Twitter for coding communities 

A few days ago I wrote that Twitter is a very nice low-tech notification system. I had an application in mind, and put a first step on my to-do list.

I started a new channel called dwcodeupdates. The content in this channel will be of interest to at most 10 people, geekish users of the OPML Editor, but the concept should be interesting to members of coding communities.

I added a hook in my code check-in system. It already had a provision for me to add a comment to each partial release, derived from the outline at the head of every script that maintains a reverse chronology of the changes to the part. In a sense every bit of code is a weblog. I've been doing it this way since the early 90s. Here's a screen shot of a bit of code I started yesterday. And one that was started in 1998.

As I release a change, the system posts a note to the Twitter channel. You can subscribe to if, if you care. Like everything with Twitter, no big deal if you miss something, but it does give you an idea of what I'm doing right now, in a different dimension.

As usual, what's important are the people.

Dumbass networking question 

Okay, here's a dumb question about routers.

I have four computers plugged into a router via hard wires, and two computers via wifi. All six computers can see each others' shared disks, and life is good.

I just bought a printer that works over Ethernet. I want to make it visible to all the computers. All the jacks on the router are used up, so I buy another router, unplug one of the computers, plug it and the printer into the new router. However, the only computer that can see the printer is the one that's plugged into the new router. None of the other computers can see the printer. Arrgh!

Do I need to find a router with more jacks on it, or is there some way to configure things so that all devices plugged into one router can see all the devices plugged into another?

All the computers are Macs, btw. The original router is a Netgear. I have lots of choices for the new router, the one I'd like to use is a new Airport Extreme that supports 802.11N.

Thanks in advance for ideas.

Postscript: The community delivered the answer in record time. Thanks!!

To the Gates of Hell with McCain 

Amyloo quotes Newt Gingrich as not liking the way debates have been moderated. I sympathize.

In this week's Republican debate, there was a moment when, if John McCain had his wits about him, he would have punched Chris Matthews in the nose.

McCain had just finished a monologue saying he would follow Osama Bin Laden to "the gates of Hell." Brief pause, he smiles nervously, and Matthews says "OK," but the tone was unmistakeable -- "what ever."

It went from reality to parody in a blink of an eye.

Of course McCain delivered the line awfully, he was almost a parody of himself.

The gates of Hell is not the kind of thing you smile about.

The line would only really work if he could have pulled off a Clint Eastwood deadpan, in the style of Dirty Harry or Fistful of Dollars.

Today's links 

Nik Cubrilovic is running Vista, exclusively, on his MacBook. Now that's a first. Never heard of anyone doing that.

An unforseen application of Twitter.

Markman twitters from Shanghai.

Philosophy from 1998 

9 years ago today: "I can imagine it would be irritating if you didn't like the dog, but I really do like the dog, especially the way his eyebrows move, so I always watch the commercials when they come on."

Today's performance results 

After reconfiguring the network, a two-second job. Voila! It's much faster.