autojump is a cool little utility that watches your directory usage and allows you to jump between directories using a regex substring. Sort of like a command-line version of Quicksilver or Spotlight. I’ve never liked managing files with those tools because they eventually drop you back to Finder, so this is a good option for me. Example:

$ j par
/Users/zackman/src/parsing
$ j dial
/Users/zackman/Documents/dialect

I only skimmed the code, but it looks like it reads and writes a Python pickle file every time you run a command. I am pretty sure I don’t really care about this performance hit compared to, you know, downloading 5 minutes of a youtube clip I decide is boring half way through. There is no master index so you have to have been somewhere before you can jump to it.

The packaging is pretty rough right now, but if you have Python on your Unix-based system, just running install.sh should get you most of the way there. I had to add

source ~./bashrc to my ~/.bash_profile because the latter is the one that is read at startup for me. On Mac OS 10.5, upgraded from a 10.3 → 10.4 setup. Your mileage may vary–if your system has /etc/profile.d/, everything should work with no fiddling.

Slashdot is usually a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but every once in a while somebody says something really funny:

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1131379&cid=26896273

It’s usually at the expense of audiophiles. I don’t mind that a bit.

(You might also read the parent post. It’s an explanation of TV for somebody who only knows computers.)

Let’s see, I:

• Showed some of my early text-processing code and asked some questions about library functions. The result is helpful answers, constructive criticism on style and advice on improving performance. From authors of books, even.
• Found a bug in ghci and submitted a report. The bug is fixed in a week. (Though 6.10.2 isn’t out yet)
• Complained about a complicated install procedure. One of the authors shows up and corrects the misunderstanding I had.

Basically, this kind of community makes up for the parts of Haskell that aren’t bulletproof, because every time I complain, the person responsible is very helpful (and usually pops up on their own).

I just switched to Google-supplied university e-mail. Two reasons:
first, I get to keep ncsander at indiana dot edu after I graduate for
free (although it redirects to umail.iu.edu); second, I get 7+ GB (and
counting) of space instead of 0.1 GB (up, grudgingly, from 0.05
GB). I’m sure there’s a catch somewhere; probably after I graduate the
ads that are conspicuously missing from the now-empty sidebar will
come back. Three reasons, actually: address, space, and
reliability. Horde doesn’t work on certain days of the month. I think
it has to do with the phase of the moon.

Wait, four reasons. Among the reasons I switched to “Umail": on
the occasions I am away from my desktop or laptop, I can now use the
Gmail interface instead of Horde, the
high quality Open Source application. (I mean that in a bad way.)
The thing is, after playing with Gmail for a couple of days, I’m not
sure I want to keep using Apple Mail. Gmail’s web interface is pretty
good and its keyboard shortcuts, while not Mac standard, are more
complete. And Mail’s RSS reader, while nice, sure looks outclassed by
Google Reader, although I’ll have to use that a bit to make sure.

Meanwhile, my esteemed colleague in computational linguistics, Josh
Herring, has finally got mutt set up successfully on his Macs,
so now he can use mutt on all his computers. Until yesterday he hadn’t
got mutt to talk to Gmail via IMAP, though. The instructions are not very
clear, either on IU or Google’s side. But I got it to work by sheer
good luck and told him how (you have to specify that you are coming
from umail.iu.edu, not gmail.com, but you still have to set up a
gmail.com password, but you have to do this starting from IU’s Umail
front page).

Now Josh loves mutt (mutt!) so much that he refers to it twice in a
manner similar to those addicted to ed (ed! the standard
text editor). I can’t shake the feeling that there might be something there, if only
the total lack of a mouse interface. I’m going to read up on mutt
this afternoon.

So I am going to decide in the next week or so which e-mail client to
use. At this point I am leaning towards GMail. I like the keyboard
shorcuts I know and I have only learned about half of them. I also
like the idea of e-mail being transparently synchronised between
peregrin and flenser (and vendacious, when I have the audacity to take
a Windows box online). However, I worry about offline access; I might
need to set up my phone too. I also am not sure about backup; Google
is large and nearly omniscient, but not nearly omnipotent. They can
lose things from time to time.

Do any of my kind readers have suggestions? I’m particularly
interested in what problems you have run into with Gmail or mutt,
since I haven’t used either that much.

In other news, it’s finally above freezing in Southern Indiana. Now
maybe some of this accursed snow will melt.

I’m going to start updating my web site, and the first step is to make this blog the front page. Well, actually sandersn.com redirects to blog/index.php, but you get the point. Afterwards I’m going to break the old index page into an About and Research page. I might have enough publications that it will be Research/Code and Research/Papers.

I also plan to switch to a dark-on-light colour scheme instead of the CS-undergrad-ish light-on-dark. It acknowledges that most of my readers have adequate room lighting (even if this is not strictly true).

So anyway now that I’ve told you about it, I’ll have to do it in 2009 some time.

Also, let me know if I broke anything. Yet.