Blame it on the Tron

I watched old school Tron the other night. So much awesome kitch in that movie, I couldn't stop grinning during the whole thing.

Some things I noticed, since last time I watched it, a few decades ago:

The "Watseka" street sign sounded really familiar. Lo and behold:

View Larger Map

I live within 10 miles of Flynn's! We'll have to pay homage some time. Here's the wider shot.

I don't think they used the same spot for Tron: Legacy, though.

I also don't remember this blatant Easter egg:

They even sampled the Pac-Man sound effects. I remember Pac-Man being such an incredible craze at the time (we sang the "Pac-Man Fever" song in school once, badly), but somehow I never caught it here.

The Messianic overtones of the movie were pretty interesting too — Flynn being the User/god, come to inhabit the world of programs in order to save them. I certainly didn't pick that up as an 8-year old. Then again, it's only these days that I spend any time wondering whether our reality is just a computer simulation.

Here's a bit of dialogue I liked quite a bit.  Flynn has just revealed to Tron that he is actually a User, and not just a program, like the rest of them.

Tron: "If you are a User, then everything you've done has been according to a plan, right?

Flynn: "You wish! You guys know what it's like; you just keep doing what it looks like you're supposed to be doing, no matter how crazy it seems."

Tron: "That's the way it is with programs, yes..."

Flynn: "I hate to disappoint you pal, but most of the time that's the way it is for Users, too."

Tron: "Stranger and stranger."

Wise words.

Facebook Dis

Have you ever been alone, minding your own business, and suddenly realize that someone has been following you, watching your every move, for the past two hours?

That's what it feels like when I'm visiting different websites and I suddenly see:

"[various friends] like this."

The scary thing is that the stalker metaphor is quite appropriate – Facebook really is stalking you, keeping track of wherever you go whenever you see one of these.

So I really liked a Chrome extension called Facebook Disconnect.  Unfortunately, it tends to break some sites (Scrabble, in particular).  So I extended the extension to allow whitelisting certain sites.

Presenting:  Facebook Dis.

If you really want to get fancy you can read the whitelist from a specific URL, say a website or public Dropbox file.  This lets you to configure several installations of Facebook Dis in a single place; all instances will stay up to date automatically the next time you open your browser or click "refresh" from the options page.

Thanks to Brian Kennish for the original Facebook Disconnect.

Fast Make for Vim

2019-02-12 update - Added g:Make_quickfix_always_open option.

2014-05-18 update - This is now vim-make on GitHub.

I wasn't really satisfied with Vim's :make behavior so I wrote a script to do what I wanted.

• Saves buffer first
  
• If there are errors, show them in the quickfix window
• Success is reported in the status bar
  
• Saves some keystrokes, especially if mapped to F5
  

Here it is. You can put it in ~/.vim/plugin/Make.vim, or if you are using pathogen, ~/.vim/bundle/Make/plugin/Make.vim.

This is basically my first Vim plugin so please let me know if there are things I could improve.

"=============================================================================
" File: Make.vim
" Author: Victor Shih <victor.shih@gmail.com>
" Last Change: 2/11/2019
" Version: 0.02
" WebPage: http://blog.vicshih.com/2011/03/fast-make-for-vim.html
" Description: Modestly enhanced `make` for Vim.
"

function! Make(args)
  " Compile arguments.
  let l:args = strlen(a:args) ? ' ' . a:args : ''
  let l:title = expand('%') . ' - Make' . l:args

  " Force write.
  silent update!

  " Find the closest directory to the current file with a [Mm]akefile.
  let l:makefile_dir = s:find_makefile_dir()

  " Move to that directory and make.
  let l:out = split(system('cd ' . l:makefile_dir . ' && make' . l:args), "\n")
  let l:len = len(l:out)

  " Output to quickfix.
  cgetexpr l:out
  let w:quickfix_title = l:title

  if g:Make_quickfix_always_open == 1 || l:len > 1
    copen
    cc 1
  elseif l:len == 0
    " No output; just report success.
    cclose
    redraw
    echo l:title . ' succeeded'
  else
    " Output is a single line; echo it.
    cclose
    cc 1
    redraw
    echo l:out[0]
  endif
endfunction


function s:find_makefile_dir()
  let l:dir = expand('%:p:h')

  while 1
    " Ensure we have only one '/'.
    if !empty(glob(substitute(l:dir, '/$', '', '') . '/[Mm]akefile'))
      return l:dir
    else
      let l:parent = fnamemodify(l:dir, ':h')
      if l:parent ==# l:dir
        " We reached the root but didn't find a Makefile.
        return '.'
      endif

      let l:dir = l:parent
    endif
  endwhile
endfunction


" Register command.
command! -nargs=? Make call Make("<args>")

let g:Make_quickfix_always_open = get(g:, 'Make_quickfix_always_open', '0')
let g:Make_loaded = 1

Ruby Autoflush

Google seems to need help with this particular association, so here goes.

In Ruby, to flush currently buffered data just once, call flush on the handle in question:

STDOUT.flush

To "autoflush", or continuously flush output immediately, set the sync attribute:

STDOUT.sync = true

References: flush, sync

Keyboard Shortcuts for Facebook Photo Tagging

Finally got around to tagging some photos in Facebook. I probably would not have bothered, had gleeBox not made it a bit tolerable by providing some form of keyboard shortcuts for the process:

• Created an "ESP vision" for the Page URL

  facebook.com/photo.php

  with the jQuery selector
  

  #photoactions>a[onclick],input[type="submit"]
#photoactions>a:first-child,input[type="submit"]



• Changed my "Shortcut to launch gleeBox" to ";"

This allows tagging to go as follows:

• Navigate to a Facebook photo album


• Press ;<ENTER> with left hand to enter tagging mode


• Tag at will


• Press ;<ENTER> again to leave tagging mode


• Left-click photo to move to the next photo

With the target crosshairs, it's about as close to an FPS you can get.

7/24/10 Update: Updated to skip new "Share" link.

Mac Remote Desktop Connection Keyboard Shortcuts

To send the three-finger salute, Ctrl+Alt+Del, to a Windows box when you are connected using a Mac via Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection, try Ctrl+Option+Delete (backspace).