I was looking for a bookmark of mine on delicious a moment ago and did so in a very primitive way — I went to my delicious page and typed my query into the search field.

Well, it dawned on me that there’s a much better way to do this. After remembering that I use Firefox Quicksearches to make my searching tasks more efficient, I went back to my delicious page and simply right-clicked in the search field, elected to create a new quicksearch, and gave it the quicksearch keyword ‘d’. This lets me do this:

d screenshot

…which yields the link on how to take a screenshot in OS X. The key here is that I just searched all of my own custom bookmarks — all of which I added tags and wrote a description for. This is so powerful because I have already narrowed down what I find interesting on my delicious page. Now, using this technique, I can search within that highly distilled list of resources directly from the address bar.

It Gets Crazier

While searching my own links is likely to be most useful, a friend of mine and I instantly realized that this should be extended to the uber-powerful ability to search the delicious/tags option. This, for anyone not familiar, let’s you search for results bearing a particular tag name, i.e. dogs, pictures, etc.

The thing that makes this so powerful is the ability to combine tags to really bring out specific results. You can search for programming+xml, for example, and get back a list of results that have both the programming AND xml tags applied across the entire delicious userbase. Very cool stuff.

Well, let’s add a quicksearch for this functionality and make it possible to yield this godlike power directly from the Firefox address bar. First, go to the delicious tags page. Then right-click in that search field and create another quicksearch. I gave mine the dt keyword. This lets us do this:

dt linux security

Uber-sick. You can, of course, combine tags for searches within your own links using this same method, like so:

d programming css

It’s quite powerful and I’m sure I’ll use it almost every day. Hopefully someone else will get some use out of it as well.

Thomas L. Friedman, author of “The World is Flat”, did a lecture at MIT and here’s the video feed.

MIT World » : The World is Flat

Many are aware of the debate among job-seekers as to whether degrees, experience, or certifications are most important to those doing the hiring for IT jobs. Well, if you’ve been on any of the job sites lately you’ll notice one phrase being repeated over and over: “or equivalent experience”.

Here’s why.

I just received an email in regard to my article about why people should dump IE, and it wasn’t so much the question that got to me as it was the qualifications of the person doing the asking.

“Hello! I read your article and really liked it; I graduate in December with an IS degree. A fellow-online class mate had told me to switch to Firefox, which I tried to do. This may sound silly, but I am not sure if I am using their browser or not. In other words, it appears the “thing” in my address box changed shapes. So I don’t know if I am running Firefox or not. Does this make sense? Second, you say you do Windows update. But I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. I am running Windows update as well. Therefore, I am confused as to whether or not I really am running the Firefox browser. Can you advise?”

This is someone about to graduate with a degree in Information Systems.

It’s no wonder companies are willing to accept certifications and experience in place of degrees. Employers are learning a simple truth — the posession of a degree isn’t a strong predictor of good work.

Counterinsurgency experts are alarmed by how fast the other side’s tactics can evolve. A particularly worrisome case is the ongoing arms race over improvised explosive devices. The first IEDs were triggered by wires and batteries; insurgents waited on the roadside and detonated the primitive devices when Americans drove past. After a while, U.S. troops got good at spotting and killing the triggermen when bombs went off. That led the insurgents to replace their wires with radio signals. The Pentagon, at frantic speed and high cost, equipped its forces with jammers to block those signals, accomplishing the task this spring. The insurgents adapted swiftly by sending a continuous radio signal to the IED; when the signal stops or is jammed, the bomb explodes. The solution? Track the signal and make sure it continues. Problem: the signal is encrypted. Now the Americans are grappling with the task of cracking the encryption on the fly and mimicking it—so far, without success. Still, IED casualties have dropped, since U.S. troops can break the signal and trigger the device before a convoy passes. That’s the good news. The bad news is what the new triggering system says about the insurgents’ technical abilities.

(Via Bruce Schneier’s Blog)

I caught a piece of the Dave Chapelle Show a few days ago and one of the skits had the coolest personal attack ever in it.

The skit was called the Player Hater’s Ball, and it had a bunch of pimp types going around trying to come up with the coolest cut-downs. They all took their turns on the main guy (played by Chapelle), and finally he got his turn:

“Well, what can I say about your jacket that hasn’t already been said about Afghanastan?”

According to a CNN article, more people in Britian, France, and Spain look upon China favorably than the United States.

I don’t really have anything else to say about that.

Pretty cool.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,13729509#13729509

Ok, stop what you’re doing and go download this Firefox extension. I’ll wait.

…

The power it gives you is quite simple:

1. Select any text and drag it slightly in any direction and it’ll open a Google search for that word or phrase.
2. Left-click any link and slightly drag it to open that link in another tab.

Godlike.

I’m currently following Steve Pavlina’s Blog — a truly incredible site where Steve dives into all sorts of personal issues.

He’s currently covering spirituality and how to live questions — questions that I don’t really have any problems with, but I am just thoroughly amazed to find someone else in the world who thinks so similarly to me.

Anyway, he casually mentioned this video game he used to play and how it has an interesting value system. Well, it’s not just interesting, it’s brilliant. Look at the simplicity:

Truth = Honesty Love = Compassion Courage = Valor Truth + Love = Justice Truth + Courage = Honor Love + Courage = Sacrifice Truth + Love + Courage = Spirituality The absence of Truth, Love, and Courage is Pride, the opposite of which is Humility.

Beautiful. Not perfect, of course, but brilliant nonetheless.

Hmm, it seems Jason was right. Radiohead is in fact a truly badass band. For some reason I had associated them with lesser groups like 311 and Bush. Good bands, to be sure, but not revolutionary.

Radiohead, on the other hand, is the real deal. Their stuff isn’t available on the iTunes music store, however. “Not good”, said Dan.