magic

TinyURL is amazing. They shortify any URL, so you can change from something long and heinous—think Google Maps addresses—to something far more palatable (ala http://tinyurl.com/2h5z5m). The end result is short, pithy, and emailable. They magically redirect it to the real URL for you, and the Internets are a better place for all of us. Check out their example:

As if this wasn't cool enough, TinyURL recently added the ability to tack on a custom alias. Now you can (optionally) choose a word or phrase to include in the hash portion of the tinyfied address, making it memorable as well as emailable. So now something like http://tinyurl.com/justin-hileman is possible.

Unfortunately the bookmarklet they provide only generates the old style TinyURLs with numbers and junk at the end. I use it all the time, so I decided it's time for an upgrade. I created a bookmarklet that lets you select a chunk of text to be used as the alias. it automatically converts the selected text so it's url friendly and everything!

Just drag this bookmark to your bookmark bar (or right click/save link as):

TinyURL!

To use it, browse to a page on the internet, select a word or two, and click the bookmarklet. MagicURL!

Note: this should work in any real browser. Read: you shouldn't expect anything in IE < 7. Aside: You shouldn't be using IE < 7, but that's another battle for another day...

Also: if you're reading this in a feed reader, there's a good chance that JavaScript has been stripped out of the bookmarklet. It's not gonna work like that. Visit the full post to get your TinyURL bookmarklet.

One of the most amazing and annoying things in Drupal 6 is the menu system. Thanks to a bunch of JavaScript magick, you can drag menu items around to reorder them, create submenus, and so forth. Unfortunately, once you've moved a menu item it no longer alphabetizes itself. If you want things to alphabetize themselves again, you are left with two options:

You can manually alphabetize the menu or submenu every time you change things or add a new menu item, forever and ever and ever. If you're not too keen on that idea, you can edit each of the menu items and reset their weight to 0, which makes them alphabetize again.

Neither option is ideal, so I created a third: this bookmarklet will set the weight of all menu items to 0 in one fell swoop. It also works for resetting block sort order, if you wanted to do that for some reason.

grab the bookmarklet after the jump.

i've been sending Provo, Utah swing dance updates with Textmarks for quite a while, but i recently started using another service they offer which deserves mention.

Textmarks can be used in a couple of ways. i have been using the BYU Swing Kids Club Textmark to push out alerts to subscribers. this way they can get updated information about changes in venues or locations and impromptu dance opportunities much quicker than through the official club email list.

justin hileman dot info has been updated. please allow me to draw your attention to the links at the bottom of the main page. i'm pretty excited about a couple. specifically the two with little arrows next to them.

you should click on them.

if you've visited my myspace profile recently, you've noticed that it doesn't look much like a standard myspace profile. which i'm pretty stoked about, since the hideousness of most myspace profiles approaches obscenity.

one key element in the makeover of my space is the blog. you see, i have way too many blogs already, so i really don't want to post to all of them. and i usually just end up crossposting everything from my regular blog to the myspace blog.

so i replaced it.

the first generation myspace blog replacement was pretty sweet. i wrote a flash based RSS reader that would check my personal blog for new posts, and display them on the 'space. but the powers that be decided that flash files shouldn't be able to link to offsite pages. so the "read more" links didn't actually work.

so we try it again. enter myspace blog replacement, generation two. this one's really rad.

Give it another go after the jump.