hultberg.org: Mannes blog

The "powerlaw" distribution pattern

Clay Shirky has written a very interesting piece on a phenomenon called "powerlaw distribution". This is the distribution pattern that in a natural way emerges in a system where freedom of choice is available between many different offerings.

The article uses the weblog world to exemplify the powerlaw distribution, explaining that is is only natural that a very limited number of blogs attract the majority of the readers.

This is not because of any elitism or snobbish attitudes. It is simply what happens when a system scales to the point that the number of options to choose from can not easily be overviewed.

"In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution."

Incredibly interesting, and eye-opening.

Shirky: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality

Alright! Shellscript for automatic rebuilding of PhonoPhoto done!

Since I am still developing PhonoPhoto, all emails containing photos are kept on the server, so I can change my script, empty out the PhonoPhoto-repository and then do a full import of all PhonoPhoto-emails rebuilding the repository from scratch every time. Tedious work...

Manually it involved cleaning out all entries in MySQL, cleaning out all original files and then running the PhonoPhoto-script to pop all the emails and import everything again.

Continue doing it manually would mean that I never could use the DynaMaster publishing tool for anything else but PhonoPhoto since I kept deleting all imported / uploaded images (regardless of origin) from the image archive in order to run the PhonoPhoto-script.

What I have done now is automate the commands for emptying the relevant tables in MySQL and use another of the great DynaMaster utility tools to clean out the relevant files stored by DynaMaster.

The "clean_dynamaster" utility runs on command line and cleans out only the files and images that are not referenced from the database. So emptying the PhonoPhoto tables in MySQL means that all the PhonoPhoto images in the image archive in DynaMaster suddenly have no references from published articles... ...and are then swiftly removed by the clean_dynamaster utility.

Then I run the PhonoPhoto-script rebuilding PhonoPhoto from scratch.

As an added bonus, the clean_dynamaster utility also cleans out old cached objects. Excellent stuff.

From 10 (dangerous and nervously keyed in) commands in three different places in the file system I now only need one. Getting it right every time.

Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Hur tyst är tyst? I Malmberget är det tyst.

Blogsurfade lite och trillade på något sätt in hos Erik Tjernlund. Han fick mig att tänka på hur tyst det var när vi var 1000 meter under marken. Ingen brist på tyst där inte.

Eriks Webblogg: Avsaknaden av tyst

Jag var på en riktigt tyst plats dagen innan nyårsafton 2002. 1000 meter under marken, i gruvan under Malmberget. Fascinerande plats.

Bil ner längs asfalterad och upplyst väg, bra luft och bättre mobiltelefontäckning än ovan jord... Så till en början var det som en utflykt till landet, fast vi var tvungna att ta oss igenom en lång tunnel först. Riktigt lång. 25 mil asfalterad väg kan man köra utan att köra samma sträcka två gånger. Fast när vi lämnade de mer "civiliserade" områdena, då blev det spännande.

Drypande väggar, upplysta bara av billyktorna. Jag riktigt såg vättarna titta fram runt hörnen och väntade mig när som helst höra trummorna från underjorden. Var det inte lite ljus som från en balrog i tunneln där borta? Men inga trummor kom. Det vara bara tyst. Alldeles tyst.

När Janken stannade bilen och släckte allt ljus, då kom isoleringen. Inga ljud. Inget ljus. 1000 meter urberg över huvudet.

Borta.

Google and blogs kick "reality TV" butt

Hello! The verb "to google" enters the columnist pages in Swedish press. Follow the link to get a very entertaining column (in Swedish) by Per Ericson at Svenska Dagbladet about Google, weblogs and the apparent advantages that an open and accessible Internet steaming with activity and self proclaimed commentators brings to the table.

Besides: good to know that someone other than me and Cristina pukes on the concept of "reality TV"... Reading Swedish press today and watching TV you would think that there is nothing else worth watching or reading about.

SvD: Hellre googlar jag än glor på tv

Ten years ago this April: Mosaic saw the light of day

Time flies. Browsing the web as we know it has been around for ten years this month. Feels like only yesterday, all grey pages and we were totally fascinated when we could make bulleted lists...

Mosaic was released in April 1993. That was the starting point of Netscape, which then led on to Microsoft setting its sights for the open Internet as the platform for communication and dumping the proprietary Microsoft Network (I believe it was called, sounds innovative enough...).

"It was an accelerator for the whole Internet," said Larry Smarr, the former director of the computing center. "It sort of took the Internet to the next level of capability."

Well, it sure set me on the track to nerd-dom. ;) Better yet: it still fascinates me every day.

