[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Idea Space | Comments]
Posted via email from techdragon's posterous
I'm not going to link to the content yet... But ive just finished developing the core of a DIY Google Latitude workalike.
Heavy Google Reader users may have noticed a few subtle changes lately...
Over the last week Ive noticed changes to the tagging behavior and they appear to have settled down, with the current changes having stayed in effect for nearly 48hrs so far. [Before this the changes were not fixed and had usually changed again in about 24hrs]
I cant confirm if this is widespread or just being bucket tested, but Google appear to have begun to use a more intelligent tagging function.
Where as the old version was a rigid match, and many of the people using the auto-completion in the tagging system have probably had that moment where we realized that we just created a brand new tag with 1 single letter different that now doubles the time it takes us to tag because we have to tap out a few more letters before we know for certain that's the only tag its going to use.
The new tagging function appears to be using a fuzzy matching system that guesses at which of your existing tags you want to label the article.
While this may slow down people creating new tags, it does seem to be a better match to my normal usage. I tag with existing tags more often than I want to make a new tag.
This is the look of the old behavior.
If you make a mistake, say I continue typing the word Interesting, but I type 'a' instead of the 'e' that comes next, the tagging system will assume this is a new tag, and when i hit enter to select the suggested tag, it will save the text as a new tag and then ill have an unwanted new tag 'Inta'
These unwanted tags get in the way when trying to continue reading & tagging articles. Now this may seem pedantic but when your reading over 250 articles/entries/posts a day, the annoyance can add up to a significant level.
Getting rid of them basically requires you to open up the settings, switch around the tabs in settings & delete the tag, before refreshing the whole of Google Reader, to make sure nothing is cached.
After the new changes however things a lot better. The improved fuzzy matching means that it will only show your existing tags, placing the one that fits best at the top of the list of suggestions.
The new matching looks like this.
The first of the 4 IBM e-Server x-Series x330 Servers i bought is now online & booted to the basic OS.
Im having a well deserved Scotch to celebrate the achievement. Ill detail the config after I unwind...
6 hrs of working blind before i could get the thing to use a serial console from post to prompt so I've earned a little relaxation now while it compiles stuff.
My 4 IBM eServer xSeries x330 servers arived yesterday.
Unpacked them. Checked all the parts as good. Good condition all round.
Will be installing an OS on the first one soon...
Currently working on some very interesting stuff.
Quite surprised how quickly its coming together...
The work is currently in silent running mode till its anything more than a test code...
An alpha/tech demo may be ready soon...
More details to come...
Ive got a simple idea. I want a link blog. A simple, short, "this is what i think" comment on the articles I've been reading.
It may seem simple, but making it how I want has proved to be too much trouble for me to continue down the road I had hoped to go down.
I have a Blogger account,
I use google reader as my feed reader,
I want to post my comments on the blog articles to a blogger blog from google reader.
Simple enough?
Wrong it seems.
Blog this is useless in google reader, since it doesnt work when on google reader pages, it nabs the google reader URL not the blog article.
To use it id have to manualy open each and every article & blog them after they load, which becomes tedious when your trying to blog the comments youve made on 4 to 5 hundred feeds.
Google Reader has a great feature... shared items & notes. Its perfect.
Except for its pathetic lack of features.
In case anyone hasn't noticed yet.
There's a few major issues with Google Reader that have yet to be addressed by the developers.
1: Tags in folders. (don't even think they CAN do this, since they've built the entire thing by treating folders AS tags) infact the entire sidebar in general is a problem. Such as why i have to hide it to get articles to use the whole screen width... this quirk alone seems utterly daft.
2: Tab order when in the Note an article popup. Tabbing throws you out of the section back to the search box in the main part of Google Reader. When I'm working with the keyboard shortcuts... its very irritating to have to reach for the mouse to make a tiny click to get to the next field when tab should obviously be working.
3: Style... Has anyone looked at the options for the style of your Shared Items page... yes i have a fully customized Blogger layout, and to make my Shared Items match that theme... ill take the ninjas header picture & the blank white page to match my BLACK theme... well done Google this is about the worst I've seen from you.
4: You have a share the item link, a Share the item with Note link, but no Just Note the item link... i have to manually remove the check box flag to share the item every time... google... FIX THIS, its not like you have to rebuild from scratch.
Now these four things are my main problems with google reader.
In particular id like to talk about number 3.
Google has everything within their power to build something better.
Why cant they.
I can build some convoluted re-poster script to scrape my Google Reader shared items & post it to blogger if i want, but i don't want to. that defeats the purpose of using the Note & sharing features.
I toyed around with Google Mashup Editor, with Google App Engine (though this I'm not yet finished trying to use to fix my problems), and Yahoo pipes. At the crux of it all is the fact that i like how the blogger template handles things for my blog and to rebuild everything up around a new soloution just to integrate my linkblog/commenting in a way i like is far too much effort to go to for the sake of these links.
