Author: larsmagne23
London Review of Chocolate
(June 16, 2012)I was in London the other week. When in London, I always try to visit a snobby chocolate store. The Brits make the best chocolate, for some reason or other. My favourites are Artisan du Chocolat and Demarquette. They make the most tasty box of chocolates ever. But featured here in this photo feature we … Continue reading London Review of Chocolate
Useful Consumer Review
(June 15, 2012)Micro SD playing headphones I have a love/hate affair with wiring. I love that stuff works. That’s why I love ethernet cables. Because wifi doesn’t work. But I hate getting tangled in cables. And I love music. So walking around is a conundrum. Micro SD card Fortunately, some geniuses came up with the idea of … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review
It Waits
(June 15, 2012)Some day… Some day…
Wrong Scale
(May 18, 2012)Fun-sized?
There. I Fixed It.
(May 16, 2012)I really like the fanless machines from Aleutia. They have a nice form factor, they’re really silent, and they have kinda amusing web pages. I’ve got three of the Sandy Bridge machines now, and they just like work and stuff. Nine thumbs up. However! These are Sandy Brigde machines. That means built-in Intel graphics. Built-in … Continue reading There. I Fixed It.
CDO
(May 13, 2012)I’m going to the I’ll Be Your Mirror thing next weekend. They’re doing a tape swap thing. I probably won’t be participating, because I’m lazy, but I did start thinking about what such a tape would consist of. Fortunately, Emacs has kept track of all the albums I’ve played over the last decade, so I … Continue reading CDO
Cheapskates Revealed!
(April 30, 2012)In the previous installment, we saw that Penguin had done weird stuff typographically. And now I understand why. In the back of the book is a “List of Variants”, which details minutely what manuscripts have been used. I mean, important stuff like “La” vs “la”. And they list these variants based on page and line … Continue reading Cheapskates Revealed!
Cheapskates
(April 29, 2012)I was reading Tender is the Night and was puzzling over the typesetting. The foreword and the index is set in a very clear, narrow typeface, while the text itself looks old and worn. This is unfortunately an annotated edition, which I loathe. I wouldn’t have bought it if I’d known. But that doesn’t make … Continue reading Cheapskates
Linkblogging
(April 8, 2012)This seems to explain the weird tendency Linux has to swap out huge processes, even when there’s plenty of free memory. I’ve always wondered why that happens. Short answer: ccNUMA. Long answer here. And also this.
Useful Consumer Review
(April 1, 2012)I bought this catch-and-release fly catcher… gun… a few weeks back. But, despite the warmest March ever (or something), I hadn’t seen a single fly since getting the device. Until today. It works! I caught the fly and released it out the window. I didn’t really think it would work, because the suction kinda sucks. … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review
Explain This
(March 27, 2012)The seam just doesn’t seem to be functional.
Springtime
(March 24, 2012)A decade ago I decided to buy lots of plants. I don’t know what this is… I’d always had a couple of plants, but they’d always die on me. Since I’m basically enthusiasm-driven, I realized that the only way I’d ever be able to have any non-dead plants on my windows was to buy lots … Continue reading Springtime
They Live!
(March 24, 2012)I wrapped up my rose bushes for the winter, but I didn’t really expect them to survive. And I just unwrapped them now. But look! New leaves! This has been a kinda warm winter, though. And it’s the hottest March ever, according to… somebody… Anyway. Exciting!
Hair Today
(March 23, 2012)According to experts, apparently long hair can get trapped in pipes leading to a less than optimal drainage situation. The solution here, according to the same experts, is to pour a liquid called “Mudin” down the drains twice a year. Or, as the experts said, “or, for you, every three months”. I’m just reporting what … Continue reading Hair Today
Computers Can Remember Things
(March 20, 2012)One feature that I’ve been missing from mplayer for years and years is the ability to remember how far you’ve watched a movie. Like, if I’ve been watching a movie, but then I stop the movie because I want to watch a TV show, then mplayer doesn’t helpfully remember where you left off. So I’ve … Continue reading Computers Can Remember Things
Lighting Out for the Territories
(March 17, 2012)I’m pretty sure there’s no air raid going on.
