February 17 2018, 17:48

I wonder if there was a popular service that recommended one or more stories each day of a strictly defined volume, taking into account the reader’s tastes? The point is that there are loads of people commuting to work – some by car, some by subway, and the commuting time is usually more or less the same. For those who like reading or listening, it would be possible to find a story or novella of the optimal size from a large library, taking preferences into account (likes, surveys). You sit in the subway or car, start reading or listening, and by the time you get to work – the story has just ended.

It would be particularly interesting not to reveal the title and author until the story is read and rated.

Clearly, you won’t find much from the “great literature” in 30 minutes. But so much has been written in the world that it would definitely last a year with any preference settings, and then perhaps they might even begin to write specifically for this purpose.

Monetization – a thank you to the author at the end of the story. Money is automatically deducted unless the listener or reader hits a big red “do not pay for this” button within a certain period after.

I think finishing reading or listening to a story right as you arrive at work or home from work is significantly “more interesting” than stopping in the middle to finish it tomorrow. Of course, this is very individual, but the format itself would be interesting.

February 15 2018, 13:56

Finally set up my Macbook Pro to work with the same efficiency as before. I’ll leave this here for my future self and others.

Console – iTerm2 + zsh.

Editor – Sublime Text + configuration for external keyboard https://coderwall.com/p/upolqw/fix-sublime-text-home-and-end-key-usage-on-mac-osx

Code editor – IntelliJ Idea.

Diagram editor – StarUML, OmniGraffle, LibreOffice, Visio under VirtualBox.

Editors for text, spreadsheets, and presentations – Microsoft Office for Mac

Graphics editor. Unfortunately, GIMP. If someone suggests something better – I’ll install it.

Email – Microsoft Outlook and for personal mail, Mail.

Support for external PC keyboard (in my case, das keyboard) – DoubleCommand. Tried Karabiner, but developers turned it into a mess in the version for the latest OS.

Messengers. Skype – Classic version. The new one is inconvenient. Microsoft Teams didn’t catch on, forced to use Skype for Business at work. Telegram.

File manager. Midnight Commander. Tried a bunch, even ran FAR under Wine. Nothing better than MC yet.

Video. VLC, of course.

Remote access to the Mac at home – VNC Viewer.

Standard set of browsers.

Programming languages for everyday use – Bash, Perl, Python, Java.

Database – MySQL.

Video processing – iMovie (there’s nothing like it for free on Windows) and ffmpeg for batch processing.

Photo processing – GIMP for individual photos and ImageMagick for batch processing.

No current tasks about sound processing, but I will find something when the need arises.

Also using XMLmind for XML, but it’s foolish. Looking for a replacement.