Now blogging at diego's weblog. See you over there!

serenity rocks

Let me join an ongoing cacophony of voices and say that Serenity is a must-see for any science fiction fan. Without question, it's one of the best SF (note how I avoid writing "sci fi" :-)) movies in the last ten years. Great dialogue, good humor, non-stop action, and good music to boot. There are a few minor flaws: some inconsistencies -- for example, it seems that about 3 dozen ships can essentially blockade a planet ("oh no! We have to go through them!") and a hero/heroes-saves/save-the-day ending that is, well, a bit too 1970s-ish. But those are definitely minor points. Fan-tas-tic.

give me back my focus!

<rant>
I am sick and tired of Windows stealing my focus away from the current window to show me a helpful message about some dramatic action that an app would like to take, exactly while I'm doing something else where I type the letter that ends up triggering something I don't want to do. I have no issue with apps "suggesting" actions (e.g., "would you like to autoarchive your old items now?") but it's high time Windows stopped sucking focus away from the current window. This is particularly bad if you touch-type (as I do).

Most X-Windows window manager don't do this (I can't remember if the OS X does it... it very well may in some cases) but Windows is definitely the worst at it. The only message acceptable when stealing focus is an information window for something really important, without buttons for confirmation (otherwise you may click "Ok" and never see it again).

Can you tell that I just triggered something bad in the middle of typing furiously?
</rant>
I feel much better now. Thank you. :)

synergy: wow

Here's something really cool: synergy. A GPL'ed tool to share mouse and keyboard across different systems with Windows, Linux, or OS X. A virtual KVM, if you will. You need two monitors, and two machines. But if you've got that, this tool is a must-have. Most excellent.

more-ning!

Ayayay, I'm at risk of turning into a monothematic weblog. Oh well.

Yesterday there was the News.com article. But my favorite for some strange reason is the brief mention of Ning as "the thing" over at USA Today's hot sites section. Sadly, no permalink, so I need to take a screenshot of that, or something.

Speaking of permalinks. Check out the latest post by Gina over at the Ning blog -- I think it's a cool summary of the kinds of things we'll start seeing more of in the playground. Krazydad has also been doing some cool cloning/retargeting/etc (Check out his user pivot). He started off with a great post a couple of days ago and since then he's been cloning and repuposing a bunch of apps for his own interests, for example spot the geek (a clone of this or that), or KrazyBooks (a clone of bookshelf).

Oh, and this one's special for Scoble: Tablet PC Duel! :-).

PS: the "user pivot" I linked to above only shows hits for public, not private, content.

slashdotted!

And here it is.

Also, a bit earlier tonight, digg. MeFi was the first one to pick it up though, early yesterday.

ning live: day one

What a day. Overwhelming, in a sense--an explosion of discussion around the blogsphere and beyond. Ning shot up to #1 search in Technorati by around noon, and to the #1 tag in Categories: ning, soft.dev
Posted by diego on October 4, 2005 at 8:18 PM