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Matt
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1 week ago
in things I hate about the internet on tychoish
- Google's current hubris (Google books, Google wave) - the claim that they are going to replace email...
- The idea that the only type of collaborative work is live. (Google wave).
- Tech-bloggers whose only qualification is that they have money to spend on gadgets.
- "Cloud" computing. Seriously. Do we really want to give up that much control over our computing? In the dystopian future celebrated by many tech bloggers, computers will be locked down appliances, and we will rely on big companies to deliver services to us.
- The claim that web apps are currently as good as desktop apps.
- The fact that the future of collaborative work and "cloud computing" is already here (git) and yet so few people recognize it.
- The idea that the only type of collaborative work is live. (Google wave).
- Tech-bloggers whose only qualification is that they have money to spend on gadgets.
- "Cloud" computing. Seriously. Do we really want to give up that much control over our computing? In the dystopian future celebrated by many tech bloggers, computers will be locked down appliances, and we will rely on big companies to deliver services to us.
- The claim that web apps are currently as good as desktop apps.
- The fact that the future of collaborative work and "cloud computing" is already here (git) and yet so few people recognize it.
1 reply
1 month ago
in glitch and web experiments on tychoish
What type of video card does your laptop have? If it's an intel card, I suspect the problem might lie with the intel driver, which has been going through some major transitions right now (right around the release of Jaunty). Just a guess, and most likely completely off base.
You mght want to use the magic SysRq key to shutdown the computer gracefully and avoid hard disk problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key
I use emacs-w3m all the time. Except to post comments to your blog, that is, which required java script. ;)
You mght want to use the magic SysRq key to shutdown the computer gracefully and avoid hard disk problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key
I use emacs-w3m all the time. Except to post comments to your blog, that is, which required java script. ;)
1 reply
tychoish
Yeah, my laptop is a delightful x41t and I'm pretty sure that has an intel card. Alas. I should probably switch distros, but I'm lazy, and I can avoid firefox more or less.
The one awkward thing about the x41's is that they don't have a mod4/windows key, so I've had to xmodmap the keyboard to within an inch of its life, so I'm affraid that the SysRq stuff works oddly. Or maybe there's something weird with the jaunty kernel. Maybe I could switch to the lenny kernel. Hrm. I wonder how in-place upgrades would work. Sigh. Another struggle for another day...
---
I agree that the javascript requirement is rough, but I really like disqus, and I think with the static generation of the site, the only other option, really, would be to setup a wiki for people to comment/discuss/collaborate, and figure out a REST-ey way to have the blog and the wiki to coordinate... Maybe.
Thanks for braving a modern browser for the commenting, though. It's appreciated, of course. Have you seen Uzbl <http://www.uzbl.org/>, which is being developed on Arch? I'm nearly tempted to make the switch for it. I wonder if I could do the switch in place. Hrm. Anyway. It looks really cool, and webkit is sort of the way of the future.
The one awkward thing about the x41's is that they don't have a mod4/windows key, so I've had to xmodmap the keyboard to within an inch of its life, so I'm affraid that the SysRq stuff works oddly. Or maybe there's something weird with the jaunty kernel. Maybe I could switch to the lenny kernel. Hrm. I wonder how in-place upgrades would work. Sigh. Another struggle for another day...
---
I agree that the javascript requirement is rough, but I really like disqus, and I think with the static generation of the site, the only other option, really, would be to setup a wiki for people to comment/discuss/collaborate, and figure out a REST-ey way to have the blog and the wiki to coordinate... Maybe.
Thanks for braving a modern browser for the commenting, though. It's appreciated, of course. Have you seen Uzbl <http://www.uzbl.org/>, which is being developed on Arch? I'm nearly tempted to make the switch for it. I wonder if I could do the switch in place. Hrm. Anyway. It looks really cool, and webkit is sort of the way of the future.
2 months ago
in jaunty upgrade on tychoish
Thanks for the .Xdefaults for urxvt. I've been using terminator, but want something more lightweight.
Wow. Didn't know that firemacs existed. To the great frustration of those who occasionally use my computer to browse the web, I'm a vimperator addict. I'll see if firemacs retains a more user friendly interface for others --- also if it allows emacs bindings for text entry. It's crazy how the fingers can quickly adapt to either emacs or vim. I had trouble learning the piano --- so why are keybindings so easy to learn?
