dW

Amazon’s Universal Wish List & Opera

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A lot of times from relatives and friends I get asked repetively what they could get me, and my response is a link to my wish list on Amazon or simply a coupon or something for Amazon. I’m forever buying books or whatnot from Amazon, so frequently that it’s worth my while to be an Amazon Prime member. Not too long ago Amazon added a new feature they call Universal Wish Lists here people could put items from other websites to their existing wish lists by adding a bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar and pressing it when on a wanted product’s page. While this works in Opera, Opera has much better methods of user interface customizing than using bookmarklets.

In Opera it is possible to create an actual button that can reside anywhere in the interface. The possibilities are almost endless. You can even execute JavaScript (or external programs for that matter). What can be better than that? One-click button installs come to my mind, at least:

Add to Wish List

Clicking that button in Opera will prompt a dialog box asking for permission to install the button. After that Opera will allow you to drag that button anywhere you wish. Personally I don’t add too many custom buttons, especially for something I won’t use on a daily basis. Opera allows for menu customization as well. All of the main menus and each of the right-click toggled drop down menus are customizable. What I thought would be interesting when I first set out to figure out how to get this to work using Opera’s UI customization features was that it’d be nice to be able to right-click on a web page and click on a menu item that’d allow me to add it to my Amazon wish list. The button was a secondary thought, but considering the capabilities to one-click install the button it’s a lot cooler to showcase than code. Editing menus are quite a bit more difficult to do, but menu customization isn’t anything so difficult that it’d be beyond the scope of the average user. It’s just that it’s not entirely obvious as to how to do it which is unfortunate as it is an amazing feature of Opera’s.

Menu customization is stored in an ini file in the Menu folder in your profile folder. The location of the profile folder depends on how it’s installed and what platform you’re on. A quick way to find out is to type opera:config and either search for “Opera Directory” or go to User Prefs then to Opera Directory. It’ll show you the location of your profile. More than likely there won’t be a menu folder there, so the easiest way (without having to explain the differences between platforms) to remedy that is:

1. In the main menu go to Tools → Preferences (or Opera → Preferences on Mac OS X).
2. Click on the Advanced tab and in the dialog’s sidebar click on Toolbars.
3. Under Menu setup click on Opera Standard and then click the duplicate button.

Doing so will create an exact copy of the default toolbar’s setting file in the Menu folder in your profile folder. Go there and open that file in your favorite text editor. Search for “[Document Popup Menu]” and paste the following under that heading somewhere.

  Item, Add to Amazon Wishlist="Go to page, "javascript:(function(){var w=window,l=w.location,d=w.document,s=d.createElement('script'),e=encodeURIComponent,x='undefined',u='http://www.amazon.com/gp/wishlist/add';if(typeof s!='object')l.href=u+'?u='+e(l)+'&t='+e(d.title);function g(){if(d.readyState&&d.readyState!='complete'){setTimeout(g,200);}else{if(typeof AUWLBook==x)s.setAttribute('src',u+'.js?loc='+e(l)),d.body.appendChild(s);function f(){(typeof AUWLBook==x)?setTimeout(f,200):AUWLBook.showPopover();}f();}}g();}())""

Figuring out where the new item would reside when the toolbar is loaded should be obvious, so place this snippet of code where you’d personally like the menu item to be. Save it as a different file than the one you’re editing in that folder and restart Opera. Repeat the directions above to get to the Menu setup preferences and select the new menu setup file you just edited. Now when you right-click on a web page you should see a menu item allowing you to add that page to your wish list.

Blown Away

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I finally finished this about two days ago. It’s an illustration of a filthy-looking Wario letting out a huge fart. It’s crude and repulsive, but I like it nonetheless. I decided to do this like a Bill Wray image, especially those illustrations he did for Ren & Stimpy. I tried my best to make him as horrible as possible, and I think I did that. I didn’t do the illustration because I hate Wario. On the contrary, he’s one of my favorite characters. It was created using Adobe Illustrator for the drawing and Corel Painter X for the painting part with Photoshop serving as a compositor. The image is quite large, being at 12,000×9,000 pixels. I really enjoy working at that size because a simple paint dab could serve as a lot of detail when resized smaller. It makes things a whole lot easier in my opinion.