Google Please add something to fix this.
You have the time to implement pretty trend graphs and havent managed to produce any improvements over the to be honest... pathetic... level of customisation. You so proudly added tags available for notes and havent seemed to come up with anything realy useful since.
Please Google Reader Team... Talk to the Blogger guys, get some communication going, and let me use the Google Reader shared/noted items along side my blog with pride.
Cause right now... its hard to be proud of a page that looks like I put not time at all into making it look different (even if i cant make it look different)
As fitting a big change like this.
Im updating the templates & going to be integrating all the new stuff in together.
So template updates & new look changes due soon!
Its an interesting few things that have all mixed together today.
Crossing several sets of ideas & some of my background reading has led me to some thoughts on the nature of my thoughts, online communication, online expression & writing and how it can be presented and delivered online.
I initially began with a small mountain of thought... I'm a prolific thinker, i can chew through several hundred blog posts a day, muse out a sizeable idea or two each day and somehow spend 8 hours at work complete with the normal wishes it was better, and gripes that i feel like sharing about my job. When I work through all of it & begin to tag & muse over it all. Theres a lot of stuff below the big idea layer. Most of it doesnt rate a full thought out blog post like this one. But its still worth sharing or commenting on.
So how can a blogger share all of this less structured information?
Micro-blogging, lifecasting, tweets, blips, bloops... seems like every time I look there is a new word for a new way to send something to either your friends or the world at large.
I used to ride the front of the wave, I was jumping on gtalk the day it came out, with no one else in my contact list using it for weeks. However i reached an overload point.
I became burdened with the task of avoiding unwanted communication, the signal to noise ratio of being a member of no less than 5 IM networks + several IRC channels became too much. If the signal i sought was random chatter i found it, but if i wanted to just have a quick technical chat to someone, it would be drowned out rather rapidly by people messaging me to say Hi or see how i was doing. I Pulled the plug on it all quite some time ago, & I'm now offline more than on (at least for IM).
But recently as I've begun to sink myself more into expressing myself through my various outlets, I've felt the urge to reconnect to the world, but i dont want to go back to the way it was, blocking & un blocking the chatty freinds that wont stop talking.
And so I wont. Ive been a fan of the microblogging idea for a while now, i used to do it years before it was popular infact. my first few weeks of blogging were filled with the 15 minute interval status updates, my mood, my work, my life etc.
And its come full circle again, Ive developed a plan for my content & how to manage it. Taking some inspiration from some of the very first examples of these kinds of message streams.
The idea of a stream of conciousness style of blog is not new, one of the first good examples is Anarchaia by christian neukirchen. He details the origins back in 2005
Inspired by the various examples ive perused, I've settled on a method of structuring my writings. Separating the content out into at least 3 distinct flows to avoid creating a blog that is unreadably frequent in its updates.
1: the 'Blog' type portion, containing extended works & original material from myself such as projects & code as well as posts like this one.
2: the 'note & tag' feed, where ill be posting shorter & more concise commentary on sites, other peoples blog & forum posts, videos, pictures, and all the other stuff that gets trawled as i go through my day.
3: the 'realtime' feed, this is where things get interesting, rather than going out and joining twitter or some other site (which i may do later & integrate back those updates into this feed, but for now its standalone) i will be posting the status changes, block schedule notices, random gripes & venting, and all the usual fodder for such short quick posts.
Its not 100% set in stone & obviously there's grey area between these 3 feeds, but thats the plan for now and ill be working on how to get it all rolling as i get the gears turning over the next few days.
A brief rundown on the upcoming plans for my blog follows after the break
[1] More frequent updates.
[2] Commenting on internet news & such... (Im getting myself all setup with some nice tagging & stuff to make this very easy for myself)
[3] More Layout Hax... percentage based layout with minwidth properties to prevent ridiculous glitching.
[4] Something about my Model M keyboards.
[5] Some more code work
New template time.
It took a while longer than I thought to work it out but here is the new template.
Its not quite finished yet but I was happy enough to post this up now so as to give an idea where its heading.
The template has switched to a 3 column layout to create some more sidebar options & I may tweak the sidebar a bit more if I dont like how the various widgets & gadgets fit.
Also i may adjust the size so as to widen the page just a bit more since I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with the proportions of the post text section v. the rest of the elements.
How does one begin... well at the beginning I suppose. I read a very good book once (Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars for those playing at home) and the book has a beginning in it, not the beginning of the book, but an event in it. Man's first steps on Mars, the era of manned martian exploration begins as it should with famous words. The first words on Mars, "Well here we are..." I cannot think of a more appropriate beginning. Its not a famous line its an honest one. I often step back a little in my mind and look for something to say about it all, at those moments where you try and take stock in life I almost always find myself thinking "Well here we are...".
