I’ve managed do find a solution to post text from anywhere to this blog using quicksilver to select text from my text editor and send it directly to the Dave’s Conundrums. The trick is to use an applescript and execute it via QS. Technically the script was used to allow you to type directly in the 1st quicksilver window, but instead of using it to compose you can just paste de selected text with CMD+G. Also, as I use MultiMarkdown on the server side of the blog I can write my short posts in it and need not to worry about HTML and other things. Posting images is not possible … yet, but for most of the daily writing this is more than enough.
CM de Lisboa vai controlar Tuk Tuk
Segundo o link do Público a CML quer controlar, ou antes está a pensar em meter a colherada, num negócio que se percebeu que é florescente? Onde está o estudo a mostrar a necessidade de controlar o número de Tuk Tuk na cidade? Ou será que se trata apenas de apaziguar a malta dos Taxis?
Posting to blog from any application
One of the issues with blogging is that you can’t really do it from within any app you choose. There are dedicated clients like Ecto, MarsEdit or Windows Live Writer, but you have to use them. What I really wanted was something that would allow me to blog from anywhere. I could just use my favorite text editor to write and then select the text I wanted to publish and use a Quicksilver command or Mac service to push that to my blog. Is there such a thing?
On The faux Sharing Economy
AirBNB and Uber are the two most well known brands of the so called sharing economy. This is a concept where — through technology — normal people can earn some extra money by optimisation of resources through information. The concept is highly abused and the sharing economy businesses shows little differences from traditional business. I recommend you to read / listen to the following:
Nothing is being shared when you hire a cleaner to tidy your house or a car to drive you to work, even if you use an app to do it. Full story
- Benjamen Walker takes the subject to other level on his Theory of Everything, calling them Instaserfs:
- The Harvard Business Review tries to clarify the sharing part and comes with the notion that this economy is not about sharing but instead is an access economy. It is all about how information about opportunities becomes available.
But the HEAT is now. And discussion on sharing economy is taking place all over the web. The next few years will define how these companies will are accepted and how their business models evolve.
A ver: Fortitude
Ver ep. 1 na RTP Play. A RTP2 está a transmitir Fortitude até dia 6 de Outubro. A não perder, todos os dias às 22h. Só é pena que o site da RTP seja tão parco na informação prestada sobre a programação das séries e que seja quase preciso ir adivinhando dia a dia se vai dar ou não. Mas sim, é todos os 5 dias da semana em ponto, às 22h.
A série passada no circulo polar ártico tem paisagens deslumbrantes e um clima único. Se é fã de Twin Peaks ou Wayward Pines vai encontrar algum paralelismo embora a realização não seja de David Lynch. A verdade é que aquele glaciar esconde muito bem o seu segredo e há gente a morrer por causa disso, . . . ou talvez não.
Os personagens da série são complexos, com passados muitas vezes negros e que contrastam com a dureza do ambiente de Fortitude onde a espécie mais forte são os ursos polares.
Já agora prestem dois minutos de atenção à banda sonora de Fortitude.
Eu Votava Num Partido Que . . .
- Revogasse o acordo ortográfico de 1990. Acho que não é preciso explicação para este desastre em que só a classe política continua a insistir.
- Propusesse o 10 de Junho como data única para a realização de eleições. E tomadas de posse na primeira segunda-feira subsequente. Que dia de Portugal poderia ser melhor celebrado do que com o acto democrático e acabava-se com a fantochada dos partidos escolherem datas de acordo com o seus interesses. Não se demoravam três meses a tomar posse e a formar governo e dava-se tempo para que novos governantes pudessem fazer orçamentos para o ano seguinte.
- Impedisse titulares de cargos políticos que se demitissem ou fossem demitidos de se candidatar por 5 anos. Num caso ou noutro são pessoas inaptas para governar, logo devem ser afastadas compulsivamente para evitar a utilização de demissões como jogada de política baixa.
- Tivesse uma ideia para os portugueses que não seja a de os ver de avental e bandeja a servir estrangeiros.
- Apostasse definitivamente em ciência e resolvesse o problema dos doutorados a prazo que servem de mão de obra barata para as universidades portuguesas.
