Sexo, mentiras e Blogger

Sexo, Mentiras e Blogger O Blogger anunciou que não quer sexo. Nada de sexo, nudez, ou algo que possa minimamente assemelhar-se a tal. Ponto final, finito. A verdade é que o Blogger há muito que tem feito por se tornar irrelevante e esta é mais uma pequena acha para uma fogueira que já não tem grande chama.

– Se o Blogger se está a tornar irrelevante porque falas dele então?
– Foi lá que comecei a blocar, lá pelo ido ano de 2002. O Blogger era ‘a plataforma‘, era fácil de utilizar, e tinha uma comunidade em crescimento.

– Mas entretanto o Google comprou-o ao inventor do Twitter?
– Sim, e com isso começaram os problemas. Resolveram mudar o sistema de templates que ninguém entendia e era/é ainda um mistério como funciona. Inventaram um modo beta para a parte de administração que basicamente nunca evoluiu e continua ainda hoje basicamente igual. Começaram os problemas com a lentidão do serviço que fazia com que os sites ficassem algum tempo offline.

– E mudaste para o WordPress?
– Sim, em 2006. Houve um momento em que já não era possível continuar a suportar tanto disparate por parte do Google e o WordPress era a plataforma a utilizar para quem queria ter um site self-hosted. Ainda experimentei a versão hosted durante algum tempo, mas o controlo permitido era pouco ou nenhum. A versão self-hosted dá um pouco mais de trabalho mas compensa pelo controlo que se tem. E aliás mais uma vez se prova com este caso do Blogger matar o sexo que quem controla os conteúdos é quem controla os servidores da plataforma e não os autores.

– E no futuro? Continuas no WordPress?
– Para já sim. A minha instalação recorre a um plugin desenvolvido por mim para gerar versões estáticas do site de forma a que os requisitos do servidor sejam mínimos. Ainda pensei utilizar coisas como o Jekyll ou Pelican, mas achei melhor aproveitar o WordPress como base. O WordPress continua a ser muito bom e a evoluir ao contrário do que aconteceu com o Blogger ou com o Typead.

– E sugestões hosted?
– Nos pacotes tipo SUMO EM PÓ em que é só juntar água, o Tumblr desde que foi comprado pelo Yahoo! cresceu muito e está muito bom. Se tiver que montar um projecto rápido para alguém ou para um grupo, sem ter que andar a gerir nada, é certamente a plataforma que escolho. A Marissa Mayer está a fazer um bom trabalho no Yahoo!, ainda que não seja fácil recuperar o tempo dado de avanço à concorrência.

– E nacionais?
– Queres que fale do Sapo Blogs? Funcionam. Experimentei em tempos mas foi um casamento que não funcionou, mas para quem quiser algo em Portugal vale a pena, até porque honestamente não há alternativa em condições em Portugal.

– E agora?
– O Blogger está a definhar, os outros vão aproveitar alguma migração de utilizadores. Mas o que isto mostra é QUEM NÃO CONTROLA O SERVIDOR NÃO CONTROLA OS CONTEÚDOS.

Tip: Remap the Caps Lock key as a Backspace

For some time now I’ve been using my Caps Lock key as Ctrl (probably the Caps Lock key is the most useless key in any keyboard) but after switching to the Colemak layout (part 2) I’ve come to the conclusion that the Caps Lock can be very useful if configured as a Backspace key. Having the backspace on your left pinky allows your finger to travel less and not loose the resting position in the middle row, making writing even speedier than before. It is my belief that this is even useful for those using a traditional qwerty keyboard. In the mac you can try it by using a little software called Seil. What do you think? Do you use the Caps Lock as another key?

Windows 10 is NOT Free.

Windows 10 is NOT Free

Microsoft’s event to launch Windows 10 created headlines because of the FREE word. They announced that the OS will be free.

Well…, when Free is NOT:

  • in a time where the OS is free in every platform other than Windows for Microsoft, FREE Windows means that it is ONLY for UPGRADES for Windows7+ computers and only valid for ONE YEAR. WHAT?
  • Yes. This is totally wrong, it is basically a measure to try to keep existing users locked in the platform during the next laptop buying season. It doesn’t aim to attract new users from other OSes, because those will still need to buy Windows 10.
  • It shows that Microsoft’s strategy is lagging 10 years behind that of Apple and that Microsoft doesn’t really understand modern technology.
  • I’m not going to discuss the use of Free (by either Microsoft or Apple or other) in the context of open source and linux (yes, I saw what you did there!)

The GOOD:

  • Internet Explorer is going to die.

The BAD:

  • Microsoft is going to write a new browser with amazing features and amazing new ways to break WEB standards and introduce security holes in your computer.

