2007/03/31

Trying Clippings

Following my urge to try nearly all Web 2.0 applications, here is an entry from Clippings
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2007/03/29

gblogger




Stufff from new gblogger install


Ubuntu Feisty beta battling

I have had exciting day battling with Ubuntu.



First off, my root partition fille up so X11 wouldn't start.  All attempts to resize the partition (qtparted, DiskWorks) failed.  What the heck, I had a new disk rive to install, so I thought I would install the lovely new beta.



Hmm, kernel panic..... OEM install isk reveale more details - all around ACPI.  Turned that off in the BIOS, on we go.  Nice looking install using Ubiquity kept freezing at 88%.  Used the naff looking OEM version, but it worked!! Finally!!!



I am now up and running, having copied over /home, some apt configs etc.



The result is good - hopfully folks using the final install will have fewer problems ( though I suspect the ACPI will never be fixed - need new mother board!!)





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2007/03/26

isearch Word Yank

A cool addition to incremenntal search; by issuing C-w whilst in incrmental search (C-s) you can add ther next word in the buffer being searched. The C-w searches for the new extended search string.

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2007/03/19

More Lisp fandom

From Stephen Ramsay
My experience learning Lisp and coding a few serious programs in it was deeply profound. Afterward, most of the other languages I had been using regularly seemed silly and inane. I found myself saying things like, “I’ve spent an hour on this method, and I know I could knock it off in three lines of perfectly elegant Lisp!” And what I was lacking in those languages was a whole host of programming constructs I had either never heard of or only dimly understood before learning Lisp. Passing a function into a function? Why would you ever want to do that! You wouldn’t. Unless you got seriously into Lisp, in which case you find yourself (a) doing it all the time and (b) writing much more elegant, expressive code as a result. Same goes for closures, continuations, anonymous functions, and macros.




and



I’ve spent the last week or so writing in Ruby. It’s a wonderful language. It’s a joy to program in it, and I’m almost always trying to find ways to overcome the various reasons not to (”that’s not the language of the project,” “there aren’t enough libraries,” etc.). I know it like the back of my hand, and I teach the language every year. It even has a number of Lispy constructs (like closures, continuations, and anonymous functions). But it ain’t no Lisp.




BUT



But last week, I was writing proof-of-concept code. There was no one telling me what language to use, no “audience” for the code, and there were good, serviceable libraries available for Common Lisp, Ruby, Java, Python and Perl. I went with Ruby.



The question, of course, is why not write it in The Greatest Language Ever?



Well, that’s a separate rant, which I’ll save for another post.




Intriguing.... is Stephen in theatre or films? The suspense is building nicely, but timing is everything!



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2007/03/17

Fridge efficiency

£25 fridge gadget that could slash greenhouse emissions:
It is made of wax, is barely three inches across and comes in any colour you like, as long as it's black. And it could save more greenhouse gas emissions than taxes on gas guzzling cars, low energy light bulbs and wind turbines on houses combined. It is the e-cube, and it is coming soon to a fridge near you.




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2007/03/04

From Emacs via gblogger


Hi there

Hey, it worked !!

Not sure about the Post URL part, but ther is probably a way to set a default.....

Anyway, check it out....
Emacs Client for Google

Entry titles in Blogger

I discovered that, using Performancing, I could set the title of a Blog entry, which formatted very nicely (IMHO). However, if I posted from Blogger, I could not set the title ( and so used h2 headers instead), and if I editted a Performancing entry in Blogger I lsot the title!

However, just go to Bloggers Settings -> Formatting and show the title. Now I have no excuse not to make these 2 types of entry look the same.

Lack of posts

Well, I haven't posted much recently. Partly that is due to a new job, but also the fact that BlogThis! didn't work with the new version of Blogger. Well, now the Google Toolbar does the trick..... except that using Firefox on my Windows laptop, I can't login to Blogger. The login window goes into some sort of loop.

I have (somewhat reluctantly) got it all working in IE7, but it is not my environment of choice.....

I can use the Emacs client, mentioned earlier - but so far I have only installed that in Linux, where such things are very easy. The Ubuntu apt-get is just great!!

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Google comes to Emacs


An Emacs Client For Blogger: "by T.V. Raman, Google Research Scientist" .

And you can do stuff with Calendar and Reader too - in fact I found the HTML provided for the list of current items is a really nice way to read outstanding items.

Note to self: Installs go better if you check you have the pre-reqs rather than (mis-)remembering.