As an alternative to gdm, might I suggest slim? It is a very lightweight, yet elegant login screen. Also it doesn't depend on gnome libraries. I try as much as possible to have a Gnome/KDE free computer - just basic GTK stuff.
How long did it take you to get your .awesomerc just right? I've tried tiling wm's several times, but have always felt they were overkill for my needs. My preference is for a very minimalistic openbox with dmenu for fast access to applications and keyboard shortcuts to move/resize windows. My main (and quite possibility fallacious) fear about tiling wm's is that the keyboard shortcuts will conflict with emacs keybindings. In fact, I tend to see emacs as my tiling wm, since my email, newsreader, pim, writing environment, finances, chat client, etc. are all in emacs. Thus, when I use another application, it's generally a graphics application such as gimp and thus works best in a floating environment.
As you know from identi.ca, I just switched to arch linux this past weekend and can say that it is indeed fantastic. The initial install is quite simple. What takes a lot longer is getting all the X components installed and customized. (But that's because I've always used heavily themed distros such as ubuntu and crunchbang.) With the help of the excellent arch wiki, I really feel I've learned a linux system from the inside out. As I see it, in Ubuntu or Debian or Fedora, everything is already installed on the system and glued together by developers in a way that is somewhat opaque to the new user. Thus, the Ubuntu wiki and forums tend to offer quick fixes rather than a systematic explanation of a problem and its solution.
With arch, on the other hand, I am forced to learn exactly why something works the way it does, what libraries I do and don't need, and where everything goes. In the end, thanks to the arch wiki, I actually spend less time setting up a new piece of software. E.g., I always find network manager in gnome very buggy. With arch, I use an elegant command line tool (netcfg) to connect with the network and conky to display my connection status, data. It all works much more beautifully.
Not that I'm trying to convert you... ;)
Wow. Didn't know that firemacs existed. To the great frustration of those who occasionally use my computer to browse the web, I'm a vimperator addict. I'll see if firemacs retains a more user friendly interface for others --- also if it allows emacs bindings for text entry. It's crazy how the fingers can quickly adapt to either emacs or vim. I had trouble learning the piano --- so why are keybindings so easy to learn?
As an alternative to gdm, might I suggest slim? It is a very lightweight, yet elegant login screen. Also it doesn't depend on gnome libraries. I try as much as possible to have a Gnome/KDE free computer - just basic GTK stuff.
How long did it take you to get your .awesomerc just right? I've tried tiling wm's several times, but have always felt they were overkill for my needs. My preference is for a very minimalistic openbox with dmenu for fast access to applications and keyboard shortcuts to move/resize windows. My main (and quite possibility fallacious) fear about tiling wm's is that the keyboard shortcuts will conflict with emacs keybindings. In fact, I tend to see emacs as my tiling wm, since my email, newsreader, pim, writing environment, finances, chat client, etc. are all in emacs. Thus, when I use another application, it's generally a graphics application such as gimp and thus works best in a floating environment.
As you know from identi.ca, I just switched to arch linux this past weekend and can say that it is indeed fantastic. The initial install is quite simple. What takes a lot longer is getting all the X components installed and customized. (But that's because I've always used heavily themed distros such as ubuntu and crunchbang.) With the help of the excellent arch wiki, I really feel I've learned a linux system from the inside out. As I see it, in Ubuntu or Debian or Fedora, everything is already installed on the system and glued together by developers in a way that is somewhat opaque to the new user. Thus, the Ubuntu wiki and forums tend to offer quick fixes rather than a systematic explanation of a problem and its solution.
With arch, on the other hand, I am forced to learn exactly why something works the way it does, what libraries I do and don't need, and where everything goes. In the end, thanks to the arch wiki, I actually spend less time setting up a new piece of software. E.g., I always find network manager in gnome very buggy. With arch, I use an elegant command line tool (netcfg) to connect with the network and conky to display my connection status, data. It all works much more beautifully.
Not that I'm trying to convert you... ;)
1 reply
tychoish
In turn:
1. Firemacs rocks and while I think vimperator is probably the more flexiable, more intense piece of software, firemacs does *enough* that in combination with the hinting navigation plugin (which you can get separate from vimperator) is *enough*.
2. I've not tried slim, but I've had problems under ubuntu when i've tried to just start x manually from a virtual terminal (xinit). Gnome power manager won't load and suspend-hibernate doesn't work on the laptop without gdm, so while I'd like to have a system setup without gdm, I'm ok with it. And even my laptop which is a retronetbook, resource consumption is pretty low. So it's not a particularly pressing concern .
