Before you can climb to the top of a mountain on one of the earlier islands you need to topple two statues into pools of lava so you can skip across. So I drop the first one easy and then.... nothing... the second one is 'just' out of range... its been a month and I've since put the disc away. I'm since playing Call of Duty 2 and Pikmin2 more on my GameCube.
The other GameCube one that kills me is Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - after a 4 mninute tutorial you are butchered by a Bitch-Queen... we laughed and went back to SuperMario Strikers. What's the deal there? Are only previous Prince of Persia masters supposed to have bought that game?
"I mean, I can run Office, IE and Outlook together SMOOTHLY on a WinXP box with 128M RAM."
No, you cant. Stop spreading FUD. If you have a slow CPU it might be usable if you have at least 256MB, but SMOOTHLY is something entirely different.
Hell, that combo runs just fine on my friends machine too. So don't be such a jackass and allow people to have their own opinions ok?
Win XP and 2000 both run fine on this machine, but Mandrake is draggy as hell. I've been half-looking for a 'Recycle Computers - Install Linux' distro for a bit now... but I think Linux's years of being something you could turn to to get more service out of an old box might be over.
Now, this is where one of you guys helps me out by telling me I'm wrong and there *is* such a distro out there and I should've just Googled for it:-P
I strongly suspect that my motherboard doesn't work under a 2.6 kernel. Anything with 2.4 works fine, try a 2.6 version and it all goes to heck... won't boot up at all after selecting any 2.6 option in a LILO menu.
So I decide to be a good citizen and report this (to Mandrake originally - although there is surely a better, more general place to raise this issue) but after opening the box I can't find a make or model anywhere on the motherboard. Normally I'd expect to see it printed somewhere but I guess this cheap temporary box is even cheaper than I'd thought.
Is there a way to get a motherboard id if it's not printed on it? I'd suspect a utility to do this already exists if it's at all possible but damned if my searching can find it.
Anyone else see a 'break' at the 2.4/2.6 boundary?
Well, the folks at FreeRIDE have a nice little Ruby IDE (Screenshots), written in Ruby using FXRuby, that covers most programming needs. It has a shiny plugin architecture so folks can add on extra tools.
It (the Plugin) was written by the folks behind the Ruby Refactoring Browser which also seems to work under EMACS.. huh, go figure.;)
I haven't used FreeRIDE in awhile as I'm busy staring at code here and don't want to switch editors in midstream really, but it's coming along slowly but surely. Maybe it'll be what you're looking for.
It *is* a great, detailed Grand Strategy game. I prefer Europa Universalis (from the same makers) but that's just an affection for the time period. I'm also looking forward to their Crusader Kings.
But there is a LOT of technology tree managing and economic stuff as well - if you just want a big RTS this may not be what you want. Tremendously fun game though.
Kevin
On the Simpsons when Lisa sees Comic Book Guy's TShirt
C:\Dos C:\Dos\Run Run Dos\Run
LISA:Ha, only one person in a million would find that funny! COMIC BOOK GUY: Yes, we call that the "Dennis Miller Ratio."
MST3K is much the same of course - references whizzing past your ears through the whole show, some you get and some you don't. And some... well some just stun you with how perfect, and yet how obcure they are. It's like a little gift from the writers to you.:)
Kevin
Plastic ... and a question on other Weblog UIs
on
On Collaborative Weblogs
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Heh, I started replying to another post - got distracted - returned and rewrote the thing as a reply to the article. Then I posted it as a reply to that fellows comment. *sigh*
I read and comment on Plastic way more than I ever did on Slashdot. Of course I did most of my slashdot commenting in the days before accounts were necessary. Not that I think things have changed too much - it's that the threads are all too large now it seems. I don't have any sense of communicating or community here. I think this is my third account because I keep forgetting the damn usernames and passwords - that's how seldom I think it worth it to log in. I still read here of course, but commenting seems to not add much value.
Simply too much 'stuff' to wade through on/. the way the interface works. Yet I have no problem navigating large discussions on Plastic. The difference in the two? Took me awhile but I think the thing that eases it for me is that they set the 'title' attribute on their links to stories and comments.
Wha? No, really. When I mouse over the links I get a cute little 'tool tip' giving me a preview of the linked comment. When those links have their 'title' set to be the first n characters of text in the comment it makes it a lot easier to skim along and determine what's deserving of 'drilling down'. I mentioned this on slashdot before I'm sure.
It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.
It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms. Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics
My wife calls this...
..."A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."
Now, I'm curious. Anyone else here discover a convenient UI feature that you wish more people used? There's probably lots of neat things going on out there that I've just been to lazy to notice.
