web

The Road to Pelican 3.2

Over the weekend, I updated my Pelican installation from v2.8 to v3.2. I tested the new version for a couple of days and was anxious to get on the new hotness. Previously, I tried to go to Pelican 3.0 but site regeneration was painfully slow for me. Version 3.2 handled my 1800 posts like a champ. I thought I’d share some tips and describe (again) how I’m using Pelican to run this site.

The Road to Idiocracy Link

Fuck. Me. I can’t get over these three douchebags talking about homies and their law professors. Just stop already. By way of Maciej’s excellent tweet.

Forecast Lines

By now, most people have probably heard of Forecast.io. It’s an impressive web application by the folks that make Dark Sky. Forecast.io is so good that it has become my most used weather “application” on iOS. It is gorgeous, accurate and packed with information. If you’re a weather nerd, there’s another service called Lines and it provides the same wonderful experience except with a focus on trends. The trend lines are projections from all of the major weather service providers and cover temperature, precipitation, wind, humidity and pressure.

The Long View of ADN

I’m user 4377 on App.net. But if you go there you will see that I’ve used it once. I check it every couple of weeks. It’s not compelling to me as another social network, because I don’t need another social network. I don’t begrudge others that want to use it either. I am disappointed with what App.net is and that’s not because of what App.net wants to be. When ADN first launched, the communal discussion was about Twitter alternatives.

Fargo Outliner Link

Dave Winer introduces Fargo.io, a web-based, ad-supported outliner that stores to Dropbox. It looks nice and it sounds like just the beginning to a bigger project and importantly, it uses OPML for import and export. By way of Taking Note

The Modern Physics of Play

At first I learned about physics the hard way. I learned through dodgeball, rope swings and lawn darts. These were the educational toys of my day and experimentation inevitably led to painful repercussions. Later, I learned through coursework and controlled small-scale experimentation. I built pendulums and trebuchets. I made mousetrap-powered cars and suspension bridges of toothpicks. But I was in high school before I began to internalize the basic principles of physics.

Google Notebook Link

Remember Google Notebook? Yeah, apparently they may not be done killing it yet. This gives me hope that we will live to see the day they kill Google Reader again too. I guess I’ll keep an eye on this page for further updates.

Fever Revisited

I’ll just throw this out there. I reviewed Fever Reader over a year ago. I really liked fever but I killed it off when I moved to a static blog. Fever also lacked all of the nice integrations with services like IFTTT. I’ll probably move back to Fever now. But be warned: Fever is not well supported. I don’t think Shaun Inman ever intended it to be very big. It is not updated very often and emails go unanswered.

Feedbin Link

Feedbin looks nice and has a basic API. $2/month. By way of Maciej.