Elvis Montero

Focus. Focus. Focus!

This may be a huge pet peeve of mine, but I couldn’t possibly be alone. Don’t you hate when you land on a web page that asks for your username and password (or any other required information) and you realize you have to click on the first text box in order to start typing? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if you just could start typing immediately upon landing on such an egregious web page? I decided today I no longer need to put up with these shoddy web design practices. Enter Greasemonkey.

This amazing add-on for web browser Firefox allows you to execute Javascript snippets that can customize the look and feel of any site. I quickly cooked up a script that now sets the focus to the first text box on any web page. This is the ridiculously simple code that does the trick:

var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');
for(i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++){
        if(inputs[i].type === "text"){
                inputs[i].focus();
                break;
        }
}

If you have Firefox and Greasemonkey, click on this link to install Focuser (you’ll see the code if you’re using a different browser). If you’d like Focuser to only do its job on certain web sites, you can easily modify the pages that are affected using Greasemonkey’s scripts manager.

Simple hacks like this make my day every time.

Greasemonkey art found at falsepositives.com.

Posted in Code, Greasemonkey Hacks | No Comments »

Sustainability and IT – My magnum opus at RIT

Scott Hawker, former adviser and head of my capstone project’s committee at RIT, emailed my publication-ready monograph not long ago:

Here’s the abstract:

Information technology holds tremendous potential to help consumers and firms make more sustainable choices by providing information at key decision points. As one example, there are a number of software programs that help calculate and summarize environmental metrics for various products and processes. Surprisingly, while many printers are moving into the IT arena, the technology has not been fully utilized. For the most part, there is a lack of knowledge on the part of the consumer on the sustainability impacts of their communication decisions. Thus, this paper outlines a decision tool, presented to the consumer as they make a print decision, which estimates the energy consumption of printing a given document by analyzing the user’s requirements for the print job, the printer selected and the corresponding life-cycle criteria for these elements.

If you’d like to read more, here’s the link to the paper in PDF format. I’ll be uploading the other major component of this work (i.e. Java code) in the near future.

Posted in Education, Life | 3 Comments »

2 years + 56,000 dollars = ?

After two years of blood, sweat, tears, and a scholarship worth US$56,000, here’s the end result:

(click for a larger view)

Sans the blood and the tears, it was quite an amazing ride. Traveling to Rochester, NY, spending 2 years at RIT and meeting all the awesome people I met along the way, is one of the most salient experiences of my short life. And to think I was morose and utterly worried because I didn’t know whether I was going to get a scholarship almost three years ago. It’s incredible what persistence and an optimistic mindset can do.

With the arrival of the certificate, this chapter of my life is officially over. It’s now time to move on and look for bigger, more difficult challenges. Up, up and away!

Posted in Education, Life | 12 Comments »

To err is human

We’re usually aghast when software from well-established, successful companies fail. We hold this idyllic vision in our heads in which software from IBM, Apple, Microsoft, or Google is simply perfect and error free. After all, Google employees are not mere programmers like most of us. They’re wicked smart, 4.0-GPA-at-MIT-while-also-enjoying-a-vibrant-social-life programmers! Picture my face when I stumbled upon this gem today:

(click for a larger view)

Does YouTube experience internal errors? Wait. Does this mean other Google online apps could also crash in spectacular fashion unexpectedly? To err is indeed human.

Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

Holiday Lights

Look at the holiday lights!

Because they are aware of your presence but not of your might.

Look at the holiday lights!

Because they do not question your motives and welcome you alright.

Look at the holiday lights!

Because their warmth is comforting and their colors are bright.

Look at the holiday lights!

Because their scintillating effect will result in delight.

Look at the holiday lights!

Because they will surely drown any vestigial spite.

Look at the holiday lights!

Because there isn’t a podium so don’t think of stage fright.

Look at the holiday lights!

Because feeling better is your undivided right.

Look at the holiday lights!

Because they likely will alleviate your blights.

Look at the holiday lights!

You better do it fast because they won’t last all night!

–

If you celebrate Christmas in your corner of the universe, then I wish you have a festive and fantastic holiday! If you don’t commemorate it, then have a super awesome weekend instead!

Posted in Life, Poetry, Writing | No Comments »