Autarchy of the Private Cave

In my previous post on CUE sheet support in Linux music players I mentioned DeaDBeeF. Unfortunately, DeaDBeeF is not yet available as a Debian package.

Fortunately, Alexey Smirnov (the author of DeaDBeeF) maintains a github repository deadbeef-debian which has simple instructions on installing DeaDBeeF in Debian (citing with minor edits): Read the rest of this entry »

Nature published the said survey based on responses of over 10000 employees in science. It has lots of multi-axis data to explore, and some major trends are discussed in the special report. Highly recommended for anyone considering science career changes.

You should already know that my preferred city vehicle is VentureOne (now called PersuHybrid, and still far from mass production – while Carver One, the original tilting three-wheeler, is now bankrupt/dead). It might be more realistic to go for Campagna’s T-Rex, which is in production since 1996.

Now, welcome the Terrafugia’s Transition transformer flying car! It can drive as a car (and is sized as a car with wings folded), and it can fly as an air-plane! Now your trip to anywhere looks like “drive to the airport – fly – land – drive to gas station – repeat as needed”. Terrafugia claims that (on average) there’s a suitable airport every 60 miles in the US. And you can fit Transition into your average garage!

That doesn’t (yet) feel like something from the future – and maybe that is why their prototype already had test flights, and they plan mass-production for 2011, and already have over 80 pre-orders.

If only it had vertical take-off…

Recently I finally managed to configure remote (aka off-site) backup for my Debian server. As always, I started with a comparison of existing solutions.

Debian has a number of packages enabling remote (over the network) backup: backupPC, backupninja, backup-manager, dirvish, duplicity, luckybackup, rdiff-backup, and some others.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sadly, Xmarks plans to stop providing synchronization services on January 10, 2011.

As a long-time user of Foxmarks – and then Xmarks – I am truly sorry to see Xmarks go prepare to go. That was a wonderfully simple idea, and it was wonderfully implemented.

If you read Founders at Work, you will find familiar names in the calm and fairly detailed history of how Xmarks got from prototype to a startup and then to the end. I recommend reading Xmarks good-bye post even if you never used this time-saving, data-organizing, safety-bringing software-and-service. That post comes right from the heart in its true honesty and let’s make the world better startup spirit.

Thank you, Xmarks. Thanks for the idea, for the software, for the service, for the well-ahead warning, and for the concern about the synchronization needs of your current users. And I still hope there’s a good exit deal waiting for you.

Read the rest of this entry »

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
— Bertrand Russell

Only marginally related: Dunning-Kruger effect

DreamPie: the Python shell you’ve always dreamt about!

• Type your code in the lower pane of the window. To execute, press Ctrl+Enter. One-liners can be executed by simply pressing Enter; If you don’t want them executed, press Space and then Enter.

• Use Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down to navigate between code segments you’ve already executed. You can write a few letters before pressing Ctrl+Up, and DreamPie will only search through code segments starting with those letters.

• Press Tab or Ctrl+Space to show a list of completions to the current expression. It will also complete file names!

• Your results are stored in variables named _0, _1, and so on.

• Type a function name and press the space key and DreamPie will automatically add parentheses for you!