I'm walking down the street ...

[crschmidt]

So, I've now written a tool that automatically stops xmms, downloads a phone post, plays it, and restarts xmms, given a username and ID. It'll restart the song, because I can't have xmms paused and use other music things, because I'm too lazy to actually set up a linux mixer.

Next step is to write an s2 style that makes it easy to parse these things, so I can just type a command, and have it play, in order, each of the phoneposts on the most recent entries page, reporting who it is.

Oh, also, I'm saving all of these for blackmail purposes. So, you better hope you don't say anything dumb or goofy, because until I get over a gig of these things, I'm just going to keep all of them.

My last post elicited some pretty serious responses from people. I really wrote it in more of a joking manner than I think a lot of people took it. As is clear from the fact that I'm being a huge geek and writing all this stuff to make it easier to listen to phone posts, I'm most likely going to listen to at least some of them.

One of my favorite comments:
"If I wanted to hear a bunch of geeks singing row row row your boat... I'd just watch Star Trek 5 a couple of times." - paranormaloid

There are some valid reasons why I wouldn't want people to post mostly from phone posts though. Between hassle of actually inturrupting other music to listen, the weird looks I'd get from my roomate, etc. there's also the fact that I really do like reading people's entries: smileloki and aiobheil come to mind off the top of my head. I love reading their writings.

However, I highly doubt that audio-blogging is going to become all that popular in the LiveJournal world. If someone does choose to go that route, they probably won't end up on my friends pages, simply because that's not what I'm looking for from LiveJournal. Similarly, someone who used their journal solely for photoblogging probably wouldn't end up on my friends page, nor would someone who only went with meta-blogging.

Some interesting conversation threads from the post though:
my opinions regarding use by disabled people/lack of personality in these posts
my opinion on how testing and so on will make this feature really annoying for the next week or so.
discussion on how jack feels that i bitch, moan, kick and scream at every new livejournal feature. (Which is exactly why I'm developing, on a daily basis, ways to work with another one of LiveJournal's new features - S2).

I'll play with it, simply because it uses my phone, and I play with EVERYTHING that I can using my phone. Simple as that.

Jess and I are going through hell being apart right now, and that's the simple truth. I never did a break this long with Sarah, and I will never do one this long again if I have any say in it whatsoever. This two months bullshit is literally tearing my heart out of my chest. It's so painful all the time that we're both in horrible shape and everything we do just sucks. We talked tonight, and it just... my chest physically hurts. The whole "gutwrenching" feeling is happening about 24/7 right now. It sucks horribly horribly horribly.

Results from the S2 polls I took (What tutorials in S2 would you like to see written?):

• How to use the various types of layers (layout, theme, user, etc) and styles
• how to create an s2 style from scratch
• fixed / no-repeat background image
• A basic S2 language tutorial, particularly some of the original ideas in S2, like what all those headers mean/do.
• How to implement either a custom style sheet, or add a custom style to the S2 layer's style sheet.
• Anything involving Generator style since nobody seems to know or want to help me!
• Adding UPI on recent and individual entry pages in Generator
• adding memeadd and edit buttons to the recent/friends pages in Component
• BOXER.
• Adding GLOBAL_HEAD equivalents (CSS and the like); also, creating custom styles (like [manually] porting an S1 style over); I know there're docs, but they make my head spin, and something simpler would be better
• anything involving manipulating generator
• use of arrays and hashes
• I think a diagram of all of the classes and which classes extend other classes would be nice, I'm still a little shaky with the object-oriented aspects.
• It would be nice to see an overview of S2 written for those familiar with S1, with maybe a comparison of features.
• I'd like to see a really basic tutorial that one could build on as they learned more.

Amusingly enough, i got more responses from my poll in my own journal than anywhere else, at least for the first day.

There's a couple requests on the board that I need to write tutorials for, but don't feel like it. *sigh*

Nifty thing I made to do a POC for *jack in lj_style: http://www.livejournal.com/users/crschmidt/friends/?s2id=374390 or http://www.livejournal.com/users/crschmidt/friends/?s2id=374390&show=P . Userpics for 50 most recent posts on my friends page, with and without comms. Note that each userpic links to the entry it is attached to :)

Physics test tonight. ECE lab due tomorrow. Video review (paper) due Friday. Project screenshots due Nov 20th. See Jess Nov 22nd. Nov 22nd. Nov 22nd. It's not that far. Just 10 more days and a few hours. I can do this. This sucks so much. But I can do it.

Hey Jess? I miss you. I love you. The only thing that's keeping me going atm is you, so hang in there. We're almost there. Just a couple more days. We can do it.

Comments

[schweds.livejournal.com]

Why do people think Star Trek is so dorky?! I don't understand!

Star trek isn't the dorky thing...

[paranormaloid.livejournal.com]

The dorky thing is Nemoy, Shatner, and DeForrest Kelley singing Row, Row, Row your boat at the end of the movie. It's just really cute.
I'm glad that the listening thing is worked out... heck, it might help even when people are too booked to call everyone they want... still a funky idea though. :-)

[damnitnicole]

Any chance of you sharing that xmms thingy? *bats eyelashes*

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

Occourse:

wget http://files.livejournal.com/$1/phonepost/$2.mp3 -O /home/crschmidt/temp/ugh/$1$2.mp3
xmms -s
mpg123 /home/crschmidt/temp/ugh/$1$2.mp3
xmms -t

That's obviously specific to my computer, and it doesn't remove the file (to do that, you'd need to add "rm /home/crschmidt/temp/ugh/$1$2.mp3", but I want to save them, at least for a little while) and you'll also need to modify the directory names, but that's the gist of it.

needs wget (which almost everything should have), xmms (since you want to pause it) and mpg123, a command line mp3 player.

