Hello lazyweb,

I want to run some “legacy” software (Trac, specifically) on a Swarm cluster. The files that it needs to store are mostly effectively write-once (it’s the attachments database) but may need to be deleted (spammers and purveyors of malware occasionally try to upload things for spamming or C&C) so while mutability is necessary, there’s a very low risk of any write contention.

I can’t use a networked filesystem, or any volume drivers, so no easy-mode solutions. Basically I want to be able to deploy this on any swarm cluster, so no cheating and fiddling with the host.

Is there any software that I can easily run as a daemon that runs in the background, synchronizing the directory of a data volume between N containers where N is the number of hosts in my cluster?

I found this but it strikes me as ... somehow wrong ... to use that as a critical part of my data-center infrastructure. Maybe it would actually be a good start? But in addition to not being really designed for this task, it’s also not open source, which makes me a little nervous. This list, or even this smaller one is huge and bewildering. So I was hoping you could drop me a line if you’ve got an idea what I could use for this.

I like keeping a comprehensive an accurate addressbook that includes all past email addresses for my contacts, including those which are no longer valid. I do this because I want to be able to see conversations stretching back over the years as originating from that person.

Unfortunately this causes problems when sending mail sometimes. On macOS, at least as of El Capitan, neither the Mail application nor the Contacts application have any mechanism for indicating preference-order of email addresses that I’ve been able to find. Compounding this annoyance, when completing a recipient’s address based on their name, it displays all email addresses for a contact without showing their label, which means even if I label one “preferred” or “USE THIS ONE NOW”, or “zzz don’t use this hasn’t worked since 2005”, I can’t tell when I’m sending a message.

But it seems as though it defaults to sending messages to the most recent outgoing address for that contact that it can see in an email. For people I send email to regularly to this is easy enough. For people who I’m aware have changed their email address, but where I don’t actually want to send them a message, I think I figured out a little hack that makes it work: make a new folder called “Preferred Addresses Hack” (or something suitably), compose a new message addressed to the correct address, then drag the message out of drafts into the folder; since it has a recent date and is addressed to the right person, Mail.app will index it and auto-complete the correct address in the future.

However, since the previous behavior appeared somewhat non-deterministic, I might be tricking myself into believing that this hack worked. If you can confirm it, I’d appreciate it if you would let me know.

I think I’m using GitHub wrong.

I use a hodgepodge of https: and : (i.e. “ssh”) URL schemes for my local clones; sometimes I have a remote called “github” and sometimes I have one called “origin”. Sometimes I clone from a fork I made and sometimes I clone from the upstream.

I think the right way to use GitHub would instead be to always fork first, make my remote always be “origin”, and consistently name the upstream remote “upstream”. The problem with this, though, is that forks rapidly fall out of date, and I often want to automatically synchronize all the upstream branches.

Is there a script or a github option or something to synchronize a fork with upstream automatically, including all its branches and tags? I know there’s no comment field, but you can email me or reply on twitter.

Monads are simple to understand.

You can just think of them like a fleet of mysterious inverted pyramids ominously hovering over a landscape dotted with the tombs of ancient and terrible gods. Tombs from which they may awake at any moment if they are “evaluated”.

The IO loop is then the malevolent personification of the force of entropy, causing every action we take to push the universe further into the depths of uncontrolled chaos.

Simple!

This is an experiment with a subtly different format.

Right now when I want to say something quickly, I pop open the Twitter app and just type it. But I realized that the only reason I'm doing this rather than publishing on my own site is a UI affordance: Twitter lets me hit two keys to start composing, ⌘N and then two keys to finish, ⌘Return. Also, to tweet something, I don't need to come up with a title.

So I added an Emacs minor-mode that lets me hit a comparable number of keys; translated into the Emacs keyboard shortcut idiom it is of course Meta-Shift-Control-Hyper-C Backflip-LeftPedal-N to create a post and Bucky-Reverse-Erase-x Omega-Shift-Epsilon-j to publish it. Such posts will be distinguished by the presence of the "microblog" tag and the empty title.

(Also, the sky's the limit in terms of character-count.)

Feel free to let me know if you think the format works or not.