Solipsism Gradient

Slowly, I’m getting rid of several bugs in my phpBB code, and implementing new features.

Subscribing to a topic’s feed was crashing if the feed contained a poll; this has been fixed.

I’m implementing threading and trackback now. In preparation for this, the per-message “reply” button now copies the subject line – just like the “quote” button, but no quote is generated. In the next version, “quote” and “reply” will tie the whole thread together.

In contrast, the former top-level “reply” button now says “New Post” and will open up a new thread inside the current topic.

I’ve been getting some comments from people used to standard phpBB forums, mostly complaining about not being able to open new topics.

My intention is to slowly evolve phpBB towards a MovableType-like model. Since I’m the principal poster on this weblog and the forums, and other people post occasional comments and suggestions, this seems very convenient; I’m not interested in running a completely open forum with hundreds of topics.

So, I see my Forum Index as similar to a weblog’s categories, and the topics themselves as sub-categories. And the way I’ll do threads and trackbacks will make them similar to in-line comments on MovableType weblogs.

Found and fixed several bugs in the RSS code.

You can now subscribe to topics containing polls, and the RSS items have been cleared of superfluous <span>s and references to styles – simple old-style HTML tags are now used.

Also, the per-message “reply” button now works the same as the “quote” button, except that no quote is generated. In other words, it repeats the “Subject” line. In the near future, it will also keep a special thread index to keep all posts on the same thread together.

The former top-level “reply” button now says “new post”. It will open a new thread inside the topic.

In the works: threads and trackbacks.

Andrew Zolli, in his guestblog on Boing boing, writes about Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico (with photos and links):

Although few history books mention his name, in the mid-1800’s Joshua Abraham Norton proclaimed himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

… Indulged by the local populace, Norton ate free in the best restaurants, which accepted his ‘currency’. During his reign, he issued a steady stream of proclamations, in which (among many other things) he abolished the Congress, called for the building of the Bay Bridge, and banished the F-word (“Frisco”) from polite speech.

Though a complete loon, he was beloved by San Franciscans during his time, and more than 30,000 people attended his funeral. Fittingly, no quote marks or other explanatory notes mark his epitaph.

Sébastien Paquet wrote “Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research”, an excellent paper on weblogging.

Link courtesy of Der Schockwellenreiter.

Noted SF writer and physics professor Gregory Benford writes about what should come “Beyond the Shuttle”. (Excerpted on Brad deLong’s blog.) The article is also discussed on SlashDot.

This weblog is now syndicated by Syndic8.

Also, NetNewsWire Pro now lists my RSS feed in its default sites drawer. Thanks, Brent!

Here’s an update to my previous post about this.

HighLift Systems has a proposal for a small-scale space elevator. Instead of a large-diameter (5 to 20 meters) full-scale beanstalk, they propose a 10-20 cm wide ribbon which would be only fractions of a millimeter thick. This is based on a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts study.

This design would drive costs down into the $10-billion range – much less than what AOL/TimeWarner lost last year – and allow payloads of a few tons.

The ribbon would be 100,000 km long and weigh about 750,000 tons. There’s a FAQ which answers many questions about safety. For instance, the ribbon would wrap 2.5 times around the Equator if it fell down… but such a thin ribbon would be mostly evaporated during re-entry. Dana Blankenhorn elaborates further on problems and opportunities. However, Carey Gage, among others, makes the point that such a structure is presently impossible to defend.

Oops.

My rating on vnunet‘s Geek-o-meter is (tah-dah!) 97%.

Ooh, who’s a clever boy then? Or, increasingly (and eventually exclusively) who’s a clever girl then? You really are a geek, and you do know your stuff. You didn’t get fooled by those laughably easy questions. On the other hand, which did you get wrong? How very annoying. Now you’d better just go back and try it again (and again, and again), or you’ll never be able to rest easy. Obsessive idiot.

Yeah, right! What did I get wrong…?

Thanks to Simon Bruning’s Small Values of Cool for the link.