2005-01 Archive

First Post

This is my first post using this system, which is stolen in its entirity from sbp. (Thanks sbp!) I think that I may switch to using this for writing entries for projects: specifically, lorebot and julie. I always want to write a real blog for them, but I know I'd never get around to it. So I think this may be my solution.

We shall see.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-24 14:04:39 UTC.

d8uv is here!

Hoorah hooray, to start the day

Wazoo, wazay, hooray, hooray!

A song, by me.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-24 17:40:38 UTC.

Hello There

Oh, so I can post to this thing then eh? Basically I am all kinds of thinking that I don't like the "> " required to start these lines, though I do think that having some kind of whatsit there is good.

So like perhaps I should propose something. Oh, I don't know what. Let's say... ":" Which would be INVERSION LIKE A MONGASL over the previous way of doing it.

Yeeeeaaaah!

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-24 18:35:33 UTC.

d8uv is not a substitute for coffee.

I so am not. You can't drink me.

* Posted by d8uv on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-24 18:40:54 UTC.

Yep

I've decided I really like the way this works.

It's got some issues: like sbp mentioned, the > is kinda icky However, it's still a nice way to write quick posts.

I can also post from my cell phone now! that's an interesting idea. I wonder if I'd ever use it. It's kind of hard to type in t9, but I am pretty quick on it.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-24 22:23:36 UTC.

SDLRoads v .1

SDLRoads V .1 was released yesterday with all the fanfare that a .1 release deserves.

I really need to try and package it up for the mac, but I've been spending all my time playing with other toys instead.

* Posted by crschmidt on #sdlroads at 2005-01-25 04:56:31 UTC.

Julie and Lorebot

After a long period of significant development, I've stagnated on developing more for julie and lorebot. Note, however, that this is not because there is not more to develop. There are a number of other things that I could add, or fix, I just haven't really done a whole lot with it.

I'm interested in what other people would like to see in the continued development of these projects. If you have thoughts on what you'd like to see, please email me and let me know!

* Posted by crschmidt on #julie at 2005-01-25 04:59:59 UTC.

mt-daap for iTunes sharing under Linux

So, tonight I was complaining that the mini didn't have any music, and how I really needed a way to share all the music I had between computers. Since I had macs, it made sense that I hsould be able to - except I have lots of hard drive space on the Linux box, and not so much on either the mini or the laptop. I didn't really expect a solution, but I was, luckily, complaining around someone who actually had the ability to help me. jc let me know about howl and mt-daap, which let one share music from Linux over apple's DAAP.

After some dicking around, I've got both the macs now reading the music from peanut, and mDNSSResponder serving out information on the availability of the music sharing service. The windows PC could also connect with iTunes, but it has the slight problem of not being fast enough to play mp3s ;)

This all makes me very happy, and makes me love macs (for having the protocol) and open source (for engineering an open solution to using it) all the more. I love things which just work, and I love solutions which do what I need and want.

Pragmatism Revolution!

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 05:40:34 UTC.

Train

So, this morning I'm on my way into work and all. And I'm a bit late, because it was just one of those mornings. I was still on time to get to work onlyl a little bit late though: no more than, say, 5-10 minutes. As I pull up to the two blocks before work, I stop at the stop light... and a train rolls by.

This is no bullet train. No, no. This is definitely not moving at anything you could even call a clip, much less a gallop. This train was moving at a crawl. It was moving at approximately 5 mile per hour, and although it was accelerating... It took 15 minutes for the train to go by.

Needless to say, I was a bit late to work.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 14:01:33 UTC.

AudioScrobbler

I had forgotten how fun this was to play with. I installed the iScrobbler plugin again last night. I wanted to let people see what the Commune (where I live) was playing in real time. Couldn't get it working last night, but I did today, and I'm getting kicked into maybe working on MeNow again too. Which means I may end up working on locative tech again soon, too. Ah, so much fun stuff to play with, so little time.

Jess said it best earlier today to my coworker: "He spends 50 hours a work here, destroying the web as we know it, and 40 hours a week at home trying to put it back." Speaking of Jess, she brought me Rueben pizza today at work. I've never tasted a better pizza. Unfortunately, the nearest place that sells it is in Concord. However, she did get a bunch of free food from him by giving him a run down on the benefits of getting a pizza place in the mills. If he could move in here, that would rock. I would love another food place in this building, especially if they had food like Foodies.

shalala you're my silicon girl.

