Slightly Silly Spells app for Android initial release

Slightly Silly Spells app for Android is available in the Google Play Store!

101 simple, slightly silly, spells to cast for everyday life. All spells use commonly available  ingredients, if needed, to cast. No magical talent or power required.

Grouped in nine categories: Ability or Power, Animals and Insects, Appearance, Chance or Fate, Feeling or Emotion, Finances and Spending, Food, Protection, and Weather, the spells cover a multitude of circumstances, such as making you less likely to mispronounce words and feeling warmer in the sun. Share your cast spell to Facebook and Twitter.
This app and all of its content is for entertainment purposes only.

 

MedBetterBUY 5.1 Chrome extension maintenance update

Version 5.1 of the MedBetterBUY Chrome extension has been released to the Chrome Web Store.

This update patches a filtering issue caused by a recent eBay change, and should restore full functionality to the extension.

MedBetterBUY extension adds country and seller search listing filters

By user request, version 5 of the MedBetterBUY Chrome extension for use on the eBay site adds two new search listing filters, allowing users to filter out multiple countries and sellers in searches. The upload is now pending release in the Chrome Web Store and should (hopefully) be available soon.

Both filters are accessible from the Configure MedBetterBUY page (not the context menu). If you wish to list multiple countries or sellers, simply separate each by a comma. For example:



Currently the extension only works with the USA eBay site. If you need MedBetterBUY for a different country, let me know and I'll check what would need to be done to add that support.

MedBetterBUY Chrome extension for eBay updated with three new filters

By user request, the MedBetterBUY Chrome extension version 4.0 update, for use on the eBay site, adds three new listing filters: Pre-Owned, Open box, and Refurbished.

Each of the three new filters can be selected from the context menu, as well as set on the Configure MedBetterBUY page. They operate in the same fashion as the previous hide Top Seller entries option.

MedBetterDNA 5.1 update allows full length notes display on DNA results summary

MedBetterDNA 5.1 extension for the Chrome browser adds a new option called "show full length Notes". This option displays up to 99 lines of entry notes on the DNA results summary, rather than the AncestryDNA default of 2 lines.

Why limit it to 99 lines? Because when I set the extension to allow any number of lines, the browser ignored it. (Browser internals can occasionally misbehave.) Regardless, 99 lines seems like enough for almost any useful purpose, but if I'm wrong, someone should let me know, and probably will.

MedBetterDNA version 5.0 supports AncestryDNA new site with over 200 filters

MedBetterDNA has been updated to work with the July 1st, 2019 major site revision on the AncestryDNA site and is available at the Chrome Web Store. This is an almost complete rewrite from earlier versions of the extension.

The biggest change is that MedBetterDNA now supports 100 filters each to only show or hide AncestryDNA DNA Matches page entries based on the notes in an entry. If you place a hashtag (a word prefaced by a '#') in the notes, MedBetterDNA will detect and can filter out those entries with those notes from view, or only show those entries with the notes containing that hashtag or others. Filters can be up to 100 characters long.

Note that MedBetterDNA will match any hashtag that contains the word it's looking for, even if there are extra letters or symbols at the end of the match, e.g. the filter "cow" matches #cow, #cows, and #cowabunga. Spaces are not allowed in filters and will be removed if added.

You can turn off and on filters through the context menu settings "show only with Notes hashtags" and "hide all with Notes hashtags" and clicking on the desired filter. To input the hashtags themselves, navigate to the Configure MedBetterDNA page via the context menu "Configure options" or the Browser toolbar MedBetterDNA icon dropdown menu or the main browser Extensions page settings.

Keeping one filter from the previous versions, MedBetterDNA allows users to filter out any entries on the DNA matches page of AncestryDNA without a profile picture by unchecking show No Profile Photo Entries in the context menu entry for MedBetterDNA.

A few quick questions:

• Can I really put in 100 filters each? Yes, but for performance and memory reasons, you may not want to go full ham on them. I only tested operations with a handful, but each filter will incrementally add to runtime performance overhead. 100 may not be reasonably achievable. I was too lazy to put in 100 unique filters and test them all myself to see how bad things got.
• Are there any known bugs? Nope, but given the complexity of the extension and the first release of an effectively ground-up rewrite, there are probably a couple lurking. Let me know if you see one and I'll try to fix it.
• I briefly see some entries before they are filtered out. You will see this at times, it's a race between the browser pulling more entries and displaying them, and the extension catching the entries and filtering them out.  Sometimes the browser wins by a fraction of a second.
• If I filter out most entries, I can't scroll. Actually you can keep scrolling on a blank page and you should see an entry with the note or notes which the filters allow, assuming there are any. Because entries are dynamically loaded by the AncestryDNA website, you may have to keep scrolling for a while, even if you don't see anything (that is, all the entries are still there, but simply hidden from view.)
• I had to refresh the DNA matches page after I Saved settings on the configuration page for the extension to come back. Yup. That's how it works. Chrome has a bad habit of retaining older context menu settings on anything less than a full reload, so the configuration page Save button will reload the entire extension to flush them out.
• Can I set the filters so that no entries will ever be displayed, e.g. simultaneously have a Show only and a Hide All filter active? Absolutely, there's no AI at work. The extension will filter what you tell it, even if it seems a completely useless task.

