Bit-Shift.Net

You have a hot date on a Saturday night. You go to put on your favorite shirt to impress your date and low and behold, you're missing a button. You have to pick up your date in 30 minutes, so there is no time to call your mom. You have two options, 1) put on that brown shirt from your great aunt that makes you look so handsome, or 2) break out the how to video on sewing on a button. 

Now if this conjures images of a 1950's video you might seen in home economics of a little old lady in a shawl and rhine stone glasses. Well think again. Introducing Debbie. In this video Debbie shows how to repair a missing button.

I'm told there is going to be a whole series. So if you are interested in what else Debbie can teach you, pay attention to Debbie's website for more videos.

OR, all you married women out there. If you're getting tired of sewing buttons on your husbands shirts, and he won't sit still long enough to learn how to do it himself. Look no further than this video.

Note: While these videos are suggestive, they are work safe.

ComputerWorld is running an article listing 20 must have extensions for the Firefox web browser. Extensions for Firefox are small add-on modules, written by the Firefox team or independent developers, that (usually) improve the behavior of Firefox.

The extensions from the article I already use are:

• GreaseMonkey -  Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.  Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of poular sites, are already available at Userscripts.org. I recommend the HTTP-> HTTPS redirector.
• IE Tab - Once installed, it places a small icon in your status bar. Clicking this icon swaps out the rendering engine from Firefox's to Internet Explorer's.
• FireBug - Allows you to examine and tweak the HTML, CSS and JavaScript contained in a page, all on the fly. This is a great tool for any web developer.

One of the extensions I've come to love that is not listed in the article is TabMixPlus. This add-on enhances the tabbed browsing experience of Firefox with features like controlling tab focus, duplicating tabs and a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

With features like these and the ability to add pretty much any feature you can dream of, it's no wonder that IE is feeling the heat from Firefox.

I was purusing the internet news space this evening, catching up on what was happening in the world. For the most part it was the usual headlines, "More troops to Iraq", "Elderly women mugged", "Mechanic: I have sex with cars"...WHAT?!?

Apparently a mechanic in the UK admitted that he has had relations with over 30 models of cars over the past 20 years, plus two motorboats and a pal's jetski.

From the article, "Experts believe his fetish is the result of a condition called paraphilia, meaning unusual sexual behaviour. They also believe it stemmed from childhood incidents."

When asked about his unusual relationship with autos the mechanic responded, "I’ve been honest about my fetish with my partners — male and female — and only one girl was jealous. I’m currently in a long-term relationship and I couldn’t be happier."

Just when you thought the world couldn't get any stranger. If you're interested read about it here, you may never look at your car the same way again.

I spent alot of time during the day chatting with friends and co-workers using instant messaging. Whether I'm catching up with friends half the US away or asking a co-worker in the next office about something (yes, we programmers are pretty lazy), IM has become something I utilize heavily.

Recently I discovered that Microsoft launched a new initiative, called I'm, to aid various social causes through the use of their Windows Live Messenger service. The premise is simple, everytime you start or join a conversation, Microsoft will donate a portion of the advertising revenue to a social cause of your choice.

There are quite a few causes to choose from too:

To join, follow this link or click the 'I'm Join Now' link in my left side bar, download the Windows Live Messenger client, choose a social cause to support and get chatting, Microsoft takes care of the rest.

This is a great way to support a social cause you belive in by doing something we all do anyway.