paul graham wrote an essay about stuff

Paul Graham has slowly become my hero. Or at least, I think he’s interesting and wise. The essay linked here is about stuff, and it touches on how the amount of stuff we [humans] collect has changed over time. It also talks about the value of stuff, and even eludes to the fact that stuff can own us. He explains it much better than I so have a read:

http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html

Warning: It contains a lot of words, and no pictures.

Setting one space tabs for textmate

Sometimes you might want to set the tab width to one space in textmate. For example, perhaps you’re working on the XML files that power the PHP manual (don’t complain, it’s been in the coding standard since the 90’s for well over six thousand files). Because the minimum tab width offered by the textmate GUI is 2 spaces, you may use the command-line like so:


defaults write com.macromates.textmate OakTextViewScopedTabSize -dict-add 'text.xml' '{ tabSize = 1; }'

There, tab size now defaults to one space for XML files.

PHPVille almost released today

Today Facebook released a HipHop l33t shizznizzle of a tool for PHP but sadly it’s not the PHPVille I was hoping for. PHPVille is probably a game that encourages PHP community members to work on the PHP project (over at php.net). Much like FarmVille, users simply cannot stop playing!

Possible game features:

  • Each SVN commit builds up your worth
  • Not tending to or feeding your PECL extensions will result in them drying up and dying
  • Dead PECL extensions may live on as zombies, as once in awhile people will resurrect them
  • Eventually you may purchase things like an @php.net email address, and karma for other SVN repositories
  • Neighbors share and improve each others code
  • Future enhancement: The selling of karma, in bulk
  • Future enhancement: When Oracle purchases PHP, you’ll be rich! [in PHPVille cash]

PHPVille members often discuss matters within the #php.pecl and #php.doc IRC channels on EFnet, or on the various mailing lists.

If you have other PHPVille ideas then please post them here and we’ll create the best facebook application ever! Also, thanks to Ralph and Ilia for discussing this on IRC and offering some of the ideas above. :)

the future of this outdated blog and life streams

This is yet another well intentioned “I’m going to start blogging more” blog post that you see elsewhere but this one is mine. It’s just not the same since micro-blogging (twitter) came along but we’ll see. I almost converted to Habari but then got distracted committing to habari-extras (helping clean up the plugins) and have since been waiting for Habari 0.7 to be released (it’s within the 0.6 cycle currently). And now I’m distracted again, this time with life streams.

So, I’m going to either help work on the lifestream Habari plugin or use something totally different, something geared towards life streams. The arstechnica article titled “Make your own lifestream with open source Storytlr offers several ideas and methods and I’ll most likely end up with something from there. Stay tuned.

And thank you for reading this entry.