Huddled Masses

The GeoShell IRC channel has always been one of the primary sources of tech tidbits for people who hang out there, which is hardly suprising considering the fairly tech-savvy populace, and the fact that techies seem incapable of keeping interesting developments to themselves.

It’s common practice for people to share the links they find most interesting with everyone in the channel, and many an hour has been spent discussing news stories, product releases, browser vulnerabilities, and even the occasional photoshopped photo (not to mention the discussion that usually ensues when someone uses a word like photoshopped and everyone has to wonder if it’s really a word).

At any rate … I’ve decided to bring some of that to the web. I thought it would be interesting to create a log of the URL’s being posted, and after a little hunting I found some python script which turned out to be just the thing. So now you can read the #geoShell link log any time. And as you can see in the right-hand column, I’m bringing those links to my personal website. As a precaution, those links are posted in near real-time, and edited by me in something approaching “spare time,” which means that you may find links on there that I don’t really approve of. (blah blah blah)

I’m going to work to improve the chump bot (the script which collects these links from IRC) in the next couple of weeks (primarily with the intent of making it easier for me to control the quality of the links, since I’m posting them on my site). And of course, as the residents of #geoshell get used to the linker bot, we may find the level of comments on the links improves (or we may find that people get bored of it, and stop using the bot except by accident), we shall see.

By the way, if you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been posting, and where the comments have gone … I’m still working on this site redesign, but school and the holidays have conspired to slow things down, so take a deep breath, and enjoy some of the link logs.

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