Re: The garden of forking paths

1

At any rate, I think it was clew.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 10:27 PM
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I thought it was, too, but with no hash who can be sure?


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 10:30 PM
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I cannot say that I have found hash a guarantor of certainty.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 10:32 PM
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4

Your hash is unsettled?


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 10:35 PM
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5

It has been made a hash of.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 10:40 PM
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6

True Git


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 10:44 PM
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7

Of course there would have to be that one character who leaves crappy commit messages. "Made some changes."


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 11:02 PM
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8

Sounds like Dhalgren.


Posted by: Finnigan | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 11:03 PM
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9

Special appeal for legal philosophy buffs, too.


Posted by: x.trapnel | Link to this comment | 11-30-12 11:52 PM
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10

6 is great, but I believe the judges would also have accepted "a novel by Vivian Darcsbloom".


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 8:14 AM
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11

So now we know* which objective facts nosflow is referring to when he uses "morning" and "excitably".

*To be fair**--although that was most certainly not my intention in writing this comment--he may have described it excitedly yesterday morning by some other means than a front-page post on this blog.

**And of course we actually only really know his stated intention to do so from the 11-302-12 12:12 AM comment. But I would expect an interlocutor as careful as neb to have explained any deviations from that stated intention so as to not confuse the careful and interested reader of his word.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 8:28 AM
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Alternately, you know that I don't always follow through on my stated intentions.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 8:59 AM
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13

See 11.**.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 9:31 AM
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14

I don't have any opinions on experimental literature, but I've developed a pet peeve about commit logs that neb might appreciate... I always phrase commit messages in the third person present tense, e.g., "Changes the fizz to buzz". This has the "nice" property that you can interpolate "Commit X" nicely, e.g., "[Commit X] changes the fizz to buzz." It annoys me when people use the second person/imperative, e.g., "Change the fizz to buzz." Who should change it? When will it change? (This is a particularly stupid thing to get annoyed by because the latter style is by far the most common.)


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 11:30 AM
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"Change the fizz to buzz" should be the bug/issue/task title. Perhaps that's just getting copied into the commit logs?


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 11:32 AM
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16

"Changes the fizz the buzz" means "drinks a beer".


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 11:35 AM
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17

Good show.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 11:38 AM
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18

Another thing that annoys me is Perforce. And another thing that annoys me is rebasing.


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 11:47 AM
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19

When your code's on fire and you're running down the street, people will get out of your way.


Posted by: Nerd Richard Pryor | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:01 PM
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20

Yawnoc's siding with the flat-affect prose style.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:01 PM
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21

I wonder what Yawnoc think about any of this?


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:04 PM
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22

I've been trying to figure out what a commit message is just by looking at the output of this generator. I'm not having much luck.


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:09 PM
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23

22:

Committing in accordance with the prophecy.

Posted by: Merganser | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:15 PM
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22: Whoever wrote that is way too amused by the word "derp".


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:21 PM
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22 - yeah, that site really gives NO clue at all. Still a foreign word to me.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:32 PM
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26

"Danger to self or others."


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:33 PM
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27

this doesn't help that much either. I'm getting the sense that these are messages you submit when you make changes to software as a part of a shared project. Is it a "commit" message because the group is now "committed" to a change?


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:48 PM
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27.2, yes; 27.3, I'd have said the change was committed to the group (written into the shared repository we all copy onto our working machines and progress from), but good enough.

The group isn't as committed to the change because one point of change-trackers is that we can say 'Undo change 0x33d37 but not the later ones, insofar as that's possible' when it turns out that 0x33d37 was a bad idea.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 12:58 PM
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29

I'd have said the change was committed to the group

Wouldn't "submitted" be more natural English?


Posted by: rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:01 PM
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30

20% more mauve.

New and improved?

You gotta know when to hold 'em.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:02 PM
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31

Yawnoc will hate me, but apparently the plurality of my commit messages are written in the present progressive with the "this commit is" elided. Lots of "fooing the bar quux" and "distimming gostak-resistant doshes" and "sleeping furiously to fix broken build".


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:04 PM
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32

There are more complicated systems in which proposed changes are submitted to agents who can choose whether to commit them to a particular repository.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:04 PM
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33

Wouldn't "submitted" be more natural English?

No (it isn't submitted for their approval or disapproval), but I also wouldn't say what clew said.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:05 PM
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34

32 to 29. While I'm here, let me recommend Ellen Ullman's _The Bug_.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:06 PM
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35

Wouldn't "submitted" be more natural English?

Think "committed" as in "to a mental institution".


