All posts by MattK

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A few Wireframes for Wordprss

Projects, wordpress, , , , ,

I had an idea a while back that WordPress is missing  a good built in feed reader.  Seems to me that Blog+Microblog+Image Gallery + feedreader + email – Freedom = Facebook.  WordPress has built up the ability to do a blog, a microblog, and post your pictures.  Everybody already has email, Facebook just has your contact list more than everything else does.  What you need is a good feed reader where your write – for inspiration, and because the web is a conversation, natch.

Here’s a quick mockup, mainly coming from my experiences with TT-RSS and Google Reader. Now, I’d really appreciate some help here – the idea is that this would something for more than just me. So, if you want, you can download Pencil Sketching – the wireframe app that I’ve used to make these wireframes. It is free and open source! You can then open up this file with all the sketch information – or clone it on github!

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Tags? Folders? All at once?

Books: Neonomicon

Books, , , , ,

cover of neonomiconAnother fin del mundo comes as Alan Moore’s Neonomicon. While Supergod is almost plotless – more a series of provocative ideas strung together, Neonomicon is a train on rails to hell. Every page brings you closer to Cthulhu in an FBI investigation of a Lovecraft copy-cult in Brooklyn. Instead of hitting all of the high notes of a Cthulhu story like Nick Mamatas did in Move Underground, Moore brings you the creeping dread, the knowledge of the potential coming. There’s one monster in the book (other than the people) but most of it is more about the dark at the top of the stairs rather than the monster stomping into view. Also, a secret about Alan Moore I have noticed: the secret to horror is killing real people. When a person with no connection to you dies, it means nothing to you. So, before Moore begins killing people in his stories, he connects them to you. Most writers don’t want to waste character time and exposition on people that they know are going to disappear later – they are having enough trouble getting you to care about the main character. Moore is fast at fleshing out people, so he has the time to make his secondary characters real characters with just hints and flashes of their past.
For me, the Brooklyn setting is icing. My adopted city is perfect for this sort of story, and if Moore gets some of the details of BK wrong, it is still creepier to read a horror story written WHERE YOU LIVE! Imagine “The Wilderness Downtown“, but after dark on a moonless night. That gives me another idea for a project – a short story set in your house, right where you live.

The rexellation of miracles

Pals, , , ,

Renee breaks the silence of the ages to bring us The Book of Rexellavelation. She cracks open the dusty, leathered tome and whispers:

In my daydream you are a total stranger, at first.

You arrive unannounced at my door, clutching a large bottle of pinot noir and the complete Van Impe Ministries video collection. And there will be that silent locking of gazes, where we suddenly understand that there is one solitary other human being out there who just totally gets the thing about Rexella Van Impe. And we are, at that very moment, staring at that one other person. Finally. We have found each other.

It continues for maybe 20 more paragraphs of this, each more impassioned than the last, broken only by youtube videos. Clearly the stresses of living in Lubbock have driven the poor lass off her nut. Anyone nearby is advised to build a tall fence around her property and throw sedatives over it.

REHACKERY

Pals

Ok, I think I fixed it. That was intense. Once they get in, they post lots of other backdoors. I’m starting to understand the term “Threat Surface” more intimately. Big shoutout to Ack which helped me root out so many of the little weasely infections.

Books: SUPERGOD

Books, Reviews, , , ,

supergod coverSupergod is a Warren Ellis blaspheme with a great concept. As the world ends and falls into chaos and darkness, a researcher narrates how we reached this sad state by weaponizing gods that we built ourselves. It’s explicitly about the superhero myths: why would these hyper-intelligent, superpowerful beings love us and care about our happiness?

The art is sweeping, raging battles between the weaponized gods of India, Russia, America, etc., or the blighted scavenged ruins of the apocalyptic end. In the foreground, the researcher – a Warren Ellis mouthpiece – raves about why people want gods, why gods would want us, how our flaws would lead us to misuse them in the first place. He’s got good points – we claimed the power to destroy the world with nuclear weapons and haven’t done so yet, but it often seems more an accident than our inherent goodness. I’ve got a soft spot for Ellis, ever since Transmetropolitan and Scars, and this is a good romp in his best style.

New Theme: Fluffy Clouds

Pals, ,

When I’m having trouble writing something, I futz about with design instead. Hopefully, this feels like a summer sky to you. It still feels a little wonky to me, I can’t figure out what is wrong. What do you think? Too busy?

