Jacks-o-2008

A bit late on the post, but since I've posted them in previous years, I thought I'd get that going again.

Mine was the ghost, and no, I did not intend for it to look like Pac-man or the logo for Ghostly International.

:set tings

This post is half googlecache, half hoping someone will find it useful.

I'm a die hard vi user. So hardcore that years ago, I started a project to replace Windows explorer with something that could be controlled with vi keys. Imagine blazing through your filesystem with j and k and then renaming a file with vi commands. I'm starting to drool again. I mothballed that project long ago.

Anyway, I have some settings for vi that I'm used to and I like to take them with me to whatever machine I touch. Here is what you'll find in my .exrc, .vimrc, or lemmy.rc (depending on the platform).


set shiftwidth=4
set autoindent
set ruler
set showmode
set wrapscan
set warn
set showmatch
set tabstop=4
ab teh the
ab fo of
map ,, o^[k
map g ^i/* ^[ ^[A */^[j
map f ^i^[j
map ,da :r!date


If I'm on OS X, warn, showmode, and wrapscan are on by default. Remember that Leopard uses Vim, so put your settings in ~/.vimrc.

To me, a tab is 4 wide, not 8. Feel free to start a religious war with me if you'd like to.

Some of my favorites are the mappings I have near the end. Hitting to add a blank line is a must have. The auto-comment-this-line shortcuts are nice too.

I know some of the readers of this blog are vi users. What do your settings look like?

Forced Receipt

Uhh, you're doing it wrong.

Baby Toy on a Pole

I can't believe I haven't run across this sooner, what with all of the complaining (err, suggesting) I do on the color blind topic. It seems that some traffic signals in Canada do use shapes, in addition to color. I love it.

Photo credit of user Sprocket from Wikipedia

The Cheapest Thing at Amazon

I don't pay for shipping at Amazon. Ever since they started offering Super Saver Shipping, I make sure that I never spend less than $25. This used to be very easy for me. I kept a wish list 5 pages long. Most of it was full of music, movies, and books that I wanted. When an order went in, I'd go pluck something from the wish list to get me over $25.

This worked great until recently. Most of my music now comes from iTunes, Beatport, and the Amazon MP3 store. I'm not buying many physical CDs. I've all but stopped buying DVDs. Between my existing collection and Netflix, I have way more movies than time. Books are similar. I have no less than 10 I need to finish and I've promised myself no new books until I do.

I recently put in an order for some rechargeable batteries (Sanyo Eneloop
if you care). The total was $24.99. Nice. Now I have to spend a penny to get free shipping. Nothing on the wish list was suitable. I went on a short search to find the cheapest thing on Amazon that I could buy and still have a use for. I ended up getting a set of Cat Crinkle Balls for one dollar and 62 cents.

So, I'm curious. How do you get your cart over $25 to get free shipping? Do you have any low cost items you toss in? What's the lowest price item you've seen at Amazon?



One warning about the Crinkle Balls link. It seems a pet supply store rather than Amazon currently has the lowest sale price, so make sure you are selecting Amazon if you try to buy this. Otherwise you will spend $7.99 to ship your dollar cat balls!

5 of the Now

• Evil Nine - All the Cash [Amazon]
  
  I wasn't full bore into "They Live" when it came out. That's changing recently. El-P absolutely smashes it on this one.


• Kid Cudi - Day 'n' Nite [Amazon]
  
  I don't tend to rank my 5otns. It isn't a contest for the best track. It's what I'm feeling and listening to at the moment. That said, this is #1 for me right now. It has infiltrated my brain. I have dreams about playing the beat on Bloom. I'm sick.


• FM Belfast - Underwear [Amazon]
  They say that all of this great music comes out of Iceland because there's nothing better to do (I don't buy it, seems like a wonderful place to live and I'd like to visit some day). Well now we get the great music that celebrates the fact that there's nothing to do there! Rock on.


• Alex Metric - In Your Machine (Treasure Fingers Remix) [Amazon]
  


• Get Shakes - Sister Self Doubt [Amazon]

iTunes and Amazon links included for your convenience and my music addiction!