Simple Simon

Now...that's geeky.

2008-05-12T22:14:37Z

So...I have an XO, as in an One Laptop Per Child device.

I love the little device, as a piece of hardware. Software for it sucks as far as its intended purpose.

I do use it though. It uses almost no power and if there is a trace of WiFi signal its on the net.

Right now I am trying to Ruby-On-Rails running on it. In so doing I ran across this article on a Light Weight Rails Stack. A DLMRoR (Debian Lighttpd MySQL Ruby-on-Rails) to the normal LAMP stack.

The thing with that article that roxxors is that it starts right from the start, you have light weight Debian installed...now what. At the end you have:
* mysql
* postfix (with SASL configured)
* lighttpd
* fastcgi
* pcre
* subversion
* imagemagick
* rmagick
* qpopper
* webmin (for postfix)

And he does it in a 773MB image.

Awesomeness.

I am not installing all of that, but some.

Sometimes the random play _really_ works

2008-04-12T20:54:53Z

The next bunch of songs, Tori, Madonna, Led Zepplin, Cake, it goes on for the next couple of hours are all awesome and just right for my mood and task.

Such a switch

2007-10-19T01:20:29Z

All day today I was dealing with code that was prepared by people who were not as senior and certainly did not have the time to consider what it was they were programming. This leads to a difficult situation for someone to come into later.

Frustrating is really the better word for it. You never know where to turn to next to fix a bug and you just keep throwing extra debugging into it.

In contrast I am now looking at some code from a very large, long term project from Snap days. It is downright relaxing to be trying to navigate this code. I have not *ever* been into this section of code before, but I can follow all that is going on and why.

Once again I am impressed by J's ability to consider error conditions and to deal with them appropriately. And, further convinced that Java is a better language that PHP for anything of any weight or long lasting value.

Anyway, the code snippet that saved my butt from certain and irrevocable roasting last week was this:


try {
  /* lots of code to get a message thread from the database */
} catch (Exception any) {
  thread = null;
}

Now, you wouldn't think that just randomly catching everything and dealing with it by returning 'null' would ever be truly appropriate. Shouldn't you try and figure out what is going on and *do* something about it. Not here. The returning of null if there was any issue means that the outside code fails gracefully and just does not display that thread. Like, say, when you have removed a bunch of user accounts in a cleanup and did not have appropriate code in place to make something more intelligent happen...something intelligent is already happening.

Where for most of the day things just failed. Sometimes in screen data dump, but usually more in a causing side effects as you go down sort of way. This was in playing with code that I have been working with off and on for the past two months.

Looking for work

2007-10-11T17:54:20Z

Those who have known me for awhile have heard me spout this way and that about resumes and people applying for jobs...

Now hiring managers will get to laugh similarly at me.

This also allows me the privilege of turning my critical eye to the other end of the process.

In particular, I disliked online posting boards when I was hiring, things like Monster and Workopolis. Take all things that are bad about trying to find someone for a position and then amplify it so that anyone who is inappropriate can apply, good idea.

I think I have now moved them into the category of loathing. Yes, I loathe them. I think they are terribly dehumanizing and only emphasize the skills based form of hiring.

A form of hiring I do not agree with. You need to get at the personality and the cultural fit of the person. Sure, they need aptitude for the task at hand, you cannot ask an extroverted hand-shaker to sit in the corner and type all day. Aptness is easy to figure out though, and why we have the 3 month no-hassle termination period.

Without the cultural and philosophical fit the person could be the best person for the role, skills wise, but they won't work out as well as a green recruit.

RIM has their own online board, that is even worse than normal...I cannot attach a cover letter for a particular position. I cannot craft my resume differently for different positions. I can't really use my resume at all. Worse, my check list of skills is huge in their system...but for any of the positions I would apply for is almost completely unrelated, short of showing that I have knowledge of certain fields. Even though I have been programming with Java for the number of years shown I don't want to be a Java programmer there. But they have no soft skills in their list.

Do you think this is because RIM is not interested in anyone who has some "other" abilities? Including an interest in snake pits?

But, I will not make it past the automated gating system. And there is no easy way to contact an HR person there and say to them "So....you have a big company that has lots of openings...lets find a fit."

Not that I was eager to work there anyway.

I am interested in finding a smaller company in the Guelph (or KW) area that needs someone with a rather broad set of skills and is willing to pitch in broadly to get to the next level. Small growing companies, especially tech ones, need someone like me, if they don't already have a resident me.

I can also bring Pie. It says so here on my resume.

Certain Reference Materials

2007-09-13T23:41:36Z

Sometimes you just miss having a book that used to be sitting on the shelf beside you or your co-worker.