[damnitnicole]

*blinks*

I'll just say thanks, and save this for degnernj to make work on my box. I tend to forget that wanting a stuffed Tux doll does not a Linux-understander make. Or something. :D

Thanks! :)

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

Note, this wont' support protected phone posts which require browser authentication. For that you'd have to use curl or w3m and it would change things. If this is an issue, let me know, and I can give you an updated script.

[damnitnicole]

I don't think it should be, but I'll let you know, yeah... thanks! :)

[angelsk.livejournal.com]

Counters would be good too - I know lots of people want to add them (I comes up lots in support).

Plus altering fonts etc when they can't be done on "edit customisations"

[lovewithnoface.livejournal.com]

Yes, this would be great.

In lj_userdoc we've been working on a counter/whos watching my journal FAQ, but it would be great if we could link to a howto post for S2 in addition to S1.

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

If it hadn't been for you posting about this, I wouldn't even have found out about it yet, not being a follower of changelog or brads journal - it hasn't been announced anywhere official yet, has it? I guess not, because I don't seem to be able to use it so I guess it's not switched on yet. I thought the geeks singing row row row your boat were kind of endearing (perhaps because they can't sing it on key). I don't see me using something like this a lot, but I do like the idea of putting my voice out on the internet for people who read my journal to hear, because to me it feels like a way of making it more personal. Like having photos of me available it's a way for people who read my journal to get a bit more of an "image" of me.

Anyway, what's the next step with the tutorials? Can I just start on one which looks interesting, or are you going to co-ordinate it through howto_userdoc? I feel like I should be getting more involved in the S2 community - now that I've got everything I want in my style, I want a new challenge :)

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

It's not live yet, it was just "employee testing" night. So, Jesse (jproulx) whitaker, rahaeli and brad were testing it out. Rah's best guess for when it'll go live is tomorrow, but there's no definite on that yet.

I plan on coordinating through howto_userdoc, and getting some information there about what exactly form I want things in, but I haven't quite got a chance yet. For the time being, feel free to grab something and post in howto_userdoc when you finish it - I want to get the ball rolling, because already I'm having to deal with things on the board and saying "Damnit, need that tutorial!"

Thanks for expressing an interest - I know you've got the knowhow, good to see I'm not the only interested in doing something with it ;)

[finding_helena]

*hugs*. You have my sympathy. LDRs are fricking annoying and stressful. Best of luck.

[pie-is-good.livejournal.com]

"If I wanted to hear a bunch of geeks singing row row row your boat... I'd just watch Star Trek 5 a couple of times."

Who can stand to do that? Honestly? My head would explode.

[jpallan.livejournal.com]

I love you.

And I can't stop crying. At all.

Like ever.

I cannot believe you knew how bad this would hurt yet chose to do this anyway.

I love you so much, but dear gods, this is painful.

10 days 10 days 10 days 10 days 10 days . . .

[chemicallace]

Jess and I are going through hell being apart right now, and that's the simple truth. I never did a break this long with Sarah, and I will never do one this long again if I have any say in it whatsoever. This two months bullshit is literally tearing my heart out of my chest. It's so painful all the time that we're both in horrible shape and everything we do just sucks. We talked tonight, and it just... my chest physically hurts. The whole "gutwrenching" feeling is happening about 24/7 right now. It sucks horribly horribly horribly.

I know exactly how you feel right now... but then, there's no choice. I mean, if I had to chose between waiting and knowing I'm loved and being tortured in this manner or being alone and heartbroken and such, I'd pick this any day. Time eventually does pass and after a time, you'll have the chance to always be together.

*hugs you and goes back to missing her love*

[aajwind.livejournal.com]

Regarding the answers to your poll (and what I can do to help?):

How to use the various types of layers (layout, theme, user, etc) and styles. - I can work on this.
How to create an s2 style from scratch. - that's a pretty in-depth request. I've seen it done in s1, but doing so in s2 is a pretty big job as s2 is quite a bit more complicated. I think the docs are enough for this. what do you think?
A basic S2 language tutorial, particularly some of the original ideas in S2, like what all those headers mean/do. - http://www.livejournal.com/community/s2practice/3517.html
How to implement either a custom style sheet, or add a custom style to the s2 layer's style sheet. - huh?
Adding UPI on recent and individual entry pages in Generator. - http://www.livejournal.com/community/s2styles/46214.html
Adding memeadd and edit buttons to the recent/friends pages in Component. - I'm researching whether this is even possible.
Adding GLOBAL_HEAD equivalents (CSS and the like); also, creating custom styles (like [manually] porting an S1 style over); I know there're docs, but they make my head spin, and something simpler would be better. - http://www.livejournal.com/community/howto_userdoc/37385.html ?
Use of arrays and hashes. - I don't know anything about this. at least I don't think I do.
I think a diagram of all of the classes and which classes extend other classes would be nice, I'm still a little shaky with the object-oriented aspects. - I'd love to work on this but I'm not sure of what a good method to do it would be.
It would be nice to see an overview of S2 written for those familiar with S1, with maybe a comparison of features. - hmmm. this would be fairly easy. something like $.journal.username == %%username%%, etc. but a lot of s2 things don't perfectly port over to s1 lingo. what do you think? I could work up a draft on this.

Links I want to keep in mind:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/s2practice/5229.html
http://www.livejournal.com/community/s2practice/2874.html
http://www.livejournal.com/community/s2practice/706.html