* Posted by crschmidt on #julie at 2005-01-25 19:11:48 UTC.

To All You Heistant Fingledappers Out There In Radio Land

Go ahead! Post! Make crschmidt's day! You know that both you and he wants to and wants you to. So do it today—don't delay! Postathonise that blogaroonie, and the suchlike.

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 19:28:56 UTC.

"Geek Office" and, hello it's me.

Sigh. I can't remember when i started to announce my blog. Must be 2 years ago or something. I'm coming near to post 1 though, we'll see, maybe this nice tool will make me work harder to get there faster.

Warning: whining ahead.

Working harder and faster yeah, thats what i'm actually really missing. There have been days where i actually did something, not only reading obscure papers and drooling over the idea of having an ipod shuffle. I noticed, i'm only doing something productive when i'm somehow social (with some relation to work - if it's people around me that work, or the discussion about work online). I know a couple of local people which are exactly like this, so i called them up and asked them if they're interested in something like a shared office. But not a normal one, just some thing where you're going regulary, not a rented place, just a café with a power socket and wifi.

I have no idea if this is new or unique, i don't really care, but people seemed to like it. Especially the non-restrictedness of what to do there seemed to attract the people. If contract work, writing code in brainfuck or insane discussions about usability.

I want that now. I should organize the first meeting this week. Man.

* Posted by eaon on #julie at 2005-01-25 20:14:44 UTC.

Interesting Facts about Aardvarks

Aardvarks like to watch sport in the mornings and news in the evenings. The weirdos.

Aardvarks don't like the noets "%" syntax because they forget to add it.

The first Aardvark on the moon will be nicknamed Longnose Dave.

An Aardvark's favourite ice-cream will almost certainly be vanilla with banana chips.

Aardvarks don't know what banana chips are. You don't either.

That's an Aardvark! Right there!

Aardvarks are very upset that they were beaten to the front of the dictionary by "a", but they also have forgiving natures.

Cody has probably never seen an aardvark.

Aardvarks like to eat ants, especially when they're covered with honey.

Aardvarks make for better human wives than do, oh, let's say... rhinos.

Aardvarks don't usually have much money.

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 21:10:32 UTC.

Eminem

Have you ever had a day where you listened to all musice that you used to listen to a long time ago? When I say long, I'm not thinking a couple years: I'm thinking back in grade school, or something like that. .. After setting up mt-daap last night, I introduced Jess to some of the music I've got sitting around from a long time ago. Jock jams and so on that I listened to in 5th grade. Did you know that some people have never heard Haddaway's "What is Love"? (Baby don't hurt me.)

Today is kind of similar, although not quite so old school. Eminem, Eiffel 65 and other similar things. I sometimes forget how much I love music when I'm working. In the office, we always listen to 80's music, so there's nothing I really like - it's just before my time. But listening to music via headphones makes me a much happier panda.

Hi, my name is... crschmidt. And yours?

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 21:14:16 UTC.

Nice Things About Noets

One of the nice things about noets, other than the fact that it lets two people post at the same time such as me and crschmidt are doing now, is that it also seems to make people post a lot more regularly. I suppose that has something to do with the fact that IRC is a very accessible mechanism: there's no tyrrany of the blank page here because you're constantly in conversational mode. What Noets does is make you wrap some of your conversationlets (odd, that's twice I've used that word today) in little packages that you then export to the rest of the world...

But it takes some getting used to, I think. For a start, you have to make sure that your typing is roughtly accurate because you can't go back in there and fiddle around with it. In version one of noets, I did actually edit a lot of the entries on the server, and I think I may have even got around to implementing a substitution syntax, or at least thinking about it. You also have to be careful that you don't go over the maximum allowed line length on IRC, otherwise the end of your lines will be chopped off. Ah, crschmidt informs me that I did indeed implement it. That was nice of me!

Anyway, just another metapost. I'm going to Googlecount conversationlet and noets now. conversationlet: 7; conversationlets: 5; noets: 13,800. So there you go.

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 21:16:03 UTC.

d8uv is posting to d8uv.com!

Little does d8uv know, we are watching his every move. As he moves the mouse, we follow. As he types the words, we read. There is no question in our mind of what is going to happen here tonight, ladies and gentlemen.

A bit stalkerish, perhaps? Yes, yes it is. Stop contradicting me, sbp.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 23:45:08 UTC.

LIEZ

Do not believe these lying liars!

They LIE!

