Short Story: Want a short link to a spot on google maps? Without a url-shortener service?

look it up at gmaps, get an about 200digit “link” from the upper right, throw away anything but http://maps.google.com/? the ll= and the z=-tags:

http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.662404,-73.972113&z=20

want a marker? Rightklick on a map and say “What’s here?”, get the link from upper right and do the same but with the q=-tag included:

http://maps.google.com/?q=40.662434,-73.972099&ll=40.662487,-73.972113&z=20

For that I made a small Autohotkey script to use with ac’tivAid.:

gmapURLShortener.ahk

If you are Autohotkey-able you could easily add an own hotkey to the script.. but … ;]

if you want the whole rant…: (more…)

I love “findWhenTyping”-stuff: You know the new (sllloooooow-ass) search bar in windows vista in the start-menu and in every explorer? (Yes the thing they somehow borrowed from osx..)
In Firefox for instance there is Tools>Options>Advanced>”Search for text when I start typing“. So on any website you can just hit some letter-keys and it finds the occurence.

And they have it in the Options>Application tab as well as in the about:config. Just like it should be: If there is an interface with a list: You just never ever know how long the list can be. Will it be 10 entries or 7000? … I just made this a paradigm myself:

It’s a list? Offer findWhenTyping!

because manual scrolling and seeking just sucks.

Finally I had a little time to build such a thing myself. In our companys Maya-Toolkit (sorry no link, seems offline now) we have a lot of list-dialogs. Actually we have loads of list-dialogs all over the place. But the Maya toolkit is the only spot (thanks to my lame-ass scripting only skills) where I can put my hands on.

exept from the obvious things:

• on keystroke: list content automatically shows matches only
• entering nothing shows all entries
• matching is non-case-sensitive
• completely keyboard driven – you “can” handle the dialog without the mouse.

I have some additions that I haven’t seen in other similar dialogs:

• a phrase that has does not match anything still shows the last matches – so if you have a spelling mistake the list doesn’t go empty. An empty list would be just useless.
• first entry is always selected – so you don’t have to extra select something if you already typed the right letters – just hit enter
• when entering an asterisk * the default asterisks around the *phrase* will be omitted – so you can write start* and it matches everything that begins with start but not with start somewhere within.

What I need to implement in the future because its so useful in the AwesomeBar from firefox:

• hitting space starts a new search withing the current hits – this means you can combine keywords just with space. For example in your image-folder “cat cap” would find all pictures with “cat” in the name or tag but within this list only the ones with a “caption”-name or tag.

…

Ok. As I’m unable to finish this right now. I gonna just amend it with a video when I have something to show. :]

Hehe :]

Technical director floh wasn’t thrilled.. But I actually was looking for a way to do this long time:

If you script code sometimes you define stuff, a variable e.g. at the point where you finally want to use this variable you need to go back to the definition somehow (via mouse or cursor) copy it and return to the point where you felt like having that variable available. A word-autocomplete might help in that case as well. But if your var has a long prefix and … nah!

What I actually was looking for:

• you get the idea: Oh I need this from over there
• I press a hotkey to remember the position
• you move to the thing you need and select it
• you press another hotkey

then its finished: The piece you where looking for is at the spot.
Ok now chill the fuck out: I got this:

This has nothing to do with the code editor: Its all Autohotkey:

• on Ctrl+Ins it figures out the typing-cursor/caret-position (does not always work FF e.g.)
• places a tooltip and waits for you to press enter
• you make a selection somewhere else
• If you press Enter: It gets the selection
• clicks the mouse to the old position
• inserts the selection
• restores clipboard and mouse position

Thats actually it! If you want to take a look at my puny source code:
or even want to test it out without having Autohotkey try the .exe:

http://goodsoul.de/ahk/rememberPosTool.ahk
http://goodsoul.de/ahk/rememberPosTool.exe
(virus total online check link: suspicios file… well it waits for your keystroke.. )

First I had an ac’tivAid UserHotkey-snippet without the hotkey on/off crap… but somehow UserHotkeys somehow deselects the current window. Need to look into this later… This example works much better. So it doesn’t matter if you click via mouse or select with keyboard.

BUT: now the downsides:

• I made it cancel when you scroll with the mouseWheel
• but if you scroll somehow else its broken of course! Works only on screenspace!
• some apps do not support the caret-position. Like Firefox for instance.

try on your own risk of course ;]

Why shouldn’t I post about when adding a new link. Nice Idea huh? :]

Lifehacker.com is a real cool glog! There is almost everything I’m interested in besides 3D-Stuff, electronic music, games and demoscene and even more of topics that I really should take a deeper look into:

• handy tools for every Operating system, even online and very likely free and Open Source
• customization-stuff and scripts for all sorts of things: Browser, OS, Gadgets
• helpful Tips & Tricks & Tutorials for OS and tools
• collections and polls for “Best 5 things for …”

but even stuff like that:

• DIY (Do-It-Yourself)- and CheapAss-instructions for all kinds of things
• tips for concentration and sorting tasks (getting things done stuff)
• simple and comprehensible environment tips
• fitness for nerds

Of course there is always crappy stuff flooding in e.g. Apple-news … *yawwwn*. But you get to know things beside your everyday round and if you are not happy with anything 100% (Texteditor, Calendar, Notestool..) might be there is already an alternative discussed at lifehacker.

If I finally get to release something Autohotkey-related I’ll definitely try to get it on Lifehacker! There isn’t even a dedicated ac’tivAid-Post! OKok, it lacks a cool presentation… My ac’tivAid-Vidcast is still long time coming ;] nah it will it will..

First I gonna get melDrop going. But thats a quite Maya-kind thing. More about that another time … (hopefully soon )