Axodys

I just noticed that Brad Choate had created a [TextMate][] bundle that allows for the easy creation of weblog posts. This is a quick test to see if it actually works and what the ramifications for Markdown usage are. I’ve wanted this functionality forever, but hadn’t ever gotten around to working on it for myself.

[TextMate]:http://macromates.com

I submitted my first macports Portfile patch today when I noticed that Bazaar-NG is currently up to version 0.8.2 and the current port was 0.7. No word yet on whether it was accepted, but at least the process of creating it allowed me to get the update installed locally. It was also useful to get a little bit more of an under the hood look at how macports works/stores files. I’m still mostly clueless, but it was good to learn a few things

In other Bazaar-NG related news nobody has gotten around to creating a Textmate bundle for it yet so I’m going to have to look into doing that when I get some spare time. I’ll probably just build on top of the work of the darcs or mercurial bundles since that would be the easiest approach and they should have similar functionality.

I finally realized today that I could in fact install [LaTeX/TeX][1] via [darwinports][2]. I didn’t realize the standard unix distribution of TeX is called [teTeX][3] and so I was under the mistaken impression that there wasn’t a port available. On my last Mac computer I installed TeX via a system called the [i-Intaller][4], which besides being yet another package management system (yuck) completely hangs my MacBook Pro.

[1]:http://www.ctan.org/what_is_tex.html
[2]:http://darwinports.org/
[3]:http://www.tug.org/tetex/
[4]:http://ii2.sourceforge.net/tex-index.html

On an entirely tangential note here’s a [great article on Donald Knuth][5] (the creator of TeX) that recently appeared in Stanford Magazine.

[5]:http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/mayjun/features/knuth.html

I was checking [reddit][] this morning and discovered that [Inform 7][] was recently released in beta form. I played around with learning Inform 6 a few months back, but ended up getting a little bogged down in the minutia of setting up the perfect development environment in [TextMate][] and then got busy with basketball season. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t get too far into the development process because [Inform 7][] is completely revolutionary. I was completely blown away when I learned that Inform 7 is built around natural language programming and an incredibly powerful integrated development environment that runs native on both MacOS X and Windows. No more second class citizenry for Mac text adventure developers. I can’t wait to explore it further.

[reddit]:http://reddit.com
[Inform 7]:http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Welcome.html
[TextMate]:http://macromates.com

I’m not much of a console gamer, but this was just too amusing to pass up. Appqrently Nintendo’s new unreleased game console, previously known to most enthusiasts as the [Revolution][] has been renamed the Wii (pronounced “we”). Reactions are understandably mixed. The first thing I thought of when I heard the name and it’s pronunciation was the immediately obvious similarity to a fairly common [English term](http://www.wordreference.com/definition/wee-wee) among young children. As one of the articles that I read noted, they must not have done much testing with western audiences. After reading that the dual i’s in Wii are supposed to represent the consoles two radical new controllers I thought that was kind of clever, but I still think it’s an unfortunate name for a product aimed squarely at kids.

Further reaction:

* [Zach Stroum](http://zachstroum.wordpress.com/2006/04/28/lets-talk-wii/) A Nintendo employee with some interesting comments.
* [Penny Arcade](http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/04/28#1146210360)
* [Gamespot](http://www.gamespot.com/news/6148462.html)
* [CNNMoney.com](http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/27/commentary/game_over/nintendo/index.htm?cnn=yes)

[Revolution]:http://revolution.nintendo.com/

Hmm… the [WordPress 2.0.2][] update didn’t end up being two painful. I’d forgotten that I still had an old defunct [Movable Type][] installation sitting on my server so I cleaned that out too. Now I need to go investigate the [new widget plugin](http://automattic.com/code/widgets/) because it looks pretty interesting.

[WordPress 2.0.2]:http://wordpress.org/development/2006/03/security-202/
[Movable Type]:http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/

In other site related news, the comment spam barrage continues. I’m guessing that [Akismet][] caught 100 spam comments easily in the last week. Give it up losers! They’re not getting through.

[Akismet]:http://akismet.com

I’ve been getting a ton of comment spam lately, but luckily [WordPress][] in conjunction with the [Akismet][] plugin does a good job of catching everything. I’m still a couple of minor versions behind on [WordPress][] and I definitely need to get on the stick as far as upgrading goes, but at least that hasn’t made it any more vulnerable to the problem from what I can tell.

Darren over at [ProBlogger][] has also noticed a recent increase in comment spam and [written an article](http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/04/27/the-cost-of-comment-spam/) covering the topic and the importance of continuing to fight it. He has a lot of good reasoning on why you need to prevent comment spam, but doesn’t really offer any solutions beyond being attentive and having up to date blogging software.

[Akismet]:http://akismet.com
[WordPress]:http://wordpress.org
[ProBlogger]:http://www.problogger.net

I realized this evening that it’s been exactly five years since my dad died. I still think about him daily, but this anniversary managed to sneak up on me. That’s probably a good thing in many ways.

I feel like I should be writing something meaningful; [five years ago I said](http://axodys.com/2001/4/26) that I had a lot of things that I wanted to write about him, but I never really did. I still have that desire though and it certainly hasn’t diminished in the intervening years. I think it’s finally time to start addressing this as we move into the summer months.

Not really a surprise to most people in Spokane I think. Even though I was pretty sure this was Adam’s last year from the beginning of the season I’ve found myself still hoping he would stay one more year. At any rate, whichever NBA team drafts Adam is going to pick up a lot of fans in Spokane. Good luck at the next level Adam.

[Wired News][] has been providing a lot of [coverage](http://blog.wired.com/apple_30/) of Apple leading up to the company’s 30th Anniversary on April 1st. I particularly liked the [Apple Heroes and Villains](http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/herosandvillains/) gallery they put together. Fittingly enough, Steve Jobs actually gets three different entries because he went from hero to villain to hero for founding, leaving and then saving the company.

I should also mention the [Apple OS](http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/apple_os/) gallery they put together covering the evolution from DOS 3.3 all the way to MacOS X because it’s pretty interesting as well. The original MacOS screenshot reminds me of the first time I got to look at a Macintosh up close in the computer section of a defunct downtown Spokane department store called the Crescent. I didn’t end up getting my first Mac for another 6 or 7 years, but I’ve had one ever sense.

[Wired News]:http://wired.com