Library Lookup for SFPL update

Posted on August 4, 2026 by Neil McAllister

Icon of a stack of books

Hey, after a long absence, I’ve finally updated my San Francisco Public Library Chrome extension.

Long story short, I cooked up a cute little Chrome extension where, whenever you’re browsing a book listing on Amazon.com, it will automatically look up that book’s ISBN and let you know if it’s available at the San Francisco Public Library. Thinking of buying a book? Maybe you can save some money (and support your community) by picking up a copy at the library.

The extension is confirmed to work on Microsoft Edge, and it will probably work on any other Chromium-based browser, too. You can install it from the Chrome Web Store here.

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I was a teenage computer virus author

Posted on April 18, 2021 by Neil McAllister

NOTE: A version of this essay originally appeared at The Register in 2015.

I was 17 years old, I had nothing to do, and I wanted to teach myself PC programming. So I decided to write a computer virus.

Don’t worry. The two viruses that I ended up writing – Leprosy and Leprosy-B – were designed to infect MS-DOS computers. They knew nothing about the internet, Windows, stealing people’s data, or anything remotely sophisticated, because neither did I at the time. And today, both viruses are as dead as smallpox.

My reasons for wanting to write software that trashed other people’s PCs weren’t that complex. For starters, as I said, I was 17. Petty vandalism kind of comes with the territory. Maybe sticking to computers was a better idea.

I was already a bit of a hacker, having taught myself Basic, Pascal, assembly language, and Forth on an Apple ][ years earlier. But the PC worked differently, and I wanted to figure it out.

Perhaps the main reason, though, was that I was a bit full of myself and I wanted to do something about the arrogance that I felt existed in the underground computer scene at the time. I just wanted to prove to the scenesters that even an idiot who didn’t really know how to program could write a virus. » More... » →

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LibraryLookup updated to version 0.3.2

Posted on November 27, 2018 by Neil McAllister

I’m not sure when my LibraryLookup extension for Chrome browsers stopped working, but when I noticed it wasn’t, I took some time out to knock it back into shape. For those not familiar with the extension, it watches when you’re browsing Amazon and when it sees you looking at a book or other item that’s available from the San Francisco Public Library, it inserts a link into the Amazon page where you can find a copy or request one be shipped to your local branch. Chrome users can install it here. » More... » →

LibraryLookup for Google Chrome

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Neil McAllister

I’ve written a new version of my LibraryLookup script for the San Francisco Public Library that works with Google’s Chrome browser. If you’re running Chrome, you can try it out by clicking this link. It should work regardless of your OS platform — in fact, it even works on Chromebooks! Note that this version of the script is a substantial rewrite from the Firefox version, so I’ll be especially interested to hear any bug reports. It works pretty well for me so far, but I still don’t use Chrome as my main browser.

Also, note that because LibraryLookup uses cross-site scripting, it has to run as a Background Page in Chrome, because of the way the browser was designed. That means it’s consuming some small amount of memory all the time, even when you’re not browsing Amazon. The amount of resources used should be negligible, but you should be aware of this before you install it. Enjoy!

Comic Book Color Swatches for Photoshop

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Neil McAllister

A recent blog post by Ed Piskor generated some interest in the old craft of coloring comic books in the days before comics were printed using full-process color. Ed created a chart showing all 64 colors available in most comics of the bygone era. I also enjoyed an article at the CO2 Comics Blog that went into depth on the classic comics coloring process and how it evolved over the years. What I thought was missing, however, was an easy way for folks to use the same colors to get a “Silver Age” effect in their own comics. To that end, I wrote a script to generate a swatch palette for use in Photoshop, Illustrator, or other graphics software. But I didn’t stop there! I also created palettes that recreated the even-more-limited Golden Age palette, as well as the expanded palettes that began to appear in the 1980s. You can download my palettes here. » More... » →

Eee PC 901 fan noise fixed

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Neil McAllister

Some of you may remember my adventures disassembling my BlackBerry 8120 to repair a cracked LCD screen. I decided to dive into amateur electronics repair once more this morning, this time to address fan noise on my Eee PC 901.

The problem had been growing for some time, to the point that a loud, very noticeable buzzing would commence whenever my Eee PC’s fan kicked in. A Google search revealed a possible cause: a piece of plastic tape dipping into the fan blades as it spun. After cracking the case, disassembling, and reassembling the netbook, I can confirm that this was in fact what was happening. » More... » →

Search OneNote 2010 Beta in Windows x64

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Neil McAllister

An old bug seems to have resurfaced in the current build of Office 2010 Beta. Normally, you should be able to use Windows Desktop Search to return search results from your OneNote notebooks. But on 64-bit versions of Windows, while the search results show up, they have generic Explorer icons and clicking on them doesn’t do anything. The problem is that the system isn’t seeing the right version of the OneNote Search Connector DLL. If you’re seeing this problem, read on to find out how to get your searches working properly on Windows x64. » More... » →

Greasemonkey fix for /. user page

Posted on December 31, 2008 by Neil McAllister

I’m singularly unimpressed with the Slashdot gang’s attempts to reinvent the site’s UI. Every new change seems to make the interface uglier, more bloated, and harder to use. I liked the mechanics of the old, pre-AJAX site just fine, thank you.

But the most recent insult was the sudden, unexpected change of the User page. Previously, if you clicked on your username in the upper lefthand corner, it would take you to a page that listed your recent comments. Now you get dumped to a Firehose page, forcing you to do an extra page load to get to where you’re going — and don’t get me started on Firehose.

So I decided to write a Greasemonkey script to fix it. You can download the script here. » More... » →

More changes to LibraryLookup

Posted on October 12, 2008 by Neil McAllister

My LibraryLookup script for the San Francisco Public Library has been returning a lot of false positives lately. I finally managed to sit down and address that issue, in addition to some other general maintenance. You can grab version 1.5 of the script at its new, permanent page under “Odd Bits.” » More... » →

Adventures in amateur BlackBerry repair

Posted on October 5, 2008 by Neil McAllister

Last night as I was walking home I pulled my BlackBerry Pearl 8120 out of my back pocket and noticed that the LCD was cracked (image here). I have no idea how this happened — I didn’t drop it or anything. The phone is only two weeks old! Unfortunately, no matter how it happened I knew T-Mobile wasn’t going to have much sympathy for my plight. T-Mobile, like most carriers, considers any screen breakage to be the customer’s fault, and it’s not covered by warranty.

This particular Pearl, however, was a replacement for my old Pearl — an earlier model 8100 — which I accidentally dropped in the toilet about two weeks ago. And that gave me an idea: Why not swap out the broken screen in the new Pearl with the working screen from the old one? » More... » →

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