Saturday, 28 February, 2009. 10:54:39 PM
My Kindle arrived yesterday and I've been playing with it pretty much non-stop. I've
figured out how to format html and text files to display properly on the device.
This Ruby script, which I found and then modified slightly, does the trick.
#!/usr/bin/ruby -an
if ($_.size==2) then
printf("\n\n");
else if ($_.size==1) then
printf("\n\n");
else
chomp!
printf("%s ",$_);
end
When combined with a pipe, an html file can be nicely converted to a text file.
lynx --dump file.html | convert > converted_file.txt
/n
Tuesday, 24 February, 2009. 11:34:08 PM
Back in 2003 Alex and I took a trip to Santa Fe for a few days. In the center of town there's
a square, with an open area in the middle surrounded by shops. Vendors sit out in front of the
shops selling silver and turquoise jewelry from rugs spread out on the ground. One vendor was
selling silver bolo ties, and remarked that Isaac Asimov used to wear a bolo tie. The tie vendor
responded "then tell him to come on down and buy a tie from me."
/n
Monday, 23 February, 2009. 11:28:48 PM
For some strange reason I started watching Dr. Who earlier this month and have now almost worked through all 4 seasons of the new series.
/n
Tuesday, 17 February, 2009. 12:15:00 PM
I haven't been blocking browser ad images for a while, but I just started again. The reason?
I can't stand to look at that ad, and it's popping up several times a day everwhere. When
advertizing companies do things that make me want to throw up, it's time they have the right to
show me images revoked.
/n
Thursday, 12 February, 2009. 11:56:39 PM
I've got to get in Darwin Day best wishes before the clock runs out.
/n
Friday, 06 February, 2009. 12:26:13 AM
Forgot to note that I ran my keyboard through the dishwasher to clean
it. After a full cycle with detergent, an additional rinse in the sink,
and a week of air drying, the keyboard worked perfectly with no damage.
I could have just bought another keyboard at Fry's for less than 10
bucks, but this one has sentimental value, sort of. It's a Swiftboard.
Swiftboard was yet-another-dot-com-company with a bizarre business
model. Free keyboards to anyone who asked.
The keyboard itself is pretty nice; the sticker on the bottom says
it was manufactured by Lite-On. It's not an IBM Model M, but it's
not bad. It has some extra keys on the board just under the function
keys labelled with the words "Books, Travel, Clothes, Gifts&Flowers,
DVD's&Videos, Music, Cool Sites, Electronics, Games,
Swift Shopping, Swift Savings, and e-Mail." The idea was that hitting
one of the buttons on the keyboard would take a customer directly to
their website where they could browse the selected category of merchandise.
And, to get as many customers as possible to their website, they'd give
keyboards with the special buttons away for free.
It was a bone-headed idea, but it was pretty typical for the crazy and stupid
dot-com days. The keyboard is completely standard except for the extra keys.
Most people who received one probably never installed the included software
needed to make the extra keys work. I know I didn't because by then I was
running nothing but Linux, and their software only worked on Windows. My
keyboard arrived in the mail in approximately September of 2000, just after I
moved into my house. By January of 2001, the dot-com boom had busted, and so
did Swiftboard. They were out of business, having burned through millions of
dollars of venture capital giving free keyboards to the world.
This note was typed on my Swiftboard Lite-On Model SK-720H, Serial Number C0008032559.
/n
Thursday, 05 February, 2009. 04:11:07 PM
I've been cooking a lot of Indian food recently. Palak Paneer, curry mushrooms, and chana masala in the past two weeks.
/n
Sunday, 01 February, 2009. 11:09:44 PM
I was reading the Linux Journal today, and was quite surprised to find my name mentioned on the Linux Kernel summary page. It was me, in connection to my usage of the ZFS filesystem.
/n