The UGLY:

  • Holographic glasses?… yes I think that was what the marketing division was wearing when they defined the price point and marketing strategy for Windows 10

Search better than apple’s spotlight

EasyFind

I hate that spotlight indexes external drives. I hate waiting for hours for it to create hidden folders of catalogs that are just waisting space. I hate that it does it to my friends drives that I will only use once and that they will take home with a strange index folder full of rubbish.

So I disable external drive spotlight indexing but now HOW AM I GOING TO SEARCH IN THOSE VOLUMES?

Well, there are Unix ways of doing the search, but I’m don’t spend 100% of my time on a Terminal window.

ENTER EasyFind from the DEVONThink guys.

A NO INDEX search software for MAC that acts perfectly to search files, folders, content in files, etc… A life saver on the toolbox of any Mac Computer.

No more spotlight rubbish please!

Easy checklist generation in LaTeX with easylist

Checklist are great tools to remind us of things and to organise tasks. There are gazillion ways to generate and use them. When writing a LaTeX document the best way to get a checklist in LateX is by using the easylist1 package.

Latex Easylist checklist example

In the preamble of your document add:

\usepackage[ampersand]{easylist}

Then, in the body of your LaTeX document use something like the following example:

\begin{easylist}[checklist]
& This is Level 1 (Bold) open item
&& This is a level 2 open item
\end{easylist}

This is a great solution to make checklists in a get things done kind of way. It is also great if you don’t have checked items in the list. If your checklist needs to have items in the checked state then there is an alternative method:

Checklists in LaTeX with completed tasks

To have items with both checked and unchecked boxes, the best approach is to redefine the item symbol on the fly inside the itemize environment. For this you’ll need to use the AMS math package2 in the preamble as it will provide the boxtimes symbol.

Latex checkbox in list

\usepackage{amssymb}

There are other AMS packages that also contain the symbol needed and you can use those instead. Next, in the place of document where you want a checklist you write:

\begin{itemize}
\item[$\square$] An open item.
\item[$\boxtimes$] A closed item.
\end{itemize}

If your items are in multiple levels you can create sublists inside this first one. Furthermore, another advantage of the easylist package is that it allows for infinite sublists. Finally, the use of & as the list symbol is very practical.

  1. http://www.ctan.org/pkg/easylist ↩

  2. you’ll probably have already loaded some of the latexsym, amsfonts, amssymb, txfonts, pxfonts, or wasysym packages, so you might have these square symbols already. ↩

R Tip: define ggplot axis labels

Formatting text and labels in ggplot or ggplot2 axis is easy. A common task when producing plots for publication is to replace default labels. Default labels in axes tend to reflect the name of variables used and sometimes these are not the most descriptive labels. At least not when you are publishing the plots in a scientific journal. So let’s try to break down some ways to personalise ggplot plot axes.

Quick Navigation:

For this formatting example I’ll use the movies dataset that is available in R. First thing we need to do is to load ggplot2 library and then the movies dataset

library(ggplot2)
data(movies)

The default ggplot axis labels

Traditionally the labels are set in the axis directly by ggplot from the aesthetics selected e.g.:

p0<-ggplot(data=movies, aes(x=year))
p0<-p0+geom_point(aes(y=rating))+geom_smooth(aes(y=rating))
p0

plot of define x and y axis ggplot

To make ggplot axes’ labels different we can use xlab and ylab. This defines x and y axis in ggplot easily.

p0+xlab('The glorious years of the movies')+ylab('The public ratings')

Setting axes labels in ggplot with scales

p0+
  scale_x_continuous('The glorious years of the movies (with scales)')+
  scale_y_continuous('The public ratings (with scales)')

Also worth investigating is the labs function that allow the change of the axes and the title e.g.:

p0+labs(
  x='The glorious years of the movies (with labs)',
  y='The public ratings (with labs)'
  )

Formatting labels text for size and rotation?

Ggplot can change axis label orientation, size and colour. To rotate the axes in ggplot you just add the angle property. To change size ou use size and for colour you uses color (Notice that a ggplot uses US-english spelling). Finally, note that you can use the face property to define if the font is bold or italic.

p0 + xlab('The Years of Cinema')+
  ylab('Public Ratings')+
  theme(
    axis.text.x=element_text(angle=90, size=8),
    axis.title.x=element_text(angle=10, color='red'),
    axis.title.y=element_text(angle=80, color='blue', face='bold', size=14)
    )

The formatting of the text in the labels is a bit counter intuitive because it uses a slightly different nomenclature. The formatting is done with the theme function and by defining element_text’s with the wanted format. In the example above the axis.text.x defines the ticks format and the axis.title.? define the labels format.

A good way to learn all the elements that a ggplot theme can format can be obtained from the help menu by entering ?theme. These examples are just scrapping the surface of what you can do but hope they can get you started in formatting text size and orientation inside ggplot plots.

Side Note: Did you noticed how crappy the movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s were?