I logged into OldFriends for the first time in bloody ages, and they wanted me to walk nine miles through some crazy process clicking "I don't know this person" on all 5000 people who'd registered from any school I ever attended. This seemed like a really stupid thing to make people do, so I wrote a JS bookmark to skip the remaining 49 pages of bad UI.

Walter today posted a GreaseMonkey script which inspired me to make it more proper.

So now there are a couple of ways you can install it:

1. Firefox + GreaseMonkey: go to this page and click "INSTALL" at the top of the page.

2. Ugly, works in most browser: Add this URL in your browser, then use it when visiting that page.

javascript:var%20yesNo%20=%20document.getElementsByTagName('input');%20%20for%20(i=0;i<yesNo.length;i++)%20{if%20(yesNo[i].value=='stranger')%20{yesNo[i].checked=true;}%20};%20%20gimmeMeAnError();

On the topic of Old Friends ... it's no wonder they've been ruined by sites like Facebook. I emailed to let them know that their site exhibits subtle prejudices against Irish, French, Italian, African and Polynesian people - that is, it can't handle names with apostrophes in.

They emailed back and said, that's right, don't use an apostrophe.

Dear Chris,

Thanks for contacting us.

Unfortunately the site does not recognise an apostrophe in a name, when searching for members who would usually have an apostrophe in their name simply remove it and then search for them

I hope you are enjoying the site, please let me know if I can be of further help.

Regards,

Mel

Hey, just spell it "omalley", "dartagnan", "dangelo", "ndour", "vaa" ... Good luck with that approach, OldFriends :)

Actually, there is a single person who managed to get themselves an apostrophe. The trick is to stutter-type, or be a DBA. Two apostrophes works (but only search for one).

Generally, failure to cope with apostrophes is a sign of something more horribly broken than you might like. There's a cartoon which I'm obliged to add here: