I think emacs has a perfectly fine control scheme, and is certainly a very powerful program, but I prefer the simplicity of vim’s modal input. Many vim users, however, seem unaware of many things that vim can do. (Many emacs users, similarly, seem to think vim isn’t capable of emacs-like tricks.)

But I am here to dispel these false notions! Here’s a list of many possibly-lesser-known vim tricks, many of which I use on a daily basis. They aren’t complicated, so you don’t need to know much about vim to figure them out. If you have any other tips, leave them in a comment. If you don’t know how to use vim but want to find out, type “vimtutor” at a command line and read the instructions.

Multipliers: Prefixing any command with a number causes that command to occur that many times. If you want to write the character ‘x’ 80 times, just type 80 i x [ESC] and the character x will be inserted 80 times. This works for all sorts of things.

Actions and motions: You might be unaware, but actions like delete (d), change (c), and yank (y) take “motions” as an argument of sorts. Motions include end of file (G), start of line (^), end of line ($), next word (w), and matching brace (%). Executing any of these motions as a command causes the cursor to immediately jump to that location. (If the cursor is on a parenthesis, square bracket, or curly brace, % jumps you to the matching one, whether before or after.) Their true power comes when you combine them with actions, however: d% deletes the matching braces and everything in between; cG deletes the rest of the file and places you into insert mode; yw will copy the next word. In Scheme, I’ve found d% and y% indispensable for moving around S-expressions.

Repeat last command: The . command repeats the last thing you did. If your last action was to delete the current line, . will delete the new current line. That’s all.

Navigating directories/archives: If you open a directory or archive in vim, it will show a file listing. You can move up and down the list as usual, but if you hit Enter, it will open the file/directory that your cursor is on. If you’re in an archive, it extracts a copy into a temporary directory.

Make: The command :mak or :make runs “make” in the current directory, showing you the result. If there are any compile errors, vim will automagically jump your cursor to the first one, even if it’s in a different file. The command :cn gets you to the next error, and :cN to the previous. This drastically reduces the time it takes to compile and fix errors, and is definitely the most useful tip here for any C programmers.

TOhtml: Your files are syntax highlighted when you view them in vim. But what if you want a syntax-highlighted copy of your file to distribute to others? Use the command :TOhtml, which opens a new edit buffer with an HTML syntax-highlighted version of your file, ready to save. If you prefer CSS instead of <font> tags, which you should, then first use the command :let html_use_css=1 or, better yet, put it in your .vimrc file so it’s always set.

Searching: To find a string in a file, use / followed by that string. For instance, /char [Enter] will jump you to the next occurrence of “char.” The setting :set hlsearch (best placed in your .vimrc) causes vim to highlight every matching search occurrence in the file. Simply typing / [Enter] will get you to the next one. :noh turns off the highlighting.

Indentation: If you want to indent with spaces instead of tabs, set expandtab in your .vimrc. Either way, set both shiftwidth and tabstop to the desired size of your tabs. To reindent the current line, use the command ==. A single = is an action, so =G will reindent every line from the current one to the end of the file. gg=G will therefore reindent your entire file. (gg moves to the beginning of the file.)

Splitting: You can edit multiple files side-by-side in a single instance of vim. Type in :sp for a horizontal split, or :vs for a vertical split, followed by the filename you want to open. You can further split either of these new windows. ctrl-W followed by an arrow key (or h, j, k, l) moves your cursor between files. Commands like :e, :w, and :q only affect the active split. (For instance, to close one file and continue editing the others, type in :q while that window is active.

This is just a small subset of vim’s features. I try to learn something new every week. By slowly adding more features to your repertoire, you’ll get increasingly efficient with your editing, without any additional thinking. And after all, that’s the goal with any text editor.

I’ll get a tracking number from, say, Amazon, before the package information is entered into their system. Fair enough. Other services (USPS, and I think FedEx as well) will return a page stating that the tracking number has been issued but they don’t have the package yet. But this is what I get from UPS (with the tracking number blacked out):

UPS tracking screenshot

The shipping date reflects my package’s shipping date, but the status, delivery date, signature, location, destination, service, and weight all correspond to a package which (presumably) previously used this same tracking number? (To wit, the delivery date is over a year before the shipping date.) Clicking on some links on that page gets me further tracking information about that previous package.

It seems as though they don’t actually delete tracking data–they merely overwrite it with new data as it comes in. They currently have only the shipping date of my package, so that’s the only part of that page which has been updated with my data. (Once they receive the package, all the remaining data is updated to reflect my package.)

This doesn’t seem like the right thing to do–they should clear out all the previous data once the tracking number is reissued. It doesn’t really matter, but I do get some information about some arbitrary package from about a year ago, and it could be potentially confusing. More importantly, it’s just kind of weird, and it’s happened to me several times recently.

