I just published a first version of whoarder, a python module that converts your Kindle's 'My Clippings.txt' file to a more pleasant, sortable, filterable HTML file:

The name is a pun on "words" and "hoarder", and urbandictionary tells me there's another NSFW meaning, which is awesome.

It's not big, it's as perfect as a first version can be, but it's a start I'm proud of, which let me put in practice the few Python books I just finished reading. So while they're hot, some newbie notes for you and for my future self:

• Python rocks. Batteries Included indeed; everything is here, and more. The native data types are powerful, the language is simple & pleasant yet featureful, and the community is awesome. WANT. TO. DO. MOAR. PYTHONZ.
• virtualenvwrapper helps to not smash your head against pointy hard stuff because of environment confusions, conflicts and weird pip magic. I point specifically to virtualenvwrapper (the shell companion to virtualenv) because, while virtualenv is obvious and virtualenvwrapper brings tremendous fluidity, the latter may be overlooked. I still don't understand PEP 405, though.
• The 'lean' vim/emacs setups sprouting around Hacker News like mushrooms around wet old pines are not yet for me. Maybe when I'm a bit more fluent and need less help. Having previously worked on C#/Java I'm still enclined to heavy IDEs and, with a few tweaks, PyDev is extremely usable. Performance is good and all the tools are here: highlighting, pylint/pep8 integration, debugging, refactoring, unit tests.
• Speaking of which, I'm falling in love with TDD / unit testing / refactoring practices. Coming from a non-CS background, and having worked on frameworks & professional environments that weren't very favorable to them, I never had the occasion to dig the subject. But I started doing so, by reading Clean Code and a shitload of blog posts, and after putting it into practice it feels like seeing the light. Being able to recklessly and confidently refactor without worrying about breaking stuff is fabulous. The tests being still very fast (whoarder is a very small app), I can even use comfortably PyDev's Rerun current test suite whenever any Python file changes feature, which is a fantastic safety net: "Oh I just broke something. Alright, I'll fix it right now. Done, thanks unittest."

Wealth Inequality in America, via standblog:

• Dictionary of Numbers puts numbers in human terms. Excellent idea, via xkcd.
• Strongbox, Tor-based box usable to anonymously report to the New Yorker, powered by DeadDrop, an Aaron Swartz creation. via kottke
• It's Thomas Midgeley day:
  "Today would be his 124th birthday. A fine occasion to think about the effects of industrialization, and what happens when short-term profit-taking meets marketing.
  Midgeley is responsible for millions of deaths. Not directly, of course, but by, "just doing his job," and then pushing hard to market ideas he knew weren't true—so he and his bosses could turn a profit." ... a good reminder, read the rest.
• Doodal, paint with portals, via waxy links

• Procrastination...
  • ... viewed by Seth Godin: Avoiding fear by indulging in our fear of fear.
  • ... viewed by Aaron Swartz: HOWTO: Be more productive.
• BitCoin again, via waxy links
  • Collected Quotations Of The Dread Pirate Roberts, Founder Of Underground Drug Site Silk Road And Radical Libertarian
  • Lets Cut Through the Bitcoin Hype: A Hacker-Entrepreneurs Take
• GeoGuesser
• CSS3 Pong, no JS at all here, via waxy links

Just discovered FAUVE (thx Bertrand!), and wow:

Also,

• Paul Miller's write-up of a year offline, I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet. via waxy links.
  I'd read enough blog posts and magazine articles and books about how the internet makes us lonely, or stupid, or lonely and stupid, that I'd begun to believe them. I wanted to figure out what the internet was "doing to me," so I could fight back. But the internet isn't an individual pursuit, it's something we do with each other. The internet is where people are.
• Stop Drawing Dead Fish, Bret Victor digging deeper through his 'Computer artists need physical connection with their creation stronger than just code' motto, via waxy links
• McDonald’s Theory, via HN
• The Amanda Palmer Problem: How Does a Cult Musician Become a Figure to Be Mocked?
  "The web offers an opportunity to fall into the open arms of fans, in ways that weren’t available before. Here’s the catch: The web also makes it near-impossible to fall into the arms of just one’s fans. Each time you dive into the crowd, some portion of the audience before you consists of observers with no interest in catching you. And you are still asking them to, because another thing the web has done is erode the ability to put something into the world that is directed only at interested parties." via waxy links

• Excellent posts by two honest men:
  • Seeking inspiration?, Derek Sivers on consuming, producing and being inspired in/by the process.
  • Hold The Door Open, Anil Dash linking to Be Kind, by Cap Watkins. I love his writing.
• Mr. Money Mustache, thoughts on sanity but not frugalism in personal finances and consumerism. via HN
• Don't mess with Texas's old computers, whoa. Love kottke's comment: "An object in motion tends to stay in motion."
• i am the very great change, Markov-chain-generated 'snowball' poems. Cute. via waxy links

Haul away.

