Archive: January 05, 2005

Wednesday, January 5, 2005

1. Glenn Reynolds rounds up a whole bunch of discussion on torture. I read many of the links. The best thing I read was this post by Steven Den Beste. I miss reading his essays.

     ¶ (0) Tags: [Opinions/Politics]

2. Damien Katz: Formula Engine Rewrite (via Ned):

   So here was I was, offered this position that I clearly wasn't qualified for. I had no experience with language runtimes or compilers, I knew very little about C and didn't know anything about C++, I had never dealt with platform byte ordering and packing and all the other issues associated with writing something for eight different operating systems, I had never even used proper version control. But none of that mattered to me. It seemed to me like an amazing opportunity and I would be doing exactly the kind of stuff I enjoy most. I wouldn't be bothered all day by marketing folks asking could the forms be mauve, I wouldn't have to worry about the wording of some field label on some feature that no one even knew how to get to, I wouldn't have to deal with icons that were too Anglo-Saxon, too masculine or too feminine, I wouldn't have to worry that some important VP wanted a new button that would confuse 90% of users. I would just write code. So I said yes... To this day I don't know what possessed Wai Ki to offer me the job.

   Wai Ki Yip is now my personal hero.

     ¶ (0) Tags: [Programming]

3. map.search.ch is pretty incredible. Try it out, then read this description of the site by one of the programmers. Both links via Simon.

     ¶ (0) Tags: [Programming]

Site was down

All of Hosting Matters was down for a bit today as the sock monkeys at HM messed with the power. All seems clear now. (btw, this post has a critical tone only if you don't know that I think HM does a good job, and that "sock monkeys" is their term of endearment).

Update: And my site was also unavailable for part of the evening, if your browser sent a referrer, because I didn't realize stripos is only available in PHP 5, and I didn't notice things were broken because I have my referrers turned off (the place I used stripos was where I 403 any site that tries to referrer spam me).

Permalink | Comments? | Tags: This website | id 6351

18:48 (utc-5)
edited: 22:47 (utc-5)

 

1. ASCIIMathML: Math on the web for everyone, via Simon. Cool. Translates mostly common sense ASCII to MathML. If I ever integrate MathML with my blog like Musings does, it'll probably be through translation from ASCIIMathML. Its expressions are typically shorter and simpler than the equivalent LaTeX expressions as well.

     ¶ (0) Tags: [Programming, Science, This website]

2. Matt talking about the flood of Trackback spam he's getting makes me glad I never implemented Trackback/pingback. If I had, that would bring me up to at least 5 sources of spam.

     ¶ (0) Tags: [This website]

3. Edge asks scientists, "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Should be interesting to read. Via /..

     ¶ (0) Tags: [Science]

Your favorite text editor tricks?

What are your favorite text editor tricks? Do you have certain keyboard shortcuts, macros, or features in your favorite editor you "can't live without"?

Since I've been using jEdit I've been customising it a lot. For instance, I've even customized the ordinary commands for cut and paste. Cx and Cc cut and paste the selection as usual, but now if nothing is selected it cuts or copies the current line. Other neat commands I just set up are CA↓ and CA↑, which move an entire line up or down. I've also forgone the normal (at least for Windows) undo/redo combination, and use Cz and CSz instead of Cz and Cy. I have Cd to delete a whole line, CSd to duplicate a line or selection, F12 to go to the most recent buffer, CF12 links to jEdit's great switch buffer plugin, I have diffs inline in my editor with jEdit's diff plugin, and so on. My page on jEdit details all the keyboard shortcuts I've set up.

What's great about jEdit is that with macros I can customize almost any feature I want, or I can create new features. So, if anyone has any neat tricks (please share) I can likely easily add them to jEdit. This is my first time using a programmable editor (I didn't know what I was missing -- the Emacs folks are onto something), so I'm having fun playing.

Permalink | Comments? | Tags: Programming | id 6347

02:05 (utc-5)