reading is hard

I read a lot of mailing lists. Mostly for various open source software projects. Most of them for work.

It would be cool to have a mailing list summary page. The page would scan the mailing lists, and post the content most likely to need attention. For software projects, this is stuff like:

  • Patches (http://ozlabs.org/~jk/projects/patchwork/ does this for patches to some degree)
  • urls to bug reports
  • urls to pastebin  or gists sites that are likely to contain errors or patches
  • things that look like error messages (segfaults, stack traces, etc)
  • links to SCM (either direct urls, or urls to web interfaces, github, bitbucket, etc)

Mailing list archive software could probably do this. Mailman has support for “topics” that are defined by regex’s. But the interface is poor.

And of course, an RSS feed for all of the above would be nice.

glass colored glasses

Last night I got a weird call from where I get my glasses. The message was “You need to come by the store to pick up the glasses you ordered in June”. Slightly odd. I did order glasses in June, and picked them up shortly there after. Obviously someone made a mistake of some sort.

So this morning I get out of bed, put my glasses on, and manage to break them. The side piece broke off of the frames. I barely touched them.

So now I have to call the glasses place and try to figure out what they are confused about. I tell them that I have the glasses I ordered, so something is odd. Then I get to tell them that I need to come by anyway since I broke that pair this morning. More confusion.

Of course, they don’t actually have replacement frames available, so I’m stuck with my old pair that are scratched all to hell and are now driving me crazy. There’s a limited warranty, so I can get the frames replaced.

Since the old glasses are bothering me, I try to fix the old ones. That didn’t work too well. Glues don’t really like attaching nickel alloy to nickel alloy. Even http://www.thistothat.com/ doesn’t offer much help. Epoxy’s don’t work since the contact area is so small. I could glob a big pile of JB Weld on there, but I don’t think I could get the lenses out then. Other even less wise repair technique flash into my head. Brazing nickel is unlikely to work.

I’m tempted to wrap a big gob of wire or tape around it. That would be a nice touch, since I’m going to https://opensource.ncsu.edu/FossFair2009 (aka, linux/open source conference at NCSU, aka, NerdCon).

small business apps

Looking for apps and websites to help run a small business is painful. It seems to be one of those subjects that SEO tends to make impossible to find actual information.

Anyone tried shoeboxed.com? Looks to be interesting, especially for less organized folks like myself.

Anyone have any advice on what works? I’d prefer web based apps, and hosted apps even more. Anything good for bookkeeping, contact management, invoicing, etc?

wrt54g firmware

I’m setting up an old linksys wrt54g router with an open firmware. It’s currently got the latest version of <a href=”http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato”>Tomato</a> installed.

Anyone have any preferences for openwrt/etc and/or why?