3. Awesome is, basically, the only desktop environment that I've used since switching to gnu/linux 6-9 months ago, so in some ways, it's taken a long time to get the configuration *just* right. On the other hand, I'm mostly using the default awesome config, so the truth is that, modifying a default config to be a usable config for me, involves just adding some program launching keybindings and changing some of the default vim-isms to be more emacs-like. (n and p rather than j and k, for instance)
Your concern about having Awesome overlap with emacs is a non issue. By default (though you can change this, of course) all of the awesome keybindings are "under" the mod4 key (the windows/apple/etc) key on your keyboard, which nothing else uses, so there's no collisions.
The other big thing that I do is that rather than let awesome create tags (like virtual desktops but better) in a loop, I create the tags manually so that I can name them and specify specific layouts on a per-tag basis. Not that I've done that. I'd be glad to share my file with you, if you want it. The awesome 3.3 config file is, somehow, a lot cleaner than it's been in the past. I suspect that you'd be able to get started using it in a few moments and be able to tweak it to perfection after a couple of days of tweaking. I wouldn't be concerned and the awesome channel on oftc is great. There are a lot of folks--myself included--who would be willing to help you get this working if you were really interested.
4. Though I've not actually done an arch install myself I'm a huge fan of the distribution, and I've recommended it to friends with some success. I'm not a huge ubuntu partisan, however. I keep running the systems because they work already, and I'm maintaining 3 computers (plus another coming in the next few weeks) and I don't want to have to baby along a bunch of systems, when the current solution works. The main downsides with ubuntu (aside from the fact that you end up not learning as much, which is a valid point) is that it takes a little more room, and there are some cases where you have to fight against the low level dependencies (for instance, if you uninstall openoffice from ubuntu, it takes out aspell/ispell, and you have to reinstall those afterwords). But moving to arch has yet to win out in the great cost benefit analysis. Someday, I suspect it will.
And when that day comes, you'll hear from me. ;)
1. Firemacs rocks and while I think vimperator is probably the more flexiable, more intense piece of software, firemacs does *enough* that in combination with the hinting navigation plugin (which you can get separate from vimperator) is *enough*.
2. I've not tried slim, but I've had problems under ubuntu when i've tried to just start x manually from a virtual terminal (xinit). Gnome power manager won't load and suspend-hibernate doesn't work on the laptop without gdm, so while I'd like to have a system setup without gdm, I'm ok with it. And even my laptop which is a retronetbook, resource consumption is pretty low. So it's not a particularly pressing concern .
3. Awesome is, basically, the only desktop environment that I've used since switching to gnu/linux 6-9 months ago, so in some ways, it's taken a long time to get the configuration *just* right. On the other hand, I'm mostly using the default awesome config, so the truth is that, modifying a default config to be a usable config for me, involves just adding some program launching keybindings and changing some of the default vim-isms to be more emacs-like. (n and p rather than j and k, for instance)
Your concern about having Awesome overlap with emacs is a non issue. By default (though you can change this, of course) all of the awesome keybindings are "under" the mod4 key (the windows/apple/etc) key on your keyboard, which nothing else uses, so there's no collisions.
The other big thing that I do is that rather than let awesome create tags (like virtual desktops but better) in a loop, I create the tags manually so that I can name them and specify specific layouts on a per-tag basis. Not that I've done that. I'd be glad to share my file with you, if you want it. The awesome 3.3 config file is, somehow, a lot cleaner than it's been in the past. I suspect that you'd be able to get started using it in a few moments and be able to tweak it to perfection after a couple of days of tweaking. I wouldn't be concerned and the awesome channel on oftc is great. There are a lot of folks--myself included--who would be willing to help you get this working if you were really interested.
4. Though I've not actually done an arch install myself I'm a huge fan of the distribution, and I've recommended it to friends with some success. I'm not a huge ubuntu partisan, however. I keep running the systems because they work already, and I'm maintaining 3 computers (plus another coming in the next few weeks) and I don't want to have to baby along a bunch of systems, when the current solution works. The main downsides with ubuntu (aside from the fact that you end up not learning as much, which is a valid point) is that it takes a little more room, and there are some cases where you have to fight against the low level dependencies (for instance, if you uninstall openoffice from ubuntu, it takes out aspell/ispell, and you have to reinstall those afterwords). But moving to arch has yet to win out in the great cost benefit analysis. Someday, I suspect it will.
