CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-15 12:39:24 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

+What Japan Thinks shows today that Japanese women, if forced to choose, prefer gray hair over long; and long hair over thinning.

I've got all three; that means I'm maximizing my attractiveness, right? Right?!

2013-05-15 01:33:14 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Cleaning crew waiting for the Aomori Shinkansen.

2013-05-14 04:49:40 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

...and suddenly I have nothing newer than two hours old in my stream, with the fourth post already from yesterday. A moment ago I saw +Wil Wheaton post about ice-maker self-mutilation; the next moment it's completely gone.

+Google+ really need to do something about the stream issue; right now G+ is useless. I may have to do actual work this afternoon if it continues like this.

2013-05-14 03:32:19 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

I just noticed my +Google+ stream is broken. It's always reordered posts according to its idea of what may interest me, but that reordering seems to be largely random now.

Among my newest posts are a few new posts, but mostly posts that are a few hours to many hours old. And if I start scrolling down the mix is completely random.

There's posts that are very recent and posts that are a day or more old; posts I have no interest in, or that I have seen many times already are high in the stream while posts from friends I often read and comment on are buried many hundred posts down, and would have completely missed had I not taken the ten minutes to scroll down all the way.

The most pernicious problem really is that I have no clue how far back to scroll to be sure I haven't missed anything. It seems even very recent posts, from people I often read, can be buried... more »

2013-05-14 00:57:51 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

皆様、お疲れ様でございます。
今日も暑かったですね。
今日はお昼から佐賀新聞さんの取材で、
夕方まで料理してました。
来月掲載予定で、佐賀新聞Fit誌に４ページ！！掲載されます。
取材してくれた記者さんとライターさんが、
話やすかったので助かりました。
来月が楽しみです。
画像は「いかのアヒージョ」えす。
アヒージョは「にんにく風味」って意味のスペイン料理。
ニンニクを入れたオリーブオイルで海鮮、肉、きのこなど煮て頂きます。
これがワインにピッタリなのは当然として、
ビールにもいいんですよねえ～
オイルもパンに塗ったり、パスタに使うと美味い！たまに作りますが、大好きな料理の一つです。
レシピはリンク先をご覧ください。
この料理には旨みに「いかの塩辛」を使ってます。
面白いですよ。
http://goo.gl/kJUkm... more »

2013-05-12 13:18:02 (12 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

So, I got Tiny Tiny RSS updated to the newest version, feeds are imported and it's up and running. Took a bit more time and effort than I expected; it would probably have been faster and better to ignore the (very old) version in the Ubuntu repositories and just install it manually the way it's described on the web page.

So far it mostly works the way I like. There's a few issues, so far. There's no way to trigger a manual update of the feeds. And, even with the Reader-like shortcuts plugin, the main keys (j and k) don't actually jump from item to item. Actually it works. There's a second plugin that swaps j and k function (they're the wrong way around by default in tt-rss), and if you have both active, the j/k swap overrides the Reader shortcut plugin. But both are likely fixable through writing a plugin; since it's open source I'm actually able to do... more »

2013-05-12 01:58:21 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

For mathematicians and computer scientists, these are some great introductions to difficult topics: http://jeremykun.com/primers/ 

2013-05-11 14:34:06 (3 comments, 7 reshares, 10 +1s)

This is fascinating, and really well produced! The history of typography http://vimeo.com/65353988# 

2013-05-09 22:31:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

2013-05-08 11:52:26 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

If you're looking for inexpensive fashions, the corner of Shinsaibashi and Nagahori in Osaka has you well covered.

Good real-life illustration of the fact that competitors preferably cluster together rather than spread out.

2013-05-07 01:15:25 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

So, I'm slowly drifting into doing server stuff. I keep seeing the #ubuntu #juju server thing, but the docs really only talk about cloud services, so I'm not sure it's relevant to me in any way. Anyone know if the system is meant for or appropriate for individual servers?

2013-05-06 11:19:18 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

In other news, I restarted my installation of Tiny Tiny RSS, and did everything by the book* this time.

• Installed VirtualBox, and added Ubuntu Server 13.04 to a new virtual machine.

• During installation I checked OpenSSH and LAMP
• After installation, I added Avahi-utils (so I can refer to the machine like 'servername.local' rather than numerical ID)
• Installed Tiny Tiny RSS:

$ sudo aptitude install tt-rss

• Selected "Apache2" and "mysql" as the server and database; let it create a database for me

• Edited /etc/tt-rss/config.php to set my servername ('servername.local' since I don't have a public address yet. Could use 'localhost' as well)

• Point Apache to the configuration for accessing Tiny Tiny RSS (the configuration is only one line, by the way), then restartApache:
... more »

2013-05-06 10:20:03 (13 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

So, I go buy a lemon. We're making some jam, and it needs some lemon as well as the main fruit.

At the store there's imported lemons from the US for about 125 yen, and there's domestic lemons for 165 yen. The imported lemons have prominent info that they've been sprayed with various fungicides and pesticides for transport.