And so, at the beginning of my renewed efforts.
Well here we are...
Now getting to business, I've gotten back into my blog because with a new job & new efforts I've had a renewed urge to make my mark on the world. Which leads to the conclusion... how do you make yourself stand out, how do you get your voice noticed let alone stand out. I suppose that's the reason Search Engine Optimisation has become an industry so fast.
Cutting a bit of the waffling around out of the process. Ive been doing a lot of programing again lately. Seems like every time i start a job I spend quite a while having to rebuild my little cozy environment with the programs/tools i like.
Switching from pre XP era NT terminal emulation programs to Putty was the first big step. Building some quick simple HTA "programs" to help with a few of the little tedious task makes a big improvement. Id like to rebuild everything from scratch but well I'm pretty sure that even though the security doesn't stop me. program incompatibilities make it not worth the effort.
With all the programing I've begun to want to do more work in other areas.
Ive been looking into IronPython a bit and I've quickly realised while its quite handy at building windows applications using python skills & native GUI elements its currently in a bad state of flux. Once SharpDevelop 3 gets out and the IronPython v2 extension is available it will be a much more useful programing language for me again.
So I've switched back to focusing on my general python skills & have begun work once again on my Python tools.
A set of basic utilities built entirely in Python. Basic & fundamental tools, Ping, Traceroute, etc built with python.
Work has been slow but it does progress. Once i get them in a more suitable state i plan on releasing the source & creating a public repository.
Touching base on the Title for a moment I'll just point out its a reflection on the fact i hope to accomplish more from my life and this is hopefully the starting point.
I'm also tweaking my page template & hopefully ill have changed the look a little before my next post.
Ill leave things there since i really want to work on the new template but hate leaving a post with some significant content unposted. It feels half done if i don't submit the work unless it just fizzles & winds up not being worth posting.
Next update will accompany the new template.
The issue of managing an increasing number of devices is a growing concern.
With the pressure of a certification exam approaching me. I reached for a way to bring back my desktop into the fold.
My first such experience was using Synergy (goggle for it) an open source app, to simultenously work on a freebsd workstation & my xp machine. Having heard about Stardock software's similar program some time ago, when faced anew with a desire to corrale multiple machines to one keyboard and mouse, I checked to see if their fabled claims of looking at a mac client were true. Alas they arent after quite likely a year.
With that i was forced to Synergy and will quite likely be very happy once i get it setup... But that is the trick... getting it setup...
Its time again to sink my thoughts to technical matters into an appropriate venue, and so i fire up the blog again.
Im in possession of a small wad of cash, which i intend to use to get my Cisco Certified Network Associate certification. I have been trying to get a job uneventfuly for some time, and it seems that my biggest stumbling point is the lack of prior experience or some other proof of competency. Thus i have reached out, grabbed hold of some cash, and im going for the goal. Crunch time and ill have to knuckle down and lock in all the stuff i studied this year at uni. Ill have a formal qualification should I be successful, and with a formal qualification, ill stand a much better chance of getting a job despite my lack of experience.
Now, i said iPhone... I love it... Its everything i want in a phone from the look of it. Now with that said, small nag, 8gb is not very big, support for a memory card would have been nice, for movies especialy so... But with that i have to say that if apple are intending to only release this phone under 2 year contracts AND such a high price... theyre likely to hurt its adoption rate. Theres a market for such a high tech phone, i know because i had one untill it broke and i want one again to replace it. But tying the phone to a 24 month contract is something that gives me pause... Id happily sign a 12 month contract for the iPhone but by going with a 24 month contract theyre going to cut out a lot of people that arent confident in being able to commit to such a long contract due to any number of things. This isnt a clear step ahead for the iPod, its an odd twist. Its good to finaly see this technology they patented emerge and prove its working. But now it should be capitalised on.
an 80gb (or 60gb) Widescreen touch interface iPod would be good...
The natural pinacle of this haptic interface patent they have (thats the multi touch input touch screen btw) is a tablet. 12-14 inch, wifi, bluetooth, usb & firewire. Stripping out all the usual components of a laptop and moving them to peripherals. No Keyboard, No optical drive, no crap. Just a tablet. All the different peripherals can be moved out into either a docking station or to usb & firewire, and leaving it as slim and lightweight as possible so its the most comfortable tablet possible.
A powerful idea... and one im sure apple can make fly... question is... will they. The OSX interface is nearly perfect for such a touch tablet. But only time will tell wether it happens or not.
All this was typed from a full screen console known as GLTerminal, on the mac
the extra polish put into the design of the mac user experience pays off. with the overall experience of both owning and using a mac having far surpased any other machine ive had before.
From the sheer simplicity of the setup process that remembers who you told it you are so all other software can reuse your initial setup information, to the unified password management, the .mac account syncronisation recently added is also a nice bonus allowing any mac you sit down at to be... just that little bit more like your own.
