tail -f carlo.log

We’re Safe, Hooray

Thank the Gods, the huge pile I’ve found on the sidewalk next to our door was just the remains of a friendly neighbour’s dog! Phew.

I mean, you might expect me to be upset since said friendly neighbour was too fucking lazy to pick up the steaming heap of crap his goddamn (and obviously horse-sized) mongrel left behind, but nooooo… not me.

Because for a moment I was seriously afraid some sort of monstrous mutant mole had broken through the asphalt and was now terrorising my ‘hood, but — phew! — it was just pooch poop.

A felt metric ton, no less.

Like, 10 meters from my door.

Motherfucks.

Lifestream Craziness

So Friendfeed opened yesterday. Naturally, I had to sign in to take a look.

When I got to the point where it wanted me to configure the feeds and services to grab data from, it first asked for my Google Reader shared items. Okay, can do. Then it asked for my Tumblr name, and this is where my eyebrows went down.

So Tumblr allows me to bundle many of my “activities” in one place. Flickr, blog posts, Twitter posts, links etc., you name it. It does so by querying your Flickr account, your blog(s), Twitter, your del.icio.us bookmark dump (to name a few) via their RSS feeds. And I believe many people are using this feature just for that. I know I do. So that’s usually the first (or even second) re-posting of original content.

Now lifestream services like Friendfeed come hopping along and are going to add another level of abstraction, in the form of aggregation of already aggregated content, or an RSS feed for the aggregated lifestream, or yet another social network layer, and/or by adding comments on top of that.

How much more meta can we go? This is some Zen shit, man.

I swear, one of these days someone will put yet another layer on this Crazy Content Cake of Doom and a black hole will open in the middle of the Internet and suck out all intelligence, reason and original content. (Yes, like Digg, just a wee bit worse.)

Also, I am well aware that I, too, run my own version of a lifestream service, and that my post might seem hypocritical, but by the Gods, there’s a reason why I try to keep escaloop simple.

Update: Added some clarifications.

Podrunner…ing… I guess

It’s amazing what 30 minutes of frantic walking can do for your sanity. Tonight, when getting out of the subway and noticing my bus had just left, I’ve popped in a 131bpm Podrunner mix and started walking. A good 30 minutes later I found myself on my doorstep with a clear head.

Check out Podrunner, a free weekly podcast of one hour gapless music mixes for workouts and the likes. The only trick is to find a bpm range that suits you. Then put it on your iPod.

It’s simply that good.

Nerdy pro tip: once you’ve found your bpm range, build a Pipe like I did and subscribe to this feed instead of the original one to only get podcasts which are “suited” for you. Oiy!

Site(s) Redesign Complete!

I’m done with the redesign. Both my tumblelog and this blog now share the same layout and (the most important parts of the) sidebar, adding some much needed consistency.

Also I’ve got rid of the Google Coop search and put the Technorati search to use instead, it’s good enough in my eyes.

The biggest change in functionality is the switch from the built-in Wordpress comments system to Disqus, on both my blog and tumblelog. Naturally, I’ve added a tiny bit of logic to the Wordpress templates so the existing comments are preserved, displayed, and those entries are still accepting new comments (assuming the Comments Timeout plugin allows it). But for new entries, Disqus is used. I figured if I don’t like it, I can always switch back and cram the exported Disqus comments back into WP.

Yeah.

Now if I could use Markdown for new posts instead of Textile, I’d be a happy camper. The WP Text Control plugin is no help, unless you consider making the server drop the connection every time helping. I don’t.

Repeated tips of the hat to Bill Israel for sharing his wonderful Letterhead Tumblr theme with the crowds (CC licensing FTW!). Due to its beautifully simple semantic structure I was able to transform it into a Wordpress theme in about two hours. Thanks, Bill!

In somewhat related news: the Hendromat has launched a new tumbelog last night — Make Games, Not Love, MGNL for short. Go check it out.

Tumblr, Wordpress, Themes

I am very, very fond of the wonderful Letterhead Tumblr theme by Bill Israel which I’ve applied to my tumblelog earlier today — and currently think about porting it to Wordpress so I can use it here.

Hmm.

Update: Over the next few hours, I’ll tinker w/ the site, and it might look broken. It is not (yet).