Plastic Bags Considered Arty
(March 17, 2012)The Floor What is that lovely expressionistic piece of art on the right, you say? Let me tell you a story. I went shopping for groceries at ICA today. I left the bags on the floor in the kitchen. The kitchen floor has heating cables. The cables switched themselves on. The red text on the … Continue reading Plastic Bags Considered Arty
Compositing Text Over Images
(March 17, 2012)8 Inch USB Screen With Composited Text I have a number of small USB-powered screens scattered across the apartment that displays various stuff that I find myself wanting to know. In particular, I always want to know what music is playing. And I sometimes want to know what temperature it is outside. (And I can … Continue reading Compositing Text Over Images
March 9th, 2012
(March 9, 2012)Dear Diary, I’ve switched the SSD disks back to the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i controller again, and did some final benchmarks. I’m comparing reading bits of the Gmane spool in semi-random (i.e. ext4 directory) order, name order (which is also the same order as the files were created), and finally, just reading a big hunking … Continue reading March 9th, 2012
March 7th, 2012
(March 7, 2012)Brace yourselves.Winter is coming back Dear Diary, I’ve now found some time to do further speed testing of the SSD machine that’s going to replace the Gmane news server. I know that you remember everything, Diary, but let me give you a brief recap. I got a bunch of 512GB Samsung 830 SATA3 SSDs that … Continue reading March 7th, 2012
Tentacle Mystery
(February 17, 2012)I ordered… something… as the appetizer at the restaurant tonight. I’m pretty sure I didn’t expect this tentacle plate to appear, though. Did I order it? Was the waiter just having fun? Anyway, what it is? It kinda looks like octopus, but not quite. The tentacles don’t quite look octopussey enough. And the texture wasn’t … Continue reading Tentacle Mystery
Baffled Pizza
(February 7, 2012)Take your backpacks off! There’s a pizzeria just down the street here that almost always has a long queue outside. Pizzeria da Baffetto. Naturally, if there’s a long line, I want to be there, too. Or perhaps not. But I was thinking that that might be the reason that all these people were standing out … Continue reading Baffled Pizza
Lethal Eatin’
(January 30, 2012)After doing intense research, I’m able to confirm that the lethal Kinder Eggs are still availble in Italy. And furthermore, they contain amusing stuff like the construction set and the paper thing on the right, and not just boring figurines. Let the touristing commence!
Roma
(January 29, 2012)Roma
(January 26, 2012)January 20th, 2012
(January 26, 2012)The magical key! Dear Diary, today the IOPS-unlocking FastPath key arrived for the LSI MegaRAID 9265-8i card arrivied! I was so excited, until I opened the box an found what’s basically something that short-circuits two headers on the RAID card. What a rip-off. It probably disables some sleep(1) calls in the firmware on the card. … Continue reading January 20th, 2012
January 15th, 2012
(January 16, 2012)Dear Diary, after the rather disappointing random read benchmarks (I mean, 4K files a second? It’s pitiful) I almost went into a severe depression and started thinking about using vi. Again. But then I went back to the hardware pusher’s web site and noticed something strange. They’re selling something that’s supposed to make their LSI … Continue reading January 15th, 2012
January 14th, 2012
(January 14, 2012)Dear Diary, today I’ve written a small benchmark utility to try to emulate NNTP server performance. A one-file-per-article spool has somewhat unusual performance characteristics, totally dominated by stat-ing and stuff. So my little utility is a C program that recursively reads a real news spool, and then just discards the result. It’s extremely single-threaded, which … Continue reading January 14th, 2012
January 13th, 2012
(January 14, 2012)Dear diary, today is the most joyful day of my entire life. The Samsung 830s for my new server arrived! Sort of out of the blue! The web shop insisted upon them not arriving until the end of the month, and then they sent them anyway. Look at how pretty they are. One might even … Continue reading January 13th, 2012
January 4th, 2012
(January 11, 2012)Dear Diary, today the RAID card arrived for my new server. I had apparently only ordered a single SATA cable instead of the six I had meant to order. But it turned out that the card didn’t use normal SATA cables at all, but a weird one-to-four connector. It’s a big connector on one side, … Continue reading January 4th, 2012
December 29th, 2011
(January 6, 2012)Dear Diary, arghh! Now the shipment date of the Samsungs has been pushed back to January 31st! “Tentatively.” Can I really wait that long to test the new server? (Continue reading my secret diary.)