• News is bad for you, must read. Bonus points for publishing it in a newspaper. via Incoming Transmission #04
• April 17, 2013 SMBC is so SMBC: weird and beautiful.
  But the really strange thing about humans is they live for less than 100 years, yet they find time to tell jokes, write stories, do science, and build machines.
  It's bizarre.
  It's like having a gamma ray burst flying toward your head from two meters away and spending the interim wondering about the 11235^th digit of the speed of light.
  It's admirable, really. Even as their lives burn away, they find the peace to sing. I think that's what make them special. What makes them wonderful. In their own way they will always be the happiest species.
• The New Prohibition, Andy Baio doing an excellent job at following up on Lessig and Doctorow (and others) "Everything is a Remix" motto, warning about the risks, and finishing with a touch of hope.
• Authorization (xkcd #1200), security for who?
• Dustforce sales figures, facts on indie game sales: Steam, sales, HumbleBundle.
• A Manager's Manifesto, and a good one. via Incoming Transmission #04
• 404
• An accordion that plays when you resize the browser window, yup.

Hi there,

• The Internet is a surveillance state, by Bruce Schneier.
  So, we're done. Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does. Welcome to a world where your cell phone company knows exactly where you are all the time. Welcome to the end of private conversations, because increasingly your conversations are conducted by e-mail, text, or social networking sites.
  And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at will without a warrant.
  Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we've ended up here with hardly a fight.
• Maybe We Should Just Relax, reminds me of Mark Slouka's 'Quitting the Paint Factory'.
• The largest computer ever built , WOW that's history. via trivium
• Google Street View Hyperlapse. via kottke
• If you want to get everything done, leave an introvert alone, via HN
• Distractions in Space publishes retranscriptions of glorious^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H funny astronauts chat. via trivium

O hai, how was your hibernation? Mine just fine, have a cup of tea and enjoy some news with your warm air:

• Google broke it: You can bend a piece of metal. Back and forth. Many times. And then, finally, it will break. [...] They bent the metal too often. My trust in Google is broken. via trivium
• The Fresh Ten Commandments, amen to that. also via trivium
• The long journey toward production, good case study of the 'got it working' vs. 'production-ready' gap.
• Why Facebook Home bothers me: It destroys any notion of privacy. Fair enough Facebook, it's only April but you get my vote anyway for this year's "most beautiful trojan horse ever". Crap, they're even re-implementing an app launcher, WTF.
• BitCoin news, both via waxy links:
  • The Bitcoin Bubble and the Future of Currency, makes things a liiiiitle clearer.
  • New Skype malware spreading at 2,000 clicks per hour makes money by using victims’ machines to mine Bitcoins, why not?
• How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing, disgusting. via waxy links
• How the world has changed: St. Peter's Square in 2005 and 2013, via df
• DRM CHAIR.
• Toy Stories, kids from around the world with their toys. via kottke
• URLs are for People, not Computers, via kottke

Good vibes coming from l'Amicale Underground: new RIEN ep, new CÂLIN electronic album, and a beautiful DominiqueA-esque new Jull!

And:

• Amanda Palmer: The art of asking, via waxy links
• Security stuff, via my bro
  • APT1: Exposing One of China's Cyber Espionage Units, funny how little things (registrar email, forum nicknames, compilation path, PE signature) let Mandiant put jigsaw pieces into place.
  • Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria?. In scam, just like in any other business, you need to focus to succeed.
• XKCD!
  • "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?" xkcd answers.
  • Dates: ISO 8601

Happy birthday, mister Stardust:

• RIP Aaron Swartz. Two important articles on the subject:
  • How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz—And Us, via boingboing
  • My Email Exchange With Aaron Swartz Shows An Original Thinker, via Winer
• xkcd #1162 taught me uranium is indeed something dense, and xkcd #1168 is a fun unix one.
• Goooood Godin posts:
  • Two people you might need in your professional life, Seth Godin neologisms: agonist and procrastinatrix.
  • Eleven things organizations can learn from airports
• Please Don't Help My Kids, sane parenting approach. via kottke
• It might not get weirder than this, Sophie Schmidt in North Korea. "like The Truman Show, at country scale".
• The Liberals' War on Science, how politics distorts science on both ends of the spectrum. What's wrong with you, American politicians?! via boingboing
• Extreme temperatures force new color code for weather map.
• A Short History Of The Death Of Culture by SMBC, for more on the subject, read Lessig.
• Data Storage in DNA Becomes a Reality, via waxy links
• Why it’s easy being a hacker – A SQL injection case study, on the utmost importance of sane APIs and good documentation. via rc3
• A helpful reminder: Video game consumption is not correlated with gun violence
• Message in a Binary Bottle, fun. via boingboing
• Actual Facebook Graph Searches, priva-what? via kottke
• Facebook makes you feel like sh*t, via ma.tt