And I find myself actually hesitate for a brief moment. Despite the fact that we're going to use the peel — the fungi- and pesticide covered peel — as well as the flesh; despite that I want to support local production; and despite that the price difference is all of 40 yen or so.

The knee-jerk reaction to save money, to pick the numerically "best" alternative is so ingrained that we tend to do it even when it makes absolutely no sense. I mean, we buy about one lemon a week, if even that, and 40 yen is a fraction of thecos... more »

2013-05-06 09:22:10 (8 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

I've spent the weekend learning that for the life of me I can't get Nginx to run Tiny Tiny RSS. Fortunately I'm using a virtual server; I'll wipe the server and start all over with Apache next weekend.

2013-05-06 07:05:14 (26 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Hi, I'm completely new to the web side of computing, and I'm trying to set up nginx and tiny tiny RSS on an Ubuntu  server. It seems I may be running into a permissions, problem but I don't have the experience to diagnose it properly.

• My nginx server, php and mysql all seem to be talking to each other, and I can run a php script placed in the html root.

• The Tiny Tiny RSS stuff is in its own directory. So I alias that to the document root:

        # set up tt-rss
        location /tt-rss/ {
            alias /usr/share/tt-rss/www;


• I can run the "index.php" file that serves as the Tiny Tiny RSS login screen from the command line:

$ sudo -u www-data php index.php

It spits out a html page that seems like the login screen for Tiny Tiny RSS.


• But when Itry to do it via the server, I ge... more »

2013-05-06 06:02:04 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Update to my previous post: I did a reconfigure of the tt-rss package, and made sure I'd set the right values such as they are.

Then tried to run the index.php as the web user:

$ sudo -u www-data php index.php

And that spits out what looks like the html for the login screen.

But I can still not actually run it via the webserver. If I access:

http://servus.local/tt-rss/

I get a 403.

If I access:

http://servus.local/tt-rss/index.php

I get a "File not found".

But PHP works; I have a tiny "phpinfo.php" file in my html root:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

and if I access it as:

http://servus.local/phpinfo.php

I get a page with lots of php status information, just as I'd expect.

A look at nginx/error.log shows me this for... more »

2013-05-06 03:55:44 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Right now I rather hate web technologies. I've wasted the better part of my entire GW holiday trying to get Tiny Tiny RSS up and running in a virtual server of mine. So far without notable success.

I'll get back to it — with Greader disappearing I have no choice — but boy do I dislike the thing right now.

2013-05-06 04:09:09 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Hi, I'm trying to install tt-rss on Ubuntu server 13.04 and nginx. I'm pretty much completely new at setting up anything webby, so I'm flailing about a fair bit.

I've got nginx, php5-fpm and mysql running and talking with each other, and I can for instance access a php script under the html root just fine.

I installed the tt-rss package from the Ubuntu repository.

Since there's no default set-up for nginx in the tt-rss package, I added the following to my default site in nginx:

        # set up tt-rss
        location /tt-rss {
            alias /usr/share/tt-rss/www;
        }

I've also configured tt-rss (using just "servus.local/tt-rss" as the server is not visible outside the LAN yet) and enabled and started the update daemon.

But (you knew this was coming): Idon't have permission to ac... more »

2013-05-04 02:29:03 (31 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Personal opinion time! What CMS/framework/whatever would be nice to use for a small personal website running on Ubuntu server? Basically, I'm looking to do this:

• Have some kind of flexible front page where I can add a bunch of idiosyncratic stuff as the whims may take me. A picture of the day; graph of the outside temperature over the past day; screenscraped weather reports; links to my latest blog posts or G+ posts; and so on. perhaps show RSS feeds for a couple of pages I often visit.

At least some things I vaguely want to do will require a fair amount of Python scripting; I might well resort to designing the front page by hand if an otherwise good tool won't let me do what I want here.


• I'll access it myself using my N7 tablet or phone often enough, so big bonus if the generated pages work decently on mobile devices.

•... more »

2013-05-03 13:23:25 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

Good points here. The capsule take-away: just as one study does not prove anything, one failed replication does not dis prove it either. In fact, both studies might well be correct, and some subtle change in the experimental conditions accounts for the difference.

We really never look for "the" one study that will prove or disprove anything. Instead it's the steady accumulation of lots of data points that eventually will make people come down on one side or another. Remember this, whenever somebody tries to use just one or two studies to push their point of view on anything.

2013-05-03 02:14:44 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Good idea! Any chance we can post really dumb "I completely missed the whole point"-type questions here about individual blog posts?

2013-05-03 02:05:49 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Started a new community for Math ∩ Programming. It'd be great to have all sorts of people (not just my blog followers) who are interested in math and programming and the ways they interact. 

2013-05-03 01:02:34 (20 comments, 0 reshares, 11 +1s)

Look what just showed up for the Steam #Linux client.