Oblomovka

2003-04-18»

Ronan has an Emacs and Perl hybrid that spots words that he hyperlinks in past pages, and then uses that to suggest suitable href's in current entries. Looks pretty neat, although of course I can't touch emacs to test it, lest my Vim-wielding hands turn to dust.

We took a break from NTK this week, but forgot to tell anyone. Oops.

(Oh, and then I put the wrong date on the invite. It's all about the admissions of fallibility, isn't it?)

2003-04-17»

It'd be unfair to give this as the reason I haven't been blogging much lately. It is the reason I've been typing a lot slower:

Todd Larason wrote an even more automatic hyperlinker macro for blosxom called "autoluckygoogle ". Much better name!

Giles Turnbull asked if anyone had written an equivalent of the overenthusiastic hyperlinker for Mac as an OS X Service. I never worked out how to get Services to work, but a while back I did hack up something for Cory for BBEdit . It worked fine on my borrowed ibook, but I didn't have time to work out how to get it to find Python libraries on his machine. Then the ibook broke :(. Here's the code - stick it in /Applications/BBEdit 6.5/BBEdit Support/Unix Support/Unix Filters/ then spend ages trying to get it to find the pygoogle libraries (which you also need to download and install). Then give it out as a DMG for others to use. Yay!

#!/sw/bin/python
import google
import sys
import re
def main(argv):
    search=open(argv[0],"r").readline()
    data = google.doGoogleSearch(search)
    if (data.results[0].summary):
        title = data.results[0].summary
    else:
        title = data.results[0].title
        title = re.sub('</*b>','',title)
    print '<a href="%s" title="%s">%s</a>' % (data.results[0].URL, title, search)
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(sys.argv[1:])

Just select the text in BBEdit, and then - oh, I forget what you do. Some BBEdit option marked "Unix Filters" I imagine. I'm such a tease.

Here's another from the bag of tricks I sent Cory - this automatically creates a new QuickTopic and subscribes you to it. Save it in the same place and give it a go. Just select the text you want as a title, and let her rip (you'll need to change the yourname/yourmail stuff in it). It'll spit out the URL for your discussion. I think Cory still uses this. It used to drive me crazy watching him jump through all these manual loops just to post one damn Boing Boing post. Like the boy hasn't enough things to do.

#!/sw/bin/python
import xmlrpclib
import sys
 
yourname = 'Your Name Here'
yourmail = 'your@email.address.example.com'
 
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
print len(sys.argv)
title=open(sys.argv[1],"r").readline()
if (title == ''):
    title = "Boing Boing Discussion"
 
quicktopic = xmlrpclib.Server("http://www.quicktopic.com/cgi-bin/xmlrpc.pl")
result = quicktopic.tio.newTopic(
                         yourname,   # user name for topic creator
                         yourmail, # email for creator
                        'boing', # forum ID (the part before the /H/ in the URL)
                        title, # topic name
                        '',  # first message
                        1, # subscribe: get email for every post
                        '', #linkfrom -- linked forum/topic
                        '', #linksubject  linked topic name
                        0,  #privacy (currently unused option)
                        '', #language (default is English)
                       )
 
url = result.split(",")[0]
print ' <a href="%s">Discuss</a>' % url

The Humanity Libraries Project is the sort of resource we were looking for after we came back from Kaindu in Africa in 2001: freely redistributable practical information for developing countries.

In order to achieve broad public participation to the pressing global issues, we propose that core UN knowledge should be released in "copyleft" in standard formats. Then they can be bundled on low cost cd-roms or central servers in each country. Copyleft would mean that UN agencies retain copyrights, and control over the commercial book sales. But that at the same time free use and electronic dissemination is allowed for non-commercial purposes without the actual inefficient centralized copyright control.

Most of the freed books look very NGO'ish, but it's a start. You can send off for a cheap CD containing 160,000 pages to redistribute in your country. (via memepool)

2003-04-16»

Writing huge swathes of text on Webpages without putting in hyperlinks looks - I dunno, somehow a bit impolite. So I wrote a vim/python macro that lets me wrap selected text with its corresponding URL, pulled from Google's top entry. So I can write A Mighty Wind, select it, hit ",g" and - voila - it becomes A Mighty Wind. You can also hit ",g" in normal mode and it'll wrap the word the cursor is sitting on. Here's my hack - you'll also need Mark Pilgrim's pygoogle code.

In your .vimrc, add these lines:

" ,g  - create google a href for word under cursor
map ,g <Esc>Bm`:r!ghref <cword><CR>"gdd``i<C-R><C-R>g<esc>dw
vmap ,g yvgvdm`:r!ghref '<C-R>=substitute(@0, "['\n]", " ", "g")<cr>'<cr>"gdd``i<C-R><C-R>g<Esc>

Now put this program somewhere in your PATH, saved as "ghref"

#!/usr/bin/python
##
# ghref - takes a string on command line, looks it up in google, outputs 
#         the HTML for a hyperlink to the "I'm feeling lucky" URL
##
import google
import sys
import re
def main(argv):
    search=argv[0]
    data = google.doGoogleSearch(search)
    if (data.results[0].summary):
        title = data.results[0].summary
    else:
        title = data.results[0].title
        title = re.sub('</*b>','',title)
    print '<a href="%s" title="%s">%s</a>' % (data.results[0].URL, title, argv[0])

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(sys.argv[1:])

It's just a fiddled-around recorded macro. I imagine there's bugs - I fixed a couple just copying this out. But maybe it'll inspire someone else to write a better version.

I've never spotted Chef Moz before. It's a spin-off of ODP that lets you read and edit reviews of over 185,000 restaurants worldwide. The data is all under an open license - I wonder if someone could craft a PDA app out of this? I wonder if someone already has?