I read and comment on Plastic way more than I ever did on Slashdot. Of course I did most of my slashdot commenting in the days before accounts were necessary. Not that I think things have changed too much - it's that the threads are all too large now it seems. I don't have any sense of communicating or community here. I think this is my third account because I keep forgetting the damn usernames and passwords - that's how seldom I think it worth it to log in. I still read here of course, but commenting seems to not add much value.
Simply too much 'stuff' to wade through on/. the way the interface works. Yet I have no problem navigating large discussions on Plastic. The difference in the two? Took me awhile but I think the thing that eases it for me is that they set the 'title' attribute on their links to stories and comments.
Wha? No, really. When I mouse over the links I get a cute little 'tool tip' giving me a preview of the linked comment. When those links have their 'title' set to be the first n characters of text in the comment it makes it a lot easier to skim along and determine what's deserving of 'drilling down'. I mentioned this on slashdot before I'm sure.
It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.
It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms. Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics
My wife calls this... ..."A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."
The one feature that would make Slashdot usable for me again (I haven't logged into my account for months before today) is as simple as setting the title on the links to people's comments.
From Plastic.com I've snatched the first reply to the first comment of the current Top Story. And as luck would have it it's a comment by the ubiquitous MAYORBOB.
<a href="/comments.html;sid=03/11/20/13072854;mode=th read;cid=16" class="int" title="Boston Market. Seriously, you're right. It's not so much the food which, when you have a house with four women in it such as mine, is plentiful and varied. It is the companionship of family and...">Thanksgiving turkey dinner for one.</a> (score of 1)<br>by MAYORBOB at Thu 20 Nov 12:29pm (# 16 in reply to # 1)
On Plastic the title of the links is set to be the first bit of text in the comment. So when I mouse over the link to the comment I get a little tool-tip like box that pops up and gives the first chunk of the comment. In Mozilla I get a popup reading:
Boston Market. Seriously, you're right. It's not so much the food which, when you have... whereas IE shows the whole title text.
Here on Slashdot though it's only showing up as plastic.com so I guess they set it automatically to the domain.
It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.
So, my question now is, is there a reason Slashdot wouldn't want to adopt this idea? It really is a great nav-tool and interface enhancement I find. It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me.
It also lends itself to interesting idioms. Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics
My wife calls this "A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep." You'd be amazed how well it works. Since your...
...but such are family obligations.
You can get a pretty good idea of a comment with the amount of text available in the Subject and title tool-tip, especially when people try to write their comments with this fact in mind.
Go over to Plastic and try following a few of the discussions in the stories there. I bet you'll see the appeal of this method. Of course, it's possible there's a really good reason we don't want to do this on Slashdot but I can't think of it right now.
Why call it Berlin? Well, why call it Kitchener? or New York for that matter. Naming is usually to do with the founders though. In this case they were predominately German. So they chose a name that reminded them of home. I'm from Nova Scotia (latin for New Scotland) and we've got a New Glascow and an Inverness amongst many old names from across the water.
Hrrrm, but what could've be happening 'around 1910' that would cause them to change a name that reflected their proud heritage?
Why Would I not want people to think I was a proud German? *shrug* It's one of those things we'll probably never know.:)
Kevin
Very much 'Not Insightful' - List of Docs follows
on
Ruby Developer's Guide
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Actually, the entire content of the post is one question and two outright falsehoods.
Check out the ruby-lang pages list of docs there's a lot of good stuff there.
I own Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide (available in full online) known as 'The Pickaxe Book' (ie the Ruby Camel) and Ruby in a Nutshell from OReilly by the language designer Yukihiro Matsumoto (known as matz on the mailing list). Hail matz!:) Then there's a personal favorite dead tree of mine The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton. I haven't finished it yet but it's full of crunchy goodness.
Between, those books and the wealth of tutorials and docs linked from www.ruby-lang.org/en there's a lot more material available than there was for Python when I started using it.
And the fact that these books keep selling and getting published implies to me that people are using Ruby.
When in doubt check the Ruby Book list at www.rubygarden.org to see whats out now and whats in the pipe.
As far as the bindings being buggy - I've only played with a few but they seem as good as I recall pythons bindings from when I used python. (admittedly that was a while ago)
C'mon give Ruby a try - I've found it a delight to play with. You might like it - and if not -well, learning why you dislike it is a valuable type of learning as well:)
I suggest the Pickaxe book (you'll eventually want to buy a hardcopy) and if you don't want to download the interpreter right now - well hold onto your hats. A clever fellow named Clemens Wyss has an 'interactive' version of the Pickaxe with all the code examples live in your browser so you can play with the code a lil. Find it here
Slashdot Mirror
I think my tree goes back at most 6 generations...
*G*
Oh... I'd wager it goes back farther than that.
All the way back in fact...
