Discreet Web Surfing

Does anyone know if there is a way to make the TikiCentral web site show up with a white background and only black text?

It certainly makes it easier for me to keep a TC window open while I am working without drawing unnecessary attention.

Setting your preferences to 'Old School' is a good start. Doesn't get rid of the colourful ad's, though.

My trick at work is to copy any decent articles I want to read into notepad as text, then read at leisure, though that's not something that seems to work with Tiki Central.

If I'm really bored, I read e-books downloaded from Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org

Trader Woody

You can receive Tiki Central postings in your e-mail, and no one is the wiser. :)

Hanford, is there a possibility of an RSS feed?

Otherwise I'd say go the email route.

You could, as TW suggested, set your preferences to old school, and then turn off images in your browser. That would kill about 90% of the color. Alternately, you could use a text only browser like Lynx. You could also probably write a Firefox extension that does this.

Its not so much surfing TC, its shouting all day that I need the disguies for. Perhaps there could be different hsout windows, and one that looks like a word document or Excel spread sheet. hahah kidding!

Ok, not really.

On 2005-01-13 20:00, tikifish wrote:
Its not so much surfing TC, its shouting all day that I need the disguies for. Perhaps there could be different hsout windows, and one that looks like a word document or Excel spread sheet. hahah kidding!

Ok, not really.

I have shout going pretty much non-stop in the upper corner of my monitor. I used to minimize it whenever management came around - but I kinda stopped caring long ago....

"Yeah I'm chatting! It's my 15 minute break!!!"

Re: Old School
A lot of the new features that I added myself have the TC colors hard-coded in them (like warnings, etc). So, Old School may make features hard to read.

Re: RSS Feed
Quite a possibility. Would you want 1 feed per forum? Give me details here ...

Re: Email
A lot of the new forums are not emailed out yet. I need to rewrite the email code as it was the first thing I programmed and really not scalable at all.

~Hanford

On 2005-01-14 12:17, Tangaroa wrote:
"Yeah I'm chatting! It's my 15 minute break!!!"

We have a new corporate stooge who checks everyone's web history... often. I can't even use the "break" excuse. I have to clear out my log & temp files every night.

-Z

On 2005-01-14 16:10, Feelin' Zombified wrote:

On 2005-01-14 12:17, Tangaroa wrote:
"Yeah I'm chatting! It's my 15 minute break!!!"

You could write a batch file that clears them out, then run that manually or automatically at startup.
(Assuming youre using windows)

We have a new corporate stooge who checks everyone's web history... often. I can't even use the "break" excuse. I have to clear out my log & temp files every night.

-Z

Monkeyman, If you are using Microsoft Explorer, Open it up and go to the TC pages. On the top of the page Click and open "Tools".
The "General" tab that opens has an "accessibility button on the bottom right, Click it.
On the top there is a check box that says "Ignore colors specified on webpages"
Click that and watch TC on a White background
You may need to restart Explorer...
Click OK and OK and there you gooooo.

[ Edited by: Benzart on 2005-01-14 19:49 ]

AND.. If you are using Firefox or Netscape.
Click on "Tools" on the tool bar and go down to "Options" at the bottom of the list and open that.
On the Left on top click on the "General" section
Now slide down to the section that offers "Fonts and Colors" as a choice and slide ofer to the "fonts&colors" button all the way over on the right. Click it toopen it.Look on the bottom left and see where it says"Always Use MyText: and Background:
Use the arrow to choose the color you want your font in today and choose a color you would like to see your Backgroung to be today
Put a check in the empty box th=at says "Use system colors"
Click OK and OK again
Now YOU are the BOSS Incharge of the colord of back ground and colors of the font that will be telling on you todayyThats it.. Enjoy and don't mention MY Name, I never knew those people...ENJOY.BUT... I gotta tell you it's Wierdwith a switched backgroundTotally not right, but you may like it.
Thanks again.
Benzart

Ah yes! Those were the days! If I'd only dared "chat" on TC especially in the weeks knowing I was being cut. I did have a lot of leeway on the browsing, our dept was graphics and we were constantly searching the web for all kinds of obscure images. None the less, it wouldn't have been considered too odd if titles like "New Guinea" and "Moai" came up in my internet history.

