Since this is not yet documented, I figured I would mention this here now... we are experimenting with some very rudimentary keystroke navigation in the discussion2 system. We support both FPS style WASD keybindings, as well as the standard vi layout of HJKL. Down/Up will cycle you through next/previous comment chronologically... left/right will cycle you through next/previous in thread order. Holding SHIFT down while you press the navigation key will collapse the previous comment. And when you get to the end, pressing down or right will attempt to retrieve more comments if you want them.

What this means is that you can now use D2 to simulate most of the most popular viewing modes of the original discussion system. By dragging both the abbreviate & display sliders right next to each other you effectively remove abbreviated comments which simulates nested mode. By toggling comment retrieval order to 'Oldest First' and using up down, you can effectivel read the discussion from oldest to newest. And of course the default settings gives you the best comments first, providing a nice default view of discussions for most anonymous users (who rarely participate and we want to really show only the best comments).

You can also disable D2 in the comment prefs (the word 'prefs' in the floating dialog box) if you are logged in. Right now we're testing D2 for a large percentage of anonymous readers. As soon as we finish IE7 support we'll roll out D2 for the rest of the ACs.

The Ann Arbor party seemed to go great- lots of people packed Leopold Bros place, doing battle with barflies and football fans. It was somewhat bizarre watching obvious normal bar people try to figure out what this large crowd of 'different' people were all about. We handed out a ton of t-shirts, drank much alcohol, ate nachos etc. Our party had a great number of Slashdot and SourceForge staffers... all folks who have been with Slashdot for so many years it's hard to remember Slashdot without them. I'm not exactly sure how many people eventually showed up... a lot of our RSVPs didn't show, and a lot more didn't bother sign up at all, so I think the two balanced out.

For me personally these sorts of things are always difficult. I'm not very good at crowds. I can smile for a picture, but I'm perpetually nervous when surrounded by strangers who have certain expectations of me. There's a reason I live life behind a keyboard!

Further compounding matters lately is baby induced chronic sleep deprivation. Me want REM cycles. It's always nice to get out and have a beer. Kathleen & I get only so many hours "out" together now, gotta make each one count. The party attendees were all cool... and understanding that I was pretty tired.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who showed up... I've still got the california party later this week. Hopefully my throat heals up by then. The only real problem with this location was the acoustics... I had to shout to be heard, and stick my ear in front of people to hear them (baby crying has done some amount of hopefully temporary ear damage). My throat is raaaaw from yelling. Sucking on cough drops helps.

As for other parties, boxes have been shipped. Hopefully they have arrived to most places on time, although I think they were shipped on a slowish shipping option so I'm not sure. I know some folks got shirts on friday, but I'm sure the others will arrive monday or so. Also, keep in mind that we only had 700 shirts and 2300 attendees from 136 parties with more than 5 attendees. So obviously not every party is getting a box... when we sent out the bulk mail, we had over 100 replies, and I'm sure there was nowhere near enough to fill even that.

But shirts or not, I hope your parties go well. Remember to submit videos or pictures or whatever to anniversary at slashdot dot org for your chance at the $1k ThinkGeek gift certificate grand prize.

This feels like a mega-spam entry, and I'm very self conscious about posting it, but I'm excited about this and I wanted to share . . .

I just published my third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I mention it here because it's all about growing up in the 70s, and coming of age in the 80s as part of the D&D/BBS/video game/Star Wars figures generation, and I think a lot of Slashdot readers will relate to the stories in it.

I published a few of the stories on my blog, including Blue Light Special. It's about the greatest challenge a ten year-old could face in 1982: save his allowance, or buy Star Wars figures?

After our corduroy pants and collared shirts and Trapper Keepers and economy packs of pencils and wide-ruled paper were piled up in our cart, our mom took our three year-old sister with her to the make-up department to get shampoo and whatever moms buy in the make-up department, and my brother and I were allowed to go to the toy department.

"Can I spend my allowance?" I said.

"If that's what you want to do," my mom said, another entry in a long string of unsuccessful passive/aggressive attempts to encourage me to save my money for . . . things you save money for, I guess. It was a concept that was entirely alien to me at nine years old.

"Keep an eye on Jeremy," she said.

"Okay," I said. As long as Jeremy stood right at my side and didn't bother me while I shopped, and as long as he didn't want to look at anything of his own, it wouldn't be a problem.

I held my brother's hand as we tried to walk, but ended up running, across the store, past a flashing blue light special, to the toy department. Once there, we wove our way past the bicycles and board games until we got to the best aisle in the world: the one with the Star Wars figures.

I'm really proud of this book, and the initial feedback on it has been overwhelmingly positive. I've been reluctant to mention it here, because of the spam issue, but I honestly do think my stories will appeal to Slashdotters.

