I was made aware that BetterSearch is currently not working on Google. Apparently, Google changed the HTML of the results page, and BetterSearch doesn’t know what to do.

I’ll release 1.22 soon. Stay tuned.

Update 2008-08-22: I’ve just uploaded v1.22 to the Mozilla addon site; once it’s been reviewed by the staff there, it should show up here.

Update 2008-08-24: v1.22 was reviewed and approved!

I’ve become increasingly annoyed with my blog’s design. It’s …too much. There’s a sidebar, there’s a tag cloud, there’s the archives, there’s whatnots and doodads and stuff. Funny; a few months ago I’ve installed it to make the site more lightweight, and had the feeling I had succeeded. (Take a look at my still unchanged tumblelog to see the old design.)

Still, over the last few weeks I felt the urge to further strip it down.

Is less more? Well… I think so. Less clutter, less noise, less fluff. (At least outside the blog posts.) Let’s focus on the actual meat! If there is any.

Plus I’ve tried to read one of my posts using the highly useful Instapaper application on my iPod touch, in its text mode, and got seriously annoyed. So much crap to scroll through just to get to the actual article — archive, tag cloud, about blurb etc.

This warranted a change.

So, taking a lot of inspiration and hints of Jack Shedd and Ryan Tomayko — read: fusing their wonderful respective designs into a freaky bastard child — I’ve managed to come up with a light and mostly clutter-free layout that’s both easy on the eyes and pleasing Instapaper’s text mode¹.

I’ve removed everything I’ve deemed unnecessary. Like the sidebar, the external links, the archive, the list of tags, the blurbs, the doodads and whatnots. The article display has been cleaned up and I’ve removed the “related pages” section. Internally, I’ve switched the site from Textile to Markdown, and fully migrated the comments from the built-in Wordpress system to Disqus.

I am pretty happy with the results.

It looks fine in both Safari 3 and Firefox 3. It’s a bit broken in IE6 (big surprise), and I don’t have an IE7 here right now. But since I’m slighly drunk at the moment, I don’t really care. I’m not a designer, clearly, but I think it’s good nonetheless. :)

Huzzah!

Update: Looks good in MSIE 7, 8 and Opera 9.5x. Thank you, Browsershots.

I’ve updated BetterSearch, my Firefox/Flock addon, to version 1.21. Here’s what’s new:

• Compatible with Flock 2 beta+.
• FIX: Action icons are back.
• FIX: Delicious support unbroken! It’s glorious.
• FIX: MSN/Live support works again.
• FIX: Statusbar tooltip was showing the wrong version number. Silly thing.
• FIX: Made some minor enhancements to Google URL normalisation.
• FIX: Removed remnant code (”big icons” etc.).
• CHG: Removed support for everything but Yahoo!, Google, MSN and Delicious. Sorry, don’t have the time anymore to keep track of anything else.

Go get the new version while it’s still hot! :)

In his thoroughly enjoyable Science In The Capitol trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson (who happens to be my favourite author) talks about a concept called “The Paleolithic Life”; something he also spoke about in a Google Tech Talk on Climate Change (at ~50min in).

The idea is that there are certain activities engraved in the mind of every human, which result in joy and happiness. These are the things the paleolithic man did during his waking hours, things nature rewarded him for by making him feel alive and capable and good, thus helping him evolve and aiding his development.

Mr. Robinson compiled a list of these activities:

• Spending the day outdoors
• Walking and running
• Looking for things
• Making things
• Throwing rocks
• Cooking and eating
• Talking and listening
• Singing and music
• Dancing and sex
• Finding a mate
• Raising kids
• Looking at fire
• Seeing by moonlight
• Killing animals
• Being killed by animals
• Making beds at night
• Exploring new land
• Feeling emotions, including terror, religion, right and wrong, etc.

Especially when you spend your waking hours in an office job, most of these activities are not part of your life anymore. We do not need to hunt for food anymore, we’re seldom being killed by animals¹, we don’t throw rocks. But the engraved patterns, the subconcious memories of our ancestors life in the paleolithic, the biochemical reward mechanisms are still within us — just unused.

What a waste.

Having doubts about this? Here are some quick tests: If you have the chance, find a fireplace in the night and stare at the flames for a while. Or get out at night, take a walk by moonlight. Or meet with friends for self-made dinner. Or have good sex. (Or all of the above, at once.)

KSR’s proposal is picking up our old habits again, raking in the old rewards, in order to lead a happier life. In a slightly modernised form, of course. Throwing rocks is awesome — until someone is crying, that is. Which should be avoided. So, how about Frisbee or Baseball? You throw things at things, with less chance of killing people by accident! And think about walking, running, building things with your own hands…

Intriguing, no?

(His theory doesn’t seem to be entirely fresh or new, tho; I think it has influenced some of the storylines in his wonderful Mars books, even though it was not specifically mentioned (it was in the aforementioned Science In The Capitol books). Some of the characters find some inner peace when doing more or less mundane tasks; Nirgal just wanted to run², Nadia was happiest when she could build and make, John was at the top of his world when he could talk with and listen to people, etc.)

So, long story short, I’m trying to get a bit more paleolithic in my life.

As mentioned, I have started running in April, and it’s actually pretty cool. I feel really good after most of my runs (not during them, mind you) — my new-found ability to run 5km straight is nothing short of a miracle to me, really.

Since I don’t feel like hitting and paying for other peoples’ stuff, but want to throw things at things, I bought some Frisbees and already took them out for some hilarious practice games with Dana, we had a blast, and I will try to make it a regular activity. I actually want to give casual Disc Golf a try; we’ll see.

Already I try to spend (a little bit) more time outdoors, mostly by walking instead of taking the bus, watching my surroundings, i.e. walking with open eyes. Good for the health, and sometimes you’ll see interesting things, really. And next week I’ll go kayaking. Gonna be interesting.

And I will try not to be eaten by wild animals.

Opinions?