Spreadsheet trick

You know how in MS-Excel if you select cells that are in a sequence (1, 2, 3) and extend it, MS-Excel will use the next numbers in the sequence (4, 5, 6, etc.). Later versions will fill in days of the week, months of the year, etc.

I just learned that with spreadsheets.google.com if the cells are just random words, it will use Google Sets to continue the sequence if you are pressing Ctrl (Windows and Linux) or Option (Mac). I just entered cells with apple, orange, pear and it extended the list to include strawberry, cherry, lemon, raspberry, and banana.

Try kernighan, ritchie, pike and see what you get.

What’s the most bizarre Google Set you can find?

Slashdot is 10 years old

Slashdot is 10 years old. For years they have been my primary tech news source.

They’re still the top place I go for news. Millions of visitors agree every day. So many people read it that when they mention a web site it gets overloaded with people visiting it. This is now known as “the slashdot effect”. In fact, the day they mentioned my first book got reviewed there the Amazon rank immediately shot up to the Top 10 and stayed there for 2 days.

The site is unabashedly geeky. It’s a URL that can not be read over the phone without great trouble (”No! h, t, t, p, colon, slash, slash, then the word slash, the word dot, then dot. No... not dot. dot!! Arrrrgh!) because real geeks cut and paste their URLs and never need to actually say them. (If I recall, they used to not display their home page if you tried to include the “www.” since real geeksites don’t need that.)

editing files on an FTP server

I need a better way to edit files on my web sites that are hosted at services that only support ftp. I am on a Mac. The download-edit-upload cycle sucks. Yes, I've automated it and it still sucks. I even use CyberFrogFTP and that does the download-edit but I have to save then click upload then check to see if the files it selected are right blah blah blah. Mac's FTPFS is read-only. Any tips? This is SO FING FRUSTRATING!

sony.com/reader

I'm on the train writing this on my Treo.

There is an advert here for the Sony bookreader. Some of the example 80 books are in the public domain. Moby Dick, Huck Fin, etc.

Isn't Sony one of the companies that spreads FUD about copyright laws that try to link the legal use of PD works to syphilis, Communism, and killing babies?