This is as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

The ROX-Filer is the key component of the ROX Desktop—it’s a file manager, like Windows Explorer or Nautilus or Konqueror, but one that takes some hints from Risc OS. I love it, and I use it all the time. But there are some ways I think it could be better. I’m not posting this list to the ROX mailing lists, because it’s not constructive criticism—there is no way I could implement this stuff, so I’d just be whining for someone else to write code for me. I can put it here, though. :)
Make the Filer spatial
This is the key thing. John Siracusa has explained, in detail, the concept of a Spatial Finder on the Mac, and I want my desktop to work like that. The Filer already can be configured to give a new window for each folder, but it doesn’t remember settings; if you resize a folder window, then the Filer doesn’t remember that. I’ve looked into having my window manager do it, but you can’t. The Filer does put the path it’s displaying into the window role property on the window, which theoretically could be used to have an external program “remember” Filer settings for that folder and resize the Filer window when it’s created. However, devilspie, which can do things to windows on window creation, can’t resize windows, and it only runs on creation; there’s no way of capturing a resize event on a Filer window to “save” the details of the new size somewhere. wmctrl can resize windows, but it’s not hooked into any window events, so you’d have to just run it in a cron job every second or so (oof), and you can’t detect Filer windows with it (it returns a window title, but not necessarily the owning app, so you can’t tell that a Filer window is a Filer window). It should be possible to write something that wraps libwnck and hooks window creation and resize events, and records changes to Filer windows, but this should be a fundamental property of the Filer rather than something implemented externally. Even if the external approach was the way to go anyway, I couldn’t do it: I’m no good at C, and I can’t find Python bindings for libwnck.
Proxy icons for files
Siracusa also flags the idea of “search folders“, which are folders that contain the results of a search, and are always up to date with the results of that search. ROXFilter nearly does this, but it’s missing a couple of things. The first is some GUI configuration, so the user can manually create search folders (without having to know Perl, yeesh). Ideally, search folders would be created for you by some search tool, but that’s OK. The second, and most important thing, is that the search folder should be populated with proxy icons. When you drag a proxy icon for app A or file B to a different Filer window, then app A or file B should be moved there. This is why ROXFilter’s current approach, of using symlinks, isn’t good; if you drag a symlink from a ROXFilter folder, it’ll move the symlink, not the file the symlink points to. I don’t think that this can be done without support from the Filer.
Make the desktop a Filer window
It should be possible to drag things to the desktop. At the moment, you can’t; the desktop can only contain shortcuts. This is a real pain; when I unpack AppDirs, I want to drop them on my desktop, run them, and then move them somewhere if I like them. At the moment I have to open a Filer window to have somewhere to put an unpacked thing. I don’t like this.
Make entering a path into the Filer quicker on big directories
I’m not sure about this one, because I’m halfway convinced that the Filer shouldn’t show pathnames at all. But, given that it does: on a Debian box (or probably other things too), bring up a Filer window, hit / to enter a path, hit backspace a few times to remove the path that’s in there, and then type (at normal typing speed) /usr/share/doc/python (or any existing path in /usr/share/doc). Doesn’t work, because after you’ve typed /usr/share, the Filer takes a second or so to display the window, and during that time doesn’t respond to keypresses. So you end up typing /usr/share/c or something. I’m not clear how to make this better, since until the Filer’s parsed the folder contents it can’t tell whether what you’re typing in is a legit path.

It snew last night. It’s very nice, a bit like it started off last time, rather than how it ended up. I like the look of it; a snowy landscape, but with nice clear roads. Looks like the council people had their heads screwed on right and got the roads gritted. Lovely.

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LugRadio is here.

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I’ve just finally realised where I recognised Mark Pilgrim’s categories from. (Well, the “those that…” categories.) It’s been tickling at the back of my head for ages, and, there I was, reading Borges (_The Library of Babel_) on the bog again, and it dawned on me. _The Analytical Language of John Wilkins_ includes the categorisations of the animals, according to an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia:

• belonging to the Emperor
• embalmed
• trained
• pigs
• sirens
• fabulous
• stray dogs
• included in this classification
• trembling like crazy
• innumerable
• drawn with a very fine camelhair brush
• et cetera
• just broke the vase
• from a distance look like flies

I think I prefer a few of Mark’s translations (“those that tremble as if they were mad“) and one wonders which of the blogosphere’s multitudes are drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, but that’s a tiny, tiny mystery solved. Now just the Riddle of the Sphinx and the question of where wasps come from to do, and then I can rest eternal.

Got me an Amazon wishlist. Now all I have to do is think of stuff to put in it :) Then again, this is likely to be a lot better than the scratty bit of paper in my wallet, which is always chronically out of date…

It occurs to me that most of the time I forget to manually ping blo.gs when I write something, and I never got around to having it do it for me. Does anyone care any more? Or does everyone just poll RSS feeds these days?

