Moving things around.. what propagates where etc.
Not so much, but where content for here flows.
My Tumblr’s been an attempt at a Lifestream, but now that proper one’s are emerging (ie Swurl, FriendFeed, SocialThing!), I’m dialing that back, and it’ll be more a digital scrapbook, peppered with comments from Whitechapel and such.
or, in other words.. test post - ignore!
Yesterday I wrote up a way to create an emulation of Twitter’s Track Feature.
This is a great for tracking keywords, but not really for tracking usernames. This is especially the case if you are already following that person (because you’ll get duplicate tweets), or that person is yourself (because, well you know what you sent, right?).
The whole point of tracking a username (particularly your own) is to catch any replies across the Twitter’verse; to let you save SMS Notifications by only switching them on for the minimal set of people, yet still be able to converse with anyone that replies to your tweets.
To complete the emulation of Twitter’s Track feature (until it’s re-enabled) I built this Yahoo!Pipe.
Enter the username you want to Track, press Run Pipe and add the resultant RSS Feed to your Twitterfeed account.
UPDATE: sadly Yahoo!Pipes doesn’t seem to be living up to it’s potential. I’m updating this as I find what works over on my wiki.
So it seems I am not the only one missing the Track feature of Twitter. Sean Bonner mentioned the same thing in his latest update on how he is using it:
The most notable is that they pulled down the “track” feature which was really my favorite thing they ever did. Honestly I can’t wait for them to bring it back online because without it Twitter is about 10% as functional for me as it was previously. Luckily there are a few services like Summize which allow you to see who is talking about things you might be interested in but that requires going to the site and running specific searches for each keyword.
After reading this I realized I had all the pieces of the solution, I just had not put them together.
As I said on Sean’s site, given Twitter are prioritizing restoring IM, I think it will be a while before Track is re-enabled.
So here is an elaboration of the steps I left in the comment, that should help us all cope in the interim.
Twitterfeed has a minimum poll-rate of thirty minutes, so you still won’t get exactly instant notifications, but it will be close to it.
Something Ariana said on the Whitechapel thread about Terraforming Mars has been bubbling away in the back of my head; namely that once we get there we need to breed like heck. Because it’s far cheaper to populate it by ‘ole fashioned reproduction, than to send ships back and forth. And to expand beyond anything more than the barest toehold colony, we’re going to need lots of bodies (and robot friends).
All of which has me thinking about space harems and Zero-G polygamy - because once you go down that road, you realize that it will be a far more effective use of resources to send one man to every six women and let them go on a rutting frenzy, all in the name of Science and the Future. And with a 40min lag-time back to Earth, let’s face it - what else is there going to be to do on a cold Martian night?
As the Bindychild pointed out late Saturday night, this lends itself quite nicely to the Mormons. And I find myself wondering why, apart from Battlestar Galactica, these guys aren’t yearning to get into Space? Because my cursory knowledge of the Church of LDS is that they have quite the Alien belief system and that they’re a) polygamists b) big breeders and c) AFAIK not exactly poor - so surely they’d make some ideal collaborators to get the Mars Colony off the ground.
Because I’m seriously done waiting around for this, and starting to look around to figure out exactly where my Space Future went. So let’s start forming whatever alliances are necessary to get out there. Even if, as watching John Adams hints to me, we’ll most likely end up repeating the great American experiment - as a group of people, all leaving their homeland for vastly different reasons, banding together against a common enemy to create a vastly different Future.
I must admit I’d have reservations about any Scientologists being involved. Apart from that, let’s do it already. Build a true coalition of the willing and bold.
What do we need to change to nudge this thing along? Can we co-opt “reality-tv”? Survivor: Phobos? The Amazing Race: LEO?
Can’t I put my superannuation contributions (or Social Security, as it’s called in the US), which I’m likely not going to touch for around 50 years, can’t I make them do something useful in the interim? Where’s my freaking Space-Friendly Investment Fund?!
I don’t care if it’s low-earning; just do something I care about, instead of propping up hedge funds, funding ridiculous take-overs, and what ever else Global Capital does with the forced savings of ~20million people.
Seriously, the Eco Freakz can consume ‘greenly’ for just about everything now - why can’t I spend my money in a space-friendly way?!
In conclusion: MARS!!! And my foot standing on it, shortly. Please. Let’s GO!
Now, what pieces of the puzzle am I missing People?
Do the Mormons already have a space program? Or do the Scientologists? Are there already rumors of the spaceship “L Ron. Hubbard” being assembled in some underground bunker already? Has someone other than Heinlein wrote compelling tales about free-loving space-colonists in Zero G?
Any good theme suggestions btw?
