User scripts are javascript files with the extension ‘.user.js’ that are executed client-side to add functionality to a web page. They are natively supported by chrome and opera and are supported via extensions in most other browsers of any note. (Some include Greasemonkey for Firefox, GreaseKit for Safari and Trixie for IE).

I succeeded in reskinning the whole website which was pretty fun. There seems to be a limit to the usefulness of userscripts in that support for the ‘@run-at document-start’ flag which I believe should make the script run before any scripts on the page do, is not supported by most browsers. It’s not all that useful a flag anyway as I imagine you’d often want the script to run after the DOM has been written so that you can work with the content expected to be on the page. In this case however it would be useful as I attempt to strip out a script on the course page that redirects 1% of all hits to a rickroll (sigh). As such the script still runs before the userscript and so the rickrolling still happens.

I might also put some more time into the replacement style sheet some time soon.

Original

Reshaped and restyled

Code after the break.

Final Code:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           !cs16chan
// @namespace      http://zethrae.us
// @description    Strips mematic content from the cs16 course website
// @include        http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs016/*
// @include        http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs016/*
// @run-at document-start
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
 //the following function is from http://snipplr.com/view/1696/get-elements-by-class-name/
 //the internet claims that document.getElementsByClassName() is supported in firefox 3.
 //this doesn't seem to be the case on the CIT machines, so I guess this will have to do.
 //and yes. if i was writing this again, I'd just include and use jquery.
 function getElementsByClassName(classname, node) {
 if(!node) node = document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0];
 var a = [];
 var re = new RegExp('\\b' + classname + '\\b');
 var els = node.getElementsByTagName("*");
 for(var i=0,j=els.length; i<j; i++)
 if(re.test(els[i].className))a.push(els[i]);
 return a;
 }

function insertAfter(parent, node, referenceNode) {
 parent.insertBefore(node, referenceNode.nextSibling);
}

function strip_css_js(){
 var jsToRemove = document.getElementsByTagName("script");
 for (var i=jsToRemove.length; i>=0; i--){
 if (jsToRemove[i] && jsToRemove[i].getAttribute("src")!=null){
 jsToRemove[i].parentNode.removeChild(jsToRemove[i]);
 }
 }
 var cssToRemove = document.getElementsByTagName("link")
 for (var i=cssToRemove.length; i>=0; i--){
 if (cssToRemove[i] && cssToRemove[i].getAttribute("href")!=null){
 cssToRemove[i].parentNode.removeChild(cssToRemove[i]);
 }
 }
 }

function import_css(source) {
 var link = document.createElement("link");
 link.href = source;
 link.rel = "stylesheet";
 link.type = "text/css";
 document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(link);
}

//removes memes that won't be wiped by the fix_markup function
function strip_inline_memes(){
 var tagline = document.getElementById('tagline');
 tagline.parentNode.removeChild(tagline);

 var footer = document.getElementById('footer');
 footer.parentNode.removeChild(footer);

 var images = document.getElementsByTagName("img")
 for (var i=images.length; i>=0; i--){
 if (images[i]){
 images[i].parentNode.removeChild(images[i]);
 }
 }

var memesbyclass = getElementsByClassName('preH1').concat(getElementsByClassName('postH1'))
 for (var i=memesbyclass.length; i>=0; i--){
 if (memesbyclass[i]){
 memesbyclass[i].parentNode.removeChild(memesbyclass[i]);
 }
 }

}
function fix_markup(){
 var header = document.getElementById('header');
 header.parentNode.removeChild(header);

 var head1 = getElementsByClassName('h1')
 for (var i=head1.length; i>=0; i--){
 if (head1[i]){
 var newheader = document.createElement("div");
 newheader.innerHTML = "<h1>CS16 / "+ head1[i].innerHTML +"</h1>";
 head1[i].parentNode.replaceChild(newheader,head1[i]);
 }
 }

 var nav = document.getElementById('nav');
 var navcontent = nav.innerHTML;
 var newnav = document.createElement("div");
 newnav.id = "navigation";
 newnav.innerHTML = navcontent;
 nav.parentNode.removeChild(nav);

 var content = document.getElementById('content');
 content.insertBefore(newnav, content.firstChild.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling.nextSibling);

}

strip_css_js();
strip_inline_memes();
fix_markup();
import_css("http://zethrae.us/work/bangCS16chan/style.css");
})();

This was all intended to be tongue in cheek. But yes, memes from ‘06 are rather annoying to see every day. And there wasn’t even longcat.

# tired 5 am adam suggests you scrap the ensuing block and rewrite it while you are fresh
# then again, he failed at writing queue tonight, so maybe his advice isn't great
# i will hit him for you

My job, aside from the universal holding office hours and grading papers was to create and maintain the website, as well as to do a couple of odd jobs such as the pictured poster (which really should have had more actual information on it). That said, holding office hours and actually teaching was by far the most fun part.

Anyway, I guess this post is most directed to people considering to apply to TA the course, so I’ll try to include some useful info. For one, it’s a lot of work, a lot of time (a fair number of people end up taking only three courses while TAing this class) and you’ll be terribly underpaid. Do it because you enjoy teaching or because you want too be more involved with the Brown CS department – whatever other reason you want. It’s also a really good way to become really familiar with the course material. Aside from academic stuff, you’ll be working really closely with 15 people or so and you’ll probably get to know at least some of them really well. You’ll have ample opportunity to get to know some of the students as well.

In short, apply! It’s worth it.

The post further states that Google realizes and is prepared to accept that this may be the end of its business within the country.

Purely from a user’s perspective, it’s great to see the internet behemoth making an effort to stick to its principles. Whatever the motivation, and even if Eric Schmidt still doesn’t understand the importance of privacy, this is a reassuring point towards the “don’t be evil” tally.