I don't have a comments system because, dammit, don't you people have blogs of your own to go to? But that does put a bit of an obligation on me to distill the best replies to earlier entries, and try and pass them off as my own. So...

It wasn't Begbie , oh no, who pointed out saproxy, a spamassassin POP proxy that works on Windows. Or Lee, who mentioned popfile which does that and more.

And it was me, not Barnaby James who recommended SlimBrowser as a good IE-based tabbed/anti-popup browser for people who are funny about using Moz.

And I really did invent the term hinternet, not subconsciously steal it from the (void) folk, who've been using it for years.

The funny thing is, that jo's coinage of hinternet on (void) is pretty much the opposite of mine. They use it to describe a place outside the "controlled web" (which is envisaged to be the corporate AOL-Time-Warner garden of controlled delights), a place where,

...when business has finished remodelling the Internet into their own image the masses will flock (or just never leave) there leaving the rest of us shuffling round, kicking our heels (WARNING: more bad metaphor, excessive cheesiness is bad for your health and may damage your unborn child) under the off ramps of the information superhighway. And it will be just like it was before. The masses won't want to start rummaging around in the rag tag collection of unbranded sites that make up our world. Even if they did they probably wouldn't be able to jump out of whatever web tv portal gateway digi box walled padded garden system they've subscribed themselves to - if they do manage it then they've probably got a clue anyway.

(from Simon's mail, which you should read in its entirety)

I know this view of the future of the Net but I don't agree with it, either as an inevitable end or an end to be aimed for.

Where are the badlands on the Net? The difference between a ghetto and your neighbourhood is how much you hate it and whether you're trapped there. The bubble of links that I live in (when I rarely see HTML mails, and when everybody laughs politely at Microsoft Bob references) is tiny, and would drive most people crazy if they were stuck here for very long. Similiarly, I imagine a lot of the voidsters would rather eat their own fists than live exclusively in AOLland.

But these are differences based on objective value judgements about the content. I'd take a more subjective angle. It's not a ghetto if you don't want to live there; it's a ghetto if the people who live there don't want to live there. That's why I think a lot of people who live in the AOL/MSN world are living in a ghetto; they really don't like it. They're surprised when I show them somewhere else, and want to find out how to move.

The other difference between ghettos and neighbourhoods is that you can sell a neighbourhood and buy more than one ghetto with it. That's why, in real life, those in the ghetto are truly trapped. That's not true on the Net (even with the increasing costs of hosting that Simon fears). There's no scarcity of Web communities. The major part of their cost is simply finding them.

That's why I think the real ghetto lies in AOLland. We can get from here to there, but they can't get from there to where they want to be. There's an implication in the (void) coinage that we should hide ourselves away, proud and separate, deliberately hard to get at - work at being obscure for obscurity's sake. I don't think that's what anyone should do. I want to increase the efficiency with which people can find what they want. You don't break down walls by building ones on your side of the divide.

(I know that might sound funny from someone who devotes their life to making the obscurist possible jokes to the tiniest possible audience. But I don't do that to exclude anyone. I do it so I can most effectively signal to people who like that kind of thing, that this is the kind of thing that they'd like.)

The other side of this coin, of course, is that a lot of people do like what AOL and MSN have to offer - far more, I'm sure, than like my tiny bit of the Net. You can talk about cognitive dissonance all you like, but ultimately you have to listen to what people say they want, not what you suspect they'd want had they been exposed to Noam Chomsky and Negativland a bit earlier in life.

2003-04-15»

Much of the angriest mail I get from Sunday Times readers is about pop-up windows and spam. Weirdly, given how often I rant against both in the column, they often they blame me - or the "Internet nerds" I'm seen to represent. It's the nerd's fault the Internet is this blighted; something should be done; why doesn't the government do something?

I spend a lot of time trying to explain that "Internet nerds" are cursed with the same burdens - more so, since they spend more time here. And that most of my friends devote their time to fighting these problems, and their solutions are often more effective than any government. And that they're free.

There's a bit of me that does feel guilty. While I manage to fend off pop-up windows with Mozilla, and spam with Spamassassin, most people don't know about those programs. They live in the "hinternet", that shanty-town of X10 pop-ups and porn adware, and endless, endless Hotmail and Yahoo spam. They're tourists in the world of the Net, and like any tourist, they rarely get a good guide. They're just taken down the back streets by disreputable but flashy showmen, and robbed for everything they're worth. And it's true, we don't do as much as we should for them, because we're okay in our little burbclaves.

I can't recommend Mozilla until it stops changing its name. But I could recommend Spamassassin , because Deersoft produced a version for Outlook. It even cost money - the true sign of quality in that weird topsy-turvy hinternet. Finally I could give friends and family a recommendation to fight the tons of crap entering their inboxes, instead of just shrug and say "Well, err, I don't have that problem anymore. Sorry!"

But now, I discover, the showmen have grabbed that. Network Associates McAfee bought Deersoft in January. They've shelved Spamassassin Pro. They've promised to release a new version in a quarter or so, under their SpamKiller brand. I'm really happy for Justin and Craig, who now work for NA on SpamKiller. But now I don't have any software to recommend for another quarter - and I don't trust Network Associates to do a decent job in the future. Even if they hadn't fucked over PGP, they're still exactly the kind of company that doesn't fix these endemic problems, but tries to profit from them, appearing as if from nowhere to save those poor tourists while relieving them of their wallet.

We let the libraries burn.

2003-04-14»

Trotskyist libertarian science fiction writer and Denis-Healey-level political bruiser Ken Macleod just got himself a blog. I've always said that if the neocons didn't exist, Ken Macleod would have to invent them. I wonder what happens now they're all in the same online novel? (via More Like This)