Categories
software

NumPad Window Tiling for Openbox

Using Openbox as my window manager lately has allowed for the sort of precise and reliable custom configuration that I’ve been missing after years languishing on Gnome/Unity. My latest triumph, with help from here, is a really quick and efficient poor-man’s method for tiling windows using the number pad keys. This configuration simply allows you to instantly resize the focused window to any half or quarter of the screen by holding the key and choosing a corner or side by pressing one of the number pad keys.

[xml]



0
0
50%
50%





0
0
100%
50%





1/2
0
50%
50%





0
0
50%
100%








1/2
0
50%
100%





0
1/2
50%
50%





0
1/2
100%
50%





1/2
1/2
50%
50%

[/xml]

Categories
links software technology

IAmThe servier engineering lead at foursquare. Ask Me Anything. : IAmA

IAmThe servier engineering lead at foursquare. Ask Me Anything. : IAmA

Categories
interwebs quotes software

“…well it’s not really him, but other architects in Microsoft are not much hairy….However…”

“…well it’s not really him, but other architects in Microsoft are not much hairy….However if we’ll normalize their hair we can get very good chances for Haskell….Want to be famous and make significant history? Grow a beard!”

Computer languages and facial hair – take two – Just code – Tamir Khason

Categories
criticism software technology

Compare and Contrast: Eco versus Stephenson on Operating Systems

In 1994, Umberto Eco wrote an essay in which he compared the Macintosh to the Catholic Church and DOS to the Protestants. “Indeed,” he says “the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits.” DOS, he says, is Calvinistic, as it “allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation.” Eco knows his religions, but his interpretation of DOS as lying on the extreme end of the spectrum of reprogramability is fairly laughable to anyone who’s spent time around real operating systems. Five years later, Neal Stephenson wrote his seminal essay, ‘In the Beginning was the Command Line,’ tracking the rise of the Operating System as a saleable commodity, and providing a set of metaphors for various OS’s structured around cars and munitions, rather than religious movements. Stephenson grants that his essay is “more review than research paper,” but justifies this by noting that “ever since the Mac came out, our operating systems have been based on metaphors, and anything with metaphors in it is fair game as far as I’m concerned.”

These two are some of the most interesting historical thinkers of our age (IMHO), and to see them both addressing the same issue of contemporary culture in historical context but each from their own unique background perspective is fascinating. I’m not sure if Stephenson was aware of the, much shorter, Eco essay when he set out on ‘In the Beginning.’ It is easy to imagine that he was not, as it was published in Italian and as far as I know only provided in translation recently. Still, it is nice to imagine Neal and Umberto sitting down in a cafe and hashing through the issues interface metaphors and reformation politics.

Categories
software technology web

Visual Wordnet

This looks fun.

Kyle Scholz has created a Visual Wordnet based on his Force Directed Graph engine written in JavaScript.

Force Directed Graphs are self-organizing, visually appealing tools for representing relational data. The look is organic, because algorithms simulate the way charged particles arrange in space. They work great in user interfaces because the user has access to data nodes while the graph is being organized.

Visual Wordnet

Originally from Ajaxian by Dion Almaer reBlogged by micah to ajax javascript graphs visualization on Jun 7, 2006, 7:42AM

Categories
software web

Technorati testing microformats search and “Pingerati”

Tools to aggregate content published in a decentralized manner are king.

Filed under: ,

Technorati Microformats SearchOver at the Technorati Weblog, Tantek Çelik has announced two new products, Microformats Search and Pingerati. In case you’re not familiar, microformats are small bits of XML that can be used to describe things like events, product reviews, or contacts in a way that’s easily readible by both humans and machines. Technorati’s microformats search, which is currently in the “technology preview” (i.e. beta) stage, lets you search for microformat-tagged information posted to any of the millions of blogs Technorati indexes. Pingerati is a new site that you can “ping” to get your microformats indexed by Technorati’s microformats search, as well as a service for developers that can send microformats to other sites. For example, if you ran a calendar site, Pingerati could forward all of the microformatted events that it receives to your site, kind of like a Ping-o-Matic for microformats.

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Originally from Download Squad by Jordan Running reBlogged by micah to search technorati microformats on Jun 1, 2006, 9:20AM

Categories
open source software web

Reblog 2.0 Beta 1 released

It took a little bit of poking around in the forum archives, and finally setting REBLOG_REFEED_ROOT_PATH in my config.xml, but my refeed install now seems to be working.

A fresh update to Reblog 2.0 has been released. Be first on your block to install it from http://reblog.org/#download.

This release includes a raft of enhancements, including better documentation for plug-in developers, slightly modified tag behavior that makes it easier to navigate your extensiv feed collection, experimental plug-ins for automatically publishing entries to WordPress, TypePad, Blogger and Del.icio.us accounts, and minor usability improvements too numerous to mention.

This BETA version has been extensively tested, and is recommended for most users. (1 comments)

Originally from SourceForge.net: SF.net Project News: reblog (including full news text) by migurski@users.sourceforge.net (Michal Migurski) reBlogged by micah to reblog php software on Feb 8, 2006, 10:20AM

Categories
software web

time-based taglines

This Yahoo Research project is the sort of tool they use to teach time travelers and aliens like Mike Myers and Mila Jovovich about history. This begs the question: if Yahoo Research is working on products for time travelers and aliens, is that getting too far out ahead of the market?

taglines.jpg
a time-based data visualization showing the evolution of tags within the Flickr online image sharing community.
the “river” metaphor gives a quick overview of the tags as a function of time. tags appear from right of the screen, travel left slowly, & disappear. the font size of the tag is proportional to the intensity of its interestingnes. each tag displays 1 photo from Flickr with this tag, & can be user selected to show more images.
the “waterfall” metaphor is useful to study tags that persist across multiple days. the screen is divided into left & right halves. the top 8 most interesting tags are displayed in 8 rows in the left half, with font sizes proportional to the intensities of their interestingness. if a tag persists for more than 1 consecutive day, more photos are added to its row.
[yahoo.com & www2006.org(pdf)]

Originally from information aesthetics by infosthetics reBlogged by micah to flickr timeline tagcloud visualization on May 25, 2006, 5:51PM