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Hide Google Plus Notifications on Google and Gmail

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Natan Yellin in Uncategorized

Tired of Google aggressively pushing Google Plus? Don’t want to share your search results with friends?  Not feeling social while you read your email?

I wrote a tiny userstyle to hide Google Plus notifications on Google and Gmail. I’ll update it as necessary.

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Goodbye Planet GNOME

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Natan Yellin in Gnome, Uncategorized

I have been a Planet GNOME blogger for almost three years now. Every post has been a pleasure. I learned some truly odd and interesting things, like how to strangely pass parameter in C and how the kernel reads shebangs.

For over two years PGO has put up with my oddities, like buying AskJeevesMom.com and writing poems about Mars, and discussing interplanetary CDNs. I never received warnings to stay on topic or to get my act together, but I can’t say I never feared it. All those fears were unfounded. The GNOME community is the most friendly and welcoming online community I know. #gnome-hackers was my home as a teenager and I don’t think I heard a dirty word once. The GNOME community simply rocks.

Knowing that my posts end up on PGO has always made blogging seem like a bold and glorious undertaking, though I felt a midget among giants. My posts end up on the same page where HP blogs and Mark Shuttleworth announces and incredible kernel hackers post all sorts of things I don’t understand, but maybe one day will.

Tonight I’m saying goodbye because in three weeks my blog will be removed from PGO and I support that decision.

You see, my blog was once about GNOME and Linux. When I was added to PGO in 2009, I was a new and passionate GNOME user who blogged about Zeitgeist. Today I use OS X and occasionally GNOME 2. I used to be passionate about FOSS, but nowadays I’m a student and I’m just happy if I eat two meals a day, preferably with a cup of fresh squeezed orange juice, assuming that isn’t over-budget, but of course it always is.

It has been a pleasure. If you want to follow me, subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed, or follow @aantn or nyellin on reddit, or plus me, or even just email me and ask me to send emails back occasionally (aantny at gmail). Do people still use RSS? I still use email. You can even send me an old fashioned letter with a cookie inside, but you’ll have to email me for my address and I can’t promise to eat the cookie. Okay, I wont eat it. But I’ll stay in touch and hopefully some of you will too.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

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Away from home? Hack some good for the holidays

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Natan Yellin in Uncategorized

Happy holidays, everyone!

I’m off for Hanukah and I want to donate a few holiday hours to a charitable project. Do you know of a good cause that could use a C hacker or independent Python web developer? Let me know and I’ll donate four hours tomorrow night, with the goal of continuing to help out during the new year.

Are you a coder yourself? Can you pledge the same? Send me an email and we will code for good tomorrow.

Update: Join us in #holidayhack on Freenode!

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Dear Google, Please Stop This

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Natan Yellin in Uncategorized

I hate it when Google auto-corrects my searches without telling me.

I didn’t search for Magic or hotkeys. It’s okay to auto-correct, but give me an undo link.

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Emacs can’t do everything

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Natan Yellin in Uncategorized

Tonight something incredible happened: I asked Emacs to solve my physics homework and it couldn’t. If you think Emacs can do everything, think again: there is no (require ‘physics). Go solve assignments yourself.

You might be laughing, but this no joke. In the process of coding and writing fiction, I have canoodled Emacs into unzipping files, trailing log files, displaying inline latex previews in org-mode, disassembling java classes, and converting variable names between CamelCase and c_style. My Emacs also commits to git and ClearCase, displays a minimap, looks up synonyms online, browses local files, browses the web, reads my emails, plays typing games with me, and provides a more vimmy vim than vim itself. Hell, Emacs can even play chess.

I didn’t produce the above list from thin air. I looked in my .emacs and reviewed what Emacs has done for me lately. If Emacs can do all that – and I hear it can provide psychotherapy services over irc – then Emacs should be able to solve my physics assignments. Go figure.

(Now, supposing you aren’t an Emacs user, don’t you think it’s time you found out what Glorious Emacs can do for you?)

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