-K
Ahh, Gold-Bugs... our premier source of 'renewable crazy'. I can't decide, is it ironic that their non-scarcity makes them worthless? -K
Before you can climb to the top of a mountain on one of the earlier islands you need to topple two statues into pools of lava so you can skip across. So I drop the first one easy and then .... nothing ... the second one is 'just' out of range ... its been a month and I've since put the disc away. I'm since playing Call of Duty 2 and Pikmin2 more on my GameCube.
... we laughed and went back to SuperMario Strikers. What's the deal there? Are only previous Prince of Persia masters supposed to have bought that game?
The other GameCube one that kills me is Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - after a 4 mninute tutorial you are butchered by a Bitch-Queen
Kevin
Oh sure, when I don't bother to log in I get lots of upmods! :-P
...
Kevin
PS - I know this is shameless and bad form but it honestly cracked me up
No, you cant. Stop spreading FUD. If you have a slow CPU it might be usable if you have at least 256MB, but SMOOTHLY is something entirely different.
Hell, that combo runs just fine on my friends machine too. So don't be such a jackass and allow people to have their own opinions ok? Win XP and 2000 both run fine on this machine, but Mandrake is draggy as hell. I've been half-looking for a 'Recycle Computers - Install Linux' distro for a bit now ... but I think Linux's years of being something you could turn to to get more service out of an old box might be over.
Now, this is where one of you guys helps me out by telling me I'm wrong and there *is* such a distro out there and I should've just Googled for it :-P
Kevin
I strongly suspect that my motherboard doesn't work under a 2.6 kernel. Anything with 2.4 works fine, try a 2.6 version and it all goes to heck... won't boot up at all after selecting any 2.6 option in a LILO menu.
So I decide to be a good citizen and report this (to Mandrake originally - although there is surely a better, more general place to raise this issue) but after opening the box I can't find a make or model anywhere on the motherboard. Normally I'd expect to see it printed somewhere but I guess this cheap temporary box is even cheaper than I'd thought.
Is there a way to get a motherboard id if it's not printed on it? I'd suspect a utility to do this already exists if it's at all possible but damned if my searching can find it.
Anyone else see a 'break' at the 2.4/2.6 boundary?
Kevin
They even have a Refactoring Support Plugin newly included these days. It appears to include
Rename Local Variable
Rename Instance Variable
Rename Class Variable
Rename Global Variable
Rename Method
Rename Constant
Extract Method
Pull Up Method
Pull Down Method
It (the Plugin) was written by the folks behind the Ruby Refactoring Browser which also seems to work under EMACS .. huh, go figure. ;)
I haven't used FreeRIDE in awhile as I'm busy staring at code here and don't want to switch editors in midstream really, but it's coming along slowly but surely. Maybe it'll be what you're looking for.
Kevin
It *is* a great, detailed Grand Strategy game. I prefer Europa Universalis (from the same makers) but that's just an affection for the time period. I'm also looking forward to their Crusader Kings. But there is a LOT of technology tree managing and economic stuff as well - if you just want a big RTS this may not be what you want. Tremendously fun game though. Kevin
On the Simpsons when Lisa sees Comic Book Guy's TShirt
... well some just stun you with how perfect, and yet how obcure they are. It's like a little gift from the writers to you. :)
C:\Dos
C:\Dos\Run
Run Dos\Run
LISA:Ha, only one person in a million would find that funny!
COMIC BOOK GUY: Yes, we call that the "Dennis Miller Ratio."
MST3K is much the same of course - references whizzing past your ears through the whole show, some you get and some you don't. And some
Kevin
Heh, I started replying to another post - got distracted - returned and rewrote the thing as a reply to the article. Then I posted it as a reply to that fellows comment. *sigh*
/. the way the interface works. Yet I have no problem navigating large discussions on Plastic. The difference in the two? Took me awhile but I think the thing that eases it for me is that they set the 'title' attribute on their links to stories and comments.
..."A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."
I read and comment on Plastic way more than I ever did on Slashdot. Of course I did most of my slashdot commenting in the days before accounts were necessary. Not that I think things have changed too much - it's that the threads are all too large now it seems. I don't have any sense of communicating or community here. I think this is my third account because I keep forgetting the damn usernames and passwords - that's how seldom I think it worth it to log in. I still read here of course, but commenting seems to not add much value.
Simply too much 'stuff' to wade through on
Wha? No, really. When I mouse over the links I get a cute little 'tool tip' giving me a preview of the linked comment. When those links have their 'title' set to be the first n characters of text in the comment it makes it a lot easier to skim along and determine what's deserving of 'drilling down'. I mentioned this on slashdot before I'm sure.
It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.
It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms.
Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics
My wife calls this...
