Thaddeus.net Blog

I created this extension about a month ago but I realized that it would probably get lost in the noise of Twitter, so I decided to write a quick blog post about it to give it a bit longer lifespan.

If you're a user of Instapaper, you might miss the auto-archive feature they used to have. It would automatically archive an article when you clicked on it to read it. At the time that they removed the feature, I created FIFO Links, which uses HTML5 storage to accomplish the same thing. The catch with FIFO Links is that it didn't provide shared storage; it only worked in one browser.

Recently, I decided that I should give Instapaper another shot (driven mostly by support for Instapaper in Reeder, the excellent RSS app for iPad). So as a result, I created a Safari extension that revives Instapaper's auto-archive feature.

You can download it here (you might need to option click that link to download it). Just double-click the package after it downloads and it will be installed in Safari. If you're curious about the source code, it's available on Github.

I just launched a new section on Thaddeus.net: Reviews.

I am a frequent consumer of various forms of media. That includes everything from TV to movies to books to blogs to podcasts. In a much older version of Thaddeus.net, I included a section of movie reviews where I would review every movie I watched on Netflix. I don't watch as many movies as I used to, but I still thought it would be nice to have a way to share my thoughts on what I see, read, or do.

This section won't be limited to media either. I will probably also include restaurants, parks, companies, and just about anything else that can be rated. So far, I have just imported my old reviews from the Netflix days, but I intended to add more content on a regular basis. So make sure to grab the RSS feed and stay up-to-date

I was talking to a friend recently about tax philosophy and was reminded of the fact that most people don't understand how tax brackets work. Many people know what tax bracket they're in (e.g. 28%), but they don't realize that doesn't mean that they pay a flat 28% before deductions. Taxes in the US are bracketed, so millionaires pay the same amount as the minimum wage earner at the burger joint down the street on the first few thousand dollars they earn.

Read on for a detailed explanation and what it means for tax policy.

I recently needed to make some updates to Thaddeus.net and got frustrated by the hassle of FTPing into my server and editing the HTML by hand for a simple update. A month ago, I started playing with Symphony CMS for my hobby site and grew to like the approach. So, I decided that it would be worth doing a bit of an overhaul on Thaddeus.net to make my life easier and keep learning in the process.

When Apple announced the iPad I figured it would be one of the first devices to bring some real competition to the Kindle. I know the Nook is also real competition, but the LCD vs. e-ink battle is the one that I'm most interested in. Now that I have an iPad and have had a week to play with it and even read a few chapters of a book on it, i figured I would offer my thoughts on the two devices and which one is the winner in the e-reader war.

One of the few things that people on both sides of the aisle agree on when it comes to health care reform is that there should be some level of protection for people with preexisting conditions. For all the talk of repeal, I don't think you'll see a single Republican candidate this Fall talking about getting rid of that provision in the bill.

One of the biggest points of division is with the individual mandate that requires people to have health insurance. Several attorneys general across the country are today threatening to sue to prevent the individual mandate and you hear a lot of conservatives decrying the idea of forcing people to pay for a service.

What most people don't realize is that the two policy questions are very tightly intertwined.

I recently tackled the problem in Blankless of hiding last year's gift suggestions. The problem is that I wanted to apply a named scope based on the user preferences. Further complicating things, I couldn't simply refer to that named scope wherever I needed it, because that would have involved a) a lot of repeating myself and b) a lot of hunting through every file for every reference to gifts.