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

Notes

last update:

Sometimes you need to run some script or program that will take a long time. What I usually do is opening a new window, start the script, and then minimize or send to the back that terminal, leaving a small corner visible to serve as a status. I could glance to the visible corner and look for the prompt to see if had ended. Now, I use this little super simple script (could also be a bash alias, probably):

Passport

Looking though my backpack (and those who know me personally know that I’m talking about the 10kg behemoth) I found my passport. I think I always carry my passport with me. I don’t know if it is wishful thinking, just wanting to get called somewhere where I actually will need it, or a hidden feeling of being somewhere else far away. I really don’t believe any of these, though. But I’m sure there is a meaning somewhere.

The state of the Onion

As usual, a must read. The State of the Onion n. 9 is here. Favorite quotes: Wu-Li isn’t actually Chinese. He only thinks he’s Chinese because when he was young his parents told him that every third child born into the world was Chinese, and he was a third child. and another: As I was thinking about the intelligence community and its recent obvious failures, it kinda put a new spin onto the phrase, “Information wants to be free,” or my own version of it, which is that “Information wants to be useful.

Darcs, Trac, SVK

I’ve been using darcs for quite some time now, and I’m generally happy with it. It’s reliable, simple to use and doesn’t get in the way, nor does it force me naming conventions, coding styles or directory organizations. The most useful feature it has for me is the interactive commit: I’m hacking away on some feature, I found some other bug, I fix the bug, and then I can commit just the bug fix, and keep on hacking.

Eolas says: "We're back!"

USPTO validated Eolas patent today. I’m sure it will be all over the tech blogs in the next 24 hours. Via Ars.Technica.

Perl6 polyglot

Very nice article on O’ReillyNet about Perl6. Perl6 Polyglot by Geoff Broadwell – What Perl 6 is learning from other languages – and why you should learn a few too. Go! Read!

MT Upgrade

Going to upgrade to Moveable Type 3.2 now. If the site disappears, then something went wrong with my backups :). I’m sorry but you’ll loose all the juicy links to sex, travel and casinos that we could find on my trackbacks. update: seems to work. Still messing around with templates, expect some changes and fixes.

24

Tomorrow, the 2: TV channel (the only broadcast channel worth watching) is going to try something new. Starting at 23:30 Friday, and until 1:15 of Sunday, they will transmit a full 24 second season. You can watch Jack Bauer in real-time, as intended. Anyway, if you like 24, or you don’t know if you do, try switching to the 2: channel.

Virtual plague

I think a measurement of how good a game is, is the things that the game environment allow outside the original control of the programmers. How open is the game. Recently, World of Warcraft gained a virtual plague that is spreading like wildfire inside the game. Nice. Me, I try to keep away from that black hole of productivity like if it had the plague… the real one.