In the future, journal entries should now be syndicated via RSS, Facebook, and Twitter. Commentators using Facebook rather than Blogger, will be LARTed.
When Google+ integrates better with Blogger, we’ll see what happens, hehe. It is rapidly becoming my preferred media but Blogger is better suited for longer stuff. Give us more API Googlers, more API!
Understanding Twitter
Newsgroups, forums, blogging, Facebook, Google+, etc are all things that I understand fairly well. Twitter less so for me, as it’s not a service that I ‘use’. Some people I know use Twitter but mostly it’s just businesses and marketing, and I don’t care about any of the businesses I like that much to listen; so I’ve little use for the service.
Viewing someone’s tweets reads off like a list of short messages, similar to the blog model (e.g. like a Wall post on Facebook) which almost everyone understands these days. But it includes the users comments inline, along with their comments (replies) on other peoples posts (tweets). In a way, it is coser to the newgroup/forum model where in you have a node that fits into a ‘thread’, yet the head of the thread is just a normal post (node). In the blogging model, it’s somewhat different because of the emphasis on the blog comment.
This makes it rather disconcerting to look at tweets for the initiated. From first glance, it’s like listening to a twittering bird that not only talks to the open air (hello you Facebook mob!) but also to its imaginary friends. By clicking the tweet (look for the icon top right) you can see the thread and explore the relationship between tweets. It’s a decentralized version of how forums work; instead of defaulting to viewing by topical thread, your default view is by the user.
If that last paragraph makes sense, particularlly the last sentence: you now understand Twitter. Or I’m missing something lol.
What remains to be seen until the course of history has advanced much further, is whether or not any given model (newsgroup, blog, twitter) will become the universally accepted model of communication on the internet. Twitter is a leg up over using a mail client that doesn’t do threads (eww) but I personally prefer the newsgroup model, but profese, twitter is an interesting data model for machine processing to whatever corporations will do to profit from that data model.
Definitions:
- Newsgroup model
- Someone starts a topic, other people reply; replies and topic starts are all the same thing (posts) but things are usually collated into “Threads”. Examples include USENET, mailing lists, and forums.
- Blog model
- Someone blogs an article, other people comment; comments are distinct from the content and may be deemphasized depending on the platform. Examples include Blogging and Facebook.
- Twitter model
- Someone tweets a short message, other people may publically or privately reply . All nodes are equal and connected as in a shared thread, but are collated by “Users” rather than threads.
Right, premake4 is one of my favourite ways to build C/C++ stuff but tonight I’m thinking it has a moron involved. You can specify a project as being one of four kinds: ConsoleApp, WindowedApp, SharedLib, StaticLib. The documentation here states that this likely means /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS will be passed to link.exe, and indeed it is. That is how you say call WinMain and do any other I’m a GUI app magic for Windows; other wise you get a main and a command prompt; simply put.
This FAQ entry on the other hand, is just retarded.
iPhone 4S vs. Samsung Galaxy S II Drop Test
The Samsung makes me glad that my ASUS Transformer uses Gorilla Glass like the Galaxy S II phone, not whatever crud is used on the iPhone 4S.
Did I ever mention that I wouldn’t have bought an iPad, even if it had Gorilla glass?
Today while I was pacing the lunch room, waiting on my lunch to finish microwaving. I came to a bit of a conclusion; concepts such as deductive reasoning and mathematical induction generally apply.
Over the span of my life thus far, my mother has been opposed to every “Good thing” in my life. Except one: getting into church. That one good thing only happened because she was presuing her own interests, I just got dragged along for the ride. Like wise, by the flipside of that coin, pro to just about everything that has had reaching negative impact on my life.
That gives me two thoughts about life at present: A.) I’m probably on the right track (Thanks mom) and B.) at least my mother is consistent.
Maybe I can never expect my mother to ever be aligned with ‘good’ for me so much as what she wants (and assumes therefore must be best). But at least I can generally count on my mother being consistent, easily anticipated, and generally annoying. Most of her present behaviours, I calculated the probability of when I was what, like 8? LOL! I like consistency and determinism. It aligns with my concept of ‘order’ in the universe instead of pure randomness.
That being said, I think I would actually worry if my mother didn’t approuch any good thing in my life, as if it was a radioactive time bomb about to obliterate the known universe. Even more so knowing my mother.
Today, my mother wanted to know how much cash she could borrow next week. Having just paid off a stack of stuff, she’d have to wait until my next pay cheque or take it against my credit card.
I had decided to “Fire” her from the grocery shopping, i.e. rather than giving her a budget to shop with ($500/month), I’d do it myself—because she proves in capable of sticking to that. I tried paying the rent (over $700) and she racked up debt against my pocket money for vacation. Hasn’t paid back a dime. To try and be *nice*, I opted for a unique option….swap groceries for bills. Which I’ve paid off ^^.
The concept there, being yet again, if I’m doing that, she isn’t entitled to more…my most recent Google+ entry shows how much debt she’s already in. Prior to taking on bills in exchange for not firing her. I wanted an formal (and witnessed) agreement that she’s not allowed to borrow any more $$$, and the bills in my name; but I never got around to that first detail.
This time, I’m requiring it + a pay in full clause as a perquisite to loaning her any more money.
The Other Guys
Just finished watching a movie called The Other Guys, and I must say: while I thought it was rather retarded at first, by the end game I was thoroughly enjoying the film.