* Posted by d8uv on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 23:45:38 UTC.

Well Chris is Clearly Incapable of ANYTHING

So I'll test a bloody {http://www.w3.org/ link} myself!

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 23:47:17 UTC.

Seriously Incapable

Trying the other format.

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-25 23:48:35 UTC.

LiveJournal volunteering

I'm always hesitant to write about this anywhere, because I have a tendancy to be a drama queen, and discussing my time in LiveJournal support only makes that behavior more apparent than ever. I often get asked why I don't volunteer on LiveJournal anymore, and I don't typically have a very good answer, because any I give will be seen as drama-mongering. So, if I write it down, I figure no one will likely read this, so I can just have it to link to.

I started volunteering for LiveJournal.com a long time ago. I quit a couple times over various things - I was a typical teenager, I'd get upset at the drop of a hat and overreact. Note that this behavior hasn't entirely changed, despite the years since when I started. So, I'm a drama queen. Blah blah blah. Nothing new there.

Around the time that I started my job at wedu, I had "interim" privs in a couple categories: Basically, I could see all aspects of the requests, but I couldn't send anything that the users could see. I also worked in a relatively high trust position, on the LiveJournal Abuse Team, which deals with people who break the terms of service. Some political issues arose regarding the privacy of information shared on IRC in the #lj_abuse IRC channel, however, which led to a turn of events. Basically, at one point we had discussed how we all disliked another volunteer in #lj_abuse. I repeated that this discussion had occured in another (invite only) channel on the network. Some people got pissy, and all of a sudden, there was a total shitstorm. To this day, I really have no idea why it happened, but I know that there were a lot of accusations being thrown around.

A short list of things I was accused of: Hacking into another user's account, hacking into administrators accounts to obtain information, sharing confidential information regarding the process LiveJournal uses to prosecute Abuse cases, Sharing my account so that other people could see things that they shouldn't be able to. Note that all of these allegations were only shared with me long after this incident: to my face, I was told one thing, and one thing only: "Due to the fact that the only reason you want to continue supporting the site is to gain more privileges than you could otherwise, all privileges are being revoked."

Now, I'm a reasonably intelligent guy. The ability to do something like I was accused of would not be out of my technical expertise: especially since one of the people in question, who accused me of breaking into her account, regularly shared her password with other users. No proof was ever brought against me: in fact, during the entire incident, none of this was even mentioned to me. This pattern has continued with other incidents of the same type, stretching both before and after my time doing support. I realize now that these kind of things do happen, so you just kind of have to grin and bear it if you wish to continue to support the site.

That, for the most part, explains why I don't volunteer to support LiveJournal anymore from the helping users standpoint. I was also active in the development community, despite the serious roadblocks to making headway in that arena. For a period of time, I continued to watch the development process, and discuss where I felt my interests lie: on the differences between XML and HTML generation, things like that. After a discussion in comments with an employee of the site, he basically explained to me that everything I said was just trying to start a fight. Rather discouraging to be told by someone who you hope to make any useful headway with. After that comment to me in public, I was later informed that he posted a non-public entry to his journal.

"crschmidt, your time is done. Go soft into that gentle night."

Along with the rest of the entry, it was quite clear that my presence in the development community only caused him, and others commenting on the entry, to be more frustrated than anything else. To this day, the idea of developing on LiveJournal is tempting, but unfortunately, I really feel that any effort i put into it will be wasted. There are a number of people who I was close to when I worked on the site who still do not know why I suddenly left: they thought it was my own volition. (This appearence has been made falsely in other similar cases as well, although in this case, I just dissapeared.) I am still contacted regularly regarding debugging or support questions. Despite all this, I do not expect that I will ever be able to again look at the volunteer aspects of LiveJournal without getting a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's unfortunate, because I really love the site. It's a shame it has to have such a political air about it, because I miss the things that I had when I wasn't involved in the politics.

This entry is largely rambling, and may inaccurately reflect some aspects of the situation. Quotes are really paraphrases to the best of my ability mirroring the intent of the quoted material.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-26 01:15:00 UTC.

noets is powered by...

I've made a few modifications to the original noets source code. See the source code for more information on how it works. The style and images are stolen directly from the original noets site, created by d8uv and xover.

