Well, not much of an update. I haven’t been doing (read, studying) as much as I wished to still because of the headaches and overall numbness that I’m experiencing on a regular basis since months. Should really do something about this but I can’t find a pattern or a cause and, being a very rational guy as I am, it enrages me that there is something in my life that has such a bad effect on my daily routine yet I can’t find a reason for its existence. Might be diet (but I haven’t changed it in more than 1 year) or hormonal dysfunctions (getting older and stuff like that); those are the most probable candidates but neither seems credible enough. A few months ago, when the headaches had already started, a blood test didn’t show anything strange.
I’ve got an idea to test though, something quite weird but harmless. Not saying what it is because half of you’ll think I’m crazy. But it could work, if my suspicions are correct.

Anyway, despite the headaches I’ve started reading Perdido Street Station. First China Mieville book ever for me. I hate insects so let’s see if Mieville is a good enough writer to keep me enticed regardless of Khepris :)
As a lighter read after Erikson, I’m reading history (Thucydides) and planning some Aristotle and old philosophers like him. Yes, I said “lighter reads”, anything is lighter than Erikson’s Malazan Book Of The Fallen :)

kodefuguru:

http://dlvr.it/1XtRqW

The Evolution of a Haskell Programmer

(Source: liamgoodacre)

Terry Pratchett (supposedly)

This is a God send; I can’t count the hours I spent editing hex code of colours for a new theme, jumping from terminal to gimp to actually see the colour, reload the terminal to see the result and, if not appealing, redo it all. Exhausting and time-consuming.
Termendous fixes all this. Choose your colours with a handy colour picker and watch how it looks with the preview. When satisfied, just copy the Xdefaults file to your home and that’s it!

This goes in the bookmarks for sure.

Esoteric languages list

Some are really weird

From the same sites, also joke languages

SCM Breeze

SCM Breeze is a set of shell scripts (for bash and zsh) that enhance your interaction with tools such as git. It integrates with your shell to give you numbered file shortcuts, a repository index with tab completion, and a community driven collection of useful SCM functions.

As the quote says. It only supports Git at the moment.
I’ve always been wary of shortcuts and scripts that wraps the experience of complex programs like git. I feel it’s a way to make it simple but what if you happen to not have it installed and have to work with real git commands? Yes, you’re in trouble. But SCM Breeze is really well done so I do welcome it.

World Map of Heavy Metal Density

Wallpaperfm

Python script to generate desktop wallpapers from your Last.fm profile.

I’m still surprised every time somebody complains that “email sucks” or that it’s “archaic” or that it’s hard to “organize mails” etc. Like this one. And every single time, those complaints come from people using Gmail or whatever-Apple-user-have-as-mail-client or some gui-client. And you know what is the issue?

Yeah, right. Mail is text. Those softwares are gui-based. If you really need to integrate emails with the rest of your system, you should first handle it as it was meant to be, as simple text. Because it’s what really is. Gui clients can be great and can have many advantages over textual ones (handling attachments and showing, god forbid!, html mails better) but if you really want to automatize your mail workflow you have to treat it as it is, text. And thus use commands and apps that are textual itself. In my set up, I can add a task with the subject of the mail with a script and Taskwarrior, save any part of a mail text in another file with Vim (and maybe upload it somewhere like pastebin with vim-pastebin), delete individual attachments with a single key press (+1 if you remove html version and just keep the text), send it to an infinite number of local folders like “spam” or “mom’s annoying mails” with just another single key press, automatically verify gpg keys and add to my keyring if I choose to (yeah, security, tell that to Gmail) and so many other things.
Using Mutt, which is a textual mail client.

Thing is, the moment many people gave up using clients and started relying on web-based interfaces, keeping all their mails “in the cloud” as they say today, was the moment when they stopped treating mails as they should have and problems arised. Use text with what text is and visual with what is visual. Keep It Simple Stupid.