This illustration was accompanied by a new layout for N+. On My Opera users are given a stylesheet to do whatever they please, so while limited by what can be changed to the markup an author is completely free to do what he/she wants to the CSS. N+ is a group on My Opera that’s dedicated to providing Nintendo news and making their own news apparently with projects and contests. I’ve been a member for some time now and I’ve been a moderator for almost as much time. The design I’ve created was done to properly separate the sidebar from the main content while still keeping both in near equal focus as there are important things on both columns to many readers. I also decided to shrink the website’s content area to make way for giving the sidebar a bit of breathing space. It’s easier to read and easier to understand with an obvious separation in appearance from the content and the sidebar and a separation between the content in the sidebar from one another. I’m really pleased with it, although I still do have some things to fix. If given a chance, go visit N+ and by all means join if it is to your liking.

Closing Comments (For Now)

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I’ve had a bit of a problem for some time now with my comment script pertaining to avatars, so I decided that since I had a bit of time to fix it I will. I seemed to have messed some stuff up in the process, so I think I’ll turn comments off for the moment. I’m unsure if I’ll fix the comment form or if I’ll scratch it completely and switch to an OpenID-based system. But until then comments are unavailable, but you are completely free to email me in the meantime if you have something to say in response to something I’ve stated on here.

Amazing Stupid People Stories

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An experience I had at work today made me begin to remember the multitudes of situations I’ve been in involving stupid people. My father owned a business and told me repeatedly when I was a kid that the best way to learn how stupid people are is to work in retail. It’s just amazing to me how truthful that is.

Today when I get to work I get a reply to an email I sent in 2007 from a woman that I sent an email to yesterday with a proof of the shirt “design” (you can’t call it that) she wanted. That is odd in of itself, especially when it’s July 2008. It’s a nasty email from that woman bitching at me that I keep sending her the same old artwork over and over and that I don’t know what I’m doing. I know that she’s probably using Outlook or Outlook Express and checking email in those programs isn’t exactly a small task, but– really– how hard is it to tell one email from another? As Bill Engvall would eloquently say in reply to a situation like that, “Here’s your sign.”

This next one will take a bit of explaining. Retards here in the South have elaborate ways to waste gasoline. There’s an entire culture of retarded people who race with trucks with customized independent suspensions and super sized motors in mud holes. Well, truthfully, to call them retards would be doing retarded people a disservice. We have the unfortunate situation of having to do t-shirts for them. This man comes in today with a large picture of half of his truck with him in it giving a thumbs up to the camera.

“Take me out of the photo and draw the rest of the truck there.”

How in the hell was I supposed to know what the rest of his truck looked like? He left– pissed off– because he had to go take a picture of the entirety of his truck without his being in it. This same afternoon he comes back with a new photo, except the front and rear bumpers are cut off. He responds, “You can at least draw the bumpers on there, right?”

About three weeks ago a woman walks in and tells me what stupid shit she wants on her shirts. I take the order, she walks off to go give the shirt count and sizes. She comes back and asks if I’d finished her artwork yet. She throws her a big fit because I hadn’t even started on it yet. Believe it or not situations like this are the most common types of stupidity that occur here. I’ve even had a woman call and curse me out over the phone because I didn’t finish her artwork an hour or so after they gave the order. After she started repeating herself I stopped her mid-sentence and told her that if she was a man she’d have gotten a five knuckle introduction. Her husband calls afterwards to irritate me, so I invite him over to get a hospital room number; he never showed up.

I hear doing freelance web design for clients isn’t much better.

Too Much Coffee

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There are times in which I go for long periods of time without illustrating a single thing worthwhile. I’m a graphic artist, and I feel perfectly at home designing webpages and whatnot. I tend to use illustration to calm myself down. I don’t really need to churn numbers, CSS properties, and HTML elements in my head while illustrating. I can sit down at the computer and paint or draw away using my Wacom tablet. Before I know it it’s 6 hours later, and I’ve listened to the same Rush song about three times because the playlist has repeated itself. This weekend I thought it was time to tell everyone to go to hell and lock myself away in my room.

This is an illustration of Espen Øverdahl as Too Much Coffee Man. Why would I do something like that? Probably because I was bored shitless. The idea came to me originally from a post on My Opera where Espen was shown offering free coffee. He’s made himself a reputation of being a heavy coffee drinker, so he’s like a real-life Too Much Coffee Man. I wanted something to illustrate, and well this idea seemed better than the previous ideas I had. I did this illustration in American movie poster dimensions, exactly 27×40 inches. Viewing the largest image size on Flickr by clicking the image above would yield an image only 25% of the original image’s size. I like to work big. The image is painted as an oil painting typically would be without the mess and cost in Corel Painter X.

When viewing photos of Espen on his own My Opera log this might not appear to look a lot like him, and it doesn’t. I doubt Espen is able to make his eyes bulge like that, but he’s had about his 1000th cup of coffee, so they should be falling out of his head by now. I just wonder what his response will be if he catches a glimpse of this.