Personally, this is probably going to be a scratchpad for me to keep track of what I want to write full blog entries on. I don't expect this to be my main source of writing, but it will probably be a place that I put short snippets to expand on later. For example, the mt-daap thing could really use writing up and posting in Technical Ramblings, but I didn't have inclination to do it at the time. Now I have a record of what I want to do with it, so I can do it later. At the same time, entries of a more personal nature will probably migrate to my LiveJournal.

Feel free to post to this thing if you want to: It's open for a reason. I'll probably add author-specific archives soon, so that you can see just what one person has written. As you can see, I have added metadata to the current archives page, so hopefully that's a start. For the record, I will likely be spammy in this thing. I think that anyone should have the right to post what they want to *somewhere*, and I don't have anywhere I else I can put all my random thoughts. This is a pre-staging area, so if you don't like spam in your aggregator, this is not for you.

Any questions on this noets thingy can be directed to me.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-26 02:24:25 UTC.

Real things

As you may have noticed from my weblog, {d8uv.com http://d8uv.com/}, I post a lot of total nonsense. However, the very existance of the weblog causes a lot of inner turmoil. You see, even though I love the weblog, I can't use it anywhere. The reason for this is that other smart people may get confused about the intentions of the weblog. Instead of seeing the latest cool thing that I made for real people, a list of facts about dragons smacks them in the face and they'll probably go "WTF we aren't going to take this fool seriously ever again forever eternity." (I hope that'll be an actual quote) This isn't much of a problem now, because I haven't made a place where real things can be put. Perhaps I'm just weirding out for no reason. I dunno I think it's because of my involvement in RSS 1.1 that I'm obsessing over all this. But eventually, either d8uv.com is going to have to mature, or I'm going to have to make two seperate sites, one that is awesome, and one for real things.

* Posted by d8uv on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-26 03:03:27 UTC.

d8uv's Taxonomy Of Stuff

Just to clarify: a) Awesome stuff b) Real things

Good taxonomy!

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-26 03:06:17 UTC.

What's missing from noets?

Comments.

However, adding them would be a huge amount of stuff for relatively little gain, so I think the real answer is I just need to start migrating the posts I want replies on to my "real" weblogs. The whole idea behind noets is to make it simple, and adding a full commenting thingy would kind of destroy that.

Still, to not be able to respond to someone just *feels* odd.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-26 12:04:46 UTC.

Re: What's missing from noets?

Just make a new post. No big deal What is a big deal is this c1d4ph1l mak your e,recti,on har!D

* Posted by d8uv on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-26 15:00:35 UTC.

Sheep go to heaven

Goats go to hell

Sheep go to heaven... goats.... go to hell

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-27 05:26:35 UTC.

Copyright infringment!

Both Cake and I are totally suing crschmidt now.

* Posted by d8uv_ on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-27 05:27:04 UTC.

iPhoto printing

Apparently, my computer announces the fact that it has a printer available over the network. Hooking the mac mini up to the same subnet means that a printer labelled "hP" shows up in the "Shared printers" drop down. This allows me to print from any mac on the subnet with no configuration whatsoever.

iPhoto makes printing photos easy: select a picture, click print, and choose the size you want. Apparently, the HP 670C series also does complete auto-detection of paper type, so I didn't even have to change any paper settings: it was all done for me.

I must admit that I have never found printing photos easier: Who'd have thunk that the most complex setup imaginable (printing from a mac over the network to a printer connected over USB via cups) would be the most efficient? Thanks to the ease of this task, I now have a full 8x10 of julie, from when she came to vote with me.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-27 13:46:51 UTC.

I'm cranky.

If you couldn't tell this, you're not very observant.

* Posted by crschmidt on #swhack at 2005-01-27 18:53:13 UTC.

wha? where are my pills???!?

i'm feeling very sleepy

* Posted by thelsdj on #swhack at 2005-01-27 18:54:24 UTC.

My name is luka. I live on the second floor.

I live upstairs from you. 'Guess you've never seen me before.

* Posted by jsled on #swhack at 2005-01-27 18:54:32 UTC.

Whilst We're Spamming Noets...

<Monty> Prove to me that you don't stalk Yoshi's Island...?

* Posted by sbp on #swhack at 2005-01-27 18:55:01 UTC.

Bots have voices, too.

I AM SUPYBOT! I AM SMARTER THAN SBP!

* Posted by supybot on #swhack at 2005-01-27 18:56:10 UTC.

Hi Kpreid

LAlaLALaLALALALALALALALALALALAlalalALLALLA

o/~ It's your own fault for subscribing o/~

This has been (and still is) an sbp noet.

