, e.g. Twitter's updates, add photo (to Facebook and/or to Flickr), or write blog post on Chi.mp. Clear view of your contacts and contents. If you switch to Dashboard / Personas & Privacy, you can change theme and switch every single content source on/off.

Composing your Profile, you can put phone numbers, addresses, emails, etc. And give them into to different personas. For example, you can only allow friends accessing your phone number. You can also upload avatars. You can even upload favicons. Both avatars and favicons are able to show differently to different personas.

In Content section, you can import content just as you do in FriendFeed, but you don't have many services to import. As of writing, there are Yahoo, Feed, Flickr, Twitter, Hotmail, Facebook, and Gmail. Here is one drawback, you actually already set some social networking websites and blogs in Profile, however, you need to do again here.

In Setting / Site Settings, this section also amazes me, you can set page Title, HTML Meta Description, Google Analytics ID,  Google Webmaster Tools Verify Code, and MicroID.

Chi.mp even gives you one Email Forwarding, what can I say, I love Chi.mp! You should already know Chi.mp supports OpenID, and you wouldn't possible to find an OpenID in so short URL, mine is http://livibetter.mp/.

After I go through all settings, I dumped Google Sites and Google Profile.

Own. Evolve. Enjoy!

Google Earth Sky and Stellarium

If I need to find any information about stars of universe, the first program which I can think of is Sky mode of Google Earth. I don't know if this Sky mode is for professional use or not, obviously, I am not into it.

Here is another application, it's called Stellarium. It's Free and Open-sourced, and All major systems are supported natively. You can see many screenshots here.

Google Earth's Sky mode has many layers and seems to be a little bit of mess if you turn on too many layers. Stellarium is much more clean. Its UI is simple as well and easy to use. However, if you are not familiar with what you just looking at, it's more easy to access online information with Google Earth.

pastebinit

pastebinit, a small Python script helper to paste text/code to pastebin.com, which is really handy. You don't need to open editor/select all/paste. You only need to run this script with filename or type in and hit CTRL+D.

Since it's written in Python, I guess it should be having no problems with all systems that Python lives on.