Building simplicidade.org: notes, projects, and occasional rants

Notes

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Some rich text editors

In a project that I’m working on, there is a requirement to use some sort of rich-text editor for textareas in a web-based forum system. I did a quick survey and found a lot of systems out there. I collected some links and I’m dumping them here, for future reference. Right now, my prefered solution is TinyMCE. http://xstandard.com/ http://www.richtexteditor.org/demo/ http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/ http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/widgEditor/ http://www.fckeditor.net/demo/ I also found a long list of editors with useful comparisons between them.

Disney CEO on digital distribution

Some days before the Oct 12 Apple announcement that they will be selling TV shows via iTMS, specially ABC shows like Desperate and Lost, Robert Iger, the Disney CEO, who also was at the Apple event, gave some hints about the digital distribution of content: If we sit back and rely on old technology, the consumer is going to pass us by,” Mr. Iger says, noting that the music industry made that mistake.

Torrent TV

I like to follow a couple of TV series: The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, Desperate Housewifes, and Without a Trace, to name just a few. Of course, watching these on portuguese TV, even cable, is not an option. Most of them are not available, and when they are, they run very late in the evening or at odd hours each time. So in the last two year, me and my wife, we have been buying these series on DVD.

Not happy with Moveable Type 3.2

I’ve been using Movable Type 3.2 for the last couple of weeks. The upgrade from my previous 3.x version went pretty smooth, but only yesterday I noticed some things that where not OK. First, my comment form does not include the Typekey stuff. At first I though that I had fsck my Typekey token or something, but the explanation is much more simple: the templates I got with MT don’t include the code to activate that option.

The new powerbooks

As I mentioned previously, I would like to upgrade my TiBook that I’m using for almost 4 years now. And this seems the last chance to do it before the switch to Intel processors. According to the roadmap, a Intel Powerbook is not expected until the second half of 2006. So the question is: can I wait to upgrade my main work computer, that I use everyday, and that is starting to show it’s age?

webcast app

I saw the Oct 12 webcast (the URL will go away soon, I supose) some days ago, but only today I got some time to post it. Of course the news of the day is the new Aperture software (and not being a photographer like João Pedro, Rui or Delfim, I can’t value it properly), and the new hardware, powermacs and powerbooks. I’ll write some comments about the last ones later.

Google Talk in other clients

From the Gaim site: I (Sean) have been hired by Google, moved to Seattle, and have been working on the Google Talk team for about a month and a half. The goal of Google Talk is to make real-time communication as open as possible, and in that regard, I’ve been working to offer all of Google Talk’s features into other clients. Currently, I’m working on making it as easy as possible for other clients to use Google Talk’s voice features.

I'm off to bed now

I was waiting for Oct 12 to see if my current laptop would get a decent facelift. It’s not he is no longer sexy, it just that I’m no longer as patient as I once was, and waiting for some functions is getting to be a drag. So when I saw that we only get TV shows in the US (as in not available anywhere else for now, nor any idea about when that might change), an iPod with a bigger screen and video decoding but resolutions that will not cut it for video out, and a desktop computer that is nice but still a desktop computer… well… it’s all pretty and nice, but that’s it.

I like to have the same sidebar on the right of my pages, both in the main page and in the individual article pages. With MT, I always edited the templates to add the same sidebar on both the main index template and in the individual archive template. Today, I tried something new. I added a new index template, sidebar.html, and copied the sidebar from the main index template. Then I removed that content from the main index template and replaced it with a include of the new template.

Big forest fire near my house

I live in Condados de Taverede, on the south slope of the Serra da Boa Viagem near Figueira da Foz. Right now, we have a big forest fire coming down towards figueira da foz. Started at 15:30. I can see the flames from my house, 500mts or so away. My neighbor to the north had his home touched by the fire. Right now I’m watering the roof tops, while planes loaded with water cruise be at low altitude.