Right now I would like to flip through Design Patterns, just to get a quick idea on how to approach this particular problem.

I have a class that was programmed to access an open source flat file data base but it is not behaving well in a concurrent access environment -- it becomes corrupt.

So, now I am creating a MySQL access class, and I am contemplating how to set it up...Flipping through I would happen across something pretty quickly.

Being that this is geeky subject matter I can just browse to The Wiki article on it. I would prefer a book.

Inside the standard apache 404 error page

2007-06-09T06:19:31Z

There is a comment.

The comment contains this:
- Unfortunately, Microsoft has added a clever new
- "feature" to Internet Explorer. If the text of
- an error's message is "too small", specifically
- less than 512 bytes, Internet Explorer returns
- its own error message. You can turn that off,
- but it's pretty tricky to find switch called
- "smart error messages". That means, of course,
- that short error messages are censored by default.
- IIS always returns error messages that are long
- enough to make Internet Explorer happy. The
- workaround is pretty simple: pad the error
- message with a big comment like this to push it
- over the five hundred and twelve bytes minimum.
- Of course, that's exactly what you're reading
- right now.

Remember that whatever error condition you may have thought you were
in, IE knows better.

applications are great, searches suck

2007-03-26T17:24:02Z

I have said this before with regards to GMail. I think that it is the
best email interface I have ever used and appreciate it greatly.

But, its search sucks. Even when I am searching for things that I
*know* exist it will return nothing.

I also use http://docs.google.com/ for much of my business documents.
Again, I think the applications are great and the interface is
awesome.

But, the search sucks.

I just did a search for 'epiInvoice' which is in the title of many of
my documents - nothing. Why? Because no document _contained_
epiInvoice.

If you were programming a search of documents would you not allow
people to search on the titles?

I don't even see an "Advanced Search" that would allow me to do it.

For a "search" company their searches often suck.

if I am ever not sure about being busy

2007-03-23T14:12:14Z

I just need to take a couple of days off from reading my work email
and see how it piles up.

Yeeesh!

You would think I have a job or something!

I understand writers

2007-03-17T18:37:44Z

You know all those stories about the great writers sitting around in a
hotel or resort of some kind do their writing?

I understand why they would do it.

sofias_dream has brought us into the city this weekend
because of her daughter's rehearsals.

Unfortunately my work is not able to take too much of a break right
now so I have brought along the laptop.

Right now I am sitting in the very nice hotel restaurant / lounge.
The waiters have brought me my preferred drink, offered me food, and
just now have brought some nuts. All requiring nothing more than a
"Thank you." With an understanding that I am working.

Nice

my cat is very wise

2007-03-12T20:51:53Z

It is scared of zombies.

If I make zombie noises, low groans, her eyes will go wide and she
will run away.

If there are zombie noises on the computer she will run away faster.

I haven't done it in quite awhile because I don't want to traumatize
her. But, I just made a little groaning noise due to code frustration
and she looked at me, with fear in her eyes. So, I couldn't resist
making full on zombie noise. She sprinted out of the room as fast as
she could.

Oh it does _that_?

2007-02-28T03:12:20Z

So, I was asked to write some Javascript so that when a person clicks
on a link it saves which link they clicked on and then if they ever
return to that page it automatically directs them to the same link
they click before.

No problem says I.

Actually, there are two links. One is the "accept" and the other is
the "decline" and there is a timer on the page. If the timer reaches
zero then it is the same as if they hit decline. And forever more
they will be directed to the same page as they originally selected.

And then some more features.

And then some more.

And some more.

In particular one that allowed for a countdown of product. That is
you would see updated live on the screen as the number of items left
decreased, ala The Home Shopping Network. When the quantity ran out,
once again we assume this is the same as "declining."

Then, they see it in action. And look at a page with the quantity
countdown. They click the accept link. Go to the order page.

A few minutes later they are telling me the site is broken. Actually
it was more of "Everything is fucked and to top it off the technology
is fucking broken!!! I am just going to rip it out."

"It" being my script.

"How is it broken?" I ask.

"I cannot see the original page anymore, it just takes me to the
accept link. Every single time."

Me, "Yes. That is how I understood this script to work. Once you
have done an action on this page you never see it again."

"Well that just doesn't make sense. We want them to be able to browse
around and come and go from the first page as they make up their
mind."

"That's fine. But it is not the usage scenario that we have been
working with up until now."

"Well we just can't have it that way. I am going to take the script out."

Wheeeee...away he goes with his 10 minutes of HTML training and
Frontpage. Mr. Hack and Slash.