Anyone who’s ever met me will know I am no fashionable bloke. I’m perpetually envious of people who are, though; not (I hasten to add) those wearing the latest catwalk creations, but people who manage to make themselves look good in pretty much whatever they’re wearing. I’d love, for example, a full-length leather coat. Because, in my head, I’d look like Neo. Of course, I wouldn’t. I’d look like a second-hand car dealer, or possibly like Colonel Von Strohm after raiding Herr Flick’s wardrobe. Similarly, I admire t-shirts; things like the ones at T-Shirt Hell (particularly the clown and coffee ones), and the way people I know can just look pretty cool in t-shirts—Jono would count here if it wasn’t for the fact that all his t-shirts are metal. Me, I don’t wear t-shirts. I wear shirts, almost all the time. White cotton button-down Oxford shirts to work, always, and casual shirts at home. Now, admittedly, that’s at least slightly because the top pocket gives me somewhere to put my cigarettes, but that’s not the point. The very word “casual” is the giveaway here. It’s a word to describe things out of catalogues. Clothes from C&A. Stuff worn to the office party by the boss; you know those tight jeans with the ironed-in crease down the front? That sort of thing. In fact, the only cool item of clothing I own is my hat and even then I’m the only person who likes it. (On the other hand, I don’t care, because I like it.) I was walking out of work the other day—dark night, glass doors—and caught a glimpse of myself, reflected. I looked like nothing more than G. K. Chesterton, or more accurately like Fiddler’s Green in his Chesterton persona, as Neil Gaiman would tell you. Honestly, all I needed was a shooting stick. Now, Chesterton was a wonderful man; a gourmet and gourmand, wit and raconteur, wise and childlike and writer of and subject of stories and anecdotes to make anyone laugh, and then think a bit. But he was in no way Adonis. He was proud of that—he was once delighted to be introduced as “Mr. Chesterton, who has been looking round in America”—but then he was a successful author and broadcaster, and I’m not.
I’m unclear whether any of this matters. I mean, some people just look good in clothes. No, wait—that, er, came out wrong. Some people make clothes look good on them; they could wear sackcloth and carry it off well. Me, on the other hand; I could make a Savile Row suit look like those rubbish bags that Toto Coelo used to wear. And I like suits; I had a fascinating conversation with a guy at work once in the pub about different types of suits and how they sit on you and so on. He wears a watch chain and manages to get away with it, and he’s about 24. Perfect example. So, my thought is: if you have to try, then you’ve already lost; you’re the boss at the office party in his ironed jeans. So my policy is generally to just lie down and die, to abandon all thoughts of the subject. I mean, I have some cool clothes—what I think are cool clothes, anyway. The hat. My summer jacket, which I can’t wear yet because the weather’s too cold. My trenchcoat. My ordinary coat, although it’s now battered—the hat looks better the more battered it gets, but the coat is wool, and does not. Much more Michael Douglas than Crocodile Dundee, sadly, and Michael Douglas clothing looks good because it’s expensive and in pristine nick, because he throws it away when it looks a bit worn. (“Your shoes cost a thousand dollars?” “That one did.“) I, however, have the tastes and don’t have the budget for that sort of thing. So, I can go for expensive but infrequently-bought and therefore rather foxed and cheap-looking stuff, or trendy stuff that doesn’t fit properly because I’m not a 19-year-old beach bum, or David Brent clothing. Or something I haven’t thought of. Suggestions welcome.

Have I mentioned before that I hate computers? Oh, I have. Actually, I have more than once. And the pain just keeps on coming. I got a neat little thing for Christmas; an Adaptec VideOh! CD, which is a neat thing that plugs into your USB port. You plug a video recorder into it, and then you can record the video onto VCD. My intention is to do this with the huge bookshelf of videos recorded off the telly, so I can get some bookshelf room back. And for the hack value of having VCDs, too, obviously.
So, first problem: you have to use the Magic Adaptec Software, and it’s Windows only. So, after some fiddling with Wine, I caved in and decided I’d use a Windows box. However, I only have two machines with USB: this one, which is a Linux box, and spike, Sam’s machine, which I don’t want to steal for video-making. I do have other machines, though, so I went and bought a PCI card that gives me USB slots so I could use it in one of the older machines. Good idea, huh? No dice. With the card plugged in, the video card doesn’t work. I’ve tried with two different video cards, one PCI and one AGP, and it doesn’t help. I’ve frigged about with all the meaningless shit in the BIOS about PCI, and that hasn’t helped either. I hate computers. Why doesn’t it work? Damned thing. So, now, I don’t know what to do. All I want is USB slots on a machine that doesn’t otherwise have them. That’s all. I wouldn’t have thought that that was too much to ask! I hate computers.

