Ralph Shao

Courtesy of Josh Winzelberg.

I should be getting one of these in the mail soon…

I’m totally stoked.

As some of you may know, I was recently pissed at facebook for taking away what was formerly the mini-feed story publishing options. At some point those got rolled into the Recent Activity stories. Then one day, facebook decided to take a huge crap over everyone’s privacy settings and no longer allow you to pick and chose what stories get posted to your own wall. See this article for more information.

Well, tonight, my anger reached full force, so I decided to write a little javascript blurb to take care of it for me.

Through a little bit of screwing around using Dave Bisceglia and Ben Pu’s profiles as my testing ground, I managed to come up with something that will hide the following from your facebook wall:

• When you write on other peoples’ walls
• When you like something
• When you comment on a status
• When you comment on a link
• When you comment on a photo
• When you comment on a note

It may get rid of a few other things too, but these are the only stories I’ve tested.

For those of you that just want the script, drag this link — F U Facebook — into your bookmark toolbar, and then just click it while viewing your own profile. You’ll have to do it from time to time to clear out recent activity.

For the others that are interested in the code, here it is in a slightly more readable format:

javascript:var d=document,h=d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0],s1=d.createElement('script'),s2=d.createElement('script');s1.src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js';s2.src='http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/js/stream/profile_ext.js';h.appendChild(s1);h.appendChild(s2);setTimeout(function(){jQuery.noConflict();
jQuery('div.UIRecentActivityStory > div.UIStory_Hide > a.UIActionButton').each(
function(idx){
function gpbn(t,n) {var regex=new RegExp("[\\?&]"+n.replace(/[\[]/,"\\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\\]")+"=([^&#]*)");return regex.exec(t)[1];}
var sid=gpbn(this.href,'story_id'),pid=gpbn(this.href,'profile_id'),key=gpbn(this.href,'story_key'),type=gpbn(this.href,'story_type');
if(type==15||type==20||type==32||type==46||type==69||type==107)profile_stream_hide_story(sid,pid,key,type,"");
});
},1000);void(0);

In a nutshell, it loads jQuery and a script from facebook that handles profile stories into the page, then finds all of the “Remove” buttons, parses the URL of the dialog that they load, and executes the hide story function using those parameters if the story type is of my list above.

It’s very possible that this script may stop working if facebook changes its underlying code. If that happens, do leave a comment and I’ll update the script if I’m still pissed off enough about it.

Enjoy and let that Zuckerberg guy know that you won’t take his shit lying down.

Edit @ 12:03am: Added when you comment on a note. There may be more edits as I find more story types. If you just want to get rid of all “Recent Activity,” drag this link — F U Facebook — into your bookmark toolbar instead of the one above. I like to leave just friendings and profile edits on there so I’m tracking story types.

Edit @ 2:26am: Wow those jackasses change shit fast. Updated with new facebook script URL and added comments on photos.

I don’t actually own rocketship underpants, though I wish I did. I think that would be pretty awesome.

For those unfamiliar, Calvin says this to Hobbes after being seemingly prepared for anything only to have a totally shitty day (see comic at end of post). Credit goes to Bill Watterson, my favorite cartoonist of all time.

Some days, even what you thought were sure things will fail you. There’s really only two options on these days:

1. Try something else.
2. Call it a day.

Ideally, you could always try something else, but sometimes your other trump cards just aren’t available. My number one cure-all is to head down to Boston Harbor, but occasionally, that’s just not an option. Maybe I’m stuck in Lexington or maybe it’s raining (like it is now).

I started today thinking I would get a good chunk of work done. Walked myself over to a Starbucks, bought my usual whole milk vanilla latte with whipped cream, and started blasting the Transformers Score on my iPod. Usually this gets my mind in the right mode and I can crank out tons of work, so long as I maintain the caffeine levels. It’s kind of like the “Ballmer Peak,” just with caffeine instead of alcohol.

Latte in hand, with tabs open to phpMyAdmin and my test site, and of course, “Optimus vs. Megatron” blasting in my ear, I thought I was ready for anything.

However, two lattes in, I’ve only managed to get through my administrative tasks and do a little bit of error checking on past code. Oh well. I ended up making myself a compromise to blog about this instead of just staring out the window.

I have to meet Mariam for dinner soon, so I’m taking option 2 now. I’ve done all I can do.

Calvin & Hobbes - Lucky Rocketship Underpants

This idea came up during a chat with my good friend Dave. I had originally put together a spreadsheet with a thorough breakdown of all the features I needed to code for a particular project. Each individual component and subcomponent had a specific weight, where if I entered a “Y” into the Done column, it would be added to a total. Though all the weights are completely arbitrary, this gave me a pretty good way to eyeball the approximate progress I had made on the project. Below is a snapshot of a sample spreadsheet:

Progress Tracking Spreadsheet

Already, the spreadsheet gives a feel of progress (or lack thereof), as each individual feature has a green or red highlight depending on whether it’s finished or not.

While talking to Dave, I mentioned how I built this spreadsheet and had gone from 47% the day before to 54%, and he said to me, “Wow, that means you’re almost passing.” After that, it didn’t take long for me to add a small indicator to tell me what “grade” I had on the project.

Current Progress

This screenshot is of the actual spreadsheet I’m using to track my work. I broke my project up into three large components, weighted 60%, 35%, and 5% respectively. Of the total, I’ve completed 78.3%, earning me a grade of a C+.

My favorite part of this system is that we’ve all been conditioned by years of schooling to know exactly what these letter grades mean. In my case, a C+ is barely above average, and this motivates me to “improve my grade.” It’s been about a week since I built this spreadsheet and excluding the long weekend, I’ve made probably about an 8-10% jump each day.

I found progress to come the fastest when I had an F, but whether this was because of the “failing” grade or because I was picking off easy tasks is unclear. Either way, I’m expecting to hit the A range by the end of the week.

Next time you have a large project to do, give this a shot. If you’re decent at using Excel, a spreadsheet like this will take less than half an hour to put together, and the added motivation it provides is priceless.