• yggdrasil: old headless Compaq box procured from Jonah; main entry point in LAN (port 22 forwarded here)
• midgard: my primary computer; micro-ATX desktop I built in March
• ratatoskr: Windows 7 VM on midgard; needed a separate name for networking (samba, mostly?) purposes
• nidhoggr: my Dell Latitude D620 laptop; recently rehabilitated since I’m carrying it around campus next year
• huginn: cell phone’s Bluetooth device name
• muninn: iPod touch (8 GB, 1st gen) for music and internet in my pocket

I think that’s about it. All computers are running Ubuntu; midgard and nidhoggr have Vista and XP installs, respectively, in case I need Windows for something.

Let’s pause here for my endorsement of Google Reader. Google Reader is my gateway to the Internet, and there’s no way I could read as much online as I do without it. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept: most websites nowadays supply feeds of their content, so you can check up on their updates without constantly visiting the site. I subscribe to 41 websites, which update on entirely different timetables with wildly differing frequencies. But whenever I go to Google Reader, all my new Internets are there for the reading. (And since it’s a Google product, the past Internets are, of course, easily searchable.) If you don’t use a RSS feed reader yet, why not? You already have a Google Reader account if you have Gmail. DO IT. I’ll wait.

Okay. Here are the 15 webcomics I am currently subscribed to (it fluctuates every month or so).

Totally awesome:

• Nedroid Picture Diary. Oh my. This is probably my favorite webcomic. Every single one is totally amazing. Stars Reginald, a bird (of some sort?), and Beartato, a bear-tato. You need to read this.
• chainsawsuit. It doesn’t really make any sense, but that’s sort of the point. The best webcomic for those of you with no attention span.
• Dinosaur Comics. Hard to explain this one. It has a fair bit of text but always hits…some sort of point…right on the head. Stars T-Rex, a pretty cool dinosaur and dude. Very excellent.
• xkcd. Yeah, it’s a great comic. Math and romance and stick figures and whatever you already read this.
• Chronillogical. It’s a webcomic about time-traveling students by my friend Greg Poulos, and his friend John Chouinard. Great art and a great story. You have to start from the beginning, but it’s not that old. Do it.
• Penny Arcade. These guys are the veterans of the webcomic industry. Unfortunately, this comic doesn’t really make sense unless you are up-to-the-day on video game news. (Maybe you should subscribe to a gaming blog!) Every comic comes with a long blog entry, and often is making fun of something announced that morning.
• Sheldon Comic Strip. If you’re feeling nostalgic, this is basically a daily newspaper comic strip that isn’t in any newspapers. One difference: unlike newspaper comics, this is actually funny. Centers around a typical 10-year-old billionaire and his talking duck.
• pictures for sad children. Funny, kind of depressing sometimes, in a funny way.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Quite funny usually-one-panel strips with a twist caption. Quite irreverent but worth reading (just not around your parents!).

Here are the rest (which are still excellent) but I am sick of writing blurbs:

• Hark! A Vagrant. Generally about history. Pretty good even if you don’t know much about history.
• Thinkin’ Lincoln. It’s sort of about Lincoln. Used to be a lot funnier, but still pretty good.
• Gunshow. Just subscribed recently. Pretty funny.
• indexed. Funny graphs drawn on notecards.
• Buttersafe.  Reminds me a bit of pictures for sad children but more peaceful.
• Simulated Comic Product. Sometimes I wonder why I am subscribed to this. Then I remember it updates infrequently and is sort of funny.

Read away! If you have any suggestions for webcomics that I don’t subscribe to, leave them in the comments!

I especially like the embedded Google Calendar, which serves as a single updatable source for our entire year’s schedule. It can be easily synchronized very easily to iCal, Google Calendar, or Mozilla Sunbird, and comes with a much better web interface than I could ever design myself.

So I’ll admit that the above image is completely nonsensical, but it’s funnier if you recognize the context. The context, naturally, is something that could only be gleaned by spending plenty of time on the Internet.

Several years ago, somebody made a parody rap called “Bitches don’t know ’bout my dick.” In response, somebody posted this image on the Internet:

Ever since then, this picture has been endlessly Photoshopped, changing the face and words. Most notable of these parodies is the “BITCHES DONT KNOW BOUT MY DIABEETUS” picture featuring Wilford Brimley, long-time ex-actor (and guy who looks a bit like a walrus) on those Liberty Medical Supplies ads that run on random television stations occasionally. (Note also that “diabeetus” is a separate meme.)