December 23rd, 2011
(January 6, 2012)Dear Diary, today I was rummaging through the drawers in the office, and I happened upon an SSD there. It was a Corsair Force 3, which is a SATA 3.0 disk! Yay! I can finally do some benchmarking, I thought. I put the SSD into the server and switched it on, but it came up … Continue reading December 23rd, 2011
December 22nd, 2011
(January 5, 2012)Dear Diary, the Samsungs haven’t arrived yet, but they’re supposed to arrive any day now. I’m starting to wonder whether they actually exist out there, or if they are a phantom product that’s announced, but not actually shipped. But I just looked on Newegg, for instance, and they claim to have them in stock, so … Continue reading December 22nd, 2011
December 19th, 2011
(January 4, 2012)Dear diary, Sinking Heat today I got the heat sink and the RAM for the new server. I installed them and hit the power switch. It’s alive! I haven’t built a server in ever so long, so I’m happy and kinda surprised that it works. The Samsung 830s I ordered haven’t arrived yet, but they’re … Continue reading December 19th, 2011
December 16th, 2011
(January 2, 2012)Dear Diary, There’s only one 8-pin header on the motherboard today I got the motherboard I ordered for the new server! I yanked the old motherboard out and put the new one in. And it fit! I got all the power cables, the SATA cables, and the fan cables fitted without any major problem, despite … Continue reading December 16th, 2011
Useful Consumer Review
(January 2, 2012)Ugly OS This year, I’m finally actually really (this time) learn to read French. So I needed a dictionary by the couch, so I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which is the tablet with the longest battery life, allegedly. (Apart from the tablets from The Company That Shall Not Be Mentioned.) The most immediately … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review
December 12th, 2011
(January 1, 2012)Dear Diary, since the beginning of time, Man has yearned to have their news spools on solid state disks instead of those pesky spinning ones. The load on the Gmane news server frequently tips over the 16 point (which means that access is denied) purely from people and bots hammering the web and news interfaces … Continue reading December 12th, 2011
Tube on the Tube
(December 20, 2011)Puny Weakling Laptop I’ve wanted to be able to display YouTube stuff on my TV for a long time. If somebody mentions a link on IRC, it would be nice to display that on the big screen instead of my minuscule sofa laptop. (Which isn’t powerful enough to show most YouTube videos, anyway. Poor Sony … Continue reading Tube on the Tube
Fancy!
(December 17, 2011)New Camera
Inscrutability. We haz it.
(December 10, 2011)Gnomic I’ve got a form to fill out about fire readiness in the apartment. Which is OK. But the questions are kinda inscrutable. I’m supposed to tick either “OK” or “Divergence” (or something. It’s a kinda odd word choice in Norwegian, too). So it starts out fine. “Is there at least one functioning smoke detector … Continue reading Inscrutability. We haz it.
The Carpenters
(December 10, 2011)Fancy Machine! A few months ago I bought some new shelves to get my shoes organisized. The shoes were all jumbled up in my closet. Today, after the mandatory procrastinating period I found myself actually awake on a Saturday morning. So today is the day! Then I spent an hour looking for the saws that … Continue reading The Carpenters
Yes Concert
(December 7, 2011)Yes Concert
Useful Consumer Review
(December 1, 2011)I bought these tipping tea cups… They actually work. I mean, they tip and the tea leaves don’t fall out when I drink the tea. However, the cups are made out of a kind of nasty plastic that feels just wrong. And they taste like plastic, too. So my rating here is: Unusable. But the … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review
Oldey Timey Mickey
(November 28, 2011)I don’t think he eats worms any more.
