Programmer and blogger Jeff Atwood highlights the distinction between everyday work and actually practicing your craft to improve your skills, quoting Googler Steve Yegge: Contrary to what you might believe, merely doing your job every day doesn’t qualify as real practice. Going to meetings isn’t practicing your people skills, and replying to mail isn’t practicing your typing. You have to set aside some time once in a while and do focused practice in order to get better at something.
While Atwood’s post focuses around computer programming skills, the overall gist is applicable to any profession: In order to improve, you need to practice your craft outside of your daily comfort zone. Looking at the difference between building your skills and simply doing your everyday work, we’re curious: do you practice your craft, or do you simply work? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. The Ultimate Code Kata [Coding Horror]
Firefox 3′s new and improved fullscreen browsing introduces a truly fullscreen experience, utilizing every last pixel of your monitor for the web page. By default the new fullscreen autohides any visible toolbars, though you can bring them back at any time by hovering your mouse over the top edge of the screen. Pre-Firefox 3 extensions introduced similar functionality, like the previously mentioned Autohide extension, so this is just one more built-in Firefox 3 feature that allows you to ditch your Firefox 2 extensions. If you don’t like the new behaviour, a couple of small about:config tweaks, as detailed in the Mozilla Links post, will get you back to the old-style fullscreen. Tweak Firefox 3 full screen mode [Mozilla Links]
Windows tip: The How-To Geek weblog details how to set up a simple keyboard shortcut to show and hide your desktop icons in Windows. To accomplish this, you’ll need to download a very simple application called HideDesktopIcons (available from the post), set up a shortcut to that app, and then simply assign a keyboard shortcut to it. It’s very simple to set up, but head to the Geek’s post for the full low-down. This app is similar in function to our own desktop-hiding application, Dropcloth, so if you liked the idea behind Dropcloth but weren’t happy with the execution, this simple shortcut provides a great way to quickly declutter your desktop. Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Turn the Desktop Icons On or Off [the How-To Geek]
All platforms: The IT designers at iPresentee offer a package of 100 attractive icons and objects for download and use in your slideshows and documents. The iPresentee Keynote objects are resizable TIF images with transparent backgrounds for use in your Keynote or PowerPoint slideshow, Word document, brochure, or any creative project. The package is a free download and includes common icons like flags, stars, speech bubbles, road signs, and computer symbols like folders and hard drives.
Keynote Objects [iPresentee via Macworld]Windows and Linux with Firefox: Free Firefox extension CookiePie manages Firefox’s cookies—small bits of text stored on your computer that tell a site you’re logged in, for example—in such a way that you can log into the same site multiple times. Just right-click a new tab when you want to double-login and toggle CookiePie for that tab. A cookie icon will appear next to the close button and you’re ready to multi-login. Once CookiePie is enabled, you can easily log into multiple Gmail, Flickr, or Facebook accounts. We’ve shown you other methods to achieve multiple logins once before, but CookiePie is a much more simple, elegant solution. CookiePie is free, Firefox only, currently works only on Windows and Linux.
CookiePie [via FreewareGenius]Now that you’ve been running Firefox 3 for almost a week, it’s time to customise its interface to your liking with a few great user styles. Just like you can add user scripts (JavaScript) to web pages with the Greasemonkey extension, you can also add user styles (CSS) to Firefox’s interface with the Stylish extension. While lots of user styles just skin specific web sites with a new look, many can actually improve the browser itself by changing the look and behaviour of menus, tabs, dialogs, and buttons—Firefox’s “chrome.” Let’s take a look at some of the best user styles which tweak, customise, enhance, and streamline Firefox’s chrome.
Photographer Natalie Norton offers up six different tips on keeping your shot steady when you’re shooting indoors, at a slow shutter speed, with no flash, or other situations where shots often turn out blurry. Some are pretty specific to long-lens DSLR cameras, but any amateur shooter can try this tip on for size: As often as possible pull your elbows in to your body and exhale completely before depressing the shutter. When you’re working with a wide aperture or low shutter speed (or both), even a breath can introduce shake. Pulling your elbows tight to your body can really help keep you steady. I also press my elbows firmly into my chest for even greater stability.
Mac users rockin’ Firefox, blogger Neil Lee offers optimised builds of Firefox 3 for your G5 and Intel processors. [via]
