Random geekness

Posted on July 2, 2004

Well, sometimes I just feel like it and this is one of those times.

So here goes:

  • Get your Monty Python’s Holly Grail costumes here, complete with helmets and swords. And if you doubt that it is real, just check the last picture at the bottom of the page. A group of fans bought the full gear and are posing for it. Neat! Especially the robes, really beautiful. Can I hold myself from buying one? My oh my, it would be really difficult to explain, that one… :-)

  • Just saw this on someone’s .sig and rolled over laughing. Yes, it’s extremely geeky but I find it extremely funny, especially since we have a history of singing variations from that same song here at work sometimes. Well, anyways, here it is. Are you ready for the anti-climax? “Old MacDonald had a PC, with EIA I/O”. So what? I think it’s funny!

  • People are starting to “find” and install Tiger all over the place. I’m not going to! I’ve just got tired of installing the OS du jour and having to deal with every little quirk it has. So I’m simply going to wait until the official release (and even then I’m probably going to hold off until the first update comes out). Let the kewl kids do the bug hunting and fixing, I’m getting too old for that stuff. Sad isn’t it, when you start to value your life more than the geekness in things?

  • Also, people are drooling all over PLC. It looks like it will save a few cables, leaving only the ones you just can’t live without (the power cables). Once I have a few more reports about it I might get interested but for me, at least for now, Wi-Fi still looks better. Although both can surely coexist.

  • There are already a few services out there who are taking a shot at this and so far I am using Mimír and having a great experience with it. The service I’m talking about (one which I fell in love with) consists in the (rather obvious) mixing of RSS and IM. Mimír in particular uses jabber to deliver news in real time. I just login to a web page where I can choose from a number of feeds available (more may be available on request) and then whenever any of those feeds get updated I get an instant message with the source, the item’s URL and the description of the item. Contrary to what I feared it doesn’t really spam the hell out of me and it is really useful. Highly recommended.

  • It’s been a fruitfull day up until now, but now I’m betting it gets better, as I’m going to read the (much anticipated) fourth chapter of Designing the Band - the essays about the design process by Keith Robinson. Funny how I’ve actually been looking forward to it. It’s not anything remotely related to my job or anything I ever did or knew but I find it strangely compelling to be on par with what’s going on in the design world. Me of all people, who cannot draw or design a single line to save my life… Go figure… :-)

  • Oh, but before I go I just got word (ain’t IM grand?) of a way of using external programs to “filter” text in gui text boxes in OS X and the most remarkable thing is achieved by piping the text to xvi (or your editor of choice) and then getting the text you edited back when you are finished with it as explained in this particular comment. Bloody brilliant! Of course what I really would like is for it to work with vim, not xvi, but Pedro is already on it, so it shouldn’t take long…