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The bloody bloody bloody smoke alarm won’t stop beeping.
No, no, it’s not beeping constantly. I’m not sitting in a house on fire complaining about the noise. It’s beeping a lot, though. Battery must be running out. It’s annoying enough to irritate the shit out of me but not annoying enough to go and fix.
Aaaaaaaargh!
Scratch that. I’m gonna fix it. Possibly with a mallet.
Update: I can’t tell which one’s broken, because it’s stopped now. I bet it starts at five in the damned morning, though. I hate electrical stuff. I’m gonna live on an island. It worked for Tom Hanks.

Outtakes from Tom Baker doing a voiceover (1.6MB mp3; not at all worksafe). Hilarious! Choice quotes:

• “Are you sure this isn’t a translation from the fucking Albanian?”
• “Symphony: number one. Even for bleedin’ foreigners.”
• “Symphony. Even for monkey shaggers.”
• “I absolutely love this. I adore distilled whippet shit.”
  Do we get the impression he didn’t want to do this much?

Well, I thought I’d actually go to Firefox but, sadly, it crashes when I use it. So, bug filed. It’s a bugger, because I was using an XFT build for the first time, and it’s really pretty by comparison with th old one. I want it! Waaah!

Sparkes notes the existence of elgoog and knocks up his own version. Personally, that seems a bit like hard work to me, so the Kryogenix House of Javascript Weirdness presents the reverso bookmarklet. Might work in your browser, might not. Works in mine, which is still Firebird 0.7 (alright, alright, I'll go to Firefox in a minute), but stuff that took me five minutes to write doesn't get a proper test procedure. :-)

At a funeral today. There was one part where the vicar (for it was a church service) talked about the faith of the deceased, and referred to “those of you who have lesser faith, or indeed no faith.” At the time he said it I was altogether annoyed. How dare he hijack the ceremony and cheapen the memory of the dead woman in order to preach at me and those others of us who don’t believe? There’s a time and a place for proselytising, and at a funeral, in the face of those who knew the departed and have gathered to honour their memory, is not it. But then afterwards I got to thinking. In these increasingly, almost entirely secular times, part of any man of God’s ministry must be to spread the Word that they see clearly to the ranks of those who do not. Still, I felt that the time he’d chosen was inappropriate. But then, on further reflection, I started reconsidering even that. When else are we likely to come into contact with a priest? There’s little point speaking on such subjects in sermons at Mass: that would be, quite literally, preaching to the converted. The majority of the secular population will only come into contact with ministers on ceremonial occasions: weddings, christenings. And funerals. So, on the seesaw between honouring the one member of the congregation and preaching the Word of God to the unbeliever, where should the priest come down? I think I’m still of the opinion that it was the wrong time and the wrong place to do it. But I have a slightly more elevated respect for the man’s decision than I did at the moment he took it.

Paul Hammond is having problems with time. In particular, he’s away from his normal place, and so his weblog and he don’t agree on what time it is. He’s thinking about having per-entry timezone options in Moveable Type, that sort of thing.
Me, it never bothers me, that. And here is why: there is only one time. Greenwich Mean Time. Not bleedin’ “UTC” either, which we were forced to rename to because no-one could stand the reminder that England set the standards for this sort of thing. In particular, if I’m abroad and it’s, say, 9.30pm local time but 2.30pm GMT, then my weblog says “2.30pm“. And it’s right, too. Local time is merely an optimisation so that midnight actually happens in the night rather than, say, mid-afternoon.
Of course, I can feel this blase and jingoistic about it because:

• I live in the GMT timezone!
• I don’t go abroad all that much
  ...but that obviously has nothing to do with it.

Firstly, Firefox, the new Mozilla Firebird 0.8, is out. This is cool (although I’m running a relatively recent nightly build anyway). Secondly, Jon Hicks was in the branding team, which is another good reason to like it. I’ve already heard comments about how nice the new logo is, and with Jon involved I’m even keener on the whole thing, if that were possible. Now all we need is seamless NTLM authentication and I’ll be pimping it at work for all it’s worth.

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Today, Niamh decided to cut her own hair, because it was getting in her eyes. Thankfully, we discovered her just after she started, otherwise I might have had a bald daughter or something. A detailed explanation of why one doesn’t cut one’s own hair ensued…

According to a recent survey, Britain’s least trusted individual has ginger hair, green eyes, a beard, and a sports car.
Damn.
That might explain some things.

Just discovered a cool new feature at Bloglines—searching. In particular, you can run a search and then subscribe to that search’s results, and you’ll be notified if anyone syndicated at Bloglines posts anything matching. Like having agents run Feedster searches for you all the time. Naturally, I am using all this incredible power and wonderfulness by subscribing to a search for my own name. The Semantic Web: bringing egosurfing even closer!

Hm, the front page is suddenly showing all comments back to the beginning of time. Investigation continues as to why this is :-)
Update: fixed. With a hacky workaround. I can’t help but think that the complexity of my PyBlosxom setup is not helping here. Perhaps I need to sit down and rewrite it…

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