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Oh yeah, here's a page (from /. maybe?) with 300 thumbnails of all manner of absurd gadgetry on display at this years Comdex. My favorites are this linux powered Sharp PDA with cool slide out blackberry style keyboard, and Samsung's virtual keyboards in wired and unwired flavors. I think I could type OK without looking (and without there even being a keyboard not to look at) but I wonder how many people could.
I did a lot of work on the back end over the weekend. Best stretch of work on this project I've managed in quite some time. And now I'm almost ready to start in on the new version of the uploaded image system, which right now is rather simplistic. This was fine to start, but now some people have so many photos on the server that grouping them in one long list is a bit cumbersome. I have a lot of ideas (many thanks to a good conversation I had with Tom Moody,) but the more I think about it, the more complex and far fetched my ideas have become. Plans tend toward kitchensinkism. This is good, because it allows me to grind through all the dark alleys and back corners of possibility, but I've learned not to start serious work until my ideas are on their way back towards something more simple. And this isn't just because I'm not the best builder.
A memepool for unix geeks: sweetcode.
Sweetcode reports innovative free software. 'Innovative' means that the software reported here isn't just a clone of something else or a minor add-on to something else or a port of something else or yet another implementation of a widely recognized concept.So, in case you need a half keyboard patch to the linux kernal, or a program to extract the original data values from a .gif image of a chart, or something else similarly obscure but possibly useful, you know where to go. Interesting stuff.
I'm very interested in people who are making weblogging software. Or is it personal publishing software? Whatever. Joel is one. His new software, citydesk, is almost complete. He has a page explaining it titled what does citydesk do. I'm not knowledgable or bold enough to make such remarks, but I almost spit coffee out of my nose the other morning when I read Wes Felter's reply to Joel's rhetorical page title: "Looks like it creates URLs with lots of digits in them."
My first version of the system we use here had an even more tortuous URL scheme. Every page was accessed through one script (draw.php3) to which you would pass a colon seperated address for the page. My page was at 0:1:14, and a subpage of mine would be at, say, 0:1:14:28. Comments several levels down would have very long strings for addresses (for examle: /draw.php3?global=0:1:14:28:3:2:18.) Not long after I started in with this system (late '99 I believe) I went to a Camworld blog bowl event at the local Bowlmor bowling lanes. I was too shy to really interact with anyone, but the one thing Cam said to me was "Oh yeah, digitalmediatree, I looked at that - what's with the funky backend?" I knew he was talking about those weird URLs. During the next rewrite I made it a top priority to get rid of all funky URLs. And I think for the most part I was sucessful.
Anyway, back to Joel's Citydesk. I was interested to hear him comment on comments.
My own discussion software does not have threading. "Threading" is technical jargon for a discussion feature where different people can branch in different directions by replying to replies. You end up with a tree of conversation. Most forum software has this feature and some people were rather angry that mine doesn't.I've been thinking a lot about threading too. When I first added it here it was by far the most complex thing I had ever built. I had to use a recursive function, which to a non-programmer like me was a bit akin to finding a powerful magic spell. And it took me so long to discover this incantation that once I got it working I didn't want to take it out. "Hey look at this - threading!" But I think I agree with Joel in prefering non-threading discussions, although maybe for different reasons.
I first noticed the value of one-train topics using the echo community software, which is, in all other respects, excruciatingly bad. Something interesting happens sociologically when you don't have threading: the conversation is forced along one train of thought.
In my system every page has an entry in a directory table in the database. The directory table holds information about where a page is in the (virtual) file hierarchy, as well as what kind of page it is. Right now there are 3,535 pages in the directory of this site. But 3,391 of those pages are comment pages, while only 144 are "real" pages. Threading (at least the way I have implemented it) takes a big toll in terms of entries in the database. Every post creates at least one comment page, but then because of threading every comment creates another page as well. Without threading there would only be one additional page for each top level post. Changing to a non threaded system would probably cut 80% of the pages out of the directory table. No doubt this would increase system performance. I worry what will happen if I'm still using this software in a few years (despite what I flippantly said the other day about not caring too much about scaling issues due to unpopularity.)
But I won't be removing threading. It is helpful sometimes. Most notably it allows others to link directly to a page that contains just one focused part of a very long, deeply threaded discussion. But I think I will make it an option for each page owner to choose straight or threaded discussions. As long as you don't have to see the spaghetti code behind the scenes this probably seems like the best choice. No going back. But it will help us grow if we only use threading where it's really needed.
Sunday morning reading: "I stumbled out from the cabin to my truck, testing just how self conscious it was possible to be. Deeply embarrassed by the trees, so obviously belonging there unlike my stupid interloping self. What was I thinking to have come here, done this? And how would I survive the next eight hours?"
Well we set the alarm for 4:00 am and hauled some blankets up to the roof to watch the show. We did see a bunch of shooting stars including at least two very large burning green ones - quite amazing. The strong ones all tended toward that green color. I'd estimate the rate at about two a minute for what we could see from our rather bright downtown Manhattan perch. Not bad. It must really be something to see this thing at full speed. I heard reports of over 1,000 an hour in some spots.