So you have two bozo’s, a “Forensic Accountant” that acts like you’d expect him to be sucking a lolly and an angry failure. Give or take a bunch of people with “WTF STUPID” stamped on their forehead. By the end of it, you’re convinced that you don’t want to mess with a Prius and that a Chechen Dora The Explorer is a terrible idea; or how many times do you see a bunch of golfers take down a helichopter for detectives in trouble?! It’s been a while since a movies made me cackle as loud as the ending, even if the beginning is a bit more obtuse.
On the other hand, it’s an excellent little romp and definitions worth watching, if you have a sense of humour and can take the pace ;).
For Fails Sake!
I just noticed in Comcast’s account page, appropriately they note the default address, username, and password to login to the web interface for setup of the particular wireless router in question. However…the scary thing is they encourage you to connect using the default SSID and the network key printed on the label (hopefully not also out of a can….), skipping any need to use the web interface what so ever.
Right, let me paint you a picture. Joe & Jane Luser, don’t know squat about routers. Most people don’t even if they know how to use computers well beyond average (but it’s not that hard). The label says skip the rocket ma-science setup smetz up and just plug it in, connect to this network name and type in this password…you’re done! The Lusers are probably so inept, they even put the label on the router just in case.
Now, let’s say they have a neighbor help fix a computer problem someday and she notes the label. Sometime later they piss her off, so she connects from her apartment, logs in with the default, and locks the Lusers out. Or maybe does all sorts of nasty shit; winning!
It’s probably a good thing that routers rarely default to allowing remote administration, so at least the SSID/Key are there…but that isn’t good enough that I would want to bank on it. And trust me, if someone gets deep enough into your network, you can be banking on it.
I guess like many, this morning I learned that the world recently lost one of it’s biggest contributors. I do not mean Steve Jobs, a man with his own important legacy. Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie has died, he was more commonly known as ‘DMR’ or just ‘Dennis Ritchie’. A G+ entry by Rob Pike is the earliest reporting I’m aware of, but I can’t say I expect this sad news to be found on TV.
Dennis Ritchie has a place in history that few men have ever achieved, because his work helped change the world. I am a young man compared to the late DMR but I does have an interest in history. If it wasn’t for this mans work, I doubt that I could be writing this journal entry, because he helped to enable so many elements that make it possible.
His most famous programming language, C, was so pervasively popular, that I knew of it before I learned to program. My first programming language (C++) was derived from it. A big part of how I fell so deep insane with computers was learning about how C and Unix became self hosting. That means you could make C and Unix using C and Unix, in laymans terms. Back then that was almost like revolutionary – today it’s like sliced bread. We take it for granted but someone had to help show us the way; then people started to use it everywhere.
Through C, we gained countless programs. Most Unix operating systems are written in C, most other operating systems are written in C or finally grown from one that was. Unix, DOS, Windows, Linux, OSX, your iPod, your iPhone, your iPad, our Android. None of it would exist just like it does. Most of the stuff we do every day involves C programs, be that reading e-mail, playing games, surfing the web. It is even normal for other programming languages to be implemented in C. The defacto standard Perl, Python, and Ruby included. It is so normal that writing a language implementation in itself is not so big anymore. C is so pervasive that it is also inescapable in other languages: their is almost always a way and a need to interface with C code. Hell, today you might even have C code involved in your toaster. It is that important a programming language. If you ever used a computer or an embedded system, you have probably used software written in C, or are old enough to remember what it was like before punch cards.
C is perhaps the single most important language since programmer’s stopped writing in raw machine code. In fact, sometime after that we stopped writing in assembly and I know no one who goes lower level than reading the machine code. A common portion of C syntax is practically our linga franca—even if C is not a shared language, the syntax (which grew from prior languages) is also widely used and an alternative to pure pseudo code.
Maybe a lot of young programmers don’t know C, or skip it. I love it. It is one of the most beautiful languages that I know, despite it’s trappings. Perhaps some of the greatest lessons I learned about my craft, was that learned from C. Perhaps another was the humility of it’s creator.
Somehow, I doubt his other works will ever be as well known as C, or things he was a big part of (like Unix), but maybe people will study them and see what they can learn from the work of a legendary hacker, like Dennis Ritchie.
Thoughts of modal/semi-modal editing on Android
In regards to modal, I mean `like vi`, where in the keyboard is shifted between a normal “Command” mode for manipulating text and an “Insert” mode for typing text into the buffer. A prime example can be found by learning vi (or vim or elvis). Personally I think this kind of model fits well with a mobile device like Android, even more so than it does a PC—emacs pinky be damned ;). Which makes me think of something like this:
- A simple “Notepad” grade editor
- Press a designated command key, send following keystrokes to command dispatcher
- Useful stuff: save/load, buffer list, etc.
- Scripting/configuration language
Something uniquely respective of my vi/vim heritage, yet incorporating lessons from the emacsen school. As a former XEmacs user, I do know quite well that my beloved Vi IMproved is not always well subverted. Using the volume up/down keys (and settings to rebind ofc) would make perfect replacements for Control and Meta (Alt/Escape). Using a keyboard with suitable keys, obviously eliminates this: and for on screen work with a big enough display, I really have to reccomend The Hackers Keyboard. It is an interesting preposition, at least. For scripting language, that one is a stickly wickly one. Android is not well suited to this in the conventional sense. Unless you want to implement one in a suitable subset of Java (double barf). An interesting idea would be to compile something like Lua or a Scheme interp’ to native code, and communicate with it using some type of local socket and RPC. That might be interesting to toy with. Then perhaps, “Plugin-lets” that add useful tools, such as busybox or git. That’s less feasible but certainly interesting.