Diplomacy - a long neglected game

I can remember some distant games of Diplomacy - the board is still around. I have even talked with some friends about restarting. Now this:
Practical Leadership: Diplomacy is Fun Leadership Training

I just got back from chaperoning a high school trip to Costa Rica. While there, some of the kids put together a make-shift Diplomacy game out of a pizza box top. Playing gave the kids and me fun lessons in leadership and negotiation.

Diplomacy as training in trust ? Hmmm.

The game recently celebrated its 50th anniversary - with a rather disappointing reissue of the game.

stumpwm under Linux

True to my normal form I find something interesting but am loathe to do anything too irrevocable!

In this case, I have found stumpwm which is a mouse-less window manager inspired by emacs - lots of key commands! Very fast ( when you know what you are doing)

The instructions talk about changes to .xinitrc which sounds much too difficult if things go wrong. Then I found this gem which describes how to add stumpwm (or any other window manager) as a choice under Ubuntu on login.

Works great.

Now I just have to remeber a new set of key bindings!!

Update: Found this screencast. Very cool - note 2 things: 1) the ogg version is far clearer, C-e is used as the prefix whereas C-t is the default.

Noah 3988 box update

Well, after my post here, mini-itx.com came through - they sent me a new front panel very promptly after I e-mailed them. Apparently the new Noah boxes have a better switch - though unfortunately the replacement for mine was of the old type.

So 10 out of 10 for doing business with mini-itx, but still a little concerned about Noah boxes - I will have to look closely at them when the next system is due. Hopefully there will be a good review somewhere......

Emacs Command of the Day on Twitter (ecotd)

Another great pointer from emacs-fu but this time to a Twitter account!

emacs-fu: emacs command of the day

Anyway, reason to bring up twitter again is the Emacs Command of the Day-twitter feed. The idea is that every day, it provides some useful command, and it's a response to a similar feed for Vim. It's only just started, let's see where this goes.

I am following! I particularly like the way that this ecotd account is following vim - competition is good,

Package management in GNU/Emacs?

Emacs-fu:

but the one thing I remember that it still somewhat missing in GNU/Emacs, is package management. XEmacs has a nice system where you can mark packages for installation, and then get them from a website; much easier than the GNU/Emacs way, where you need to manually download things, maybe compile them, and update your .emacs - at least for things that your OS or distribution does not provide.

This has changed now with ELPA, the Emacs Lisp Package Archive. It's Tom Tromey's answer to the XEmacs package manager

Need to give this a try. Update: Tried it - works fine; some concerns on inadvertently getting rogue software but otherwise great strart.

Noah 3988 Case problems

Last July I built a kit from Mini-ITX.com and it has proved to be a very nice box: quite, small, powerful enough for a NAS, but it can also act as a reasonable workstation (but not gaming machine!)

Last night however, the pretty blue power button disappeared inside the case - an inspection showed that the plastic "spring" element had broken. To make matters worse the actual power button is not directly behind the hole in the front panel, so temporary fixes (like poking in a pencil!) won't work.

I can see this being a very irritating problem to fix - gluing plastic never works for long. So if anyone has any insights into how to approach this, please let me know!

Steampunk Snowboard

Jake found this: http://steampunkworkshop.com/steampunk-snowboard

but wanted to know more. Well here is some more:

http://zaskoda.com/2009/04/13/the-worlds-first-steampunk-snowboard/#more-163

I would have commented on Jake's site but the captcha image didn't work for registration

emacs-snapshot for ubuntu jaunty

Good pointer http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/2009/04/nice-ubuntu-emacs-snapshot-ppa.html

N810 as a real Linux machine

Now this 'box' is proving to be both a consumer internet tablet and a Linux machine:

• consumer: instant messaging, great sound including podcasts, video etc. I have now got maximise window and zoom hardware buttons off pat and scrolling by pointer makes browsing faster
• linux: shell, getroot, apt-get, ssh. Used ssh to install stuff ona nother machine

Great stuff!

nokia N810

Received my new toy this morning! Very small and a beautiful build. The screen is very clear.
Not sure about the built in keyboard - troublesome on a slippery surface.
A comprehensive set of internet type applications, with the browser able to cope with most formats.

One thing to work on: how to get dependent packages installed automatically

M-x proced

From yrk:

I stumbled across M-x proced, which gives you a Dired-like-esque-ish view of system processes. I especially liked "T", which toggles a tree view.

For some reason I am really blown away that it works under Windows!! I am so surprised:-)

Gloomy day - let's test twitterfeed!

Does this entry on my blog get to twitter?

Gloomy day - let's test twitterfeed!

Does this entry on my blog get to twitter?

Pilot Capless Pen

I am now the proud owner of a Pilot Capless pen.

I have been keen to get one for a while now but a few things came together:

• My old pen leaked when I was with a client - not a major problem on that occasion, but I took it as a warning
• That pen kept drying out - I must admit that I use a laptop so much that my pens get very intermittent use ( I also got some Namiki ink to solve this problem - some people have cited Quink ink as a problem for pens which aren't used frequently)
  
• My wife allowed me to buy my own present :-)
  

Initial experiences are positive - looks great and writes smoothly. Leaking and drying up will take time to test.

I hadn't seen this article until just now, but the advantages of the pen are well put and the same on-line site Cult Pens was used: great price and very fast delivery.

More on doing GTD

A very interesting post by Venkatesh Rao.

Interesting to see how a 7-year GTD veteran deals with lifes uncertainties - and his memory! Actually that last point makes it especially valuable - hearing from from super-organised , never forget anything people is so unrealistic..... well isn't it?

Blogging from emacs with g-client

Just to add a new , weird and wonderful way of blogging, I have now
added (re-added?) Emacs as an environment. A bit of messing about
with Emacs 23 and w3m-snapshot to make it work.

New David Allen book arrives

My copy of "Making It All Work" has arrived, yet more to read
post-Xmas, but I think this will be near the top of the pile

Pocket Informant on Blackberry

One of my favourite applications on my dear old iPAQ is Pocket Informant. The iPAQ is now mainly a (rather large) music player.

I was delighted to find that PI is now available for my Blackberry

Excellent news - really looks good and has many great functions - everything seems very easy to see ( I love the Agenda view) and adding new stuff is easy. My categories etc. for GTD work just fine.

This version lacks things that I would like from the Windows version: hierarchies of tasks, links from tasks to contacts are a couple that I used to use a lot. As this is an early version on this platform I am confident there will be new features coming along regulalrly

From Bad Science:

Writing this column really scares me because I wonder whether everything else in the media is as shamelessly, venally, manipulatively, one-sidedly, selectively reported on as the things I know about. But this week the reality editing was truly without comparison.

Interesting on 2 counts: 1) the particuares of MMR and the fact it could prevent arthma, 2) another data point for the power of the media and its ability to influeunce and mislead.

Certainly, whenever I see artices in normal newspapers aboutr a subject I know well I marvel at how misleading they are.  This is usually appears to be down to the ignorance of the reporter rather than deliberate attempts to misinform.  But then most of these topics that I know well are not politics, big business etc.

Worrying - perhaps the demise of newspapers won't be such a bad thing ( so long as Bad Science maintains a blog!) 

For how much longer? Revisited

I asked "For how much longer?":

I think, with the UK pre-budget, the affordability of a lot of programmes is now in question, including education and health.