Carlos Fenollosa — Blog

Thoughts on science and tips for researchers who use computers

Roundup: Welcome, on news, bad tools and great tools

July 28, 2017 — Carlos Fenollosa

I'm starting a series of posts with a summary of the most interesting links I found. The concept of "social bookmarks" has always been interesting, but no implementation is perfect. del.icio.us was probably the closest to a good enough service, but in the end, we all just post them to Twitter and Facebook for shares and likes.

Unfortunately, Twitter search sucks, and browser bookmarks rot quickly. That's why I'm trying this new model of social + local, not only for my readers but also for myself. Furthermore, writing a tapas-sized post is much faster than a well-thought one.

Hopefully, forcing myself to post periodically —no promises, though— will encourage me to write regular articles sometimes.

Anyway, these posts will try to organize links I post on my Twitter account and provide a bit more of context.

While other friends publish newsletters, I still believe RSS can work well, so subscribe to the RSS if you want to get these updates. Another option is to use some of the services which deliver feeds by email, like Feenbox which, by the way may never leave alpha, so drop me an email if you want an invitation.

Nostalgia

RTVE, the Spanish public TV, has uploaded a few Bit a bit episodes. It was a rad early-90s show that presented video games and the early Internet.

On news

I quit reading news 3 years ago. A recent article from Tobias Rose-Stockwell digs deep into how your fear and outrage are being sold for profit by the Media.

@xurxof recommended a 2012 article from Rolf Dobelli, Avoid News. Towards a Healthy News Diet

LTE > Fiber

I was having router issues and realized how my cellphone internet is sometimes more reliable than my home fiber.

It seems to be more common than you'd think, read the Twitter replies! XKCD also recently posted a comic on this

Journaling

There was a discussion on Lobste.rs on tools to journal your workday, which was one of the reasons that led me to try out these roundup posts.

New keyboard

I bought a Matias Clicky mechanical keyboard which sounds like a minigun. For all those interested in mechanical keyboards, you must watch Thomas's Youtube channel

The new board doesn't have a nav cluster, so I configured Ctrl-HJKL to be the arrow keys. It gets a few days to get used to, but since then, I've been using that combination even when I'm using a keyboard with arrow keys.

Slack eats CPU cycles

Slack was eating a fair amount of my CPU while my laptop was trying to build a Docker image and sync 3000 files on Dropbox. Matthew O'Riordan also wrote Where’s all my CPU and memory gone? The answer: Slack

Focus, focus, focus!

I'm a brain.fm subscriber and use it regularly, especially when I'm working on the train or in a busy cafe.

musicForProgramming() is a free resource with a variety of music and also provides a podcast feed for updates.

Tags: roundup

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