Reuse Before Recycle
(November 25, 2011)I got a package from Amazon today — delivered in a mail bag. Which isn’t unusual. This is, though: But a veteran of what?
More Further Legal Proceedings
(November 22, 2011)As you recall from the first episode of this series, I received several kilos of paperwork from India about… something. The gist of it was — somebody had allegedly committed libel against somebody else, and they had put a law firm onto the case. The law firm got it all firmly in hand, but neglected … Continue reading More Further Legal Proceedings
More Legal Proceedings
(November 21, 2011)My boss got the letter below today. As I don’t speak French, I’m not totally sure what it’s asking me to do, but I’ll assume that it wants me to remove the links in question. The fascinating thing about this very geniune-looking (ahem) official letter is that it doesn’t mention who’s sending it. Who is … Continue reading More Legal Proceedings
Music Distribution
(November 12, 2011)The main issue when I moved to the new flat, oh, three-ish years ago? I think, was how to listen to music. I want to be able to walk between rooms, listening to the same music. This means that there has to be some kind of way to distribute music between the rooms. I looked … Continue reading Music Distribution
Lars Animal Rescue
(November 11, 2011)Bird When I came home today, I found a magpie (Pica Pica) sitting on top of my outlet box. That’s on the fourth floor, so it had flown up the stairs. Confused bird. Anyway, I thought could just open the window and let it fly out, but it flew on up to the top floor … Continue reading Lars Animal Rescue
Emacs Light Switches
(November 11, 2011)Tellstick Duo Telldus launched a new version of their nifty USB-based “home automation” thingy a couple of months ago. It’s mostly the same as the last version, but this one can receive signals as well as send signals. This means that you can buy stuff like this switch, glue it onto a wall somewhere, and … Continue reading Emacs Light Switches
Will This Do?
(November 9, 2011)I was reading an MC Siegler post linked to from HackerNews, where he rants about the iOS Gmail client and Google products in general: And all of this is the M.O. of pretty much all Google iOS apps. They’re half-ass, buggy, and generally ugly to boot. The obvious retort is “yeah, and Apple never released … Continue reading Will This Do?
flac123 tweaks
(November 8, 2011)I’ve altered flac123 slightly to allow setting the output buffer size, as well as cleaning up the STDOUT/STDERR interaction and put it on github. Not extremely exciting. So here’s a picture of a bowl: Bowl
Artifacts
(November 7, 2011)Cartridge
(November 1, 2011)Gem I bought a new pick-up for the record player (I know, how au courant) today. They didn’t have the one I wanted so I bought this one instead. Look at the pretty packaging!
Legal Proceedings
(October 31, 2011)The last time I handled Gmane emails (I do that about once a month. Drunk.) I got a stranger than usual threat from India. I’m used to being told that I’m so sowed because of something some moron once posted on a mailing list, but this seemed to actually be from a lawyer. As is … Continue reading Legal Proceedings
Dawn
(September 10, 2011)Oh, Brando
(September 9, 2011)I bought some USB3->SATA adapters from Brando. They came with US->Euro plug adapters. (Yes, the adapters had adapters with adapters. Geez.) See if you can spot the problem. In addition, the speed I get when ripping CDs via these adapters is, as they say, teh sux. Oh, well. It’s not as if I actually expected … Continue reading Oh, Brando
Remedies
(July 15, 2011)Do I have a sufficient number of throat lozenges? Do I? I’m so bored. Bored!
Shoes On Couches
(July 15, 2011)Extreme Couching It’s always fascinated me that on American TV shows, people seem to put their feet up on furniture, even though they are wearing shoes. After spending some time in the US, I realised that TV was only reporting fact. It’s so shocking, I’m sure. I’ve got a cold now, so I’m watching episodes … Continue reading Shoes On Couches
Kongsberg Jazz
(July 15, 2011)Jazz? Jazz Not Jazz
Stupid xorg.conf Tricks
(July 7, 2011)Mimo Monitor I’m getting addicted to small USB monitors. They’re so practical for displaying “extra” information that I don’t want to clutter up my main screen. These monitors just require one single cable to the computer, and they typically have a touch screen interface, too. So you can pretty much use them for any small … Continue reading Stupid xorg.conf Tricks
You can lead a horticulturalist
(July 6, 2011)This is a rose Either Pink Fairy or Viking. Who can tell? While waiting for the fallout of the default change of send-mail-function, I’m snapping flash pictures of the roses in the middle of the night. As one does. Look! They are roses!
