I’m continuing to play with Nanoblogger and through it learn more about the unix command line, ftp, and other things. I understand now why the script used to publish the blog does not publish the archives (mput * does not work with folders recursively). I have tried to replace it with wput, but the connection fails repeatedly. Tried also “cadaver” – a command line webDAV client, but this failed too. I’ve decided to simply upload files with Filezilla for now, when I feel like it.

I’ve also placed a mirror of the blog on Ubuntu One. That makes it possible to keep a mirror also on my other computer, and solves the problem of using different machines. It would work permanently. Dropbox – a similar service – also makes it possible to use a CName. It solves the upload problem completely if I like.

That brings me to think again about Opera’s Unite service. I realize now that it would be better if they offered the option of a caching proxy – actually just like Dropbox. That way it would not be necessary for one’s computer to be on all the time, and the service would also permit the download of files more quickly than if the user were to download these from one’s slow computer. They could charge for the option, by capacity.

A few weeks ago Kent lent us Invictus – Clint Eastwood’s movie about Nelson Mandela. We don’t have a working DVD player in the house. At first I couldn’t get it to work on my Linux machine. It took a while to understand that I could download the necessary codex and then it would work. Tonight we decided to watch it, so I connected the external hard drive to the laptop and the laptop to the TV via VGA cable and sound cord and presto!, the film hit the big screen. Or rather didn’t. Bits of the Linux screen moved over, and other parts didn’t. So I switched over to Dorit’s netbook on Windows 7. However, Windows Media player complained about a missing codex. I downloaded VLC player, and it worked, though it was impossible to get the shape right for the TV.

Invictus itself is a pretty good film. I didn’t check for authenticity, but the story rang true. It worked as a fim thanks to a very tight plot – it fastidiously chooses only two or three elements which seem at first glance quite minor, and focuses on them. Mandela evidently did the same. It’s moving to watch the reshaping of a national identity, through the minds and hearts of individuals. As Deb says (NME), identity change is often less about removing old parts of identity (difficult), but in adding new layers. At least in the beginning.

I ordered a Kindle back before intending to visit my parents in Virginia, in early May. But that trip didn’t happen, and I waited for someone to bring it over. Now it’s arrived, and I quickly finished off a Murakami that I’d mostly read (using Amazon’s service) on my I-pod touch. Now I’ve got started on No More Enemies by Deb Reich.

I opted for a Kindle rather than a tablet computer, since I know that having a device that can do many things would distract me from the experience of reading.

I love Kindle’s display. Ergonomically, I think the device isn’t perfect. There’s too small of an area to grab without accidentally hitting navigation buttons

Richard Stallman has famously spoken out against Amazon and the other book chains, and I agree with him. But the convenience factor steps in; I’m just happy Amazon make it possible to buy books here in Israel/Palestine, unlike B & N, Google and the other ebook publishers. For print, I’d started to use The Book Depository – a UK merchant that ships all over the world, for free. (I’ll bet it’s still cheaper to order from India.)

Deb Reich’s book is brilliant by the way, though I’m still in the early chapters.

Before our last trip to India I purchased 2 pairs of “Ex Officio” underpants, which came with a slogan that went something like “17 countries, 45 days, one pair of underpants”. The company makes products of light, quick drying material, and the idea is that you can wash them and wring them out each night and put on a fresh, sweet-smelling pair every morning.

So indeed, when we went to Tamil Nadu for a month, I took along just two pairs (sorry, couldn’t get it down to one!). I washed them out each evening and by afternoon of the next day they were dry, usually. It needs to be mentioned that the coastal regions of that part of India have a dank tropical climate and even for there, there was an unusual amount of rain last August. Sometimes it took days to dry a normal load of laundry, and the climate makes you want to change your clothes three times a day. So it was a fairly good test of Ex Officio underwear. On the other hand, my wife succeeded more or less as well to wash and dry her own less-pretentious underwear, since in India it is considered impolite to give one’s bloomers to the hotel staff or dhobi.

Last weekend, I did my laundry at home, and it came out to three washing-machine loads. In Israel’s dry summer climate, you put laundry out on the line and it’s dry within a couple of hours. But Dorit commented on the quantity of laundry that I manage to produce in a couple of weeks and this got me thinking. Why not do the same as we did in India? So now, for the last few days, when I get into the shower, I also soak my socks, underwear and a shirt,then rinse it out and hang it on the line. It takes a couple of minutes. I put on the previous days set, after ironing my shirt. I figure in this way I can cut down drastically on the amount of clothes I need, and not have three loads of laundry to hang and dry every second week.

Also, I should mention that light cotton shirts dry even quicker than my fancy-pants hi-tech Ex Officio underwear. I have a couple of hand-spun shirts from Delhi’s Gandhi Ashram that I love.

Excited to read about this.  There’s a whole new world of static, database free blogs.  This would be the answer for using Opera Unite or Github as free blog providers, or my Fastmail system (which I already use for email and for photo albums).  Basically, it’s possible simply to write text files in any editor, and transform these into instant blog posts.

Here are some links I discovered so far:
http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/static_blog_generators.html

http://rog.rubyforge.org/

http://blog.notmyidea.org/pelican-a-simple-static-blog-generator-in-python.html

http://jinja.pocoo.org/docs/

http://jekyllrb.com/
can import from WordPress.com

jeykll on fastmail http://tomalison.com/reference/2010/04/03/webdav/

Using github as a free blog provider
http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/2011/04/05/how-to-blog-using-github-and-eclipse/

github pages:
http://pages.github.com/

http://samsoff.es/posts/new-blog-on-github-and-jekyll