Certainly not giving me any chance to think about the situation or
what to do about it.

Anyway, I step back. Review the code for a couple of minutes. Have a
fix. Test it. Upload it all before he could change the HTML and send
him an email telling him what I have done.

You know what happens then...

He uploads his changes. Overwrites mine. Gets my email. "Undoes"
his changes back to the old script. And uploads that.

And then calls me and tells me it is _still_ broken.

I have just now changed it again to the current script...Lets see what
happens now.

His latest response "K"

"K" What?

"K" it is working?

"K" you are checking?

Your mom's name is "K"?

You would like to have special "K" for breakfast?

What?

What?

Awesome

2007-02-13T16:23:41Z

Eveytime I look at J's code I am amazed.

He has sanity checks on every user input value. The particular example
I am looking at us some cleanup code that gets its time span for
deleting old posts from a config file. If that span is less than 31
days he ignores the deleting process and sends out an APB about the
situation.

This is best practice of course...but you so rarely see it, and he
catches everything.

buggering debuggers

2007-02-13T01:20:26Z

What exactly is the point of a debugger that changes the environment
so much that code runs differently?

When I run this javascript in normal mode it is broken. When I run it
in the debugger the variables evaluate to what they "should" be, but I
cannot actually run the code with the debugger running. Aside from
the fact that no user will ever have it.

Instead I am slowly building up an example/test file from scratch to
the needed complexity and trying to see at what point it breaks. It
now does almost everything I want and doesn't break. But my code is
still broken and is not very different from the running test code.

Supersize Lyrics

2007-02-06T19:23:49Z

You know the Matthew Good song "21st Century Living"...

I just noticed what the first few lines say:
You know, today I was asked only one question
One question all day
Do you know what that was?
"Do you want this supersized?"

This is a very cool start to the song, in particular in combination
with what the Director Engineers Without Borders said about having
more mature participants.
"Unfortunately someone who has worked 10 years in a field has 10 years
of answers, and not 10 years of questions. We need people who are
willing to ask questions, and to question their life. And it only
gets worse as people work more."

I am paraphrasing and making it less diplomatic than he did. I
usually do make things less diplomatic.

But, the concept of asking questions is a good one and I am pleased to
find its (lack) in the start of this song.

We don't really *know* that much. (...anything...)

HUUGE TRACTS OF LAND

2007-01-30T18:05:17Z

It is all about location.

And the cat knows it.

I just put in a new video card that will drive two monitors, plus my
trusty old matrox PCI card that does very well for 2D applications
gives me three monitors of interfacing goodness.

Add in one cat that the camera seems to like focusing on and you have
a reasonable work space.

the web is blue

2007-01-22T16:54:55Z

I am soooooo tired of looking at blue.

Why is it that every website and set of controls for a website are blue?

Not only are they blue, they are the same blue palette.

Is it really the only colour that works?

And yes...I am creating a blue website. Fuck.

did we learn nothing from Y2K?

2007-01-12T22:03:24Z

So...Here I am fiddling with some code.

I happen across someone storing a date in this format:
"0611"
Would you suspect that is a date? What date might you think it to be?
I had enough context to know it was a date, but that is the way it is
stored in the database, as a string, and with the name "GE_RUN".
Excellent.

When displayed for end users, they see it as "06-11".

Now you feel better don't you? Now all ambiguity has been removed.

But, my simple code of first two characters being the year and the
last two being the month broke. Why did it break?

I will tell you.

Because sometimes it gets stored this way:
"611"
Yep. Missing the zero.

It isn't significant, I guess. But, still. If you are going to force
me to use string manipulations to get the printable version of a date,
you could please try and be consistent.

Dates and times are bad enough when people play with them poorly.
When you do crap like that you should be shot.

PS. DB design and maintenance brought to you by your friendly
neighbourhood certified Oracle DBA supported by a fat Oracle support
contract.

No loop

2006-12-22T16:11:48Z

Like an infinite one.

sometimes

2006-12-18T17:55:59Z

Bugs are silly things.

This one, which has taken over an hour to figure out, is because I
used the term ":START" as a keyword in a prepared statement to Oracle.
This is a reserved word. The error message says "Incorrect
Host/Table mapping." Not very useful.

my last name

2006-12-17T22:27:06Z

I don't really like it much.

Why couldn't I have had a name like "Gnoll" or "Kant" or something?

GAWD

2006-12-12T17:18:53Z

I am working with a guy I worked with _years_ ago.

There was a database management system that I had developed that did
all sorts of funky things that I wouldn't even consider trying to do
anymore...At least not in anywhere near the same way.

