Jay McGavren's Journal

todo.txt...

KDevelop allows collaborative editing on a document… If the file is altered on disk and you haven’t made local updates, it’ll reload as soon as the other person saves.

I think I’m gonna use this for an always-on todo list at work, which I’ve wanted for eons.. I’ve pointed KDevelop at a plain text file on a Samba share, then loaded the same file in the editor on my Windows box. Every time I save in Windows, the change is reflected on the KDevelop screen a second later.

Now when I want to know what I should to next (or need a reminder after spacing out), I should be able to just flick my eyes to my left, instead of waiting for an e-mail client to load. (And yes, I could accomplish something similar with paper and pen, but I want something searchable, automatically archived, and universally accessible.)

A similar setup with Google Docs seems to work as well. The view only refreshes automatically if you have edit permissions on the document, though. If you don’t (or don’t want to log in all the time), the Firefox “Reload Every” plugin should do the trick.

Splog busters!

Get ‘em removed from Google. (Quick for you, painful for them.)

These guys have a database of splogs and an API Webmasters can call for updates.

Playing with Fedora 8 on the new Dell at work… Pretty nice. I feel like I jumped from Windows 95 straight to XP. It’s fast. Firefox popped up in 3 seconds. Even turned on wobbly windows for the hell of it. The main system menu and the various app menus still aren’t organized worth crap, though.

OK, why the hell can’t I find a Windows text editor with a “Filter Selection Through Command” option? TextMate has it. Even freaking KDevelop has it. Ctrl-A, Shift-space, “sort”, Enter, and my document’s sorted. (The Ctrl-space is a custom setting.) And piping it through Ruby only takes a fraction of a second.

Oh, I could very readily become a Linux user for that alone. But the experience outside my editor might drive me mad. Wonder if TextMate would be as fast as KDevelop?

Heh, 8 days till I’m outdated again - that’s when Fedora 9 is released.

Finally! Got past all the database and scheduler errors, and we’re talking to the remote Web service again. Good thing, ‘cause my boss was starting to tap his foot.

I can’t tell you how frustrating our in-house ORM is to work with. Fifty different kinds of database objects, and you have to know the system right down to the guts to do anything. If you could just run the generator and use the resulting objects, you’d be fine, but that’s never the case in the real world - SQL has to be customized, lists have to be cached, and it’s all exposed to all but the most casual user.

Miscellany...

The iTunes “Priority Electronic Music” playlist just burned a new CD for me, and it included some Stendeck… I realized that song that had been stuck in my head for a week but couldn’t remember who did it was one of his. He’s not an incredibly versatile artist, but at least I like his one style. (Yet another track with ultra lo-fi drums and sweeping, plaintive pads… Count me in!)

The new Goozex account is working out pretty nice. (They’re a game-trading service.) Finally, I can find good homes for the titles on the Pile of Shame that I know I’ll never get back to. Shipping stuff out is especially easy for me since I only have to stop by the mailroom.