Edit: Laughing Squid reports that Google has already stopped censoring google.cn.

Edit: Some Chinese reactions.

Read the paper. (Really).

And here’s a reddit thread about the paper which points out some of the unstated assumptions.

Other related things of interest:

• Video of Michio Kaku arguing that SETI’s hitherto corroboration of the null hypothesis does not reinforce the Fermi Paradox.
• Wikipedia entry for Nick Bostrom
• The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. A superb short story about the inevitability presented by entropy.
• Wikipedia entry on the Great Filter hypothesis.
• Wikipedia entry on Von Neumann probes.

It is a 1000px wide translucent png. If it were any less sophisticated, it’d be a ruler on your screen.

The idea of the feature is to allow for dynamic newspaper style columns on a website. Columns have ordinarily been unachievable though any means but manually separating up content (which would still give unpredictable results).

I’m in the camp that wants the web to be both usable and pretty even with javascript turned off. I’ve missed lots of neat aspects of websites as a result of browsing behind NoScript in past. I think it would be very difficult to make a website designed with such drastic styling done with javascript degrade gracefully in a browser with the tool disabled. However, from a designer’s perspective, this is still one of the most interesting JQuery plugins I’ve seen yet.

My brief was to make a website that would fit with the course’s theme (Yes the course has a theme. Read the aforementioned blog post), Star Trek. I decided to base the website off the Star Trek universe’s LCARS computer systems. This was by no means an original take on making a Star Trek tribute layout – lots of fan sites have done similar things – but it is certainly recognizable.

I cherry picked other layout aspects quite liberally from different time points in the Star Trek series. The header text uses the typeface from The Original Series. LCARS itself only features in episodes and movies placed chronologically after TNG. The ship shown is the Enterprise of the 2009 Star Trek relaunch.

I ran into the CSS column issue when making the layout. The dashed line under the navigation buttons was always intended to stretch to the bottom of the layout no matter how long the content was. I originally made this work with positioniseverything’s CSS columns hack but later realized that there would be anchored links in the content presented in the layout. The anchored links caused the layout to break in Firefox, so I was forced to revert to javascripting the same effect. However the javascript I (found via google and) used to do it doesn’t work in some versions of IE. I obviously need to become proficient with a JQuery or another good javascript library.

The layout also uses conditional comments and the ie7-js script to mitigate issues with IE6, in particular the use of a png image with an alpha layer for the Enterprise in the top left.

In closing… if you are reading this and are an undergraduate at Brown, take the course this year! If you tell me you’ve read this post, I’ll give you extra special help*.
*This statement is probably a lie.

Dear Andrew Slaughter,

It was recently brought to my attention
(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=117055866653) that Margaret
Beckett, the current favourite for the position of speaker, does not
accept emails from her constituents.

I find this rather disturbing given the widespread adoption and the
efficiency of the medium. I believe that in not accepting contact of
this form Ms. Beckett makes it much harder for her constituents to be
heard, decreases transparency and accountability and shows that she is
disturbingly tied to outdated tradition and naïvely close-minded to
notions of innovation.

I urge you to take this into consideration when casting your vote for a
new speaker.

Thanks for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Adam Zethraeus

The first response:

Dear Adam,

Thank you for contacting Andy. I’m not sure where this information originates, but according to the very website you used to write you email -i.e.  Write to Them – Mrs Beckett received an above average number of emails from constituents and responded to them, getting a medium rating, which is pretty good, considering that the sample size used suggests that she receives an well-above-average numbers of emails!

I’ve no reason to suppose that this isn’t still the case – I suppose it just goes to show that  as well as facilitating communication, people can use the web to spread rumours, inaccuracies and falsehoods…..

Yours sincerely,

John Dawson
Parliamentary Assistant

My second email:

John,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Mrs. Beckett is listed as having no email at http://www.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/mps_and_lords/alms.cfm
Additionally the guardian lists her as having no email address. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/person/contactdetails/0,,-319,00.html
Mrs. Beckett has no website so further verification appears impossible.

The website writetothem.com has been developed from the now defunct ‘faxyourmp.com’. Furthermore, nowhere on the statistics page (http://www.writetothem.com/stats/2007/mps) from which you quoted Mrs. Beckett’s ‘medium’ rating does it state that messages were delivered as emails. It therefor seems reasonable to posit that writetothem.com simply faxes letters written to Mrs. Beckett.

I would greatly appreciate if you could relay our correspondence so far to Mr. Slaughter.

Yours sincerely,
Adam Zethraeus

Second Response

Adam,

You’re right. I’ve just checked with Margaret Beckett’s office and indeed she doesn’t do email. Write to them do Fax their emails over, as you suggest, and she apparently deals with them by post.
I don’t need to relay anything to Andy – through the magic of  server-side rules, mail filters,and forwarding, all our correspondence is already in his private inbox!

Kind regards,

John

Many thanks to Robert Gaal, one of the co-founders of Wakoopa, who was nice enough to provide me the font information over Twitter. If you think you might geeky enough to find logging your used applications an interesting idea, I greatly recommend his application.

I make note of this information because it would be a grand shame if one were to, say, spend one and a half hours attempting to emulate the typography used in the logo and extrapolate it to create a single word simply because no where on the internet is the font used stated.

It would be especially regretful if the person in question were then to resize the product of his labour to a size that made all the work feel rather insignificant.

Instead, any hypothetical person emulating the Wakoopa logo would do well to smack his words down in Glamour Girl. Oh, and do replace any letter dotting done in hearts.

How does my attempt compare with the real thing? I’m not a huge fan of the a-t letter spacing.