Next step: software magnate

January 31, 2009

A few nights ago, I stayed up until 8am working on a program. A seven line program. Yes, that means I wrote seven lines of code and called it a program. And no, that does not mean they were super-long complicated lines of regular expressions or anything like that. In fact they were very simple lines of Applescript.

These seven lines actually took just a minute or two to write and test to satisfaction. After that, I took a while to marvel at my creation. Then came what actually took several hours: I went to work on documenting and sharing this program (you can now find it hosted on Google Code).

Some of you might remember a post of mine from June where I professed my love for OSX 10.5's QuickLook feature. In that post, I complained about not being able to get into QuickLook's Index Sheet mode quickly. The typical process (select everything in Finder, hit space, click the Full Screen button, click the Index Sheet button) is not so slow as to be unusable, but it is just slow enough to not be "quick." And quickness is what QuickLook is all about, naturally. So this simple program I wrote solves my problem, for the most part. It takes what is at best a 3-step keyboard & mouse task and turns it into a quick two-mouse-clicks task. Ideally, I'll find a way to make it a one-click task, but for now, two clicks will suffice. This pushes it back into the realm of "quick."

I'm not going to reprint the copy from the Google Code page here, so if you're intrigued, just head over to the quicklook-fullscreen-gallery Google Code page. There are (fairly) detailed instructions there, along with the actual download.

And if you have any suggestions, questions, or fixes, then by all means please let me know!

P.S. This is my first official - albeit meager - foray into releasing open-source software. And hopefully not my last. I'm proud of myself. (Can't you tell?)

posted by joem | 4 comments

quick question: kindle

January 27, 2009


Has anyone seen someone using a Kindle (or any other e-book thing) out and about in public? Like on a subway or a bus or park bench? I would like to consider one, but, like the iPod ahead of it, I refuse to get something like this until I know I can take it out on the subway and not be a crazy oddity (or a mugging target, even though I imagine this would appeal to thieves less than an iPod).



Background to my inquiry:
As much as I love little paperback books that fit in my back pocket, I've finally accepted that reading has become a computer-based interactive process for me, due to so much computer time in my life. I need bookmarking, copy'n'pasting, and cross-referencing when I read. Yes, these are still possible with normal paperback books, but not in the same way. I am not saying that e-books are the future, but I think I need to admit that they will be my future.

posted by joem | 6 comments

1. Star Trek Was From The Future! 2. Plaintext.

January 22, 2009

Via John Gruber (who I've now started following), I found waferbaby's The Setup on Steven Frank (a man I never knew by name, but I know of his company). I'm not going to post the whole thing, or even necessarily recommend reading it (unless you want to hear someone talk about their personal hardware and software), but I do want to highlight a few key phrases/concepts Mr. Frank mentions. First:


"My [computer] at home is my "master" computer for everything ... and I leave file and screen sharing so I can get to that [computer] from any other computer over the internet. The other two [computers] I keep only very sparsely populated, and pull files from my home [computer] over the net as needed. It's sort of like "cloud computing", but with my own personal cloud."

A few weeks ago, I was dreaming of having a similar setup, if only I could afford multiple computers. People talk about "cloud computing" a lot these days, often as if it is a new concept. While certain aspects are new (the web interface, I suppose), the concept is very old and harkens back to the era of the mainframe. And yet it IS the future. Take, for instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation (or DS9 or VOY, for that matter). These crews of the 24th century basically have a (voice-activated) server-and-terminal system... with the main computer, the computer access panels, and the little pad-like things they would work on. You could almost pull that off today, just so long as you don't let Verizon make the voice software. So, Steven Frank's computer setup is an early version of the Star Trek Enterprise's computer system.

Later in the waferbaby piece:

"I've found that I'm really averse to installing any software at all, because years of computing have taught me that proprietary data formats are fragile and succumb to time. So an application needs to prove itself extremely useful and extremely reliable to survive on my systems for long."

I'm right there with you, Steven. I periodically cleanse my computer of software that doesn't make the cut, and I make a point of having only 1 ideal version of any given type program. There's no need to install 3 sound editors, 5 programming IDEs, 4 professional graphics editors, and so on. Nor is there need to install 1 monster hybrid sound-editor/programming-IDE/professional-graphics-editor/do-everything program. Keep only the best, and keep only what you use*. The more software you have installed, the more data formats you have to choose from, and the more ways to manipulate those data formats you have to choose from.

And that idea led right into this next quote:

"As much as possible, I try to keep my data in "lowest common denominator" formats (like plain text) that can follow me anywhere without hassle."

