Mon Jun 09 10:01:14 epic "skunkworks" story about Apple's Graphing Calculator:

Somehow, I've never read this great story before.

Sun May 18 21:22:55 CST song archetypes: folk hero ballads:

These songs are usually about a famous folk hero -- some are more legendary and some are more factual than others. Classic examples include John Henry and Jesse James.

John Henry was, of course, the man who beat that steel driving machine but died as a result. Jesse James was the outlaw with a heart of [gold|silver|tin], often touted for his faith or lambasted for his theft of gold from old people. Few people know that Jesse was a secessionist who targeted Northerners that either served in or who he thought profited as a result of the war. On the balance, most songs treat James as a hero.

Personally, I want to write a song about Jesse James and John Henry meeting in heaven and fighting each other up and down the hills of Zion for a thousand years before settling their grudges. Seriously, don't steal that idea.

Update: Steal that idea all you want -- folk songs are all about stealing from each other.

Sat May 10 12:53:49 CST song archetypes: the list song:

I often think about different kinds of song archetypes -- songs that either in form or content, get written and rewritten constantly. One of these days, I want to do an album of all song archetypes... I suppose one approach would be to make you try to figure out what archetype it is, and the other approach would be to make it incredibly obvious... I'm not sure which strategy I'll take on this nebulous idea (file it under "probably won't ever happen").

Anyway, one archetype that, as a kid, I thought was absolutely hilarious and clever, was what I called the "list song", which basically just begged you to memorize it. Notable list songs: We Didn't Start the Fire, and It's the End of the World As We Know It. I think that American Pie is also one part list song -- it's also one part "mysterious lyrics" song, which is a different archetype I'll talk about some other time.

All three of those also have the distinction of being list songs about historical events... but I'm sure there are lots of these songs out there.

Stay tuned for more song archetypes.

Sat Apr 26 11:43:58 CST today's soundtrack:

So, I'd say 3/5 days I wake up with a song already in my head... I'm not sure where they come from -- maybe they're the song that was playing during my dream, or maybe they are *like* dreams -- I have this idea that if you "had" one of *my* dreams, that it would be something completely different to you, since our brains are different. I have no idea if that idea is scientifically sound or not. So I'm not sure if I actually had this song in my head while I slept, or if that's just the song I come up with when I try to make sense of the random music in my head. Anyway, today's soundtrack is "I'm still alive", by Pearl Jam.

Wed Apr 23 22:12:22 CST Piled Higher and Deeper:

So, I've decided to stay on at UCLA and get a PhD.

Mon Feb 04 07:47:31 speed versus throughput:

It occurred to me yesterday that while elevators have higher speed, escalators definitely have a higher throughput. In other words, if you were first in line, the elevator would get you to the ground faster -- but if you were last in line, the escalator would get you to the ground faster.

Imagine a 5 story building and you're on the top floor. There's one standard elevator that holds say, 15 people max and one standard escalator (running all the way to the ground floor). The escalator can hold at least 15 people at a time, probably way more.

You want to get to the ground floor. Assuming there are two even lines for each conveyance and people never change lines, which line would you rather be in?

Sat Sep 22 15:36:03 firefox forwards and backwards navigation:

Thinkpad laptops have two special "forward" and "backward" keys above the typical left and right keys that are used for paging in applications like Firefox and other web browsers. Unfortunately, they don't work out of the box in Ubuntu like other buttons (like the volume knobs, suspend, etc.). I hate using Alt-Left/Right -- why make two keystrokes when I should be able to use one?

So I have been looking for a solution, but complicating this issue is that old solutions to this problem don't work in Firefox +v2.0, firefox extensions that advertise this ability are pre 2.0 as well, and Firefox remote tricks assigned to commands don't seem to work either (I think because of a vulnerability in Firefox remote? I'm not sure.)

Anyway, this site has a working howto, and it's really easy. The short version is to edit your ~/.Xmodmap to make back (keycode 234) and forwards (keycode 233) F19 and F20, and then edit browser.xul to use that instead of the Alt-Arrow combos. For Ubuntu anyway one thing different from the howto is that browser.xul is already unzipped in /usr/share/firefox/chrome/ ... etc, not in your homedir or .mozilla, etc. Just edit it and save it; you don't need to re-package chrome or whatever although you do need to restart Firefox. This material should get updated in the ThinkWiki and other sites... but I'm not going to do it.

Incidentally, the "back" and "forward" buttons on the new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 use the same keycodes, so if you have one attached to your Thinkpad like me, this is a two-for-one deal.

Update: You can leave the old hotkeys in and just add the new ones to keep the old "alt-arrow" mapping and add the new thinkpad arrows if you want! Beaujolais!

Thu Sep 06 09:37:23 cool screen tricks:

I used to do this one all the time, but recently forgot it. I had to look it back up again.

Anyway, when you're using screen (which is all the time, right?) and you wish that a particular screen was at a different index (like let's say when you're running some job that you don't want to start over) you can just reassign its index like this:

<escape>:number n

... where escape is probably control-a (aka C-a in screen lingo) and n is the numeric index you'd like the screen to be at.

Yes, it's just that simple!

Another cool screen trick that I'm going to throw in for FREE (if you call in the next 30 seconds) is nesting screens. There are two ways to do this:

1. Set a unique escape in each screen. You can do this by setting a new escape in one of the screens:

<escape>:escape ^Xx

... to set the escape to control-x in that screen. Then you can pick up the screen inside another screen and use the appropriate escape sequence in each screen context.

2. In this method, you don't change the escape sequences at all, but you just hit the sequence twice to "drill down" into a nested screen. So for example, if you have a screen within a screen, and within the nested screen you want to change to the next window, type:

<escape><escape>n

... where merely typing

<escape>n

... would just change the screen in the "top level" screen.

At these prices you can't say no!

Mon Aug 27 15:24:04 cool vim trick:

You can split windows in vim and keep multiple files open. This isn't usually that interesting to me because I use screen for everything and memory usage isn't really an issue.

What *is* useful is that you can have two views into the same file -- so if you want to reference something way up top but you're working way down at the bottom, you can split your view. Here's how:

:sp (splits window) CTRL-W up (move up) CTRL-W down (move down) :q (closes this window)

You can find a lot more info and additional commands if you search for "vim split window" or somesuch.

Pretty rad!

Fri Jul 13 17:32:35 free ideas: a series:

If I were a chemist or a physicist or whoever would be doing this, I would design a microwave mode that wouldn't make reheated coffee taste bad. It would have to be some kind of uber-gentle microwave mode. But even if it took 2 minutes to heat up a cup of coffee, as long as it tasted like it was fresh off the press/percolator/whatever, I would be happy to wait.