USATODAY.com - Mosaic: A decade ago, the click heard round the world

Before that it was all WAIS, Gopher, UseNet News, IRC, FSP... Suddenly it all came together in a simple to use and accesible way. I guess it became the glue that started gathering the critical mass.

I wonder however, as I recall we were using X-Mosaic before April 1993. I definitely think we had a web server running at the university by then, the one I and Kiwi later took responsibility of. The memories are blurred though. ;)

Wonderfully pointless

Totally without meaning or profoundly deep? Decide for yourself: www.laquestionaire.com.

Whatever you think, this sort of web gadget fascinates me.

Fascinating 1: Where does the idea to make a never ending survey with totally unrelated questions come from?

Fascinating 2: Who has the time and energy to actually implement the idea?

Fascinating 3: Who has the time and energy to actually implement the idea in an aesthetically and intellectually pleasing way?

Fascinating 4: How do people actually find the place...?

Fascinating 5: Who has the time and energy to actually register and participate...? ;)

Movable Type rocks

Five hours later I have configured MT to my liking, created new templates for entries and archives based on the hultberg.org look and feel and have a fully functioning blog system. Over my 28.8k-modem. Good stuff.

Installing Movable Type was a breeze. Our LAMP-system is indeed configured according to standards. :) The only "problem" I ran into was my MySQL-user not having privileges to create tables, causing mt-load.cgi to crash horribly. So now I have learned about the GRANT command in MySQL.

Re-hacking the templates was equally easy. Actually it reminds a lot of the DynaMaster-philosophy when it comes to inserting template tags for lists, variables and recurring design elements. I felt "at home" from the start, so to speak.

Since MT generates static files with all content, stitching the latest MT-entry together with the DynaMaster-driven start page of hultberg.org was about 60 seconds worth of template-creation and inserting a text file at the right spot.

I really like this.

My first MT-blog-entry

Ok, so this is my first entry in Movable Type. Kind of exciting, really. ;) Even though I work with WCM-systems for a living I still get a tingling feeling when I post something on the web.

Biggest question is of course what I should do with this tool... I do however have a plan. Two of them actually:

1. Document my evolving skills (sub-skills at the moment...) in Perl-programming. I have recently acquired a taste for Perl, and thought it would be nice to be able to follow my findings, experiences, frustrations and problems as I try to learn more.

2. Learn enough about Movable Type to combine with my growing Perl skills to such an extent that I can develop and release a plugin, allowing for the automated publishing of photos sent from my phone. In other words: rewrite PhonoPhoto from scratch and adapt it to Movable Type.

Sounds easy enough... ;)

Beginning Perl

Ok, from the kid stuff (Perl & CGI för webben) on to one of those red books with scary nerds on the cover. At least this Simon dude looks friendly. Doesn't he look quite a bit like Josef Falk though?

Title: Beginning Perl
Author: Simon Cozens with Peter Wainwright
Publisher: Wrox
ISBN: 1-861003-14-5

Irresistible book cover: "Perl is for everyone: the Windows user, the UNIX guru, and even the PDA enthusiast. It's available for a wide range of platforms and has some serious power for you to use. Better still, it's easy, it's really flexible and it's genuinely fun to learn."

How could I ever refuse to take that book with me home from the library? Impossible. As it turns out, Simon is right. Perl IS fun. And not that hard to get started with, provided that you have some prior experience in basic programmin concepts and don't worry too much about the details.

This is a great book. Even for a novice like me, it has a tremendous lot to offer and it is presented in an easy to read manner using good examples and code walkthroughs. Every chapter has a number of exercises with sample solutions (remember: there is more than one way to do it...) at the back of the book.

The first five chapters, up to regular expressions, are very easy to grasp. I am not so sure I will ever understand the part about references though... But they do seem awfully important. ;)

The book also briefly covers object oriented Perl techniques, debugging techniques, cgi and databases. The last chapter is an overview of related topics such as packages for graphical interfaces, LDAP, security and cryptography and more.

I really enjoyed this book. Easy to read, yet challenging. Strong first half focusing on core concepts, more confusing second half (perhaps a bit beyond the "beginning" part of the title...) but definitely well written enough to create more curiosity than fear.

Now it is time to take on the ultimate beginner book: The Llama Book. Learning Perl. Once I am through that (hey, repetition is the mother of all knowledge) I should have enough basic understanding of Perl to actually start reading other's code and start producing reasonable code myself, for my simple purposes.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1861003145/qid=1051654753/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/104-2212766-5912700?v=glance&s=books