After the disaster with O'Reilly on Just A Geek, I've decided to try this one entirely on my own, so I'm responsible for the publicity, the marketing, the shipping, and . . . well, everything. If this one fails, it will be because of me, not because a marketing department insisted on marketing it as something it's not.

Of course, I hope I can claim the same responsibility if (when?) it finds its audience . . . which would be awesome.

So if you only count anniversary parties with 5 or more attendees, we have 128 venues with a grand total of 2366 attendees. The largest parties include Pudge's in seattle with 129, mine in Ann Arbor with 194 and Hemos's in CA with 197.

I'm sure that there will be many RSVPs that no show, but still, that's still an awful lot of interest. We'll be shipping shirts to a good number of those parties, but we have triple the attendees to shirts available, so we'll see just how far we're able to spread the love. Emails will be going out to party planners in the next couple days to get postal addresses.

As we're nearing 100 signed up people for the A2 Slashdot anniversary party, we've changed the venue to Leopold Bros... it's just a block south from the other place and they can handle us. I've also got word that we'll be printing a few hundred extra shirts since there was already like 50 parties with 5+ people in attendance. We certainly won't have enough for everyone, but we'll make a good dent in it.

I will of course put this information into a story next reasonable chance I get for a story, but I figured at least I could get the word out there. The anniversary party entry on the official page has been updated with the new location & address.

The A2 party already has like 70 signed up. We're going to have to rethink venue or time I think if we really have that many people. Wait a few more days and see what we can work out. Keep reading in the party forum for info. We have 500 shirts to print and hand out... it'll be fun to see where they go.

more info as I get it. There will be notes on future stories as days get closer.

If any of you are using an iPhone and are willing to help test out some Slashdot handheld crap, shoot me off a note... my email is the same address as always, and if you can't guess it, you probably can't help anyway ;) I've built a stylesheet and Tim put together a few little options that we think will make a few bits of Slashdot look nice on an iPhone (or really most lower resolution displays) but unfortunately none of us actually HAVE one yet... so anyway, let us know. Or if you work at Apple, send us freebies dammit!

Simple tasks like switching between Firefox and Thunderbird are driving the load on my machine up over 4, and if I'm trying to run Amarok at the same time, it drives it up to 8. In fact, my machine frequently climbs up into the 7-9 range, bringing my apps to a crawl and frustrating the hell out of me.

So I've decided it's time to buy a new computer. I'm going to replace my aging Sony Vaio desktop machine (which runs Linux) with something newer that has more RAM, a faster processor, and a bigger hard drive.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure where to start looking. A quick walk through Circuit City a month or so ago lead me to believe I can get a rather "big" computer for as low as five hundred bucks, which further leads me to believe that if I were to buy something online, I can get a huge pile of RAM, a fast processor, and a big honkin' hard drive for even less.

I run Kubuntu, and use KDE as my desktop (though I occasionally switch to Gnome when I get bored) and I mostly use Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Amarok, and run PokerStars in wine. I'm looking for something that can do all of that without slowing my machine to a crawl.

Anyone have any suggestions on where to start looking?

Edit: I don't think I have the patience to build my own machine out of individual parts. I also don't have any real loyalty to any particular company or architecture. New Egg has lots of machines with AMD processors, and though I've always had Intel processors because more things seemed to run on x86, that's not as much of an issue as it once was, right?

Sorry to all the nay-sayers, but I pretty confident now that multiply isn't going away. I already find myself going to that page before slashdot. I'd suggest picking it up, just so you have an ID there and are associated with it in case we don't come back.

Here's me as a starting person to be joined to. Make sure you give me you /. id when you join, though.

FYI - I've requested to the site a way to grab /. historical journal entries, and they are considering it (they already have this feature for blogger, blogspot, etc...). I'd also like to see cross-posting for those too stubborn to leave...

After serious consideration, I'm probably going to move to multiply, myself. My id was created a couple days ago (same ID as here), but I think I'll actually move journals over to it.

Most people that aren't on ask "what's so sexy about it"? The answer is it does everything we do here, plus a lot more (pictures, music, etc... but not terrible like myspace). The things its missing? The front page.
Now most people feel like there will be no more growth in the /. circle, which I feel is incorrect. The growth will be probably the same, but the reason will be different.
Right now, growth comes from a new slashdot id that stumbles onto us. We have lots in common, cause, most likely, the new person is a geek like the rest of us.
In Multiply, the new friends will come from other friends friends (follow that?). Basically, I'll become a friend of one of blinder's friends. Since blinder and I have a lot in common, his friend will, most likely, be compatable with me, also, so then the circle grows. Its just as open ended as the growth we have here, even more so, especially in the beginning.

