March 2010
7 posts
Is the End of Privacy the End of Shame? →
This is an interesting take on the social consequences of the social web and a generally interesting read.
2 tags
Apple vs HTC: a patent breakdown -- Engadget →
Apple attacks HTC and it’s Android devices. Awesome. Some of these patents seem so broad it’s ridiculous.
Seth's Blog: Everyone's model of work is a job →
Sometimes Seth Godin says some insightful shit, and sometimes he takes someone else’s insights and makes them better. This is the latter.
2 tags
2 tags
User Agent Detection in Java
I was looking for a way to detect mobile devices in Java and hoping someone had done the heavy lifting for me. It turns out someone had. There’s a port of a PHP script I found at Hand Interactive that looks like it does what I need.
Basically if I detect a mobile device I want to use a different stylesheet on Quote Crate but I didn’t want to have to find all the user agent strings...
February 2010
8 posts
functional programming ftw
harryh:
Simple, but fun:
def partition[T](items: List[T], p: (T, T) => Boolean): List[List[T]] = {
items.foldRight[List[List[T]]](Nil)((item: T, items: List[List[T]]) => items match {
case (first :: rest) :: last if p (first, item) =>
(List(item)) :: (first :: rest) :: last
case (first :: rest) :: last =>
(item :: first :: rest) :: last
case _ =>...
Task Queue Java API Overview - Google App Engine -... →
Today I implemented the Task Queue functionality on Quote Crate in an effort to speed up saving quotes. Basically instead of adding things to the index on save it fires off what is essentially a background task to add the quote to the index. Since it’s not getting much traffic (or any really) things are added almost immediately and the request to save quotes is sped up a bit.
Next up,...
2 tags
Coming and Crying →
I just backed this project on Kickstarter because I believe these ladies have got the right idea. Also because I like books and sex.
4 tags
Quote Crate Works!
Seriously, this is a big deal to me. About eight (8) months ago Alex Payne wrote a quick blurb about an idea he had for a site but wasn’t going to work on. He called it Quotidian with a tagline of “A place to store and organize quotes”. The original text of the blurb he wrote is on his site as an unfinished idea and when I read this in June of last year I was immediately...
“Guerilla career move: send your resume in it’s present form to the longest...”
– /via @rands
1 tag
Concurrency and Me
I got to play with the java.util.concurrent package today and I have to admit that after some of the lessons I’ve learned in Scala it didn’t seem nearly as scary as all these people make it out to be. Of course I suppose that part of the danger is exactly that it doesn’t seem difficult but I’m optimistic.
The reason I was playing with it at all is because I’m trying...
3 tags
D'oh: GAELucene
As I said just a bit ago I took a look at GAELucene and I guess I should have spent more time reading than writing because I noticed this bit on the project home page when I checked out the source code.
The GAEDirectory is read only, that is, you can not use the Directory to build index! You should do indexing on another machine, then push the indices onto google appengine datastore with...
3 tags
Sorry Google, I jumped the gun.
I recently tweeted that something broke when I updated my Quote Crate application from version 1.2.5 of the AppEngine SDK to version 1.3.1. As it turns out this was unfair to Google (sorry). It doesn’t appear to have had anything to do with the SDK change but rather my poor implementation of Lucene for the AppEngine datastore.
Since the data in my application was all my test data I wiped...
December 2009
1 post
Respect is Earned →
This is why I love the internet. There are people out there that believe nearly exactly the things I do. They write about them, and write about them well. So well in fact that all I have to say is “Me too.” This is one of those times.
To Brian Carper I say, “Me too.”
November 2009
4 posts
What I learned today
I found a couple of new and interesting bits about languages and applications I use on a daily basis. I love it when that happens.
Scala
Option(null) returns None (in 2.8)
Option(_) where _ is a non-null value returns Some(_) (in 2.8)
Vim
When navigating in normal mode after leaving insert mode gi can be used to jump back to insert mode at the location of the last edit.
I also learned...
Tidbits 21 November 2009
Poedit is a useful tool for providing source files and having it extract text based on specific keywords. I used this for a Facebook application and it seems to be pretty speed, likely this is because it is “harcoded” so it essentially does a lookup. In any case this could be useful in languages other than PHP as well if there are libraries to interact with it.
A couple personal...
More Writing Please
There have been a number of times where I’ve tried to start writing (words not code) more. I enjoy putting pen to paper and making the clackety noise to produce something. My problem is I’m never really sure what to write about.
A little while ago I realized I tend to learn new and useful things pretty often but then forfet them because I only need to use the knowledge once and...
September 2009
2 posts
Pocket Distribution
atsween:
kubi:
Exactly the same except I store trash in the back left. Gum wrappers, receipts, etc.
jeffrock:
Front right: keys.
Front left: iPhone.