Regarding the pylons–a famed real-time strategy computer game called StarCraft has a race called the Protoss whose buildings require energy pylons in the vicinity as power sources. Thus the “BITCHES DONT KNOW BOUT MY ADDITIONAL PYLONS” and Protoss head image which can continue to confuse everybody. If you want to really confuse somebody, go find a YouTube video about “…ADDITIONAL PYLONS” and show somebody unaware of memes and StarCraft. Hilarity ensues.

• One person reached my blog from the Google results for “how to court a christian girl.” I have verified that, in fact, I am at the moment the first of two Google results for “how to court a christian girl” (with quotes), thanks to my old post about how stupid WikiHow is.
• Except for the aforementioned man searching for a Christian girl, most people getting to my website from Google are searching for acfdb. One person searched for “matt weiner acf.” I hope they were not disappointed that my website lacks Matt Weiner.
• In fact, 67% of my traffic last month was directed at acfdb, which is a good sign, seeing as I hoped acfdb would actually be used.
• 17% of the traffic is to my blog. The remaining traffic is fairly evenly split between the other sections of my website.
• Slightly more than half of the visitors use Windows. Very few use Linux.
• My most popular non-recent blog entry (by far) is the math stand-up one.

In conclusion, my website has quizbowl resources, Christian advice, and math stand-up.

But the announcement a month ago of Diablo III has reminded me how many good games are in the works right now. Let’s see:

Blizzard alone has two very highly anticipated (as in, anticipated for the last decade) games on the way: Diablo III and Starcraft II. Of course, they’ll be coming out on a Blizzard-like schedule, which means in two years, but you can’t blame ‘em–all their games remain heavily played over a decade after their releases. They have to get it right, y’know?

Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour are coming out in a few months, and will surely be an improvement on the already-awesome Rock Band. Personally, I find Activision has been a negative influence on the Guitar Hero franchise. (Their ideas get worse and worse–guitar battles? DS game? Aerosmith-centered game!?) But regardless, I’m sure GH:WT will be a pretty cool game. And both games have great setlists!

There has been lots of good news besides game announcements: Final Fantasy XIII will not be a PS3 exclusive, Xbox Live might switch to free multiplayer gaming, console storage is going up (including Nintendo, who realized that a console should probably have more than 512 MB of storage).

More Portal levels are coming soon, and an entire sequel is in development. Bungie is working on a new Halo-related game (not my thing). And of course, Spore is on its way, and will be the last thing you’ll ever desire. (Sorry for the Battlecruiser 3000 reference, but Spore really isn’t my thing. I’ve never enjoyed a god game. But doesn’t Spore’s gameplay sound just a little bit like Battlecruiser 3000?)

Good times. But for the next few months, I can keep on truckin’ through Sanctuary with Bezos the Amazon, who is currently on Act 3 of Nightmare difficulty. Beware her level 20 Charged Strike. (Except for the lightning immune monsters which are really annoying me.)

Now, I don’t disagree that a “tiered Internet” is a bad thing, but I think that calling for legislation necessitating complete net neutrality is an overreaction, and is very likely in fact a bad idea. There are reasons why some degree of non-neutrality might be necessary or even preferable, but these points seem to get lost in a big “you vs. The Man” war in which, if you don’t stop The Man, he might severely restrict your Internet!

But maybe we should educate ourselves before we engage in this debate. The concept of net neutrality seems straightforward–essentially, that all Internet communications should be “treated equally”–but gets complicated once we start discussing what exactly that entails. So I figured that I would devote a few posts in here to explaining what net neutrality is, why people think it’s good, and why other people think it’s bad. It’s not a simple debate, but it’s irresponsible to support net neutrality as a savior of the Internet without realizing how harmful it might actually be.

“As we move to a broadband environment and eliminate century-old non-discrimination requirements, a lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive.” -Vint Cerf, co-creator of the TCP/IP protocol underlying the Internet, and net neutrality proponent

“I am totally opposed to mandating that nothing interesting can happen inside the net.” -Bob Kahn, co-creator of TCP/IP and net neutrality opponent

(Hey, by the way, you definitely ought to leave comments on my blog all the time!)

You can use the database at http://www.carloangiuli.com/acfdb. It currently has all the ACF tossups since 1999 Regionals in it, for a total of 10,703 questions, all of which have been categorized. (Many thanks to everyone who helped out, especially Jonah Greenthal and Ben Cohen, who apparently have nothing better to do than categorize thousands of tossups.)

The idea here is to allow people to more effectively study particular subjects. You can search for tossups by text, but you can also find all tossups on a certain category. Tossups are all labeled by their year, level, author, and number, so you can easily find them in the original packets if you’re interested. I haven’t added bonuses, because this isn’t meant as a place to read packets from — it’s just meant as a study tool, and tossups are much more uniform and easier to study off of. ACFDB features a powerful Boolean search tool and can export the results to a text file.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!