[UPDATE: Feh. This only works for certain kinds of docs, like Cocoa APIs. I may try to make it work more generally when I get a chance, but it probably works for most of the cases I care about, so I may not bother.]

I wrote a quick and dirty bookmarklet that navigates from a local documentation file to the online ADC version of that file. To get the bookmarklet, drag the following link to your browser's bookmark bar: toadcurl.

To test, use your browser to open the local doc file for, say, NSString. You can easily do this from AppKiDo or the Xcode doc window. Once you have the page displayed, click the "toadcurl" bookmarklet and you should go here.

I sometimes want to do this for two reasons:

1. I might wonder if the online version is newer; and
2. I might want to paste the online URL into an email, rather than a file:// URL that might not work for the people I'm emailing to, depending on what version of Xcode they're running and where they have the Dev Tools installed.

I originally named it "toADCurl", since it generates a URL that links to an ADC page, but changed it to all lowercase because I liked the random phrase "toad curl". Of course you can name it whatever you want.

I've only tested with Xcode 3. If it doesn't work for earlier versions, perhaps someone could send me a fix?

It's entirely possible there's already a way to do this that I missed. If so, I'd love to know about it.

Maybe I'm the last to know this, but the town motto for Springfield, home of The Simpsons, is "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."

May we all learn to embiggen those around us.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. — Dr. Howard Thurman

I'd love to know where and when these words were spoken or written. Google turns up a lot of references to the quote but I haven't seen whether Dr. Thurman wrote it in an essay or said it in a speech or what.

I have short legs. When I'm sitting and I put a laptop on my lap, it tends to slide off.

To address this, I got a Silpat baking mat to put on my lap, under the laptop. I've only used it a few minutes, but so far it's quite comfortable with excellent grip, and my MacBook Pro hasn't budged.

I don't think the mat is intended as an insulator — indeed, I assume it's supposed to transfer heat from your baking pan to your cookies — but it does protect my legs a little from the heat of the laptop's aluminum bottom.

As an extra bonus, this helps me keep my wrists at a good angle by having the keyboard very low.

I wonder if I'm the first to think of this.

Amid all the hubbub around Steve Jobs's stepping aside for a few months, I finally see a reference — albeit a one-word reference — to his skills as a negotiator:

Jobs is widely viewed as Apple’s chief innovator, dealmaker, leader, deeply involved in minute decisions, inextricably tied to Apple’s brand.

The iTunes Store and the iPhone are widely recognized for technical and design excellence, but I doubt they could have happened without Steve's ruthless negotiations with the music companies and AT&T, respectively.

The above quote is from an Edible Apple article that quotes RBC analyst Mike Bramsky, who lowered his target price for AAPL to $70.