New MedBetterDNA extension is planned and coming for the major AncestryDNA site update

I am indeed working on a new release of MedBetterDNA Chrome browser extension for the AncestryDNA site that will have at least two unique filters not found in the major AncestryDNA site update of July 1st, 2019.

Barring major issues, I anticipate a first release within the first half of July 2019. It will probably be fairly underpowered compared to the final version of the previous site's MedBetterDNA features, but it will continue to be enhanced and improved based on user feedback and requests. Significant filtering enhancements appear to remain a possibility with the new site. However, the extension will undergo what is almost a complete rewrite from scratch, so this will take time.

Honestly, for all the filter ideas AncestryDNA used in their update that were in my original extension, I think they ought to give me a free AncestryDNA subscription for life, but I am not so silly as to expect such a thing. They are certainly under no legal or moral obligation to do so.

MedBetterDNA now supports filtering out AncestryDNA results by Unlinked Tree

MedBetterDNA version 4.3, updated to add the feature of filtering by Unlinked Tree results. Unlinked Tree entries are normally shown on the AncestryDNA results page, but can be hidden from view via the standard context menu checkmark, or the extension options page.

That is all.

MedBetterDNA 4.1 reintroduces No Trees filtering of AncestryDNA results

MedBetterDNA version 4.1, updated to reintroduce the previous feature of filtering by No Trees results, while we wait for the AncestryDNA beta to become a public release. No Trees entries are normally shown on the AncestryDNA results page, but can be hidden from view via the standard context menu checkmark, or the extension options page.

Also, minor wording changes to the context menu and elsewhere, based on user feedback.

MedBetterWTHAY updated, new popup information window in family tree

MedBetterWTHAY, a Chrome extension for use with the Ancestry site to display extra family information in a popup window, has been updated with a new feature. It now shows a popup window of a person's relationship to you when the cursor is placed, or hovered, over that person's information box on the family tree page.

This option is only available for the top-down or vertical family tree display, and not the sideways or horizontal family tree display. It will activate after one second of hovering the mouse over any family tree entry.

A red line at the top of the box will show when the feature is activated by the mouse hover, and then there is a delay of varying time (less than one to several seconds) while the extension requests and loads the relationship information from the Ancestry site.

The original popup window showing Relationship and LifeStory for Find Person listings continues to operate as before.

I personally use this feature of the MedBetterWTHAY extension when I'm deep in the family tree and start to lose track of exactly who the heck I'm looking at.

Please note, the new family tree relationship is internally a lot more fiddly and fragile than other parts of the extension, or other Ancestry-related extensions. If the Ancestry site changes even a little bit, I would be wholly unsurprised if the change caused this feature to stop working properly. Just let me know and I'll see if I can make it all work again.

MedBetterWTHAY updated for Canada, Australia, UK site support

MedBetterWTHAY Chrome browser extension for the Ancestry website has been updated. Version 1.1 adds support for Ancestry sites of Canada, Australia, and the UK.

That is all.

New MedBetterWTHAY Chrome browser extension released

MedBetterWTHAY is a Chrome browser extension for use with the Ancestry website to enhance the Search All People feature available from the Chrome Web Store. It displays a popup window that shows the Relationship (to you) and LifeStory of a person when the cursor is placed, or hovered, over that person's Search entry. This can be useful, for example, to more easily determine people who have a family tree entry, but are not attached to your main family tree, also known as orphans or islands.

Install the extension and navigate to your family tree page, select Find Person and List of All People from the right dropdown menu. From this page, or a specific search on this page, hover the cursor over any person's name whom you are interested in seeing further information. After two seconds, you will see a red line appear under their name. This indicates the extension is loading information from the Ancestry website. When the information is retrieved, a popup window containing the Relationship and Lifestory is displayed.

Some entries may have a blank LifeStory if there is no information on record, but all entries should have a Relationship if they are connected to the main family tree. If you see a blank Relationship, this is a strong indication that the entry is an unattached "island" and can either be removed, or possibly reconnected, to the main tree.

Verify that the entry is truly unattached by clicking the person's listing link to see the their information before deleting them. An entry with no relationship to you listed below their name means that they have no or an unknown connection to your family tree.