* Posted by sbp on #swhack at 2005-01-27 19:00:21 UTC.

Hi Sbp

It's called "Mark All as Read"

* Posted by kpreid on #swhack at 2005-01-27 19:00:58 UTC.

Welcome

<div style="background-color: red; color: white; font-size: xx-large">I do not escape.</div>

* Posted by jsled on #swhack at 2005-01-27 19:02:53 UTC.

Sigh

I'm tired and cranky still. I did just finish dinner. Julie is still eating.

I've been playing with VNC to the mac mini. It's kinda cool. I like VNC. I had forgotten that.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-27 23:47:16 UTC.

Changes to Blogbot

blogbot has gone through some changes, most notably that he doesn't require the % at the start of lines now . Additionally, notices have been changed from user-notices to channel-notices, mostly because user notices for me show up in some status window I never look at.

One new feature is "Recap": @recap will display what you've written so far. Note that the line breaks are IRC line breaks, not paragraph breaks that you will see in the final result.

Because I treat all of my bots like community property, they can all be administered by any user until that privilege proves to be a problem. In this case, blogbot's "yoo-hoo" character is @: @join #foo, @part #foo, @recap, @quit, and @title (to retitle an entry) are the important features. If the bot becomes too much of a problem, it will be made to go away. So please, don't abuse it.

That is all.

* Posted by crschmidt on #swhack at 2005-01-28 04:38:23 UTC.

Do not read the next post.

It's called "Nomenclatural Dilemma". By sbp.

* Posted by d8uv on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-28 05:34:38 UTC.

Nomenclatural Dilemma

What oh what shall I call my wiki? It has no name, the poor little bundle of not-yet-pages; it has no little latin script label by which it can be known.

This is the dilemma of the fool who decides yet again to create a little directory in which to scribble that will subsequently never be used. As d8uv rightly points out, you shouldn't've read this post (but you did, didn't you!), since I'm going to be soliciting suggestions somewhere towards the bottom.

Ah, we're at the bottom already. Please suggest names! "topic", a la ESW, is no good; nor are "notes" (taken), "noets" (too close), "wiki", and "twogc". Thanks.

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-28 05:35:58 UTC.

Good night moon

Good night stars

Good night sky

Good night the sbp

Good night the Cody

Good night!

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-28 07:07:56 UTC.

Good Morning!

And what a fine morning it is. It seems that I will finally be getting my work on a site off my chest and onto the web. This site has been in production for entirely too long, given what it was supposed to be when the project started. I'm tired of it. I want it to die, along with everything related to it.

I'm really just glad to be getting this on the web. It's really not that bad of a site, but the more time I spend on it, the more I want to KILL MAIM DESTROY. So, today is starting out to be a good day!

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-28 13:27:22 UTC.

New noets feature!

In addition to new blogbot features, noets also has a new feature: author-specific archive pages. For example, you can see my posts, or sbp's posts. Note that this is not a really complete feature as far as UI goes, but it does work.

So, now if you want to use blogbot, you can even go back and find all your old posts! I may be adding channel-specific archives too, as well as expanding to work in the RSS and recent views.

This post is also testing a slight change in the escaping. Before, nœts escaped all & characters. I'm thinking that if I make it only escape those with a space after them, I can do more fun things. I'll have to tune it though, cause I just wanted to write "&", which wouldn't work well. Here goes nothing.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-28 13:34:35 UTC.

Kandinski swoons at my presence

As I walk in the room, he wavers with lust.

Or something

* Posted by crschmidt on #swhack at 2005-01-28 13:41:20 UTC.

~|o Alias Bristow and I are in love and we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence! ~|o

(with apologies to Linnell and Flansburgh)

I am watching the Alias episode in which they send Marshall the Q-alike tech geek Marshall character on a field mission! it is season 2, episode 10, in case someone cares. Kevin Weisman is such a good actor.

I have also noticed that as Alias became succesful, they hired better musicians and directors. The robbery scene from this episode is very Michael-Mannish in its HEAT-ness even the scripts are tighter, and even their soap-opera-ness is better integrated into the overall plot (some may argue that the soap-operaness is THE plot).

I was swooning at Jennifer Garner, really.

* Posted by kandinski on #swhack at 2005-01-28 13:52:36 UTC.

Good job!

This bot is nifty.

crschmidt is sexy.

We should establish a religion in his name.

* Posted by jsled on #swhack at 2005-01-28 13:59:10 UTC.