While anyone can claim that the overall experience using something is better or worse. The proof is always in the facts. From my own experience the battery life is superb on this G4 14inch iBook, and i can only expect it to be even better on the latest Core(2) based laptops.
Along with mentioning the improved battery life. I have to mention something quite specific to the laptop experience. The "hibernation/sleep" functionality on this iBook is fantastic. Its smoother, faster, and though not something i can verify offhand, it has caused me the least amount of trouble of any device with similar features that ive ever used. I close the lid and seconds later its sleeping, I open the lid and a few seconds later its awake. Something im sure has only improved in performance in the newer models.
I preffer the unix command line, i like having the the power to drive everything through the keyboard, or remotely, and having a wonderful fairly standard set of commands to do what i want on almost any unix system. But being a gamer, and a long term windows user, ( windows NT isnt as bad as it used to be, or as good as it first was... but if you look after it, its not as tempremental as yould think) I find myself accustomed to using a GUI to manage multiple tasks, and using mulitple consoles. And i still occasionaly like to game, so having some kind of entertainment type programs is good, and there are a fair few.
I'm rambling now I think. So I'll leave it there, having said plenty for now about how nice i find this Mac.
Ive just been busy with my head in the sand
Ive had an extremely busy new years, done a pile of stuff.
Ive suddenly gained a large amount of social momentum which is also cutting back on the exessive thinking time that spawned this blog in the first place.
I will get back to updates more regularly once things settle down and i get my own internet back ... again
And while im at it http://www.ampledesign.co.uk/va/ owns in that funky electroplankton, music anyone can make kinda way.
Ive now taken possession (abeit of a temporary and 'non permanant' fashion) of a 14inch iBook G4
So ive been around Mac OS X and ive been getting used to all the things more and more and im fairly convinced should apple produce a tablet i will purchase it. I just love how nice everything is on the Mac... i dont want one as my main workstation but as a laptop... i cant fault it. Everything works!
Expose above all is a pleasure to work with. Just flick to the corner and all your windows are at your fingertips... another corner and all the windows from your current application appear... its a joy to watch things flow so well when i work now.
Im looking forward to getting a lot out of this laptop over the next couple of months. And ill probably be mentioning some of the things here.
First things done were, setup, aquiring a .mac account good for the next 12 months, installation of firefox and the TigerLaunch app (quite a good one), and VLC to make up for some of the inadequacy of Quicktime as a general movie player.
To solder hax or not to solder hax, that is the question...
While working on my power cabling efforts ive grabed some solder and begun wrestling with the urge to Solder the IEC sockets from 2 power supplies to get my outside of case to insde of case 'passthrough'. Along the way toying with the idea of using the fan mounting on the back of the PSU for an extra fan for more drive bay ventilation.
Im not entirely confident of my soldering ability and dont know if i should procceed with the soldering of these wires intended to carry 240V AC. Theyre already soldered, so while its obviously not a bad thing... I dont wish to screw anything up and cause further damage to any components i cant afford to replace. Thus im deadlocked with myself on how to do this... likely ill wind up hacking around some more till something crops up thats a better soloution to my power supply passthrough... ideas are brewing but i cant check them while out at the moment.
Case Work Time!
Ive had a renewed desire to work on improving my machine since my acquisition of extra memory.
I'm planning on redoing my Power Supply layout (dual PSUs can be tricky to manage cables without modular cabling, which i don't have on these two) In addition to this im thinking of trying to obtain some rounded and longer cables for my UDMA5 cabling (ATA100/133 - IDE 80 Pin cables) to clean up the biggest source of cable clutter which is at the moment the large number of drives ive got installed. Powering them is second to this but with molex cables taking up only a fraction of the space of an IDE ribbon cable, and their lengths being far easier to manage, I'm beginning to get very frustrated by standard UDMA5 cables, so the search has begun for replacements.
With the extra memory in my system, I've put back the plans to purchase a 512MB module quite a significant way down the to do list, and shifting into 1st place on the hardware list is the purchase of a SATA hard drive of reasonable size. Quite likely a Samsung 250GB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive for about $90AUD. This is going to consolidate all 4!! drives I'm presently using and give me freedom to experiment a bit more with Gentoo since it will free up my 120GB PATA drive.
If I get a camera I'll take some photos of the before and after of my case through this work.
With my growing desire to have a tablet PC, tablet related news has increasingly grabbed my attention and I'm hoping to at some point be able to obtain one. With news like this only increasing the likelyhood that a future laptop purchase will be a tablet. Apple are apparently experimenting with a tablet concept for home & educational users.
This kind of untapped market would probabyl latch onto an affordable well built and attractive tablet PC and do nothing but bolster the growing support Apple has had of late.
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