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.

Larry Craig trying to play pass the potato has finally crystallized the answer to a question that has been floating around the back of my head for many years now. Why do so many social conservatives believe that being gay is a choice?

ANSWER: because for them, it really is a choice.

Way back in college I completed most of a minor in Psychology (then transferred schools and did most of a minor in CS, then decided to just graduate rather than finish either, but I digress). The key point my favorite Psych professor stressed about sex was that orientation is not a boolean toggle. It's a continuous set, bimodally distributed with a large hump near the hetero end, a smaller one on the far side, and a non-zero curve joining the two. (FWIW, I express this mathematically because that was my major; she taught it with friendly illustrations).

For most of us, preference is just a hard-coded trait. We might feel an outlier twinge once in a while, but it's not enough to act upon or even worry about. But imagine what it's like for folks toward the middle of the spectrum, who find themselves attracted to both genders on a recurring basis. Among the Reality-Based Community, such a person might accept being bi and have a good time. However, for someone whose gut tells them that devout belief supersedes pesky facts, wow, this is a serious problem!

And so we end up with hundreds of these conflicted souls entering politics, publicly proclaiming their choice of heterosexuality, while covertly looking for cock in bathroom stalls. Almost makes me feel sorry for them. Almost.

While browsing for disinformative comments to downmod, I came across this likely candidate.

Take a casual glance at http://www.google.com/search?q=canada+nickel+dead-zone+nasa and you'll see the obvious fingerprints of a dittohead smear campaign. However, the question is ... is it false or not?

My searches didn't find any factual reports about nickel mines in Canada; either the story doesn't exist or it's completely overshadowed by the turd blossoms. Anyone else have better sources?

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!

So here we are, four months into the first year of Apple Inc, and they are living up to the name change. I didn't realize the utter non-extent of it until I opened the latest version of MacTracker, clicked 2007 in the Timeline, and found exactly THREE entries:

1. AirPort Extreme (802.11n)
2. Apple TV
3. Mac Pro (8-core)

That's the complete list of product revisions since last year. Not even an iPod Gig-bump or an inch of display. Exactly one Mac update that's only of use to a handful of high-end pro artists. Meanwhile, Centrino Duo is here, and everyone else's models are zooming ahead. Several of them offer internal cameras now, BTW.

There hasn't been a year with this few announcements since ... hmm ... 1998. Lord Steve really believes iPhone is going to be as big a hit as iMac and iPod were. Dammit, I don't care about that, gimme my MacBook Santa Rosa!

Apropos of nothing: My kids love those repetetive decrementing-verse songs, so I hear them way too much. This variation has been going through my head for a while, and I felt like sharing:

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped his head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
no more monkeys jumping on the bed!

Four little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped her head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
are your monkeys jumping on the bed?

Three little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped his head,
mother called the doctor and the doctor says,
I'm reporting you to Social Services!

Two little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped her head,
doctor called the copper and the copper said,
no more mother jumping on her kids!

One mother monkey in a jail house bed,
slapped around by her cell mate 'Ed',
mother called the doctor and the doctor said,
no more monkeys jumping on the bed!

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?

Ever since the first story about kidnapper/astronaut Lisa Nowak, I've had this gnawing Deja Vu. Her enigmatic mugshot just kept on reminding me of... someone. Disheveled brown hair, bleary eyes, je ne sais quoi... who was she? Actress? Long-ago girlfriend? Who?

Yesterday, at long last, it hit me. That picture is a many-years-older... more-strung out... Ellen Feiss!!! C'mon, try to tell me you don't see it too. A few quick searches didn't turn up anyone else mentioning this resemblance. You heard it here first; pass the word.

My organization just rolled out its new site design (which includes a good chunk of moved pages), and I just upgraded my copy of Danny Goodman's _Dynamic HTML_ to 3rd edition ("updated for Ajax and Web 2.0"). So I quickly realized we should have an AJAX script on our 404 pages. Parse the given URL, apply some heuristics, test a half-dozen candidate addresses, forward user to the best match.

Except that somehow I haven't found any prebuilt libraries for this. It *is* an obvious idea, right? I suppose I'll roll my own if necessary, but a system like this really ought to exist already. And I absolutely agree with Douglas Karr that the grandmasters at Google are blatantly falling down on the job by not catching their 404s more effectively.

I renewed my phone contract today; I finally have one with a camera. It also has a USB port for syncing with computers... which is disabled by Verizon (but of course they will transfer our files over their network for a low low fee).

I see various gray market entities selling unlocker software. Anyone care to share their experiences with this sort of thing? Where are good places to find phone hacks? What do they typically add/change? What do phone companies do to detect/deter/destroy unlocking? etc? Any helpful pointers would be appreciated.