A wishlist bug for noets: Tags in posts

crschmidt: you could add tags in the ">>>" publishing command as in ">>> TV_tropes Geek_Icons" for post number 45 about alias . They would be optional, but good to have, methinks. >>> Meta noets facets folksonomy tags OMG tag_abuse! fucking_kandinski

* Posted by kandinski on #swhack at 2005-01-28 14:18:44 UTC.

Dear Jybe,

It is the suck that more than two users cannot be in a session at once. Especially since you claim that they can, and this is supposed to be Beta software.

As well, it would be nice if -- when the previously-second user was logged out -- that their only recourse for leaving the Jybe chrome was not closing and restarting their browser.

In short: please no longer to suck.

* Posted by jsled on #swhack at 2005-01-28 14:22:48 UTC.

testing

* Posted by jsled on #swhack at 2005-01-28 14:25:23 UTC.

Layout as syntax: (yet another wishlist bug)

. <<< | Layout as Syntax | | If the noets blog were so formatted, the layout | would act as its own syntax flashcard/cheatsheet. .. | | You could gray out the '<<<' and the '..'s | for an optimal readability/reference balance. | Vertical whitespace left by auto-formatting would | obviously not be marked by a ".." .. | | Also, vertical line is only for IRC readability. | I will do another version without it, to see how | readable it is. I assume whitespace should be enough. .. | | Hope it works this time | . >>> | layout_as_documentation autodoc meta noets wishlist_bugs | OMG folksonomies! fucking_kandinski I_WIN! ]]]

* Posted by kandinski on #swhack at 2005-01-28 14:39:07 UTC.

Whee!

Blogbot has returned! For most of the day, the router was dead for some reason. Now it's back. This makes me a happy panda.

However, it reinforces the fact that I need to get a server where the power is not local to my house. I just have too many "always on" services that haven't been "always on" lately.

Oh right, I meant to post this.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-28 23:35:23 UTC.

Tagging Test

Although sbp doesn't like it, I do like the idea of being able to tag posts. However, I'm not sure if it works thus far. I have some code in place, but it's really hacky and may not work.

This entry is a test.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-29 03:02:27 UTC.

Channels, and why they don't work how they wish I would

A lot of times, I want to be in a channel with a bunch of other people, but I don't really care about the topic of the channel. The very nature of IRC channels is very seperatist: you're in one or the other, you can't be in some mix of both.

For example, I enjoy a lot of the people in #swig: they're interesting, and they talk about interesting things. However, it's a very strictly controlled topic: wandering off topic tends to lend glares at you, for some reason I don't quite understand. So, rather than just hanging out there, and contributing when I feel like it (which most of the time starts slightly off topic and heads more so), I don't feel comfortable being there.

What I really want is something that can be more of a gathering place; someplace where I can sit around and watch various topics. What I want is more along the lines of a cross between a MUD and IRC. The problem with MUDs it that you can only be in one place at one time. The problem with IRC is that you can't move between places(/topics) easily. If there was some way to have a more "current topic" than "always the topic" aspect to IRC (which is something that discussion in MUDs seems to typically have), that would be cool.

This thought was inspired by the fact that danbri is here, and danbri is someone I find quite interesting: he's always got some new neat project up his sleeve (even if, like me, they're mostly incomplete ;)). But I don't see him around all that much cause he's always busy with something. So, it would be cool to just be able to follow danbri around and see what he's currently working on. Of course, then I would waste even more time of my day on IRC, which wouldn't be useful

Kandinski points out (Hooray, somewhat collaborative writing) that sbp had a mechanism to enact this: he had a secondary client that was basically all conversation in one window, IIRC. (That was sbp`.) However, this 1. means yet another IRC client connection for me. Given that there's already 9 or 10 client connections coming through my house, i don't really want to flood the channel more every time the connection dies than I already do. and 2. doesn't really complete all the goals that I'm working towards: it means that I'd have to either deal with all conversation in one window (ick) or just be back to the equivilant of what I had when I was sitting in every channel, just so I wouldn't miss anything.

