life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

I can't believe that I haven't posted anything in this journal for almost a year. Mostly because I have been using it to read and comment, so I don't feel like I've been *gone*.

I think it's because real life has been somewhat mundane, and fannishly I'm mostly following ice hockey, which doesn't lend itself to LJ, unless I was doing it as an actual hockey blog. Maybe I should make an effort this year to update it with something.

I haven't been reading much Yuletide fic this year either, as I'm not hugely into any small fandoms right now, apart from Antonia Forest, but this Persuasion fic, rec'd by legionseagle, looks promising.

I finally admitted that my HTC Desire was kind of dead (it might have lived with a new battery, but it was also very tight for internal memory), and acquired a Nexus 4. Did consider the Samsung S4, but it was a little expensive. Of course then Google announce they'll be selling an S4 with stock Android. Oh well. Bring out a new tablet and I'll think about that instead.

It's fun having a new phone, populating it with apps (so much more space, yeah) and finding my way around the settings. Making me realise how little I'd been using the Desire as a smartphone the last couple of months, because it died when I tried to do anything that used battery. I've let my sister borrow it to play with to see if she can cope with a smartphone. Maybe I could get a new battery and she could use it. Otherwise I'll have to see if it can be recycled.

Having fun with the Google doodle for Turing's 100th birthday. For someone who codes for a living, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise how the conditionals worked. I'm clearly not at all visual when it comes to coding. I can think in terms of flow, but I think I was being influenced by memories of logic gates.

Gakked from various places:

Thank you.

Thank you to everyone who's ever written a line of code, fixed a bug, wrangled a tag, answered a support ticket.

Thank you to the back-end coders and thank you to the front-end coders.

Thank you to everyone who's ever brainstormed about what the archive might do, and thank you to everyone who's poured their hearts, souls, and spare time into trying to make the archive do all of those things and more.

I use the AO3 every day. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for building it for me and for everyone who uses it -- and for everyone who doesn't use it yet but might use it someday.

This archive isn't something to which fandom is entitled. It's a labor of love. You make the archive as your gift to fandom, and I appreciate that gift so, so much.

Even though it isn't finished yet. Even though it isn't perfect yet. It's still awesome, and your hard work is tremendous and admirable, and I just want to say thanks.

(Dear everyone else: if anything in this post resonates with you, feel free to signal-boost or repost.)

I'm a developer myself. I generally sympathize with the devs; my reaction to Facebook changes are generally, "Someone probably worked very hard to code that, and grinned at their monitor when they saw it work for the first time" rather than "Oh, no, more changes!" That goes treble where the devs are volunteers. lim's post explaining her resignation from AO3 is heartbreaking; code was her happy place, and now she's lost it.

I have a week off work, first since Christmas. I'm just lying about in the sun, trying to make a dent in the reading and watching piles. The first day or two I thought I should have some kind of project, but actually it's probably better for me if I don't.

I've joined Google+, but so far it's all the professional crowd. It's more of an overlap with Twitter than Facebook for me at the moment, but it's a bit disappointing overall. The Stream is a complete FB ripoff, I'm never going to use the video chat, Sparks is mildly interesting but I can do a better job at the moment with Google Reader + Twitter, and the much-vaunted Circles....I'm getting tired of all the tech blogs falling over themselves to say how wonderful they are when 1) they are pretty much Facebook lists (in fact, FB lists are better in several ways; you can set a default (a la LJ/DW) so you don't have to keep choosing one for every update, you can create a new setting on the fly—show Birthday Fun update to "Friends, except $BIRTHDAY_PERSON", and FB lists also apply to chat, so you can be offline to Work People and online to everyone else)
2) LiveJournal had the basic idea back in 2000 or so (brad retweeted someone saying as much. It must be weird being a Web 1.0 social media dorm-room entrepreneur looking at the 2.0 lot, but on the bright side for Brad, it seems like he still gets to code, unlike the Zuck.)

I also got a bit freaked out, for the first time, about how much Google actually already knows about me. Yes, Facebook knows a lot too, but that's because I put it there. Google is more "Whoa. Where did you get that from?"

I'm re-reading Wyrd Sisters, thanks to this blog post about how Pratchett's writing of women developed. This is not helping reduce the to-read pile, which shamefully includes rj_anderson's Arrow, which I've owned for months and months.

I could be doing with some ice cream or ice lollies, but there seems to be sad lack of same in the freezer. Oh well, this can be my healthy diet week.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen!

Google have developed a self-driving car. We're living in the future!!

Oracle has just sued Google, claiming that Android infringes their Java patents.

Both as the owner of an Android phone and as a Java developer, this does not fill me with joy. Companies are less likely to build on Java if they think Oracle are going to turn around and sue them if they get too successful. Android won't suffer much in the short-term, but carriers and developers are going to be more wary in the long run, over the 5-8 years it's likely to take to settle the lawsuit. It does take a bit of the shine out of owning an Android device.

Software patents are a stupid idea anyway. You shouldn't be allowed to patent an idea, but I doubt anyone in the US Patent Office knows enough about software to tell what should and shouldn't be patented.

Those patents are vague enough that any implementation of a virtual machine or JIT compiling is probably violating them. Oracle could go after .NET with them as well if they weren't sitting cosily with Microsoft.

Google may be slightly evil these days, but I hope they win, because Oracle are so greedy - Ellison on Open Source "Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do." (Source) At least Google does give back to OSS.

Does anyone know of any tool or script that can download past Facebook statuses?

(Also, what's up with all the random comments on LiveJournal "Soon Jane Doe will rise from Pandora's Box, and thousands will cheer as the armies of justice drag the dead horse down Sesame Street!" in large red allcaps? It's obviously some kind of bot, but it seems a very useless one.