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:06 PM
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36

You don't know they're in the present, with the copula omitted. (Why not "This comment was fooing the bar quux" or "This comment has been distimming gostak-resistant doshes" or "This comment will be sleeping furiously to fix broken build"?) Perhaps best just to construe them as gerunds and leave it at that.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:07 PM
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37

29, 32 - I believe the term was adapted from relational databases that support making a series of changes (a transaction) then either committing the transaction or rolling back to a previous savepoint.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:08 PM
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38

Think "committed" as in "to a mental institution".

Yes, the change is being committed to the repository. You dink around with it on your computer and then check a version in, as it were, by committing it.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:08 PM
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39

And also Ullman's _Close to the Machine_. I haven't read _By Blood_ because it looks so dispiriting.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:14 PM
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40

"Committed" and "commit message" are vocabulary particular to a certain strain of revision control systems; other systems do in fact use "submitted" for basically the same operation. In perforce, for example, you "submit" a "changelist" with a "description" rather than committing a whatever with a commit message.


Posted by: Hamilton-Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:15 PM
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41

26 -> 35.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:17 PM
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42

40: Useful.

I was hoping for extra nifty Mercurial terminology, but haven't found any.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:21 PM
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43

Mercurial is pretty strongly influenced by git, though, isn't it? I'd imagine darcs, arch, or Monotone would be a better place to see weird computer scientist terminology bubbling to the surface.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:25 PM
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44

This thread prompted me to go see if PANVALET, the source code repository I used in the 70's, was still remembered, and it is apparently still in use! Owned now by Beelzebub Computer Associates.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:29 PM
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45

44.last: HA. CA in action when they bought Pansophic (who developed PANVALET).

Computer Associates International Inc., true to its reputation for lowering the boom quickly following an acquisition, is cutting Pansophic Systems Inc.`s work force by 500 to 600 people, or as much as 38 percent.

Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:34 PM
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46

Mine are past tense sentence fragments with the subject omitted, but I think I'll start doing them Yawnoc-style.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:36 PM
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47
David Roundy: At its most basic level, the theory of patches is about the commutation, or reordering, of changes in such a way that their meaning doesn't change. The rules of commutation tell us when, for example, one patch requires another, since dependent patches cannot be commuted. Once the commutation primitives have been worked out, one can do all sorts of interesting (and useful) operations, such as merging. And such operations can be shown to be independent of order, i.e. it doesn't matter whether you merge patch A or patch B first, you'll get the same result.

How to use this in the novel?


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:48 PM
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48

With this (about GSMorson's work)?

At its heart, _The Words of Others_ is a case for the quotation as a literary form: a self-enclosed unit of thought that identifies itself, as such, independent of context.

Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:50 PM
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49

So is this what the East Bay meetup was like?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:50 PM
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50

I believe mercurial and git were initially developed concurrently.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:50 PM
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51

48: I was thinking about "sideshadowing".


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:54 PM
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52

How the fuck can apt experience errors installing OpenSSL on a fresh system?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:57 PM
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51: Oh, nice.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:58 PM
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mercurial came before git, then was something else.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 1:59 PM
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46: !!!


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 5:55 PM
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56

committing a whatever with a commit message.

The git jargon is "committing a changeset" but I'd also accept "committing a commit."


Posted by: Yawnoc | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 5:59 PM
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57

So is this what the East Bay meetup was like?

Add coq jokes and beer, and then yes.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 6:11 PM
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58

and then yes

So a prog meetup! Nice.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 6:13 PM
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59

No.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 6:15 PM
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60

Fine, have it your way.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 6:18 PM
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61

Is there any way to discourage the github culture of "hey this worked once on my machine so I'm going to put it up on github with no documentation because that will be totally useful to others"?


Posted by: Hamilton-Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 6:51 PM
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62

||

Print your own sex toys! Pretty interesting, although I think (and the caveats toward the end kind of imply) there's less here that's both novel and meaningful than some of the people involved would like you to think.

|>


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 7:05 PM
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Is there any way to discourage the github culture of "hey this worked once on my machine so I'm going to put it up on github with no documentation because that will be totally useful to others"?

Don't use that stuff?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 7:43 PM
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64

I really should learn to use git in addition to joking about it.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 7:54 PM
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65

While I'm here, let me recommend Ellen Ullman's _The Bug_.

Oh, hey, I just read that in August, after it had been sitting on my shelf for years. I would also recommend it, though I didn't think it was as good as Close To The Machine and would warn that it's a bit depressing.

I'm a fan of Ellen Ullman's writing. In college I was doing a paper which touched on "computer culture" and her essay in Wired Women was by far the best written thing that I came across in my reading.

I feel like I should also recommend Pat Cadigan at this point, but perhaps I have mentioned her enough on this blog that it is unnecessary. I do think Synners is my favorite cyberpunk novel, despite the weak ending.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 8:09 PM
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66

63. I was doing that already; it didn't work.


Posted by: Hamilton-Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 8:17 PM
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67

Did you document what you were doing so we can try it ourselves?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 8:26 PM
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68

Epistolary.


