Present Perfect

This week, after receiving a Google API key from a kind mecenas (which probably violates the EULA and thus she shall go unnamed) I implemented another one of my wishlist features for moap: looking up your project's home page using Google or Yahoo.

This is part of my preparation for my GUADEC talk on Practical Project Maintenance. Especially in the early days of a project, you need to make sure people can find your project easily, not only on the name of your project, but also on keywords related to what your project does. People are out there googling for keywords that should lead to your particular project if it's any good.

Since Yahoo's web API is completely open, I'm defaulting to yahoo's search for now. I must say I was always down on Yahoo like everyone else. But Google has gone from a search engine to a an ad company and made their API less useful, while Yahoo - who made the transition of search -> ads a long time before - actually trumps Google on accessible API for the search part.

Anyways, a curious thing has happened. My project page used to be hit number 5 on Google for the keyword "moap". After reading some page recently on Google optimization, telling me I should have as many key words as possible in the first paragraph and such, I expanded the text on the start page a little. I did not yet add keywords - as I need to figure out how to do that with Trac. I also added a logo and a favourite icon - which is unrelated to the optimization I want to do but I wanted to make it look a little nicer than the default page.

Now, today I run the search again, and I'm not even in the top 100 anymore. Did Google not like my logo ? Did Google know I was going to shuffle a complaint in this blog post before I even wrote it ? I don't know ! I don't understand this whole search engine thing.

Luckily, Yahoo has the project page at hit number 3. Another reason to like Yahoo...

I'm going to do another release of moap soon.

Feel free to leave tips on optimizing my entry page for search results !

This week, after receiving a Google API key from a kind mecenas (which probably violates the EULA and thus she shall go unnamed) I implemented another one of my wishlist...

I want to like beagle, I really do.  I want to use it, and I want it to work for me.  Some of the smartest people in free software have hacked on it, and I can only say good stuff about them.

So where's the disconnect ? I have been going crazy for the last week trying to figure out why my home machine is consuming 100% CPU when it should be idling because I'm not doing anything on it.  I can tell it's doing stuff because the fans are blowing like crazy.  When I move my mouse to wake up the screens and X, I can see my CPU monitor suddenly going from 50% (on this HT machine) back to 0%.

It wazzz in my PC.  Eatsing my CPU.

But I couldn't figure out what it was, as it went away when I checked, and I had no second computer in the house to log into the machine.

Tonight I brought my laptop back home, and it's poor old beagled.  It's probably been Doing Stuff for the last week, and it has had 100% of one hyperthread for more than 75% of the time to it in.

But it is Not Yet Done.

And it goes skulking off into the corner whenever the X session wakes up - typically the sort of nifty hack Joe or Jon would have come up with.

Who can tell me What It Is Doing ?

Here's a textdump of beagle-status output if it helps:

Every 5.0s: beagle-info --status                        Fri May 18 22:15:40 2007
Scheduler:
Count: 1755041513
Status: Finding next task to execute

Pending Tasks:
1 Delayed 0 (5/18/2007 10:15:41 PM)
File Crawler

2 Maintenance 100 (5/18/2007 8:55:15 AM)
Final Flush for FileSystemIndex

3 Maintenance 0 (5/18/2007 8:55:18 AM)
Optimize FileSystemIndex

Any tips on debugging beagle - from a user perspective - are welcome too.

I want to like beagle, I really do.  I want to use it, and I want it to work for me.  Some of the smartest people in free software have...

Tell me this.  How do I tell mugshot to stop telling me what I am doing myself ? There's nothing more annoying than having that stupid notification popup in the way telling me what song I am listening to (which I already know anyway) for umpteen seconds.  I want to tell my computer to do stuff, not have my computer tell me what it's doing.

Tell me this.  How do I tell mugshot to stop telling me what I am doing myself ? There's nothing more annoying than having that stupid notification popup in the...

- So, where were you ? Did you go to Belgium ?

- Belgium ? Why would I go to Belgium ?

- I think the relevant question is, why wouldn't you ?

I have been OD'ing on last year's Christmas present - the Buffy DVD boxset.  The pace has picked up because I got sick as a dog yesterday - so I've now started on Season 3.

My sickness did not prevent me from reaching a landmark milestone on my N800 - getting the time for all Mahjong boards under 3 minutes.  Apparently this is not a big deal - Josep claims his wife does them under 2.  She must be cheating.  Incidentally, Josep recognized my Mahjong addiction purely by looking at the scuffed LCD on my N800 - amusing.

(Warning: poo references ahead)

Incidentally, I have gone from a fever and liquid stool yesterday, over the worst headaches I've ever had all last night, to firm-but-yellow stool today, plus some back aches.  The internet puts me down for only one possible disease: hepatitis ! Luckily it also said "Don't use this as a diagnosis."

My sister is wildly entertained each time I call her for medical advice.  I am happy to have at least some use these days.

- So, where were you ? Did you go to Belgium ? - Belgium ? Why would I go to Belgium ? - I think the relevant question is, why...

By sheer accident I picked up a copy of Watchmen this weekend in Brussels. I must say I'm glad I did - I found it hard to put down, and it's definitely one hell of a graphic novel. It would have had more impact in my younger years, as the story does show its age, but it managed to work on all the levels it wanted to and kept some surprised around. Intriguing storyline.

Incidentally, I just finished watching Heroes Episode 21 (thank effing god for the Internet, why are series still "delayed" over here in this millenium ? And kudos for getting a show with such a common title to be number 1 on Google). Seeing that episode the day after finishing Watchmen is eerie. Before I felt the series was liberally copying plot lines from X-Men (5 years in to the future ? Where are the Sentinels, everything else looks the same), but the resemblance to the Watchmen plot is uncanny. I can't say why I guess without ruining either story, but I'm sure other people must have felt a little resemblance as well no ?

Heroes being derivative doesn't hurt me one bit though - it would have been hard to avoid regardless, and they've done an excellent job at driving the story forward, keeping the characters interesting, and having some awesome visuals.

The fact that it's derivative does not make it predictable, since you never know beforehand which bit they'll derive next...

I'm guessing next week is the big finale. Yay internet !

On unrelated news, my muscles ache, my appetite is gone and my head is heavy. I'm hitting the sack in the hopes of avoiding getting a cold.

By sheer accident I picked up a copy of Watchmen this weekend in Brussels. I must say I'm glad I did - I found it hard to put down, and...