This is a child theme of thematic and the source to fluffy clouds is open and available on github. The geeky details: All css3 changes, I added multiple columns to make it easier to read on wider screens, all the clouds etc are done in CSS3 with no extra images.

Project Idea – Syncing ebook reader

Books, Django, Hacks, Pals, , , ,

The bookworm logo

Here’s the setup. O’Reilly hosts a django based open source ebook reading website called bookworm.  You can run bookworm on your own server.  I opened a ticket on bookworm’s bugtracker to provide an api method to update where you are in a book.  Next you update Aldiko (Not open source, but perhaps we can write a plugin for it) and FbreaderJ to use that method when they exit to update where you stopped reading.

Upshot: You open a book on your phone and read it.  It syncs with your server with a bookmark of where you stopped reading.  Then you go to your website, and begin reading from where you left off.  And so on. Perhaps your phone also detects when it gets a new ebook and uploads that to your server or downloads a new book from your server when one shows up as well.

Back from Africa!

Books, Movie, Reviews, , , ,

We got back Sunday at 6 in the morning and have been frantic since.  This weekend we can hopefully get some brewing done and sort through the huge pile of pictures.

We got to see many many things during our two 15 hour flights, 4 days in Kruger National Reserve, 4 hour bus ride, and all the rest of the excitement. We’ve met an amazing amount really good folks and had some fantastic experiences but on the flight back I was shocked at how many books and movies I’d consumed during just the travel and downtime.

Animals

  • Spotted Ginnet
  • White Rhinocerous – Last chance to see, I find it hard to imagine they will be around for my grandchildren.
  • African Elephant – Nothing prepares you for how huge and awesome these are.  Also, I was disappointed to find out they are jerks.
  • African Buffalo
  • Kudu
  • Impala
  • Batalieur (Short Tailed) Hawk
  • Lion – These murder machines are intensely powerful up close.  I had one eyeball me for 30 seconds and it was all terror.
  • Giraffe – Surreal in person.
  • Monkey
  • Hippopotamus
  • Warthog
  • Steenbok

Movies

  • Thor
  • Jozi – A really great South African comedy about drugs, recovery, and one man’s relationship with Johannesburg
  • The Beaver – Sam and I loved this movie, which does not mean we want to hang out with Mel Gibson.
  • Midnight in Paris – This was brilliant. Particularly Hemingway.
  • Bride Wars – Trapped on a bus. This occupied time and kept us from hearing the incessant beeping of the bus falling apart.
  • Tyler Perry’s The Family that Preys – Ditto.
  • Green Lantern – less than 15 minutes. Amazing that it was released.
  • Hangover 2 – I can’t believe this is happening again.
  • The Departed
  • The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – This finally helped me get some sleep. Thank you soundtrack made of drones!

Books

  • Tucker Max Assholes Finish First – A male heavy drinking narcissist tells funny stories about his horrible behavior. Very funny. A bunch of great stories that belong in a bar at 2 am. His only redeeming quality is his honesty.
  • Dan Ariely The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
  • Lauren Beukes Zoo City – Great! Loved this Noir detective story set in a Johannesburg full of people who get familiars when they commit a crime. Feels like Robert Parker meets Philip Pullman in South Africa.
  • David Cross  I Drink for a Reason – Without his delivery, his routines are less compelling.
  • Lev Grossman The Magicians – Best thing I read. A Harry Potter style story that has real people, with actual characters. What would a magic academy full of actual teenagers be like? What happens once you actually graduate? Also, great villains and call outs to Narnia.
  • Chelsea Handler  My Horizontal Life – A female heavy drinking narcissist tells funny stories about her horrible behavior. Very funny, but I wonder if gender roles limit the pride that shines through in Tucker’s stories.
  • Christopher Hitchens  The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever – Worth it for the bits of Lucretius.
  • Richard Kadrey Butcher Bird – I had read a previous version for free online. It’s still good and very weird.
  • Sir Terry Pratchet  The Wee Free Men – I don’t even know that it’s very funny, but I think I will read these books till he dies.
  • Sir Terry Pratchet  Wintersmith
  • Cherie Priest  Boneshaker – It’s got all the elements of steampunk, but it didn’t feel like it had a heart.
  • Philip Pullman  The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – I like Pullman and I like inversions of religious stories. Why couldn’t I get into this book?
  • Kathryn Stockett  The Help – Second best thing I read. I read this out loud to Sam while I was sick in bed for a few days. Full of great mysteries and little gold coins all along the way.