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George Carlin:

It looked pretty good. It was pristine. Paradise. Have you seen it lately? Have you taken a good look at it lately? It’s fucking embarrassing. Only a nation of unenlightened halfwits could have taken this beautiful place and turned it into what it is today: a shopping mall. A big fuckin’ shopping mall. You know that? That’s all you’ve got. That’s all you’ve got here folks. Mile after mile of mall after mall. Many, many malls. Major malls and mini malls. They put the mini malls in between the major malls. And in between the mini malls they put the mini marts. And in between the mini marts you got the car lots, gas stations, muffler shops, laundromats, cheap hotels, fast food joints, strip clubs, and dirty bookstores. America the beautiful: one big transcontinental commercial cesspool.

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Long ago I realized that it’s often better not to quit a suspected bad idea, but to explore it and learn from it. @substack just gave me more insight into this:

Don’t unpublish your bad ideas. The best argument against a bad idea is to implement it well.

– James Halliday (@substack)

The last sentence is key, and applies to more than published bad ideas. In web development, if it is indeed a bad idea, you’re more likely to learn from it, than to cause harm. If it’s a good idea that seems like it’s a bad idea, which turns out to be a good idea, it might be a really good idea.

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I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.

— Henry David Thoreau (seen in the lobby of Hotel Palomar in San Francisco last week)

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To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I just wrote my first GreaseMonkey user script. It’s a script that puts a random Benjamin Franklin quote above the stories on reddit to remind me to be dutiful and not spend too much time looking at online news. I found the quotes through (you guessed it) reddit.

Here’s what it looks like:

reddit_franklin.jpg

And here’s the code:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Reddit Quotes
// @namespace      com.benatkin
// @description    Shows Quotes in front of Reddit
// @include        http://reddit.com/
// ==/UserScript==

function franklinQuote() {
  var quotes = [
    'Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise',
    'Diligence is the mother of good luck',
    'God helps them that help themselves',
    'Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright',
    'Dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of',
    'Lost time is never found again',
    'He that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night',
    'Drive thy business, let not that drive thee',
    'Industry need not wish',
    'He that lives upon hope will die fasting',
    'There are no gains, without pains',
    'Plough deep, while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to keep',
    'One today is worth two tomorrows',
    'Have you somewhat to do tomorrow, do it today',
    'Be ashamed to catch yourself idle',
    'Let not the sun look down and say, inglorious here he lies',
    'He that hath a trade hath an estate',
    'He that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor',
    'At the working man’s house hunger looks in, but dares not enter',
    'For industry pays debts, while despair encreaseth them',
    'Constant dropping wears away stones',
    'By diligence and patience the mouse ate in two the cable',
    'Little strokes fell great oaks',
    'Employ thy time well if thou meanest to gain leisure',
    'Since thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour',
    'A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. Do you imagine that sloth will afford you more comfort than labor?',
    'Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.',
    'Many without labor would live by their wits only, but they break for want of stock',
    'Industry gives comfort, and plenty, and respect: fly pleasures, and they’ll follow you',
    'Keep the shop, and thy shop will keep thee',
    'If you would have your business done, go; if not, send',
    'He that by the plough would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive.',
    'The eye of a master will do more work than both his hands',
    'Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge',
    'Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your purse open',
    'In the affairs of this world men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it',
    'Learning is to the studious, and riches to the careful, as well as power to the bold, and Heaven to the virtuous',
    'If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself',
    'For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost, and for want of a horse the rider was lost'
  ];
  return quotes[Math.floor(Math.random()*(quotes.length))];
}

function addFranklinQuote() {
  var tbl = document.getElementById('siteTable');
  if (tbl) {
    var quoteBox = document.createElement('div');
    quoteBox.innerHTML = franklinQuote();
    quoteBox.style.fontSize = "16pt";
    quoteBox.style.backgroundColor = "#f9f7ed";
    quoteBox.style.padding = "1.5em";
    quoteBox.style.position = "relative";
    quoteBox.style.width = '500pt';
    tbl.parentNode.insertBefore(quoteBox, tbl);

    var quoteName = document.createElement('div');
    quoteName.innerHTML = "-- Benjamin Franklin";
    quoteName.style.fontSize = "10pt";
    quoteName.style.position = "absolute";
    quoteName.style.bottom = "0";
    quoteName.style.right = "0";
    quoteBox.appendChild(quoteName);
  }
}

addFranklinQuote();

Greasemonkey really is as simple to use as it sounds. You give it a script and the URL’s to which it applies. When you browse to a page that matches the URL, the script is executed. For this one, it was a simple matter of adding a DOM element in the right place.

Some scripts are meant to be loaded on all pages, such as a script that makes it possible to use shift to quickly check or uncheck a bunch of checkboxes. If you’ve heard people complain about the Greasemonkey overhead, it’s probably because they’ve run a bunch of these utility scripts that run on all pages. A script or two that are browser-wide, with the rest of the scripts only running on a single site shouldn’t slow things down much.

To install, first install greasemonkey. Then, find the greasemonkey folder (gm_scripts) in your profile directory and save the above code into a file called “redditquotes.user.js”.