Once
upon a time, not so long before the video-games era, people needed the
command-line and knowledge of esoteric commands like _examine_,
_look_, _take_, _drop_, _go south_ etc. to
get into the mysterious worlds of dungeons &
dragons. If you have nostalgia to the heroic times of text-based
adventure games (nowadays called IF for _interactive fiction_),
there is a short message : get Inform(ed)! Here’s a
slightly longer message for those who have a mac running OSX and want to
know the quickest way to get to a screen like 
and start
playing Christminster (or another of 300 IF-games) (if you’re on a
different system, things will be just as simple but you’ll have to find
it out yourself starting from the Inform-Z
machine page). step 1 : Get a
copy of an inform installation and expand it to get an
Inform-folder and place this in your Home-folder. step 2
: Go in the Finder to Inform/Games/MyGame1 and double click on
the _MyGame1.command_ file. A Terminal window will open and exit
and you will see that a new file appeared in the Folder :
_MyGame1.z5_. Double click it and a warning message will appear
that this is the first time you will open _Zoom_, tell it’s ok
and Zoom will launch and you can play your first (though primitive)
Inform game! step 3 : If you want to play other
games (such as Christminster), go to the Z-
code archive and pick one of the 346 games. For example, click on
the minster.z5 link and the file will download to your
Desktop. Place it in the Inform/Games folder (not necessary) double
click it and you should see the above wellcoming message. That’s it,
start playing. step 4 : If you don’t know how to
play such games, there are excellent tutorials
available on the Inform site.
Category: web
In the
‘subscribe
to my brain’ post I promised to blog on how-to get your own
button up and running on your homepage. It seems rather unlikely
that I’ll ever keep that promise if I don’t do it right away. So, here
we go for a quick tour :
step 1 : set up a rudimentary
FoaF-file : read the FoaF post if
you dont know what it’s all about. The easiest way to get a simple
FoaF-file of your own is to go to the FoaF-a-matic
webpage and fill in the details you feel like broadcasting over the
web, crucial is your name and email information (for later use) but
clearly the more details you fill out and the more Friends you add the
more useful your file becomes. Click on the ‘foaf-me’ button and
copy the content created. Observe that there is no sign of my email
adress, it is encrypted in the _mbox_sha1sum_ data. Give this
file a name like _foaf.rdf_ or _myname.rdf_ and put it on
your webserver to make it accessible. Also copy your
_mbox_sha1sum_ info for later smushing.
step 2 : subscribe to online services and modify your
online-life accordingly : probably you have already a few of
these accounts, but if not, take a free subscription just for fun and
(hopefully) later usage to the following sites :
- del.icio.us a social bookmarks manager
- citeUlike a service to
organise your academic papers - connotea a reference management
service for scientists - bloglines a web-based personal news
aggregator - 43things a
‘What do you want to do with your life?’ service - audioscrobbler a database that
tracks listening habits and does wonderful things with statistics - backpackit a ‘be better organized’ service (Update october 2017 : Tom Howard emails: “I thought I’d reach out because we’ve just updated our guide which reviews the best alternatives to Backpack. Here’s the link”
- flickr an online photo management and
sharing application - technorati a Google-for-weblogs
- upcoming a social event
calendar - webjay a playlist
community
So far, I’m addicted to del.icio.us and use
citeUlike but hardly any of the others (but I may come back to this
later). The great thing about these services is that you get more
value-information back if you feed more into the system. For example, if
you use del.icio.us as your ‘public’ bookmarks-file you get to
know how many other people have bookmarked the same site and you can
access their full bookmarks which often is a far more sensible way to
get at the information you are after than mindless Googling. So, whereas
I was at first a bit opposed to the exhibisionist-character of these
services (after all, anyone with web-access can have a look at
‘your’ info), I’ve learned that the ‘social’ feature of
these services can be beneficial to get the right information I want.
Hence, the hardest part is not to get an account with these services but
to adopt your surfing behavior in such a way that you maximize this
added value. And, as I mentioned before, I’m doing badly myself but hope
that things will improve…
step 3 : turn these
accounts into an OPML file : Knowing the URL of your foaf-file
and sha1-info (step 1) and your online accounts, go to the FOAF Online Account
Description Generator and feed it with your data. You will then get
another foaf-file back (save the source in a file such as
_accounts.rdf_ and put it on your webserver). Read the Lost Boy’s
posts Subscribe to my
brain and foaf:
OnlineAccount Generator for more background info. Then, use the SubscribeToMyBrain-
form to get an OPML-file out of the account.rdf file and your sha1.