I'd suggest everyone getting an ID, and start friending everyone up. I'd also suggest setting up your messages to only get the 'daily' email, not new emails for every little thing (as that is annoying as hell). Maybe do a weekly thing, who knows. Anyway, I'll still be around here, but probably not many more journals (especially since my journals have fallen off)...
Oh, and its easy to keep in touch with those that DON'T move there, as you can setup an RFF feed for your friends' journals here...

I got another ass kicking last night. Did legs and partially back. The leg squats really kciked my ass (on the hammer-strength machine, 3 sets of 12 forward, and 3 sets backward). Calves and hammys I did well on (especially calves). Then we started on my back. While working on my lats, I started getting light headed... stomach started to ache. I had to constantly take breaks. The PT asked what was wrong, and I told him the light headedness. He asked when I last ate (this was at 5pm), I told him lunch at 11:30. That's when he said "Don't move, I'll be right back"... within a minute, I was on the floor barely concious. Another PT was keeping me awake until my guy returns with a shake. I was seconds away from passing out. So a lesson to learn, here:
Always have a snack before going to the gym! (Yes indeedy! I'm a stupid idiot!)

Anywho, the bicep sprain wasn't a sprain or a strain, just a really sore muscle. We worked it out and its fine today. I must be favoring the right side too much when working on my arms...

Yesterday I went in and told the PT that initially put me on a workout that I want to ramp it up. He asked if I want to get 'big'.
Sure.
Ok then...

And then... he proceeded to fully kick my scrawny little ass. Spent an hour just on biceps, chest, and abs (lots of 'hammer strength' machines, which are machines with freeweights on it that NFL/pro athletes use, then lots of freewieghts. The only 'simple machines' we used was for me to work on my biceps one at a time). I was in agony. He set goals on what I was to do. Then he told me to lay off all the cardio. I do 30 minute cardio on Sun, Tues, Weds when I'm lifting, and 60 on MWF when I'm not. I'm supposed to do 60 minutes a week, and that's it. Plus the way he's working me out, I may not be ready to go at a muscle group after 45, so I'm supposed to work out a muscle group until I fail (then I know I've worked it to the max), and pick another muscle group the next day.
Monday we work on quads, hammys, calves, and tris. The triceps should be the only ones that give me a ton of trouble, as I used to run track in high school, and still have pretty large legs...

I've been good about going to the gym (except for when I was sick). I lift on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursday, then spend M-W-F on cardio (I still do cardio on the days I lift, just not as much). I leave work at 4:30 and avoid the rush at the gym (though its starting to taper now that people are quitting their New Years resolutions). I'm finding it difficult to keep my heart in the cardio zone on the treadmill. I have to actually work to keep my heart pumping for 45-60 minutes a day. Holy hell, I'm actually somewhat in shape! I actually requested to take the whole family out grocery shopping right after my workout, cause I had trouble settling down and relax. I ended up wearing everyone else out, but I still had energy to burn...
I don't LOOK any stronger, but I definitely FEEL it. My abs are starting to show, much to the wife's delight (though I think she's waiting for my biceps to increase in size), which I haven't had since early college. Unfortunately, seeing them come through, I've been overworking them a bit...
When I ran track back in college, I always had issues with my calves. They used to call me popeye on track, because my calves were always larger than my quads/thighs. At night, I'd always wake up multiple times cause of muscle cramps in my calves... I'd spend a good 15 minutes working out the cramp to get back to bed. Last night I actually work up with muscles cramps in my abs. Talk about uncomfortable.

Anywho, I'm still on it and starting to feel the effects. When I have washboard abs, a descent chest and some guns, I'll post pics ;)

I'm currently reading In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions...When It Counts as one of the first main books in my new O'Reilly Safari library account.

What an amazing book! Such insight! Such intrigue! I am going to make a zillion dollars with this secret knowledge of how to handle accusations from unruly people. I am certain that God himself would have wanted a copy of this to field all of Satan's accusations. Satan would have wanted a copy of it as well.

Last weekend, when I was watching TV, Jenna walks into the room, sees the tube and yells "FOOTBALL GAME!"

Today, I was explaining to my wife how I've waited for today's games, and I intend on lounging and watching both of them, when Jenna walks in. "Want to watch football with daddy, today?" "Mmkay!"
She held my hand to lead her to the TV. Had to convince her to go get her favorite shoes to distract her...

So... I'm raising a tomboy, which is fine by me. Either that or she is ugly for the next 16 years. I don't want to have to deal with boys when she gets old enough. I simply don't have enough guns to clean...