Here's one of those things that will bind your heart to FireFox and make you vow never to go back to that boring Internet Explorer even if it does have tabs and RSS in it: Smart Keywords.

Yes, after a quick look at this page (or, for those who need a complete walkthrough), you too can make it easy to search your favorite sites. I just type wiki Derek Webb to find the latest on a favorite artist. Or, I also type whois inreview.com from time to time because I kinda want the domain. And, as the FireFox page points out, any movie fan should have imdb Stephen Tobolowsky to look up those obscure actors that are everywhere and have cool names.

Ha! I think that picture's hilarious. John Reuben is my guilty pleasure, if you know what I mean. I know he's not the best rapper ever, but I identify with him a bit, he's my type of humor, and he's definitely not afraid to push the boundaries. Just to show you all the fun, here's a couple things on YouTube (after the jump):

If you're in Minnesota, spend your $8 wisely to check out his February 9th show at Club 3 Degrees. Hey, I'll probably be there, but that's not why you're planning on going. Also, check out Word of Mouth, in stores and online February 6th.

Did you know that you can do many things in the Google search box? Sure, it might search the web for it, but the real answer comes up first. Here's some examples:

• 20+1.234pi and other such queries turns Google into a calculator.
• 10.95 British Pounds in US Dollars will tell me how much a delirious? CD would cost if I import it.
• define:christian gives me definitions from around the internet.
• AAPL will give me a quick look at the stock information and plenty of places to research more.
• Curse of the Golden Flower will show me some movie times of nearby theaters if I give it a location.
• John Smith Minneapolis will return a list of phonebook results.
• Population of Minnesota will spit out the answer to the question.
• 541 will tell me where an area code is located in.
• 1Z9999W99999999999 will get me to the status page of my UPS package quickly.
• site:cmusicweb.com the elms will give me a search for "the elms" but only on cMusicWeb.com.

Use those and more to power your searching and research.

One of my least favorite parts about CakePHP (and many open-source projects that are not yet fully mainstream) is that there's very sparse documentation, if any at all.

Such was the case this morning. I knew I could use the finderQuery variable for a model to modify the behavior of the HABTM relationship. The problem is that the finderQuery needs the value of that model's user ID. I tried various queries on the CakePHP site and Google to find the answer, but could not find it hardly anywhere.

In the end, I found it via Google in the Cake Wiki. But CakePHP people are saying, "But the Wiki has been closed." Yes, the Wiki pages now say, "Maintaining the wiki became a bit too much to handle, so we created the Bakery to become the central location of all information related to CakePHP." Thankfully, Google still has a cache of these items so that I could find the data I was looking for.

I found that the variables {$__cakeID__$} and {$__cakeForeignKey__$} are the magic formula for making your own queries. Worked like a charm.

The Internet, in my opinion, is supposed to be a wealth of data. I only very hesitantly remove any data in the hope that it will be someday useful to someone. In this case, just because someone does not maintain the site should not mean it has to be closed and inaccessible. If the site is not updated or maintained well, just put a blurb saying so at the top or bottom of the page and leave the resources for people to find if they need them. Mentioning the functionality in an out-of-date document is better than in no document at all.