Save the source as _mybrain.opml_.
step 4 :
add/delete information you want : The above method uses generic
schemes to deduce relevant RSS-data from an account name, which works
for some services, but doesn’t for all. So, if you happen to know the
URL of RSS-feeds for one of these services, you can always add it
manually to the OPML-file (or delete data you don’t want to
publish…). My own attitude is to make all public web-data
available and to leave it to the subscriber to unsubscribe those parts
of my brain (s)he is not interested in. I know there are people whoo are
mainly interested to find out whether I put another paper online, would
tolerate some weblog-posts but have no interest in my musical tast,
whereas there are others who would like me to post more on 43things,
flickr or upcoming and don’t give a damn about my mathematics…
Apart from these online subscriptions, it is also a good idea to include
additional RSS-feeds you produce, such as those of your weblog or use my
Perl
script to have your own arXiv-feeds.
step 5 : make
your ‘subscribe to my brain’-button : Now, put the
OPML-file on your webserver, put the button
on your
homepage and link it to the file. Also, add information on your site,
similar to the one I gave in my own
subscription post so that your readers know what to do when do want
to subscribe to (parts of) your brain. Finally, (and optionally though
I’d wellcome it) send me an email with your URL so that I can subscribe
(next time you’re in Antwerp I’ll buy you a beer) and for the first few
who do so and are working in noncommutative geometry and/or
noncommutative algebra, I’ll send a copy of a neverending book. Mind
you, this doesn’t apply to local people, I’m already subscribed to their
brain on a daily basis…
Freewheeling on your interests may lead to interesting discoveries.
Today I wanted to add some meat to my FoaF file and discovered in the
vocabulary the foaf:meyersBriggs
tag
The foaf:myersBriggs property represents the
Myers Briggs (MBTI) approach to personality taxonomy. It is included in
FOAF as an example of a property that takes certain constrained values,
and to give some additional detail to the FOAF files of those who choose
to include it. The foaf:myersBriggs property applies only to the
foaf:Person class; wherever you see it, you can infer it is being
applied to a person.
The foaf:myersBriggs property is interesting
in that it illustrates how FOAF can serve as a carrier for various kinds
of information, without necessarily being commited to any associated
worldview. Not everyone will find myersBriggs (or star signs, or blood
types, or the four humours) a useful perspective on human behaviour and
personality. The inclusion of a Myers Briggs property doesn’t indicate
that FOAF endorses the underlying theory, any more than the existence of
foaf:weblog is an endorsement of soapboxes.
Okay, but
how to determine your MB-type (after all there are just 16 such types)?
Clearly, you can consult the official Myers-Briggs page. You
can also follow the online Test,
but by far the quickest way to determine your type is to look up the Myers-Briggs
intro. One makes four choices between 2 options (pretty obvious, at
least to me). In a few seconds it was clear to me that I had to be an
INTJ-personality. But, what does this mean? There is an excellent
page The
Personality Type Portraits explaining what kind of information is
contained in your MB-type : ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers
ESTJ –
The Guardians
ISFJ – The Nurturers
ESFJ – The Caregivers
ISTP – The Mechanics
ESTP – The Doers
ESFP – The
Performers
ISFP – The Artists
ENTJ – The Executives
INTJ – The Scientists
ENTP – The Visionaries
INTP – The
Thinkers
ENFJ – The Givers
INFJ – The Protectors
ENFP
– The Inspirers
INFP – The Idealists
This may look like a
self-fulfilling phrophecy but I swear I didn’t know any of these types
before. Still, let’s have a look how a typical INTJ is
supposed to interact with others
Other people may have a
difficult time understanding an INTJ. They may see them as aloof and
reserved. Indeed, the INTJ is not overly demonstrative of their
affections, and is likely to not give as much praise or positive support
as others may need or desire. That doesn’t mean that he or she doesn’t
truly have affection or regard for others, they simply do not typically
feel the need to express it.
sounds familiar? Another
eye-opener
When under a great deal of stress, the INTJ
may become obsessed with mindless repetitive, Sensate activities, such
as over-drinking. They may also tend to become absorbed with minutia and
details that they would not normally consider important to their overall
goal.
Fortunately, I ended up with a common career for
my MB-type…