But, the scary thing is that there is a link on one of the edit pages
that looks like this:
"Bookmark this link not this page (right click anywhere on
this sentence)"
Which grabs me because at that time I had to do odd things for
browsers to figure out what was really being bookmarked. This sort of
thing is so not necessary anymore.

Dark Cake

2006-12-08T20:18:17Z

Well.

That didn't take long.

This Canadian Living recipe looks like just the thing.

Here is one for mr_hand, Pork Cake. Yep, meat inside a sweet cake...mmmm...

But, I think that I will use some modified version of this recipe for my light cake, Mama's Poor Man's Fruitcake for my light cake.

baking

2006-12-08T20:12:12Z

This weekend sofias_dream and I (and probably her son) will be doing our Christmas baking.

She has already requested that the following items be on the list of constructions:
* ginger snaps
* shortbread
* sugar cookies

No problems there. Need some additional decorating items for the sugar cookies though.

But now for the tough part, finding some recipes for me to make. I want to make a dark christmas cake and a light one. I feel that I must explain "light" in this case. This is a description of colour and specific density...as compared to the dark christmas cake. The dark is that type of thing that "everyone" dislikes that can be used to hold doors open or to simulate the effort involved in carrying gold.

This form of "light" takes it out of the realm of the christmas cake that most people dislike. But it still has some fruit in it.

I never understood all the negative hype around receiving christmas cake. It has always been one of the things that I have looked forward to as a special food for a special time of the year. But, then one year I did not feel that I was getting enough and I _purchased_ one. YICK! No wonder.

Growing up in a house where all sweet stuff was home baked and the person doing the baking had been doing it for 15 years before I even started to really take notice of the food I was eating...very spoiling.

(actually, to be honest I have had many _good_ purchased christmas cakes over the years. I had an uncle who did not have my luck as far as in-house dessert baker and he would get them from the mennonites...but that is hardly different than home baked ones)

A few years ago I made this light cake that everyone *raved* about, for months. Unfortunately that recipe was from online and I couldn't even find it again a week after christmas. But, I would like to make that one again if I can find something like it.

So...now...I am going to try and find a couple of recipes and this time I will be sure to store them just in case I decide they are something that needs to be repeated.

guys and girls

2006-12-08T16:06:54Z

At the very quiet office that I work in some days...

There are two women and two men (other than me) in the studio area. These people are all permanent residents, where I am a transient programmer.

I prefer itinerant programmer actually...

[[ goes and changes his .sig for his work email ]]

Anyway, back to the point.

There is _very little_ personal belongings on their desks.

The artist (male) has two pictures of him and partner, one is a photo, one is one of his drawings and a plant.

The Lead hand (female), does IA, art and some coding, has a plant.

The junior hand (female), does updates and art, has a plant.

The programmer (male), has a fake plant.

The artist's plant is actually plant #3 since the time I have been here. The two women's plants getting loving treatment everyday and are thriving very well in the office. The programmer's plant is plastic, and he is the quietest person in the studio, but he has uttered more words about his pride around (not) taking care of his plant than any other subject.

Take from this what you like. I'm just observing.

logging into facebook and looking for friends

2006-12-08T03:26:59Z

In doing my homework I have logged into Facebook...

*rolls eyes*

I was on the phone for 2 hours today discussing Web 2.0 ond AJAX and
about bringing a site up to date.

Not a single feature the people on the other side could come up with
did not already exist inside the product. Something we designed over
six years ago.

At one point someone said, "Why aren't you guys rolling in it?"

Good question.

I don't have a good answer, short of the fact that we did everything
for crummy Canadian TV shows. (Even the best ones are crummy in
audience numbers compared to even a minor US success)

Anyway...about Face Book.

On registering I had to supply my "Full Name" they did not tell me
that this would be publicly displayed.

And there is no way for me to change it.

Also, they said that the name "Simian Monkey" was not a valid name.
Nor was "Simon Monkey" but it did let through "Simian Brown."

I wonder what it would have done with "Pieman Jones."

Then, in the next step it wants to help me "find friends" (thank you
very much I already have plenty). To do so it wants me to give it my
credentials for my email account.

Not bloody likely!

Why though? So that they can grab my address book and then check to
see if there are people in FaceBook already that I don't know about so
they can hook me up.

1) What else are you grabbing with my address book?
2) What if I keep more than just email addresses in my address book?
You know, like people's addresses and phone numbers?
3) What if I don't want to find some of the people in my address book?

And, there does not seem to be a way to just enter in an email address
of a specific person.

I really do not like this site's attitudes towards my privacy.

Really