To quote Omar: "Indeed." My adherence to this code may have been hastened by my year-or-so of using Linux, but I've been keeping notes and writing drafts of papers in simple text files for my entire computing life (OK, maybe not elementary school when I didn't know how to use anything except word processors). Besides "following me anywhere" (a.k.a. data portability), plaintext is also great for focusing you attention on the text itself. No fiddling with fonts and typography, no fiddling with colors or sizes, barely any fiddling with layout, no hyperlinking... Break up what you do. Write your text as text, then convert it into a formatted document, be it HTML or MS Word or OpenOffice.org Writer or LaTeX.

(Oh, and to bring it all back to John Gruber, I was very glad to discover Markdown, a simple method of formatting a text file so that it is easily converted into richly-formatted texts (primarily HTML). The beauty of this particular markup method is that it is incredibly simple, incredibly transparent, and to a large extent I had already been formatting my plaintext in its syntax.)

* I used to think of this as "computer minimalism" but perhaps it's more akin to "use every part of the buffalo" and "only take as much as you need."

posted by joem | 10 comments

The One Song

January 12, 2009

This is the one song that I've listened to more than any other:

Undertow by Lush

It is entirely possible that I've listened to it more than Happy Birthday, actually. Honest. I've been listening to it since either late '94 or early '95. I love it. I loved it then, and I love it now. And I've loved it every moment in between. Sure, there are other bands that I've been listening to since back then, but none as solidly as Lush. I'll fade in and out of love with certain bands, but not Lush (Oh, Miki!). At least not this one song. EVERY SINGLE TIME I put it on, I have to tear myself away from it eventually. I think I've been listening to it for at least a half an hour now, and I'm so tired. I WANT to sleep, I really do. But I need to listen to this song again.

And again.

(If the download link goes dead, sorry. Let me know and I'll send you it or something. Maybe I'll invite you over and play it for you. Who knows.)

posted by joem | 0 comments

I liked the one with the penguins

posted by joem | 0 comments

Nothing New Regarding Division By Zero

I just found myself sitting here contemplating the concept of division by zero. I am nothowever, thinking about infinity, or nothingness. What intrigues me right now is how such complicated concept is there, easily come across, even in grade school arithmetic. Granted, grade school teachers (and many high school and college teachers) will simply say "you can't do that" if it ever comes up.


That's all I was thinking. 

And I noticed that while I was thinking about this, Ladytron's True Mathematics randomly came on my shuffled playlist.

posted by joem | 0 comments

A new regret.

January 06, 2009

I regret that isn't me playing that guitar:


Shamelessly lifted from PCL Linkdump. Again.

posted by joem | 1 comments

A Challenge for the English Majors or the PROgrammers

January 03, 2009

I've been reading about Ruby a lot. Ah, what fun. Often, I see people saying things like DRY and REST and (worst of all) RESTful, and no matter how many times I look up those terms, I always forget what they mean or why I should care. Due to this, I'm fairly certain they're basically buzzwords that mean nothing. Or at least they mean nothing for which there isn't already a word.


So... I hate those terms.

I was just reading a thread where someone used the acronym LOC for lines of code. I realized that this acronym doesn't piss me off, even though it took me a few seconds to figure out what LOC meant. But if the author of that post had written LOCal (meaning: pertaining to the lines of code), I might have vomited.

Herein lies today's challenge:

Who can come up with the most vomit-worthy compound use of an acronym?

Rules and things:
  • Chatting/texting acronyms (LOL, WTF, BRB...) don't count, unless you manage to come up with something amazing.
  • Bonus points for using vomit-worthy acronyms.
  • Mega-bonus points for writing a program to help you find as many as possible.
  • Super-mega-bonus points for writing a program that finds as many as possible and automatically makes an 'educated guess' at their meanings.
  • INSTANT WIN for actually making me vomit (without the aid of disgusting pictures or fingers down my throat or syrup of ipecac, mind you).

My humble first (lame) entry to get the ball rolling: POSitive
I can't figure out what it would mean, though. A good piece of shit, perhaps? Like "Plan 9 From Outer Space is totally POSitive!"

Come on. SOMEONE can do better than that....

posted by joem | 2 comments

I talked and ate chicken wings

January 01, 2009

It's been a while since I actually linked to some music, eh? To make up for my delinquency, I've got quite a treat for you...

kracfive vs after-school kids
(There's no easy link just to the album that I can tell, so that link takes you to the kracfive website, and the album should be right there free for download on the front page.)

Now, what is this music? It's a group of real short songs made by kracfive after some k5 members recorded some little kids rapping at an afterschool program. We didn't stop there, though... Beats and music were added, the rapping was digitally touched up and all that great magic that producers do. And the results are awesome. Hilarious, fun, and sort of bad-ass.

Disclaimer: My involvement was unfortunately limited. Most of the hard work was done by Chris Colongib. Big ups.

posted by joem | 1 comments

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
/* Google Analytics ----------------------------------------------- */