TheDarkTrumpet.com

Getting LeafNode to work on OSX is a bit of a pain, messing with that today I found that little exists in terms of documentation on how to make this happen. The real problem isn’t specifically with the base install of LeafNode, but getting it configured is where the problem is at:

Installing Leafnode:
port install leafnode

Once leafnode is installed, you have a few commands that you can use at this point:
fetchnews – This will be used to get the listing of groups, which once read, will start pulling the actual documents themselves
leafnode – This can be run a few different ways, but with the macports option it’s really not a bad idea to run this through launchctl (assuming you’re on a later version of OSX).

Once it’s installed, your configuration file that you’ll need to edit is in /opt/local/etc/leafnode/config. Most of the stuff in the config.example will help in configuring leafnode. The important elements that should be edited are:
server – The server name itself
username – Obvious
password – Again, obvious
expire – I personally wanted everything that a newsgroup had, and to continue to fetch as much as possible since I want to be able to search off archived messages. I set this really high, I’d recommend the same.
hostname – This can be configured from your newsreader, but I added this as something if I forgot to configure it correctly.
maxfetch – Similar to expire, just sets the max number of initial articles to fetch. I set this insanely high as well.

The plists for launchctl are located in /opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.leafnode
One way to load this right away is:
sudo launchctl load /opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.leafnode/org.macports.leafnode.plist

I’ve also created a symlink from the above location to /Library/LaunchDaemons
cd /Library/LaunchDaemons
ln -s /opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.leafnode/org.macports.leafnode.plist .

At this point, you can use emacs to connect to your server. Much of the stuff left is to configure your emacs variables. Some example stuff I use is:

;; GNUS Setup
(setq user-mail-address “youremail@domain”)
(setq user-full-name “Your Name”)
(setq gnus-select-method ‘(nntp “localhost”
(nntp-address “127.0.0.1″)
(nntp-authinfo-file “~/.authinfo”)
(nntp-port-number 119)))

(setq gnus-summary-make-false-root ‘dummy)
(setq gnus-build-sparse-threads ’some)
(setq gnus-fetch-old-headers ’some)

(setq gnus-posting-styles
‘((“.“
(signature-file “~/.signature”)
(x-url “http://www.thedarktrumpet.com/”)
(organization “The Dark Trumpet”))))

The last thing that really needs to be done is setting up your crontab. I used the root crontab to do this, using “crontab -e” as root, then I have the following line:
/60 /opt/local/sbin/fetchnews -v -n

I hate categories that define people into groups, since things are so complicated – Over the past few months though I wanted to address issue related to extroverts vs introverts. The reasoning for this really started from our move to agile – and specifically “Agile Bob” on what he said during one of the social events. Really from that, I realized really how difficult it really is for people to understand an introvert well.

First let me start by describing what, exactly, an introvert is. An introvert is someone who is usually claimed as being shy. An introvert usually has few friends, dislikes large group events, and generally doesn’t brag about their accomplishments and abilities. This differs from an extrovert because an introvert needs to have “alone” time to really recharge. What this means is that an introvert likes to spend at least some time by themself doing something they love.

In comparison to extroverts, introverts have as much drive when it comes to their goals in life as extroverts do. Extroverts like to meet many people, and chat with others – introverts (depending how much one is) tends to not go out to meet others. What’s important to note is that introverts don’t do this because they dislike others, but because the trust isn’t there. An introvert can be mistaken for disliking another person because they don’t chat personally with the other person – again, this should not be assumed. Speaking from myself, I can’t name one person that I really dislike. Generally, I feel fairly neutral toward everyone and consider few really friends. When an introvert doesn’t speak, it also shouldn’t be assumed they are annoyed or upset about anything. As I’ve mentioned to others – the more people involved with something, the less an introvert may actually talk. Speaking from my experience, if the meeting has more than say 4 or so people at it, my participation tanks big time. With everyone trying to make their point, trying to be right or whatever, I personally don’t want to be any part of that. On the other hand, if someone asks for my opinion 1-on-1 or even in a smaller group setting, I’ll near talk their ear off. My boss (not my direct supervisor) has a lot of my respect because he understands this point and makes good use of it.

So now that I explained a bit about introverts, how does one handle them? Before I get into that though – one thing I want to correct “Agile Bob” on is that introverts do not try to avoid being accountable for their actions any more than extroverts do. Introverts may feel a bit more shy about talking about what they are working on. Speaking from experience, I really dislike standups in the sense of trying to describe what I’m doing – yet I work on a lot more for the office than most see (in my off time – including 2 projects currently that may end up helping the office a lot – just few know about them yet).