- Revertesse a perseguição às mulheres que este governo implementou no que diz respeito à introdução de taxas moderadoras e às consultas obrigatórias na interrupção de gravidez. Será que temos que ser um país tacanho de mentalidades e de atitudes?
- Colocasse na constituição um desemprego SUB 5% em vez de querer colocar lá um déficit sub qualquer coisa.
- Tivesse mais mulheres (principalmente mães) nas suas fileiras do que homens gordos.
- Obrigasse a um serviço mínimo garantido de internet para todos os portugueses. Uma pen USB/ ou só o cartão/ com 256Kb/s de largura de banda que permitisse ter sempre acesso. Acesso à internet seria uma garantia constitucional.
- Mudasse o processo democrático para o mundo digital. Eleições, referendos, decisões camarárias. Todas poderiam ser participadas por todos a partir de um computador. Acabar com esta parvoíce que é não poder votar porque estou em viagem no estrangeiro.
- E por fim, eu votava num partido que não prometesse nada desta lista, porque todos mentem nas promessas. Não quero promessas, quero actos e se começassem por esta pequena lista já ficávamos um bocadinho satisfeitos.
Second Life Abandoned Virtual Realities
There is something strange about online entities, be it blogs, virtual games, moocs, or vles. There’s something ethereal about all those entities. Because they will fade away quickly as they were praised. They have a lifetime so short that some users are still hanging to those entities while the servers are being shut down. An example is Second Life islands. How many abandoned places are still there in Second Life. Ghost of 2007 gold run. Who is paying for them? Some of these places were never really popular. The virtual worlds were sold by the companies that promoted them to suckers that spent much real money to buy virtual goods, islands and services.
Second Life is only an example, but you can clearly imagine the same thing happening to other worlds like WoW or Minecraft. Obviously right now they are highly sought and present users might say that they don’t feel that the online entity is going to disappear. Are really you sure about that? Second Life was a pain. A evolved IRC for finger and imagination impaired people. I never liked it, but just 8 years ago everybody was writing about it (me included saying how bad it was (in PT)).
The moral of finding all these abandoned places in the virtual worlds is that there always some Bullish movement sponsored by companies that are real Bears. Be careful where you place your online bets. We really need an Internet janitor.
Switching to Colemak – My ColemaP
During 2014 I decided to switch to Colemak keyboard layout. I just want now to give a brief overview of the process, and where I am right now. Here are a few pointers if you want to try it yourself.
Switching keyboard layouts is not easy. Many people give up and stick to qwerty forever. It is dumb but at least not as dumb as the old Portuguese hcesar keyboard layout.
COLEMAK OFFERS THE BEST OF TWO WORLDS, fewer keys change place—for example shortcuts keys like copy and paste stay in the same keyboard location—and more words are typed using the home row with less finger travelling.
PRACTICE. Typing fast is mainly a matter of practice and finger memory. I used Amphetype and Typeracer to improve over time. In Amphetype I downloaded a book from The Gutenberg Project and read it by typing it through.
I MADE SOME CHANGES to the original Colemak keyboard that have nothing to do with letters. I changed the numbers 6–0 to have the symbols of shifted 1–5 !@#$% that are very useful for programming, twitter, emails, latex, etc… and I didn’t want do be using shift to type them. I put 0 to the left of 1 and put 6–9 as shifted 1–4. I now need to press shift to enter those numbers, but I can use the number pad on the right of the keyboard. I AM STILL UNDECIDED ABOUT keeping this half system or to use the french azerty scheme of inverting all the numbers and shifted symbols (ColemaP figure above) — I used Ukelele for remapping Colemak to my version that I call ColemaP
DEFINE the caps lock key as a backspace. Even if you are still using qwerty. The caps lock is useless and having the backspace key on your left pinky is great. It takes some time to get used to but not having to rise and extend your right hand to reach the backspace is a time saver.
REVERTING BACK to qwerty is very easy as you don’t forget it that quickly. You lose some speed on qwerty but nothing that is that problematic. And when you go back you really feel it in your fingers how slow that layout is.