Search bug in Google Groups … Komm, süßer Tod … Goodbye Lenin! … Closures in C 8th of January, 2009 POST·MERIDIEM 02:34

Reasonably often, I want to search for a given string of text within Google™ Groups. This has sub-optimal behaviour at the moment, in that if the result you’re interested in is deep within a thread—see the first result here, for example—clicking on that result will take you to the first page of the thread, with no indication of how to get to the actual message you’re interested in without reading through the entire thread. Reading through the entire thread is not necessarily very attractive when there are four hundred messages, and when the search engine is supposed to do the searching for you.

I’ve found a work-around, though. Select the »Weitere Optionen« link (“More Options” in English) of given message in the group you’re interested in, then »Einzelne Nachricht« (“Individual message”) and copy the link. This will give you text looking something like http://​groups.​google.​com/​group/​sci.​lang/​msg/​c642b948e4cba605.​ Now go back to the search results page, and look at the address listed under the result you’re interested in—it’ll look something like http://​groups.​google.​com/​g/​df57fef5/​t/​89718702f2175a61/​d/​f626ed6270f2b9d5​ Take the text after the final slash, and use this in the “Individual message” link instead. So, in this example, the final address is http://​groups.​google.​com/​group/​sci.​lang/​msg/​f626ed6270f2b9d5​ And all’s right in the world. Well, in my corner of it. Apparently not in the corner of it that the Google™ Groups team inhabit.

Komm, süßer Tod, film, 2000. Director: Wolfgang Murnberger. A going-away present from Jóska, who spent eight years in Vienna before moving to Berlin, this is Austrian, and very clear about that. Its DVD case lists it as a comedy, first and foremost, but I wouldn’t list it as one myself, it’s a murder mystery first (in the same way that Snatch is a gangster film first and foremost). It is funny with it, though, the banter of the characters and the occasional absurdities of the plot do ensure that.

Goodbye Lenin! [2002], film. If you got back three months ago from three agreeable years in Berlin, speak German, have hung out with people from one-time Communist countries a huge amount, have listened to the Yann Tiersen soundtrack regularly for three years, have just drunk two bottles of wine, and have never seen this film before, this will bring you to tears. That is possibly not a very general recommendation, but, well, yes, this is a good film, and I should have watched it years ago. You should have too.

I wrote this ages ago, and I really should have posted it then. Anyway; this is how one writes a closure in C, non-portably (it works on the non-OS X machines I’ve tried; OS X seems to relocate file-static variables(!)): http://​paste.​lisp.​org/​display/​52083.​ It’s ugly and useless, but not impossible, despite what Paul Graham says, while giving as a counterexample some Lisp that fails to work as Emacs Lisp. (You would need a lexical-let and a (require 'cl) (unless you were sticking to XEmacs).)