Posted by: bjk | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 9:01 PM
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62: Consider the sex toys of the 3D printer -- they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed such as these.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 9:15 PM
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I never did persuade anyone to do all the hard work in sp0rkvοlution. 'Course, all I have is the bloviating, not even code-once.

You be the *.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 9:31 PM
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One of the two profitable enterprises I know of in the hackerspace nearest me is sex toys. I'm so happy I'm a beta.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 9:34 PM
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72

What's a beta?


Posted by: Von Wafer | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 9:51 PM
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73

All I know is, the Betta fish always make me sad at the pet store. So lonely.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 9:59 PM
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67: Step 1: Ignore crap github culture

Step 2: Want badly to send realtime MIDI events from Python, preferably in a cross-platform way, but willing to do so Mac-only

Step 3: Google 'python midi wrapper' and several variations thereon

Step 4: Find promising-looking python wrappers around PortMIDI hosted on github

Step 5: FUCKING DEPENDENCIES

Step 6: Segfault

Step 7: It's actually easier to run fucking VMWare and develop this project by running it in a virtual Windows machine

Step 8: Whine to the Mineshaft about it


Posted by: Hamilton-Lovecraft | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 10:22 PM
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73: take it up with SE Hinton, Stanley.


Posted by: Von Wafer | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 10:32 PM
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76

Sorry, "S.E."


Posted by: Von Wafer | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 10:33 PM
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Not VHS, Von Wafer. VHS is said to have won the videotape format wars by allowing porn. See also Brave New World, because I know this is a high tone lit'ry crowd.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 10:46 PM
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"With Pyknon you can generate Midi files quickly and reason about musical proprieties."

Probably a typo, but hope springs eternal.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 10:51 PM
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62: I kinda feel that we already can do those things in a better way at this point. Possibly in five years time 3d printing will be competing with casting, but right now doesn't seem super compelling to me.


Posted by: Keir | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 11:16 PM
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79: at least some of them are just doing prototyping with 3-d printing, which probably makes more sense.


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 1-12 11:56 PM
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81

NaCoMeNoMo has passed again and I hardly dipped a quill in ink, I'll confess.


Posted by: Mister Smearcase | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 12:10 AM
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82

62.Charlie Stross is waaayyy ahead of you.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 4:41 AM
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83

What three qualities doth prototyping chiefly require?


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 8:04 AM
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84

Has anyone made the "chewing beta nut" joke? If not, I'd like to reserve the area for further exploitation development.


Posted by: Flippanter | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 8:24 AM
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85

Is that like "sucking hind teat"?


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 10:14 AM
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86

It's like someone just built the tower of babel.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 11:11 AM
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87

I begged you not to break the blog text.


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 2:39 PM
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88

Can I be unf now?


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 2:55 PM
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89

How's your golf game?


Posted by: Eggplant | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 3:02 PM
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90

It was never very good, but I do well at driving ranges.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 3:13 PM
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91

I guess I could post something.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 3:23 PM
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92

I did just go grocery shopping. I could complain.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 3:24 PM
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93

will you give me a back rub? maybe I should start posting as unf.


Posted by: text | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 3:28 PM
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61: Things on github are supposed to be useful to other people? I'm always surprised when someone stars or forks one of my repos. I have public stuff up because it's cheaper than tarsnap and you're only allowed a limited number of private repos.

I have a couple of substantial projects up there, and the README pretty much says "I'm putting this here because, well, why not? If you want to get this working you'll have to deal with X and Y, which are pretty annoying".


Posted by: sral | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 3:57 PM
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you're only allowed a limited number of private repos.

Why not switch to bitbucket, then?


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 4:25 PM
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I was under the impression that bitbucket is mercurial only, but, apparently, that's no longer true (if it ever was).

Now, I suppose my only reason is inertia. Since some folks are forking or following what I'm doing, I don't want to switch and inconvenience them unless there's a real benefit for me. If bitbucket supported darcs, so that I could have all my old unconverted repos in the same place as my current stuff, I'd probably switch.


Posted by: sral | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 4:37 PM
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97

There are fans of The Quincunx? I'm having a hard time correlating those folks with fans of Pale Fire


Posted by: grackle | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 8:48 PM
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97 - There are! A lot of them used to endlessly parse on my website.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 12- 2-12 9:10 PM
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I do like the idea of a novel built out of engineering change requests, not even necessarily commits, could be hardware. Like William Golding's "The Spire", but for software, 747s, ships etc.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 12- 3-12 2:24 AM
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