I have personally used MedBetterWTHAY to detect and remove over 200 people, as well as over two dozen multi-person subtrees not attached to the main tree. Prior to the extension popup, I needed to click each person's entry and view their information page to check their relationship to my family tree.
Of course, this is not the only purpose for the extension. You may also use it to quickly view more information about a person in the Search listing that you are interested in or curious about.

Please note that while the two second delay before the red line is always present (to avoid constantly loading pages as you move the cursor about the page), the time after that is purely dependent on the time spent loading the information from the site. If you have a slow connection, or the Ancestry server is bogged down or otherwise acting like a slug, it may take a while to view the information. At worst case here (so far), I have seen delays of around five seconds to retrieve information when the Ancestry server is engaged in other tasks of vital importance.

MedBetterBUY Chrome extension has new filter features

The Chrome browser extension MedBetterBUY for USA eBay users has been updated and is available in the Chrome web store.

Version 3.0 of MedBetterBUY adds support for filtering (hiding) search listings with zero bids or one or more bids, by user request. Remember that Seller information must be checked in Customize your search, so that bid information shows up in the search listings. (Yes, it is possible to check both and have no listings shown, unless you also include Buy It Now and other non-Auction listings in the Buying Format.)

On the administrative side of things, I noticed that my support email for the blog has not always received a notice of comments pending moderation, leading to a few comments being held in limbo for several months. After clearing out the old comments, I added a second notification email to hopefully reduce the possibility of this issue recurring.

MedBetterDNA updated, including filter on Profile Photos

MedBetterDNA version 4.0 has been released for the Chrome browser and adds the filter option: "show No Profile Photo". The option is on by default to show AncestryDNA Results listings regardless of whether they have a profile photo (i.e. the standard behavior without MedBetterDNA active). If the option is unchecked, only listings with a profile photo are shown, and the rest are filtered from view.

I added the picture filter option to easily look at photos of people for a pattern of family resemblance (typically not so much). Plus the dog and cat pictures can be cute. Note that a few photos will remain generic genderless profile images, as those are internally processed as a photo by the site. Also, a photo may pop into view after a brief delay, as Ancestry loads photos separately.

The No Tree and Locked Tree filter options were removed. Hopefully, this is a temporary change. The AncestryDNA site recently changed how the tree information is displayed on the listings. For my results, the change has been unstable, Usually I see a loading/wait icon on the results page without ever showing the Tree-based information. Occasionally the information does display, but not reliably enough to make and test an update to the extension to support filtering on it. I anticipate that eventually this situation will resolve itself and Tree-based filtering will return after a new update.

Miscellaneous and minor behind-the-scenes program changes were made to maintain full compatibility with the most recent versions of the Chrome browser with tighter security restrictions.

Another option was introduced that might be of interest to a few people: "Donate to development". A user asked me about donating to reward or encourage further development of the extension. I created and added a link to a Ko-fi account for those who might be interested.

Useful feedback and requests continue to be encouraged.

MedBetterBuy version 1.2 update

MedBetterBuy version 1.2 update is available, a Chrome browser extension for use with eBay.

This version fixes an incompatibility with a recent eBay site change which caused the rating count and percentage filtering for sellers to fail.

Chrome extension Nancy for Metafilter updated

The Chrome extension Nancy used for filtering of Metafilter site's posts and comments has been updated to version 1.4. The version supports both http and https Metafilter links for browser permissions, which fixes a potential problem using the extension with https addresses.

If you have problems with the update or using the extension, please post to support with the issue details.

MedBetterDNA extension update double filters to 8 each

MedBetterDNA has been updated to version 3.0. 

By user request, the Chrome extension MedBetterDNA, used for actively filtering AncestryDNA results (and showing notes on the main results page) has been updated to version 3.0, supporting eight hashtag filters for "show only" and "remove all" filters. This is double the previous maximum of four hashtag filters. Note that using more filters may increase time to fully process a Results page.

In anticipation of future similar requests, please also note that further increasing the number of filters isn't simply a matter of pumping up a number in the extension code. The extension is pushing the limits with the current code structure, and adding more filters in the future, if ever, will likely require significant rewrites to large portions of the extension's program code. I'm not saying it won't ever happen, I'm saying it won't happen soon or easy.

Post to support if you experience problems with the update or extension operation.

MedBetterBuy, new Chrome extension for eBay to filter listings by Seller rating and info

The new Chrome browser extension MedBetterBuy version 1.0 has been uploaded and is available for download from the Chrome Web Store.

MedBetterBuy is designed for eBay users who want greater control over their search results. The extension filters eBay searches to hide item entries from sellers who have a feedback score or rating percentage below or above values you specify, as well as the ability to filter out Top-rated sellers.

