I have fallen in love with Twitter, the latest social networking craze. I use it practically all day to keep in touch with my contacts and meet new and interesting people. I also enjoy using it as a micro-blogging platform to say things that would feel out of place to say here on Zerosign. So, in an attempt to bridge my two biggest online profiles, I have added a Twitter badge to Zerosign. Some of you may have noticed the seemingly random thoughts that appear on the very top of this page now. That is my latest Twitter post being displayed for a more encompassing social experience. However my Twitter badge has been tweaked, ever so slightly, to make the use of it a little more seamless.

The functionality of the standard Twitter badge is to display all of your most recent Twitter updates. However, most of my updates are @replies meant to be seen by only a few people at most. Others would have no idea what

“@Utch I see what you did there”

means, nor would they care unless you happened to be @Utch or knew him. So in an attempt to remove all @replies from the Twitter feed shown on Zerosign, I tweaked the Twitter badge JS code and created my own. So, if you would also like to display your latest tweets on your site but, like me, don’t want your @replies to be shown feel free to follow the instructions below.

1) Copy and paste the following code wherever you want to display your Twitter badge:

<br /> <div id="twitter_div"> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/USERNAME" class="twitter-title">Twitter Updates:</a></p> <ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul> </div> <p><script type="text/javascript" src="http://zerosign.net/twitter.js"></script><br /> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/USERNAME.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=10"></script>

2) Replace “USERNAME” in the code above with your own Twitter user name.

3) Follow @leadingzero on Twitter. (Not essential, but highly recommended)

Disclaimer: Install this code at your own risk. This code is not guaranteed in any way shape or form and I hold no personal responsibility for any effects it has on your site, desired or otherwise. blah, blah, blah…

In today’s world of viruses, security threats and weak operating systems, many have switched from Windows to Mac to one of literally hundreds of flavors of Linux to find the one OS that suits their needs with as little compromise as possible. However, with constant versioning issues and seemingly endless updates and service packs, some are beginning to venture even further into OS experimentation. One such method is the idea of a PC with no installed operating system at all on the harddrive. Instead, the computer would boot directly from a USB drive containing a variation of a live OS, most commonly of a Linux variant. While seemingly impractical, this would provide for some very interesting functions. Security wouldn’t ever be an issue. No one could possibly access your data while you aren’t there with your USB stick directly plugged in. Also with the latest method of using a live OS, updating the software of your stick OS would be simple. I don’t claim to have expert knowledge of today’s cutting edge operating systems but I am always intrigued by what others are doing to revolutionize the computers that the mainstream will be using in the future. With Windows Vista being released this week, it will be interesting to see how far the home computer will develop in the coming years and what types of systems will soon control our entire households.

link - Create your own Linux on a stick

My growing list of RSS feeds is quickly becoming quite difficult to manage. Luckily, I use Firefox. With some simple organizing, I found a pretty simple way to manage and navigate through all my current feeds without ever leaving my browser’s toolbar. With this method of feed reading, you can quickly browse through the days news without even logging into Bloglines.

First open your Firefox browser (note: for this article I will be using version 1.5.0.6) and make sure you have your bookmarks toolbar enabled. (right click on the top toolbar and make sure there is a check mark next to the ‘Bookmarks Toolbar’ item.)

Next, create a new category folder on your bookmarks toolbar. Right click on the toolbar –> new folder — > left-click –> choose a name for this folder depending on the feed category you want to have (i.e. Tech, News, Ted Stephens, etc.). Then click ‘OK’. You can repeat this step to add all the categories that you will need.

Once you have enough categories to get you started, go to the ‘Bookmarks’ tab on the top toolbar and select ‘Manage Bookmarks’. Within this window, you can locate your category subfolders and drag them into a master folder that I called ‘Feeds’ (this should also be created within the bookmarks toolbar).

Now find your feeds. The easiest way I have found to do this is to actually go to the sites that I want to subscribe to, left-click on the little orange feed logo on the right side of the address field, and then select the format of the feed you want. A Firefox popup window should appear asking you where you want to place the feed or ‘Live Bookmark’. When you see this, click the small button on the right of the window and navigate to the appropriate category folder for this feed.

When you’re all set, you can easily browse through all your feed headlines in a snap by navigating through the dropdown menus. While I’m not giving up my Bloglines account just yet, I am enjoying the convenience of having all my news within one easily accessed folder.

This bizarre sign, which apparenly is not a prank staged by disgruntled elevator operators, seems to be warning people of its own existence! While this is totally amusing in and of itself, it also serves as an excellent example of recursive programming. In school I remember people having the hardest time trying to wrap their brains around recursive methods, which (if you don’t know) is a method that simply refers to itself. This sign would have been a perfect teaching tool for professors to use to explain the subject.

Apparently though, the sign does serve some purpose. From the source:

I once saw a kid sticking his head off the side of the escalator get caught in the gap in between the railing and the upper floor. There was much blood and screaming. The next week, they put a sign up just like that one so that, presumably, stupid kids will bump into the sign first, and pull their heads back in mild pain rather that being decapitated by the wall up ahead.

So basically, the sign exists to warn people of its true purpose - which is to bump people in their heads. That’s pretty profound, isn’t it?

[via] link