I suppose what would work would be a way to give "priority" to messages. So, everything goes in one window, then I have swhack which is "Loud" and foaf which is "not so loud" and swig which I could just review if someone mentioned redland or something. The thought behind this is based around my MUD idea: When you're on a MUD, you can hear local poeple if they "say", and you can hear people in the area if they "yell", and you can hear people mudwide if they "gossip" So, I can wander around to different channels, but if something interesting happens in nanother channel, I want to see it no matter what: vis the swig/redland example at which point I can jump to that location and watch all the conversation there

The biggest probloem is that I just have too much information flowing at me: I typically sit in ~ 10-15 IRC channels. So there's just too much stuff flying by. I think that part of this problem could be fixed with figuring out how to adjust the hilight levels in irssi. I'll have to look into that.

Anyway, just some rambling thoughts, as well as a semi-explanation on why I'm not in #swig now/as much.

* Posted by crschmidt on #swhack at 2005-01-29 14:10:48 UTC.

Movie Review

I saw _The Aviator_ today, with no foreknowledge of what it was about going into it. It turned out to be a very awesome movie about Howard Hughes. It was a great flick, very interesting to see all the different things. Reading the trivia on imdb, I also saw that the movie used post-processing to edit the colors to seem more time-period realistic. For example, the peas in one scene are blueish-turquoise green: The scene takes place in the 1930s, and the color techniques of the time would have made them seem that color on-screen.

The movie has some really great bits, from the creation of the XF-11 to the Senate War Committee hearings between Hughes and Senator Brewster. It's motivated me to learn a lot about Howard Hughes the man, reading mostly articles on wikipedia. He's an example of a man who wanted great things for the world and went out and got them, and everything in biographies I can find makes the movie seem relatively accurate to the story. It's up for a lot of awards, and I hope it wins them.

After hearing a recent NPR piece on Mirimax, I'm sad to think this might be one of the last movies that is put out by the original creators of the company, but at least it was a great one.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-30 02:42:03 UTC.

Site Design

crschmidt.net is run mostly out of PHP. It's a messy site, with lots of extra files all over the place, many of which are left over from, literally, years ago. I've recently started to make an attempt to clean it up, and one of the things that I would advise everyone to do is to create/use a simple templating system.

In PHP, I do this using output buffering, after which I use a regex to map content. I have several of these templates, although I don't think I use more than one at a time. Basically, all I do is create one template, and then my actual pages just include that template at the top of the file. Once I do that, I put in a <title> and <body> content, and everything else is taken care of for me. An example of it in use is available from lorebot's svn.

I've built 6 or 7 of these templates for clients, and they definitely help me to keep a site's navigation clean, while allowing me a full reign over flexibility if I want it. For example, a couple of the sites use a sidebar: but for things like that, I just add support for an additional <sidebar> tag. Or if I want page-specific <head> stuff, I just add support for <headdl>. It's really quite simple. The best part is that I don't have to do a thing in order to get it to work: if I write a full HTML page, it'll just pull out the relevant bits, and work as expected. It's really quite grand. So, I'm just putting out there that I think that using a simple templating system can be a really great thing for site design.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-31 03:02:17 UTC.

IRC Editing

IRC editing has this really odd quality where you'll be typing out your entry and trying to keep it isolated, but people will be talking about it and typing other stuff. I noted this in the original noets site, but I think now that we have two IRC input mechanisms running side by side in #d8uv.com it's becoming even more pertinent.

I just told crschmidt (whilst he was writing the entry that he's just finished, 55) that it reminds me of that bit of HHG where to learn to fly you have to be shocked into missing the ground. So people would be hired to jump out of the bushes and scare them etc. Well it's kinda similar here in that if you're being a git you try to put other people off their entry, like I successfully did with crschmidt in the previous one (though that was an accident).

It doesn't seem like crschmidt's learned to fly as a result, though.

* Posted by sbp on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-31 03:03:53 UTC.

Why Being on a Planet sucks

You're always writing to a much larger audience than you would be otherwise: there's no way to do stream of conciousness entries without bumping off screen space from people more deserving of it in the specific planet setting.

Although it's cool to have more readers, at the same time, it's annoying because most of them aren't reading for *you* anyway, and even if they were, they aren't reading for your thoughts on sharing music over iTunes with mt-daap, they'r reading for the Planet topic

I really think I may just give up on trying to please and post whatever I feel like, but it's still annoying.

* Posted by crschmidt on #d8uv.com at 2005-01-31 03:53:49 UTC.
Christopher Schmidt, and other various and sundry characters.
All code which runs this thing was stolen from sbp. Based on the original nœts site, circa 2003. Design by d8uv, xover, with help from the works of Eric Meyer. Any other people who were involved are also credited and thanked here, in this very small space: . Thank you.