One trick you can use: Take a screen-capture of a "work appropriate" screen and set that image as a screen-saver! At the touch of a button your in the clear!
-FB

I hope I am not giving the wrong idea here. Its not like I spend a disproportionate time on the web. I do have a busy day from start to finish and it could easily be determined if I wasnt getting my work done.

The problem is that I may work on a single spreadsheet or project for 3-4 hours straight (with no "fresh air","coke machine" or "smoke breaks") but it always seems that if I have the web open for two stinking minutes someone inevitably walks past my desk and sees it. The giant word TIKI is easy to read from a distance.

The folks seeing it are not I.T. gestapo or my managers, its just the peer group sizing you up and making generalizations about your entire work day based on what they see happening on your screen during that two minutes.

Yes it could be my own paranoia and they could not know anything or not care but it still bugs me. Yes I know I could also just not check TC while at work but sometimes its just the break in the action I need to let my brain discharge.

Thanks everyone for your very real and helpful answers.

On 2005-01-15 00:02, Monkeyman wrote:
...but it always seems that if I have the web open for two stinking minutes someone inevitably walks past my desk and sees it. The giant word TIKI is easy to read from a distance.

On 2005-01-15 00:02, Monkeyman wrote:
...but it always seems that if I have the web open for two stinking minutes someone inevitably walks past my desk and sees it. The giant word TIKI is easy to read from a distance.

I feel your pain, MM. I get the same feeling, and I work in a videogame company! I'm way off in the corner and no one ever comes around, but invariably my supe will come around with some biz right as I'm crusin' TC. In 7 months there I think this has happened like 4 times. Work 4 hours straight, pop open TC, and bingo! It's hard to not think that there's some BIG LIST of 'net offenses out there that the IT geek is compiling. We are teh paranoid. I'm watching you right now!

Did my instructions work for anyone? It looks like the change needs to be made each time you open Firefox, but is permenant in Explorer And it is universal so All your web pages will have your designated background color.

The tips Worked but if you turn off all the images then the buttons for submitting replying and the like are not easy to find. Just a bunch of blank boxes.

It takes some getting used to. I will need to use the force to figure out which box to click. Maybe my magic 8 ball could help.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

On 2005-01-14 13:34, hanford_lemoore wrote:
Re: Old School
A lot of the new features that I added myself have the TC colors hard-coded in them (like warnings, etc). So, Old School may make features hard to read.

I actually find it makes it a lot clearer, but perhaps they all look a bit different on different PC's. I've not noticed anything that makes it diificult to read at all in terms of codings.

Trader Woody

Monkeyman!
No More Tiki For You!
Back to work!
Love,
Your Boss

On the issue of RSS, it would be nice to get one feed from all the forums with the new stuff.

One RSS feed per forum. If i subscribe to TC RSS, I don't want bilge in there. It also let's you target your audience. Tiki drinks RSS on my reecipe page, locating Tiki on my Places page...

RSS Feeds are possible. it's on my todo list.

UPDATE: 9/27: they're done: RSS Feeds Beta

[ Edited by: hanford_lemoore 2005-09-27 16:16 ]

Hahaha, I catch my co-workers goofing off on the interweb all the time. Both of my bosses have walked up when TC was open, once it was to the 'Pirate Costume Thread' page that Unga had posted the picture of his 'hot pirate date' and my boss wanted to see the hot pirate... the other boss walked up when I was looking at the cool modern house down on the Peninsula, and he wanted to see the house & furniture. I call it 'research'

:)

It's not an RSS feed for Tiki Central, but it may be the next best thing:

http://blog.humuhumu.com/feed/

That's the RSS feed for my new tiki blog, Humu Kon Tiki. More details about the blog here: http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=16316&forum=1&2

Critiki also has an RSS feed, notifying of the latest updates and additions to the database: http://www.critiki.com/updates.xml

GOD DAMN ,MONKEYMAN, you gotta get outta there. RUN .....RUN FAST ,RUN FAR ,RUN NOW. before we read about you in a clock tower with a AK 47