a blog involving philip olson

paul graham wrote an essay about stuff

nospam@example.com (philip) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:44:32 -0500

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

nospam@example.com (philip) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:02:00 -0500

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

nospam@example.com (philip) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:03:00 -0500

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the future of this outdated blog and life streams

nospam@example.com (philip) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:41:00 -0500

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.

communication 2.0 is lame

nospam@example.com (philip) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:51:28 -0400

Today I experienced an enormous flashing light above my head so will write about it now. Communication 2.0 is chaotic and lame. I write to blogs (this one, comments on others), micro-blogs (twitter), social networks (facebook), mailing lists (e.g., php docs), forums and other places yet it's all scattered and lost as opposed to being together and remembered. Why so Weak?! A new TODO: Change this. How? One route: Locate APIs of utilized resources, mash them together, then do stuff with it like display. Also, research this and related topics like privacy.

Integration that already happens for me today (automagically):

Tweets are shown in this blogs sidebar (via a blog plugin)
Blog posts are shown in facebook (as notes)
Tweets (some) are displayed in facbook (when appending #fb to tweets, using the selective twitter facebook application)
iPod touch apps display facebook/twitter info

Obviously this situation can be improved a ton, both by simple means (currently existing applications) or customized (like designing how to gather and use all of this raw information) with the latter being on the ever-growing TODO.

Whatever the case, the current situation is weak and will change. Google wave should help.