Back right: wallet.
Back left: empty.
You?
Front right: iPhone, headphones, space pen.
Front left: wallet, keys, change, multitool.
Back right: a thin softcover Moleskine
Back left: empty.
You?
Front right: wallet, pen
Front...
Shut up and act →
Great point about keeping your mouth shut and getting work done.
August 2009
6 posts
“…if you’re only interested in building power, you’re going to...”
– Michael Lopp [Managing Humans]
“The love of a man for the integrity of his work and his right to preserve it are...”
– Howard Roark [The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand]
3 tags
Lucene and the App Engine Datastore, They Play...
As it turns out, most of my troubles to date with getting Lucene to save “files” to the datastore have actually not been troubles with the datastore interaction at all. The problem was in fact more basic, I was saving the “file” in Lucene’s pre-commit phase and not in it’s actual-commit phase. This caused me all kinds of craziness because I could tell the Array...
1 tag
Super Fast JavaScript Array Processing →
Why Quicksilver? WHY?!
I really like Quicksilver. It is one of those applications I wonder how people can be on a Mac and not utilize it. While it has been out of active development for a while now I still find it eminently useful. However, I do have to re-launch at least once a day because it tends to have it’s catalogs get confuzzled and the only way I can find to un-confuzzle it is to relaunch it. I recognize...
Lucene Directory Implementation for Google...
For the last week and a half or so I’ve been spending free time working on an App Engine project in Scala. A fairly large portion of the concept is the ability to search through submitted data. The App Engine being a Google product I assumed before I started search would be no big deal. As it turns out there is no good way I can find in the low-level Datastore API to perform a text search on...
June 2009
8 posts
Glyphboard 2.0 →
Outstandingly useful selection of glyphs for use on the iPhone or iPod Touch.
mrgan:
Just in time for today’s release of iPhone OS 3.0 with its oh-so-handy pasteboard, I’ve updated a little project of mine, Glyphboard. It’s a sort of keyboard which lets you type glyphs not available on any of the standard iPhone keyboards. These glyphs include , ☂, ☺, ✔, and even ♫.
You may find this handy...
“getting really annoyed at those around me short cutting the process b/c they...”
– Justin Stockton on twitter
WatchDave Eggers’ talk at TED about the themed tutoring centers he’s been a part of creating.
2 tags
Entity in Google AppEngine
If no id is provided when saving the Datastore will generate one. I didn’t find this documented anywhere and it is only vaguely implied by the Javadocs.
“[I]f we get some really smart folks together to ponder and brainstorm paradigm...”
– Robert Brunner of Fast Company
“People want to know how I started Teach For America straight out of college, and...”
– Wendy Kopp, Teach for America founder
Found on Signal v. Noise
2 tags
Downgrading Flash Player
Legacy Flash Players
In order to get around this, it is necessary to delete the registry entry. It is available at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\FlashPlayer\SafeVersions.
To do so, follow these steps.
Go to the start menu and select RUN
Type cmd to open the command prompt
Once in the command prompt, type regedit, which will open the registry
Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Open...
May 2009
15 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Free as in Beer
There is this colloquialism, “Free as in beer” in the open source software development community which I’d never really understood. I wanted to know where these people lived and why they were giving away beer. Then I found the beer-ware license (find another form of the beer-ware license) and things began to make more sense. I’m not sure if this is actually where the term...
2 tags
How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR →
A great page explaining exactly how to everyone should use Twitter for marketing and PR. Everyone should read this!
2 tags
QuickTip: Coda's Open Quickly
One of the oft touted features of TextMate is it’s ability to quickly open any file in the project. I’m a semi-regular TextMate user and I depend on this feature so much I’ve installed several plugins which replicate some of this functionality in Vim (or MacVim) which is my primary editor. Every once in a I use Coda to edit a site and I just discovered the Open Quickly command it...
2 tags
Change what a symbolic link points to
ln -sfh [new target] [old link]
Prescription Porn →
“The next national campaign to hit the airways will be a grand-scale touting of the youth-granting, muscle-building, virility-boosting benefits of testosterone supplements. You may not even think you need more testosterone, but with enough nonstop advertising, you’ll soon realize that you do.”
However, it sounds like there’s an alternative. That’s right, watch porn. It...
Rules for Time Travelers →
Science rules for time travelers.
1 tag
Wolfram Alpha →
Impressive data visualization and mapping to answers to simple English queries
1 tag
“Two New Jersey hunters go hunting. After a while, one of the hunters clutches...”
– http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/72/realitycheck.html?page=0%2C2
3 tags
TBuzz →
The latest installment of Arc90’s awesome bookmarklet skills.
1 tag
Background Position magic →
To see the magic of this page incrementally increase and decrease the width of your browser. Awesome.
1 tag
1 tag
