Koke’s

Vim is back with new goodies

Posted by Jorge Bernal September 21, 2006

Now including… the time machine, so you can keep track of all your mistakes

In Vim 7.0, a new feature has been included which allows a user to jump back or forward to any point of editing. For example, I am editing a document and after a couple of minutes (say 10 min), I realise that I have made a mistake. I can easily take the document to a point 10 minutes back by using the command :

:earlier 10m

Or for that matter, move to a point 5 seconds ahead by using the command:

:later 5s

Another interesting new features are live spell-checking, tabs, and smart completion.

(Via: All About Linux)

Open Source Personal MBA revisited

Posted by Jorge Bernal September 20, 2006

This came when replying to The Open Source Personal MBA, it went longer than expected so I decide to share this here.

What I tried to explain is that currently, the PMBA project tries to help you acquire the concepts acquired in a standard MBA, so you solve the price problem, but only that.

Like in Open Source, the openness doesn’t bring perfection, mostly if you try to copy a wrong concept. Fortunately, when a critical mass of users appear, the small proportion of common sense gets noticeable and things begin to work.

Just in case, I’m using the metaphor of linux desktops some years ago, when they tried to clone windows. It’s a similar case: it’s not better because everybody uses it, whether it’s windows or an MBA.

Maybe we should begin changing its name to reflect its evolution. Something like “Principles Of Enterpreneurship”. It can’t be master since you can’t ever again assume to be a master. Things change too fast. Business is too generic, we want to focus on new big hits of the next years: a family who runs a small business doesn’t need to know very much about all these things if they want to stay small. In fact, I think this is all about getting big without exploding.

BTW, about the windows cloning, that came to me yesterday when I discovered an article about giving Ubuntu an OSX look. Well, you can try if you like, but don’t expect anymore than a slightly better look. I just love this quote:

Perhaps I just have higher standards, but the Ubuntu makeover looks like lipstick on a pig to me.

Warning I’m not calling Ubuntu a pig, I still consider it the best free desktop distribution.

Joel on pausing

Posted by Jorge Bernal September 19, 2006

In the meantime, if, say, hypothetically, you were pausing because you live in a country where the police brutalize people, and a policeman was brutalizing you, and you wanted to stop the music so you could try to figure out what the policeman wanted and perhaps there was some way if you could just hear him that you could get him to stop beating you with a riot bat, you’re already DEAD by the time you figure out how to make the pause button actually pause.

(Via: Amazing X-Ray Glasses from Sprint!)

Or how to turn great marketing ideas into a fiasco. If you are a phone company giving away free phones to bloggers and think that replaces advertising you’re dead wrong.

Blogosphere marketing only amplifies the quality feeling of your product. So if it’s worth having, bloggers will make it clear, but if your product is just crap, everybody will know.

So next time, think about it.

First-time Sex & the Beauty of 1.0

Posted by Jorge Bernal September 19, 2006

I have nothing to add to this…

Just get through it the first time. You can try that stuff you read about in magazines later.

Listen to the short (2:35) podcast episode at First-time Sex & the Beauty of 1.0.

Just in case you don’t know 43folders, it’s Merlin Mann’s site about personal productivity, life hacks, and simple ways to make your life a little better

Finally, I’ll visit London

Posted by Jorge Bernal September 09, 2006

I will be in London in October, from 10th to 18th. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. London is a city which attracted me a long time ago, but I’ve only been in Heathrow by now, so there I go.

One of the best points of Ubuntu conferences is I now know people in a lot of different countries, so if anyone living there wants to meet, drop me an email.

I will also be attending to the MySQL European customer conference, where I don’t know anyone.

See you in London.

Damn you, copyright junkies!

Posted by Jorge Bernal September 09, 2006

Today, I felt like recovering my old guitar from the closet and try to play for some time.

But I checked OLGA (the OnLine Guitar Archive) and found this:

OLGA is currently offline while we attempt to resolve legal issues with the archive.

We received a ‘take down’ letter (pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 ) from lawyers representing the NMPA and the MPA.

We greatly appreciate your support and hope to return to providing resources to the aspiring guitarist as soon as possible. Contact rcwoods for more information. In the meantime, we recommend the usenet newsgroups rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature and alt.guitar.tab.

I think this is one of the first tablature sites on the Internet. In fact, it’s also one of the first web sites I visited (when I got online the first time I was learning to play guitar, so it was one of my first searches)

Now we can’t enjoy this because it’s supposed to kill the music industry (or another stupid reason). Sure, you have to watch me play to discover I’m not putting artists like Queen, U2 or any other by getting their tablatures.

In fact, they are usually written by amateurs and not copies of the official tab book (if it exists).

I hate you all, obsolete copyright junkies!!!

Now, a sample tab:

E-------0-----|-------0-----|-------0-----|-------0---7-|
B-----0---0---|-----0---0---|-----0---0---|-----0---0---|
G---0-------0-|---0-------0-|---0-------0-|---0---------|
D-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
A-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|
E-0-----------|-0-----------|-0-----------|-0-----------|

They are the first notes from Metallica’s “Nothin else matters”. That means you can just play the first part of the song without even knowing how to play guitar (the 0’s mean you don’t have to ‘push’ the cord, only play it). So, how in hell can be this copyrighted?

Note to evil lawyers: don’t even bother on trying to sue me for this piece of a tab. Spanish laws allow me to quote a part of a registered play to illustrate news.