IMPORTANT: To use this script, check the Seller Information box in Show details of View Customize, which will display seller information in listings. Choose List View and not Gallery View. Otherwise, the information to filter will not be available, and MedBetterBuy will not work.

MedBetterBuy works via the context menu, generally accessed through right click or control-click of the mouse. There are five possible filters to apply to search listing from the menu: if a listing is from a top seller, a minimum and maximum rating percentage for the seller in a listing, and a minimum and maximum rating count for the seller in a listing.

The values for minimum and maximum can be set at the Configure options pages, which is the last selection on MedBetterBuy's context menu. Each filter can be checked on and off from the context menu. The current total of filtered out (not visible) listing is shown on the first line of the context menu.

Always refresh or reload the results page listing after changing a value, or checking and unchecking a filter. Although the page can dynamically change, the filter count and previously hidden entries may not properly update without a page refresh.

This extension has been tested with registered and unregistered use of USA's ebay.com. Other country sites currently use different internal website patterns. Support for more countries may be added later, based on user requests and feedback, as well as the effort to include more patterns.

For the contrary-minded, there is no prohibition or check against choosing values which will hide all unsponsored items in a listing, e.g. a Rating Score of greater than 100 will filter out all entries, as will a minimum count higher than the maximum. Zero values are ignored and treated as not active/checked.

Note that eBay can update–and have previously updated–their sites' structure in ways which cause the extension to fail, as it depends on a predictable internal pattern. Please report if MedBetterBuy fails after a site update, so it can be revised to work with eBay's modified website structure, if feasible.

 MedBetterBuy is based on the abef (A Better eBay Filter) Greasemonkey script that I developed and first released several years ago.

(because all the good names were already taken)

Screenshots:

Abef Greasemonkey Script update

The Greasemonkey script Abef (A Better eBay Filter) has been updated with code revisions by Greasy Fork user kolalok for latest Greasemonkey compatibility and is available at the Grease Fork script repository.

Below is a write-up of the original Abef Greasemonkey script. Note that I am, preliminarily, working on a Chrome extension which provide similar features to the script, although no release date is available and it may not work out as planned.

A Better eBay Filter is a script designed for users of eBay. It filters eBay searches to hide item entries from sellers who have a feedback score or positive percentage below values you specify, or above for feedback score, or filter out Top-rated sellers. The input values can be dynamically changed to filter items into or out of view. Last values are saved between browsing sessions. Use A Better eBay Filter to winnow the display of auctions to sellers that match your preferences. The script has been tested on USA's ebay.com, Canada's ebay.ca, and UK's ebay.co.uk sites. It may work with other country sites, depending on whether they match the internals of the tested eBay sites.

NOTE: For this script to work properly, choose List View (not Gallery View), and turn on the Seller details option in Customize View, so that the seller information is displayed in the listings.

A Better eBay Filter requires seller feedback information to be displayed on each item entry so it can filter the results. After installing A Better eBay Filter, go to a listing or search screen. Click the View link at the top of the listings and choose Customize. This will navigate you to the Customize your search page. On that page, you should see a selection titled Seller Information. Check the box so that seller information is displayed in listing views. Note the exact wording may change depending on the site's native language.

After installation and setup, A Better eBay filter will display two status lines immediately below the basic Search line. The first status line shows the minimum feedback score and positive feedback percentage necessary to display an item entry. The initial values of 50 and 98.5 are forgiving, but easy to change. In addition, you may specify a maximum feedback score, or leave it blank if you do not wish a maximum: zero is not the same as blank. The default is blank (no maximum). In addition, there is a checkbox to filter out Top-rated Sellers. The second line displays an Update Filter button and the current number of items hidden from view by the filter.

You can change the score and percentage values to whatever you want. For example, if you do not want to hide new user auctions, you can change the feedback score to 1 (or 0) and see those auctions. Should you change a value, the filtered items message changes to a Values changed. message. This is an indication to press the Update Filter button to update the display with the new filter constraints. Each time you press Update Filter, the current values are stored for a future browser session or search/listing page display. You are not prohibited from choosing values which will hide all items, e.g. a Minimum positive feedback input of greater than 100 will filter out all entries, as will a minimum score higher than the maximum.

MedBetterDNA 2.2 update

MedBetterDNA  has been updated to version 2.2.

Version 2.2 is a fairly minor revision. It allows using filters on Shared Matches pages for a specific member with matching DNA.

This was accomplished by making the pattern for several address links less restrictive. Fortunately, the extension continues to work on the new pages, though it was not originally designed for them.

Leave a note if you have any questions or feedback. Thank you.