I never promised myself a rose garden
(May 22, 2011)Viking to the left, Pink Fairy to the right But now I have a rose balcony. I wanted to have something growing on the balcony (in addition to the dirt), so I went to buy a rose bush. I got a bit carried away, as usual, and got three of them. A (I’m not kidding) … Continue reading I never promised myself a rose garden
RAID Fun Redux
(May 18, 2011)Addonics Mini Storage Tower You will remember me getting a new eSATA box with the crappiest thermal design ever. To recap, there’s a big fan situated a few millimeters from an almost totally non-holey wall, Batman. When fans are that close to an obstruction, the air flow makes a lot of noise. So I unplugged … Continue reading RAID Fun Redux
It’s like the 4th of July
(May 17, 2011)I’ve been celebrating the Norwegian constitutional day (I think it’s celebrating that we were rid of the tyrannical rule of the Danes, or the Swedes, or somebody equally tyrannical and heinous) by putting up more book shelves. I’m not digital at all in the book dept. It’s still all papery stuff. It takes a lot … Continue reading It’s like the 4th of July
Is Amazon Insane or Just Deranged?
(May 4, 2011)So, I stumbled onto Suddenly, Tammy! having their third album (which was recorded in 1997, but held (and not released) by Warner’s (they fired the band, but refused to give back the music to the band (record labels are scum)) finally seeing the light of day yesterday. (You can untangle the tenses, I think.) So … Continue reading Is Amazon Insane or Just Deranged?
The Curious Case of the Box Fan
(April 30, 2011)I bought an ESATA box to replace the crappy Synology RAID thing. It’s a very simple external enclosure with no brains whatsoever, so I can just string four ESATA cables out of the computer in the cupboard to the enclosure, and run standard Linux soft raid. I installed four 5900RPM Seagate Green disks into the … Continue reading The Curious Case of the Box Fan
Funny Looking Chocolate Not Actually Amusing
(April 26, 2011)Look! Exciting! As a rule of thumb, chocolate that looks all fancified often isn’t very good. (There are a number of exceptions to this rule.) But this one looked too intriguing for me to pass up. As you can see, it’s blueberries and lingonberries suspended in white chocolate. I was wondering how they did that. … Continue reading Funny Looking Chocolate Not Actually Amusing
More Input Devices
(April 24, 2011)Targus Wireless Presenter and Emacs Volume Control Finding wireless input devices (for controlling the stereo) that are 1) not too ugly and2) works reliably and3) has a range over a few meters isn’t trivial. I’ve experimented with a few thingamabobs, and one device I’m pretty satisfied with is the Targus … er… I can’t find … Continue reading More Input Devices
Live TV!
(April 23, 2011)Still can’t get my camera to focus on the TV I haven’t really missed having live TV for a decade, but it would be practical if guests wanted to watch the news or something. So it just occurred to me that doing live TV would be trivial with the current infrastructure. I have an Emacs … Continue reading Live TV!