And when that day comes, you'll hear from me. ;)
3 months ago
in emacs blogging? me too? forward directions… on tychoish
I couldn't agree more about "search + a few hand curated lists." Blogs that smother every post in a gazillion tags are a bit bewildering. I much prefer blogs where the author has taken the time to categorize and classify her/his work -- greater editorial care makes for a richer reading experience.
I've been on a futile quest to use org-mode as a blogging tool. Alas, the two existing tools (org-blog and blorg) have serious flaws and (as far as I can tell) have been broken by newer versions of org mode.
I've been on a futile quest to use org-mode as a blogging tool. Alas, the two existing tools (org-blog and blorg) have serious flaws and (as far as I can tell) have been broken by newer versions of org mode.
1 reply
tychoish
I'm a historian's son, and I've worked in libraries/archives, and as a
result of both experiences I think I'm pretty sensitive to meta-data
concerns and organization. So my tag systems have always been well
organized and thought out so that's not the problem *per se*, but I
think even then, there's a limited utility to the way blogging engines
display data, particularly when you're like me and have so many
posts.
I was really surprised that at the state of emacs blogging, I have to
say. Maybe part of it is that TextMate blogging is so good, but there
are tons of features in the APIs that weblogger.el leaves out, (I
think), and I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that "saved"
weblogger buffers don't get saved to disk, but sent to the database,
which doesn't make a lot of sense. I want offline blog clients to
really be offline, or else they don't make a great deal of sense.
I've been playing around a lot with
[jekyll](http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/tree/master), and the
thought of moving to that system now are quite daunting. I think
future blogs will use that system, but moving this site over to that
is really daunting. In any case, Jekyll might be small enough that you
could hack the yaml format that it uses into something more org-mode
like? Similarly, I think it might be really cool to write some sort of
org-mode based xml-rpc client for wordpress/blogger, so that you wrote
org mode files/outlines, but it published to wordpress. I'd be all
over that.
Cool thoughts!
result of both experiences I think I'm pretty sensitive to meta-data
concerns and organization. So my tag systems have always been well
organized and thought out so that's not the problem *per se*, but I
think even then, there's a limited utility to the way blogging engines
display data, particularly when you're like me and have so many
posts.
I was really surprised that at the state of emacs blogging, I have to
say. Maybe part of it is that TextMate blogging is so good, but there
are tons of features in the APIs that weblogger.el leaves out, (I
think), and I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that "saved"
weblogger buffers don't get saved to disk, but sent to the database,
which doesn't make a lot of sense. I want offline blog clients to
really be offline, or else they don't make a great deal of sense.
I've been playing around a lot with
[jekyll](http://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/tree/master), and the
thought of moving to that system now are quite daunting. I think
future blogs will use that system, but moving this site over to that
is really daunting. In any case, Jekyll might be small enough that you
could hack the yaml format that it uses into something more org-mode
like? Similarly, I think it might be really cool to write some sort of
org-mode based xml-rpc client for wordpress/blogger, so that you wrote
org mode files/outlines, but it published to wordpress. I'd be all
over that.
Cool thoughts!
"we're promising a revolution," for what seems like evolutionary
changes. Not that there's problems with the sort of evolutionary
changes, buuuut, watching the leading edge of commercial technology
is sometimes a bit rough, agreed.
- I don't think google wave is a bad thing, in fact, it's xmpp based,
so the worst part is that they're building an ajax client, and that
they have a head start on developing the server tools. I mean, I'm
not terribly excited about it for myself, yeah.
- Agreed totally about the sort of a-list tech blogger scene. It's
also, always been that way.
- So ok, here's a preview of an upcoming post, with regards to cloud
computing, but: I'm totally agreed about cloud services and pushing
computing off onto web-apps created by google, scores of start-ups,
etc. At the same time, what I think is at the core of cloud
computing isn't this stuff about giving up control of your
computing, but rather a move towards thinking about your computing
needs as being infrastructural rather than specific-tool based.
I'm totally a cloud guy, but my cloud lives on a small VPS and
consists of way too many git repositories and an always-running
screen session.
- +1 Web apps are a scourge. I think I speak for both of us when I
say, "get emacs and shutup," to the web-app people.
- Mmmmm git.
Cheers,
sam