EGLZFAN.com - Random Neural Firings

In my law practice, I keep all of my client files in one “clients” directory on our server. However, there are hundreds of files in there, but typically only a couple of dozen that I’m actively working on. So, I keep an “Active Cases” folder, which contains shortcuts to the active cases. To add a case to the “Active Cases” folder is a two step process - right-click and create shortcut, then right-click and “Send To Any Folder” (a Windows PowerToy - Google it if you’re interested, it’s pretty handy). However, I wanted to streamline this even more, so that I could create the shortcut and send it to the “Active Cases” folder in one fell swoop. I finally figured out how to do it, so I figured I’d share the technique with the world. (more…)

My dad sent me an article recently about some sort of software package that (assuming I read the article correctly, it was pretty dense) allowed you to develop web applications that were more extensible by the user, thus presumably moving web apps closer to traditional desktop applications in terms of functionality. That sparked a return email tirade over why I think that’s stupid. When I was done, it occurred to me that it would make a decent blog post, so here it is. (more…)

More geeky shit today. JavaScript has a Math.round() function, but no convenient way to achieve a precision round. So for example, if you have a value of 8.942 and you want to round it to 8.94, you have to do some more math in your code. This handy little function lets you do that a little more easily.

Building on that, here’s another function I wrote that’s pretty handy for expressing numbers as formatted dollar values, complete with commas for values above $1,000. You can call this function one of three ways:

var v = dollar_value(); // $0.00

var v = dollar_value(3.4); // $3.40

var v = dollar_value(3.4, ‘€’) // €3.40

Here’s the dollar_value() function.  Note you need the precision_round() function for this to work.

Geek post today. I have developed a cross-browser JavaScript class that adds drop-down “shufflers” to a table which will allow the user to change the order of the rows in the table on the fly. (more…)

Some folks find it curious that I love technology so much, yet inexplicably hate email.  Between outright spam and email that’s legit but irrelevant, the amount of “good” email I process is probably something like 2-3%, which is horribly inefficient.  One thing I really liked about email, though, was the concept of an electronic newsletter - specialized content pushed to me whenever there were updates.  I don’t get newsletters anymore, however, thanks to a great innovation called “RSS”.  A friend asked me about RSS earlier today, so I figured a post about it might be in order. (more…)

Engadget had an article on Fujitsu’s commitment to solid-state hard drives, or “SSDs” that made me think of something that occurred to me recently about my predictions for the future. Specifically, about four years ago I remember sitting in my living room, bullshitting with my old college roommate, and saying that I believed SSDs were the wave of the future and would eventually outright replace disk-based drives (which have been dominant for decades now). My prediction at the time was for five years, and it looks like I might be right, but of course any credit I get for my amazing powers of prognostication depends completely on Jeremy’s memory. If only I had written this down back then… (more…)