If you have grown up with computers and computer networks in the early days, replacing smiley character combinations with graphical icons is evil at best. I am still upset that Apple can‘t provide a hacker compatible option to turn that stuff off. Instead, when I type something like chown(8) in a chat, the number gets replaced with these nasty little things.

Today I reached my limit and went for a hunting session. And I found the little bastards. They are hidden in a property list file in the InstantMessage system framework. You can change the mapping in the files (SmileyTable.plist) manually or – to make a long story short – you can just kill them by typing:

sudo rm /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/InstantMessage.framework/Versions/A/Resources/*.lproj/SmileyTable.plist

And the martyrdom is over.

Don Park has some interesting thoughts on social software and dead people where „social software“ means networks like Orkut or Blogs or Wikis:

It would also be interesting to turn my blog into a wiki-ish blog after I died so that my friends can post to my blog for one reason or another.  In a sense, ‘I‘ continue to live within the mind of my friends so ‘I‘ am still blogging from the grave.

He also touches upcoming deaths that are sure to happen:

What should happen when a member of Orkut or LinkedIn dies?  It‘s bound to happen or have happened already.  Should his node disappear?  That doesn‘t make sense.  Two people having a friend in common is relevant even if the friend happens to be dead.  But if the node is left within the network, what are the downsides other than having to add a gravestone icon to the profile?

Good question.

Jeremy Zawodny writes in his blog about Why Google Needs Orkut and makes some interesting points although I find most of them quite apparent. I am sure that Google will sooner or later use the personal data to optimize their search engine and maybe for more. However, read the comments as well, the discussion is interesting.

Ever thought of clearing out your flat? Better start now before it looks like this.

The HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux document tries to list common problems bringing women into the open source community.

This document began with the verbatim recommendations of the women who attended the LinuxChix BOF, and was added to by many more women in the months following the original BOF. In other words, this HOWTO represents the feelings and opinions of real women involved in Linux. While we represent the women who „made it,“ we still have fairly important insights into why other women left or never entered the Linux community, as well as being keenly aware of the pressures which are currently pushing us out of the community.

http://www.rxweightloss.org

Arve Bersvendsen has digged a bit deeper into Orkut: Why you should read Terms of Services and Privacy Policies.

Pentanium Cable Spools is the only thing that resists terrorism!

„I need to buy some stock of this company“

LOL!

Hooray! The Blinkenlights Toolkit is now almost completely available for Mac OS X via the DarwinPorts system. So now it‘s a lot easier to get everything installed properly without going through the lengthy process I described earlier.

To make it work for you, you have install DarwinPorts first. After having fetched everything, there should be four ports available that relate to Blinkenlights:

• blib – the Blinkenlights Library, foundation of the whole Toolkit
• blinkentools – the Blinkenlights Command Line Tools for converting and sending Blinkenlights movies
• blinkensim – the Blinkenlights Simulator allowing to visualize Blinkenlights Movies send via the Blinkenlights Protocol
• blinkenthemes – companion theme files for the Blinkenlights Simulator

After having completed the DarwinPorts installation, you can simply install everything by typing:

  $ sudo port install blib
  $ sudo port install blinkentools
  $ sudo port install blinkenthemes
  $ sudo port install blinkensim

This is it. After installing everything, all the programs should be available in /opt/local/bin. Keep in mind that there are several dependencies, especially the simulator needs access to X Windows so you should have X11 (which is included in the Mac OS X 10.3 Install CD 3) and the X11 SDK installed (which is included in the Developer Tools CD) both of which are not enabled by default.

Furthermore, there are several other options how to build blib. For instance, there is an experimental option for having the blinkensim output via aalib to the terminal instead of using X11. It‘s sort of nice, but the (non-existent) performance of Terminal.app makes it even more experimental. However, if you want to build it that way, you have to install blib with sudo port install blib +aa instead.

I will explain more about using the Blinkenlights Toolkit here soon. For those who know the DarwinPorts integration it should be much easier to track changes. Please note that DarwinPorts itself is under heavy development and that minor issues might come up now and then.

The latest bluetooth software and firmware updates finally enable bluetooth headsets on Mac OS X. What this means is that you can use a bluetooth headset as a regular sound input and output device selectable in the Sound Preference Pane.

I hooked up my Sony Ericsson HBH-35 headset and it worked immediately as expected. While listening to your Music with a headset is not really recommendable, it works great with iChat audio conferences. Now telephony is truely wireless, really cool.