Remodelling

Despite not having written in a while, I’ve gotten some excellent comments on the look of this site.

“…I don’t know if that’s artsy or what, but I wasn’t all that impressed.”

and the more concise:

“conspicously vacant”

Perhaps suck.com had the same problem 😉

Either way, this site’s role has changed, and it needs to do more than it did when I refreshed it last.

Also, last week kicked off the full kitchen remodel here at HQ. In an effort to minimize stress, anxiety, and any jinxes, I’m holding off writing about it until it’s over.

The Power of Vendor/Gems

Right now, I’m heavily reliant on an unsupported (if not completely abandoned) ruby gem library. Historically, I’ve just gem install bizarro-gem and moved on.

A couple of issues have changed my perspective:

  • My host, textdrive, doesn’t allow installing bizarro gems on their shared servers and I’ve had difficulty freezing them, so I worked around the desired functionality.
  • I needed to make some modification to the library. Not easy to do if it’s installed system wide.

Thankfully, I found Chris Wanstrath’s Vendor Everything , his post makes it trivial to freeze gems in a reliable, testable, hackable way.

The core of Chris’s technique is added this line to your Rails::Initializer.run block:
config.load_paths += Dir["#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/gems/**"].map do |dir|
File.directory?(lib = "#{dir}/lib") ? lib : dir
end

And unpack the required gems into vendor/gems

With that, I was able to make the necessary modifications and make a more portable app.

Thanks Chris.

To Do Before I Die: Get 99 Other People to Speak My Made Up Language

While Toki Pona‘s minimalism feels too much like Newspeak for my taste, the notion of creating a new common-use language is an intriguing thought. Especially if the language’s biases were deliberate – and I agreed w/ them 😉 – from the beginning.

Initial thought: a highly technolibertarian version of Dutch.

Thanks to: Hobbies in everything- Tyler Cowen

RE: Rice Lake Cross Country Meet

Back in HS XC, the Rice Lake race was one of a handful of races I always looked forward to. Aside from being a very competitive race, the course had an interesting features – back then, it started out around the Community College’s baseball diamond, as people fought for position and got into their pace around the fencing it was inevitable that people would stumble and fall.

And the crowd would count the fallen runners – 1…..2…..3……4

Thanks to JimmerC for the memories.

Innovation in Feed Aggregation = Search?

“So what do I say when people want me to switch my reader away from Google Reader? I answer ‘it’s too late.'” – Robert Scoble

1

Anyway, in the comments, there’s a pointer to fav.or.it. Like streamy and aiderss it’s another attempt to make a new kind of aggregator. From the screencast, it seems more in the realm of techmeme (5000 channels and nothings on) rather than newgator/bloglines (just the channels I want).

The most interesting innovation in feed aggregation can’t be Google adding search. There’s got to be something else. Please let there be something else.

Then again, I’ve been building2 and haven’t been paying super close attention.

1. On a personal note: This comment makes me smile. It’s a fine line between promoting the next hottest app and proclaiming lock-in.

2. I’m planning to go more public with it at this month’s ruby.mn meeting. So, shhhh if you’ve already seen it, thanks.

Dr. Who’s to Blame

If you’ve been watching the new Dr. Who series (even via Netflix like myself) then you you can be relieved to know that Torchwood is now it’s own series1.

Laurel points to this review:

“If Torchwood has one real problem, it’s that it’s trying to be two series at once. One is a mostly smart, morally troubling series about a demon-haunted band of paranormal investigators; the other’s a fizzy, omnisexual soap opera where everyone is always just on the verge of making out with everyone else.” – Nathan Alderman, TeeVee.net

Feels like Torchwood belongs just below Dr. Who on the quality scale; mostly entertaining, occassionally excellent, extremely melodramatic and cheesy, something about scifi.

Sounds perfect to get from Netflix and have on in the background.

1. In retrospect, it feels like Russell T. Davies’ pretext for the new Dr. Who series was a set up for the spin off. Blah.

Re-Tweeting FeedSeeder

If you’ve been reading my twitterings over the past week or so, then you’re already read this stuff. I’m posting it here to include it in the FeedSeeder category archive fer later.

“…there are only very few instances where unsub’ing from a feed makes sense.”

“@swirlspice – exactly. the real issue is how always find the relevant/intersting things in feeds that don’t always have them.”

“no, ‘reading’ is not a gesture of any value, nor is ‘opening’. At best, it’s a comment on the effectiveness of the headline copy.”

“this new feed thingy is working out pretty well for me. While not perfect, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything nor do I feel overwhelmed.”

“…is thinking about what I as a publisher want from a feed reader. The more I think about today’s feed readers, the more I shake my head.”

Me: “I don’t like lengthy sign-up forms”
Them: “It’s 6 fields”
Me: “Too long.”

Unread Bug

“Unread counts now go to 1,000, so that you can know just how far behind you are when you come back from vacation.” – Google Reader

WTF? Telling me there are a 1,000 new things in the world is a feature? Hell, where’s the count of all the people I haven’t met, all the foods I haven’t eaten, all the places I haven’t gone, all the women I haven’t slept with.

None of those numbers are valuable, useful, or relevant.

Plus, as proven by the recent addition of search, if I’ve read something – there’s a far great chance that I’ll want to find it and read it again. So if anything, there should be a ‘read’ count.

Seems so much more optimistic and encouraging.

UPDATE Oct 5, 2007:
I’m now confident that ‘read’/’unread’ – whether in email or RSS readers – promotes poor inbox management. If you can visually identify new stuff, there’s no reason to eliminate the old stuff. Want to reach Inbox Zero? Turn off your read/unread.

ELSEWHERE:

“In, let;s just say, Gmail, do you need a statistical breakdown of how many people you have BCC’d in the last day? Week? Month?…In Google Calendar, do you need to know the average number of appointments you have had on Tuesday afternoons, over the last year?…No, because that would be freaking stupid.” – Gabriel Cheifetz

“I give up. Select all, mark as read.” – Lou Springer

“Been neglecting my Google Reader feeding list for days. Terrified to log in.” – nathantwright