Digital Audio Extraction from Emacs
(April 21, 2011)Triple Threat SATA Multilane Connector So my CD ripping situation is that I put a CD into the CD reading thing there (more about that in a thrilling later blog article), hit a key in Emacs, slap a CD cover onto the scanner, hit another key in Emacs to say that the format is (usually … Continue reading Digital Audio Extraction from Emacs
Useful Consumer Review
(April 19, 2011)I got a new phone today. The Nokia E7. And look! It’s perfect! It runs Gnus under ssh! Look how pretty Gnus is on the phone! (The only thing that would have been perfecter would be if it actually ran Emacs on the phone itself, but I guess that’ll have to wait until somebody produces … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review
Scanning Record Sleeves
(April 19, 2011)A CD Rippin’ Cupboard with an A3 Scanner In the continuing story of bits and pieces related to my music playing Emacs@Home installation, here’s the sleeve scanning function. It’s basically just a tiny data base of common CD/LP/tape sleeve sizes. There’s a lot of sizes, unfortunately. But what I really wanted to have was something … Continue reading Scanning Record Sleeves
Editing Sound Files in Emacs
(April 17, 2011)Emacs PCM Editing I buy quite a lot of vinyl still. And the hipsterish hipsters have started releasing things on tape, since vinyl is obviously too mainstream. (I’m wondering when 78s will be making a comeback.) So to listen to this music I need to sample it and then convert it to flac. That’s trivial … Continue reading Editing Sound Files in Emacs
Greylisting Considered Annoying
(April 16, 2011)Nobody likes spam. So to avoid spam they either inflict pain on others, like with challenge/response systems that send endless challenges to me since “I” have sent them spam (From headers are so hard to fake? (I know this guy who automatically responds to all challenge/response systems (evil, but understandable))), or they use “greylisting”, which … Continue reading Greylisting Considered Annoying
My Favourite Shop
(April 16, 2011)I buy tons of music, and most of it I buy from Norman Records. One of the many things I like about them is how some of their reviews are both concrete and abstract at the same time.
Emacs Can Haz Brainz?
(April 15, 2011)Adam mentioned MusicBrainz in the comments of the last article. I took that as a challenge, of course. I only implemented the query bits, though. I’m selfish. (Oh, OK, the only reason I didn’t do the submission part, too, is that I can’t make up my mind whether cddb.el and musicbrainz.el should share the same … Continue reading Emacs Can Haz Brainz?
Editing freedb/cddb entries
(April 15, 2011)The new album New Album from the folk band Boris When ripping large quantities of CDs, you really have to have an efficient way to query and edit CDDB entries. So here’s an Emacs library for doing that. It includes a bunch of convenience functions for fixing up other people’s bad entries, and you also … Continue reading Editing freedb/cddb entries
Musical Beats & Pieces
(April 14, 2011)The music player The last hoard of Emacs-related code I’ve written over the years is part of my Emacs-based music player. It started off (in 1997) as a way to rip my CDs and play mp3s (as well as swap out the mp3s to CD since I didn’t have enough disc space to store all … Continue reading Musical Beats & Pieces
Emacs Movie Browser
(April 12, 2011)See Emacs. See Emacs play movie In the continuing story of Emacs@Home (don’t worry, I think there’s only one part left now), we’ve now come to the part where I watch TV. I know, it’s something most people manage quite perfectly without resorting to Emacs, but why would you? Well, actually, I think that the … Continue reading Emacs Movie Browser
Sennheiser HDR 180
(April 11, 2011)Headphones cradled on the charging cradle Most hardware seems to have been created in a “will this do?” mind set. They have a bit of technology, and they have some economic restraints, and then they rush it to market. It makes perfect sense, and I can’t envision that it’ll ever change, but it’s somewhat depressing. … Continue reading Sennheiser HDR 180
Hardcore Food
(April 11, 2011)I was looking through my cookery books for meatball recipes, and this was one of them. It just seems too hardcore for me. It starts with “half a kilo of meat from ox, calf, sheep, horse, moose, whale”. And then you add blubber or lard or whatever “spekk” is. And half a liter of milk. … Continue reading Hardcore Food
Quimby Upgrade
(April 10, 2011)The old Quimby Quimby (the machine doing everything at *.gnus.org) has been unstable lately. (It’s died mysteriously two times.) So instead of investigating what’s going on, I just installed Debian Squeeze on a new machine and rsynced over all the pertinent parts. The old Debian installation was too stale, anyway, and 32-bit, so it was … Continue reading Quimby Upgrade
