Oct 27, 2009

Human stupidity in one of it's many moments

This is one of those things that get me stunned every time I read them. And on top of that they get me terribly amused occasionally. This one in particular got me thinking, mostly because I loved that movie when I was a child: "are there people around really that stupid?". Here's how it happened.

I have one of those widgets on my iGoogle homepage that gives you all sort of weird fact. This one is called "Gullible Info" and it's from http://www.gullible.info/. It's an entire collection of weird "did you know?" facts sentences there. I say sentences because I'm not sure all of them are true. But this one really amused me. It went something like this:

Disney's "The Never Ending Story" sparked 28 lawsuits from customers who were furious that the movie had an end.

How much fun that is? I imagine the defense attorney trying to explain to the judge something that everyone else in the courthouse (including the judge) understood: it's just a title, it refers to the action and story of the movie, it wasn't meant to be "never ending". That must have been one hilarious trial.

I don't know how the attorney/s pleaded his/her/their case, but if I would have been there I would have probably blamed it all on Michael Ende, the author of the novel :)

There are not many things that amuse me in this world, but human stupidity never fails me!

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Oct 21, 2009

Social Share! Blogger Widget

A new version of this widget has been released. You can find it here: Social Share 2.0

Social Share! Blogger WidgetThis is the first version of what will be known as Social Share! Blogger Widget. The name is not very cool, I know, but it will have to do. What this widget does is it provides you, the owner of a Blogger blog, with a list of links your visitors can use to share whatever they like on your blog.

I came up with this little widget because I wanted to have an easy way to bookmark or share my posts on social networking sites with the help of a Blogger widget and I couldn't find one that gave me everything I need. If you find it usefull, please feel free to share it with others or install it on your own blog.

The widget currently provides your users 8 easy ways to bookmark or share your content. The list contains so far the following:

The icons used in the widget have been created by plechi.

To install this widget you must have a Blogger weblog. All you have to do after that is click the following button and you will be taken to the installation confirmation page. By default it installs itself in the sidebar, but you can place it wherever you like.

Enjoy it and I hope someone finds this useful. Please let me know if there are any problems and if you have any suggestions on expanding it or improving it. I thought about a few things but I haven't had the chance to implement them because I was too eager to release it. Maybe in a latter version, if it ever catches on.

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Oct 14, 2009

How to really remove the Blogspot Navbar

The Blogspot Navbar is meant to provide some functionality to the Blogspot users, but let's face it: we don't want it there. It was probably placed at the top of all these blogs for people that don't want to read something in particular and are just browsing. And even if it can bring new users to your blog (very few indeed), it can also take users away. That, added with the fact that it just looks bad, forces many Blogspot blogs to remove it. And here are the ways you can do that.

The "hidden" way

Using this method you are not really removing the Navbar, but you are hiding it so people visiting your blog won't see it. What this involves is adding a CSS rule at the top of your CSS. Here's how to do it: on your blog's Dashboard, go to "Layout" and then to "Edit HTML". Scroll to the beginning of your CSS and on a new line, immediately after 

 <b:skin><![CDATA[
write the following: 
#navbar{display: none;}

The Navbar will still be loaded, but it will not be displayed. If you look at the source of your page you will notice that it is still there. I didn't like that so fortunately there is another way.

The better way

I believe this method to be a little better because the code for the Navbar is not loaded anymore. Using this little hack, the template engine will understand that you want to remove it, and will even ask for confirmation. Here's what you need to do: go to Layout and Edit HTML again. Scroll down to your closing 

</head>
tag and just before that, on a new line paste the following: 
<!-- </head><body> -->

When you click "Save Template" you will be asked to confirm if you want to remove the "Navbar1" widget. Click on the orange "Confirm & Save" button and that's it. If you look at the source of your page now, you will notice that the Navbar is really gone, not just hidden. Well actually something still remains, but it's just a comment line that is completely harmless. This is the line that actually tells the template engine to display the Navbar. The reason you don't see it when you edit your layout is because it gets added later and this way you "trick" it into getting loaded into an HTML comment. Because of that it won't be parsed, hence it won't be loaded.

And that was my quick "how to" for removing the Blogspot Navbar. I hope someone finds this useful.

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