Now, I'm curious. Anyone else here discover a convenient UI feature that you wish more people used? There's probably lots of neat things going on out there that I've just been to lazy to notice.
Kevin
Simply too much 'stuff' to wade through on /. the way the interface works. Yet I have no problem navigating large discussions on Plastic. The difference in the two? Took me awhile but I think the thing that eases it for me is that they set the 'title' attribute on their links to stories and comments.
Wha? No, really. When I mouse over the links I get a cute little 'tool tip' giving me a preview of the linked comment. When those links have their 'title' set to be the first n characters of text in the comment it makes it a lot easier to skim along and determine what's deserving of 'drilling down'. I mentioned this on slashdot before I'm sure.
It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens. It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms.
..."A gathering of strays" instead of "lost sheep."
Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics
My wife calls this...
Kevin
It's rendered like this:
Thanksgiving turkey dinner for one. (score of 1)
by MAYORBOB at Thu 20 Nov 12:29pm (# 16 in reply to # 1)
From the following code:
On Plastic the title of the links is set to be the first bit of text in the comment. So when I mouse over the link to the comment I get a little tool-tip like box that pops up and gives the first chunk of the comment. In Mozilla I get a popup reading: ...
Boston Market. Seriously, you're right. It's not so much the food which, when you have
whereas IE shows the whole title text. Here on Slashdot though it's only showing up as plastic.com so I guess they set it automatically to the domain.
It's a small thing but it makes navigating a thread much easier when you can quickly gauge the tone/value of replies without having to click on them all to open them in another window. It works wonders with reading short replies, deciding which comments to investigate first and helps with often meaningless subject lines like "Re:The thing this thread started as but it no longers bears any relation to'. It's surprising how used you get to depending on that little bit of introductory info. I constantly mouse over the links in huge Slashdot threads and am surprised everytime when nothing happens.
So, my question now is, is there a reason Slashdot wouldn't want to adopt this idea? It really is a great nav-tool and interface enhancement I find. It's changed the way I read on Plastic, I now read many more of the comments to a story because I seldom get frustrated by chasing replies that are of no interest to me. It also lends itself to interesting idioms. Take this example of a post. Subject line is bold and the first line of the comment body (which'll show up in the popup and completes the 'thought') is in italics
You can get a pretty good idea of a comment with the amount of text available in the Subject and title tool-tip, especially when people try to write their comments with this fact in mind.Go over to Plastic and try following a few of the discussions in the stories there. I bet you'll see the appeal of this method. Of course, it's possible there's a really good reason we don't want to do this on Slashdot but I can't think of it right now.
Kevin
Why call it Berlin? Well, why call it Kitchener? or New York for that matter. Naming is usually to do with the founders though. In this case they were predominately German. So they chose a name that reminded them of home. I'm from Nova Scotia (latin for New Scotland) and we've got a New Glascow and an Inverness amongst many old names from across the water.
:)
Hrrrm, but what could've be happening 'around 1910' that would cause them to change a name that reflected their proud heritage?
W hy W ould I not want people to think I was a proud German? *shrug* It's one of those things we'll probably never know.
Kevin
Actually, the entire content of the post is one question and two outright falsehoods.
:)
:)
Check out the ruby-lang pages list of docs there's a lot of good stuff there.
I own Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide (available in full online) known as 'The Pickaxe Book' (ie the Ruby Camel) and Ruby in a Nutshell from OReilly by the language designer Yukihiro Matsumoto (known as matz on the mailing list). Hail matz!
Then there's a personal favorite dead tree of mine The Ruby Way by Hal Fulton. I haven't finished it yet but it's full of crunchy goodness.
Between, those books and the wealth of tutorials and docs linked from www.ruby-lang.org/en there's a lot more material available than there was for Python when I started using it.
And the fact that these books keep selling and getting published implies to me that people are using Ruby.
When in doubt check the Ruby Book list at www.rubygarden.org to see whats out now and whats in the pipe.
As far as the bindings being buggy - I've only played with a few but they seem as good as I recall pythons bindings from when I used python. (admittedly that was a while ago)
C'mon give Ruby a try - I've found it a delight to play with. You might like it - and if not -well, learning why you dislike it is a valuable type of learning as well
I suggest the Pickaxe book (you'll eventually want to buy a hardcopy) and if you don't want to download the interpreter right now - well hold onto your hats. A clever fellow named Clemens Wyss has an 'interactive' version of the Pickaxe with all the code examples live in your browser so you can play with the code a lil. Find it here
In closing:
RubyCentral
RubyGarden
Ruby-Lang
Ruby-Talk Mailinglist
or check out the newsgroup at comp.lang.ruby
Kevin
--
'Just another Ruby Miner'