Ok, so now how to handle an introvert.

1) Don’t be shy of just going up and talking to one. This doesn’t mean infront of everyone asking something personal – think 1 on 1. It’s not that hard, either through IM or just go up to them. Speaking from experience – I tend to be very open in how I feel about stuff and that includes my opinion. I don’t like being infront of others talking about my opinion unless I’m extremely passionate about it – but I still have opinions.

2) During meetings, the more people there are, the less introverts talk. This isn’t bad, the solution is simple – ask questions or give space for introverts to give their opinion. Frankly the meeting coordinator should do their best to get everyone’s opinion, but I haven’t experienced many people who do this worth anything. Extroverts can easily take up all the space when it comes to giving their opinions on how something can be done. Again, introverts do have opinions, and the danger one runs into without getting balanced opinions in general is someone just doing it their own way in the end anyways. This goes for both extroverts and introverts and is just human tendency. People want their input to feel valuable and their presence to feel valuable.

3) Don’t expect introverts to go to parties, out to eat with large groups of people, and so on. Large social gatherings are likely just not an introvert’s thing. Speaking for myself, I am more than glad to go out to eat with one or two other people maximum – but any more than that and I usually pass. This is why I go for tea with Jeff often, he figured this part out easily. Greg’s done a good job with this as well.

Those are the biggies – but really all this comes down to is communication. Introverts can have a depth of knowledge, experience, and feelings that most people see the tip of the iceburg when it comes to that. Introverts tend not to for bonds as easily as extroverts do for more reasons than I can really count. The important thing to remember is that assumptions in near anything in life is an evil that needs to be watched for.

This only gives a smaller chunk about introverts – but the most relevant to what I deal with on a day to day basis, so that’s why I’m focusing on that more here.

I’ve been into these services for awhile, but have done a fairly poor job of communicating these from this site.

So for some of my tech-related comments, especially that of Common Lisp, Twitter is a good source:

http://twitter.com/TheDarkTrumpet

For more personal stuff, I tend to use Facebook (although VERY little)

http://www.facebook.com/dthole

For code that I’m releasing publicly github tends to be the better spot, at the moment, for that:

http://github.com/TheDarkTrumpet

So I joined facebook….

Having read their privacy policy a few times, I’ve always been frightened of joining their site. The idea of being able to have data mined from everywhere was a worry of mine. Granted, all that information is public anyways…but still.

Well, having attended “code camp” at the University this last Saturday, I felt the need to join Facebook was worthwhile. Why? Facebook is good for networking ties with other people. As much as I hate social interactions, I came to the realization a lot this weekend that if I want to get where I want in life, many times dealing with people on this level are helpful…

So what are the benefits:
1. Keep in contact with more people. Unlike others on there who seem to be friends with 50+ people, I want to keep mine a little smaller so I can actively keep track of each of the other’s profiles.
2. If/when moving to other positions, facebook could be a help in that area actually. This site + facebook should give potential employers enough information to go off of.
3. Kinda a fun thing to do. I took a few “tests” today, and some of this stuff was pretty enjoyable. Interesting to find people I know from the past as well (but whom I may not keep in contact with now). I did a lot of searching tonight for anyone’s name I could think of.

Did I add all the old friends and all? No. I’m tempted, but I haven’t yet….I still need to decide more on that.

As far as code camp, it was well worth my time to go. I am a lot more interested now in development with C#, as I’m finding it to be a fairly structured language with some nice features built into it. I’m not planning on dedicating a lot of time to it in the short term, but in the long term it would be nice to learn it. Another toolbelt for the future, is what I figure.

As you probably noticed already by reading this one blog post – commenting is now available

I worked on this a lot on Saturday to try and make a decent expandable solution, and I think I did a pretty good job on it. At the bottom of each of my posts you’ll see a link to click on to add a comment. Clicking on this link will bring up the synopsis of the site, and where you can add the comment. The reason why I did this was to reduce spam to a degree (which I hope works). Many sites put the comment box at the bottom of the page, which on my old site got spammed quite a bit. This method needs to go to a different page before adding the comment – I’m hoping that spammers aren’t used to this method yet and I won’t have to deal with the problems that much.

I do manually approve each comment before it shows up. One of the next items on my list is to have polls, which then hopefully I can start gathering some feedback here and there on the site.