Comments for Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn

Comment on Travelling with the truffler by muonman

muonman — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:47:40 +0000

I to think it is fascinating but am curious as to why a computer scientist drops his normal language when describing his daughters actions. Surely she has identified “Classes” of objects like “Cat” of which “Zen” would be an instance. Similarly when she resolves cat/nat/dat into the Class Animal then the discrete instances Cat, Dog, Shark, Dad would fall into place? I am sure categories are the same as classes as I am sure she would not consider a “red” “shark” in the same category as a “red”"bora” which is a means of transport. i.e. similar property but different methods

Comment on On the death of Google Reader by Robert Goldman

Robert Goldman — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:30:42 +0000

I’m leaning towards self-hosting a server side RSS feed aggregator. I like being able to read my feeds in browser, on iOS, and on Android. Not excited to delegate this, since that’s already worked out poorly once. Although I suppose paying for it raises the probability of the service sticking around.

Unfortunately, there are a dizzying array of web aggregators, and it’s hard to get a sense of the relative feature sets, much less which ones are going to give the keys of your server to J. Random Hacker.

Comment on On the death of Google Reader by M. Grégoire

M. Grégoire — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:17:06 +0000

I’ve been using Gnus with nnrss to read feeds for a few years now (Emacswiki has a trick for dealing with Atom). Recently I’ve started to try gwene as suggested above. It does keep track of which messages I’ve already read.

The messages do not seem to be stored locally, and I don’t know how long they’re available through gwene, but IIRC you can archive copies onto your own machine if desired. Gnus is designed to handle high message volume though, so it might be just the thing for your 250 or so feeds.

Comment on On the death of Google Reader by Alex

Alex — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:15:00 +0000

Does gwene.org keep track of read status?

Comment on On the death of Google Reader by Toby Smithe

Toby Smithe — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 18:10:11 +0000

How about gwene.org coupled with Gnus?

Comment on The future is inching its way onto our set-top boxes by Alex

Alex — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 08:42:25 +0000

Surely that’s what we have at the moment? The process of getting a show ready for the next available network slot means they are unlikely to go for anything too radical. If the pilot does pass muster then you are on the production train straight away for 13 episodes with pressure to get it out in time for the sweeps.

It’s a similar problem to the music industry although the up-front capital costs are higher. However we are seeing the start of independent self-funded artists building their own following and bypassing the artificial label AnR gate. Maybe we’ll see the same with film and TV?

Comment on The future is inching its way onto our set-top boxes by Mark

Mark — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:29:00 +0000

I fear two of the potential outcomes with this model:
“Safe” ideas and banking “celebrities”
Lowest-common denominators
Can you see a “Red Dwarf” or Vampire-slayer in there, let alone running for multiple series?
Maybe I’m being too negative. Name _any_ decade and you can find the same distribution of terrible, good, great tv/films/music. There will always be people out there wanting to make great media and probably enough people to back them. There’s a lot of confusion out there as people get to grips with this new model. Let’s look back in 10 years time and see that society didn’t actually collapse.

Comment on 2012 a year in review by Jess

Jess — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:02:47 +0000

Well, if there have been myriad parenty posts I have missed them. I love the fact that you have had a most excellent daughter and also that I can vicariously have kids through my friends. Also that I can get drunk and stay up all night without being woken up by anyone who needs food at 6am, of course

Comment on Many ways to skin a GNU by Alex

Alex — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:42:17 +0000

Is this what you mean?

(defun my-efficent-find-tag()
  "Find tag at point, caching find-tag-default"
  (interactive)
  (let ((ftd (find-tag-default)))
    (if ftd
	(flet ((find-tag-default () ftd))
          (etags-select-find-tag-at-point))
        (etags-select-find-tag))))

Comment on Many ways to skin a GNU by Alex

Alex — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 09:01:44 +0000

Oops, funny fact my first programming job was in Forth. Perhaps it’s my subconscious wanting to go back to the days of DUP and OVER.