Alarm Clock
(April 10, 2011)The alarm clock before I started writing this article Most alarm clocks have somewhat awkward interfaces, which may be why so many people have switched to using their mobile phones instead. Most mophos have alarm clocks that are easy to use — just open the clock app, choose a menu item and type in the … Continue reading Alarm Clock
Adding Commands to mplayer
(April 7, 2011)The computer I use to watch DVDs (and other stuff) with has three sound outputs: via HDMI to the TV, via the built-in analogue sound port to my wireless headphones, and via a USB sound card to external stereo speakers. Which one I use depends on what I’m watching and what time of day it … Continue reading Adding Commands to mplayer
An Emacs-based PVR
(April 5, 2011)In the continuing story of me trying to push a few of the odds and ends of the code I’ve written for my own use, we’ve now come to the Emacs-based PVR. As usual, it may not actually be very useful code for, like, normal human beans, but why not push it out there? Perhaps … Continue reading An Emacs-based PVR
Synology DS409 RAID is Crap
(April 3, 2011)Do you see that thing over there? The Synology Disk Station DS409? It’s crap. It’s not the usual hardware RAID problems that make it so crappy. Yes, it’s slow. Painfully slow. Yes, it has a weird Linux kernel that, somehow, manages to do put all NFS clients into df: `/mirror’: Permission denied if you change … Continue reading Synology DS409 RAID is Crap
Running an RSS to NNTP Gateway
(April 2, 2011)If I knew that doing an RSS to NNTP gateway was so easy, I would have done it years ago. I was just waiting for somebody else to pick up this obviously useful idea, but apparently nobody else wanted to. In comparison to doing the Gwene gateway, the (almost) ten-year-old Gmane mail-to-news project is pretty … Continue reading Running an RSS to NNTP Gateway
Tellstick Redux
(April 1, 2011)I was whinging a lot about the terrible Tellstick range in my last post on the issue. Deservedly so. It’s terrible! However, the Telldus people have released a new version of the device: The revolutionary new invention is the antenna! Who would ever have thought that an antenna would give greater range? Kids these days. … Continue reading Tellstick Redux
Make RSS feeds from last.fm Shoutbox Pages
(March 31, 2011)I was somewhat interested in seeing what people were saying about the new Boris albums on last.fm, but reloading that page is so 1993. I wanted to read it through Gwene, but there’s no RSS feeds on last.fm. So I whipped one up (in Perl! *sob*) and put the service on Quimby. Feel free to … Continue reading Make RSS feeds from last.fm Shoutbox Pages
Lolz
(February 5, 2011)Square McSweeney’s
(January 10, 2011)The fun people at McSweeney’s have done a lot of amusingly formatted issues of their Quarterly Concern (a shaving kit, an advertising folder, etc), but this one is certainly the bulkiest one: It’s a 15x15x15cm box, and when you crack open his forehead, you find lots of neat litte pamphlets inside instead of brains: And … Continue reading Square McSweeney’s
Gmane On Github
(January 9, 2011)I’ve started putting the various Gmane things on github. If I get around to it, I’ll probably put most of the programs and scripts up there eventually, but first out are weft and weaverd. Oh, and I also added the source code for the defunct we:search search engine. It’s no longer used, since Gmane switched … Continue reading Gmane On Github
Assange Past Revealed!
(January 9, 2011)I was looking through my ~/lisp directory just now, and I found this file, saved in 1998. I can’t recall ever using it or where I got it from, and it’s probably written by a different Julian Assange, but anyway… Here are solid connections between Wikileaks and the sordid Emacs development environment! I think the … Continue reading Assange Past Revealed!
Emacs Home Automation
(January 9, 2011)Nexa unit We all grow so very weary of having to switch lights on and off. Every day. On again and then off again. Will the madness never end? Technology comes to the rescue! There are companies that sell receivers (like the one pictured to the left, plugged into a wall outlet that I now … Continue reading Emacs Home Automation
Milk Technology
(January 9, 2011)Compare and contrast the riveting development in cow/cat milk delivery technology: Source: Link, link.
You Know It’s Over
(January 8, 2011)IT people are as subject to fads as anybody else. It’s perhaps more interesting to being able to pin-point the moment that they’re over than anything else. Perhaps we can learn from other industries. Like fashion. This picture captures the exact instant when the no socks thing was over.