Zink : Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:55:56 PDT

Male Depression

I've been learning about "Male Depression" (Mayo Clinic)!

Depression affects only half as many men as women, but of course Male Depression is much more important than any other kind because it affects people with penes. In fact, the lovely Mayo Clinic doesn't even need a page on "Female Depression"!

You can refer to the "Depression" (Mayo Clinic) page.

Zink : Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:45:31 PDT

Karl Rove, Obama, Arrogance, and the South

Why is it lost on everyone that Rove is just saying that Obama is an uppity Negro? That's what the "arrogance" is. Sure if you ask Karl about it he'll say something else, but that's why "arrogant" works for him. If you listen to Karl Rove discuss the issue he'll talk about a bunch of things (public financing or whatever) that either can't be tied to "arrogant" or which would normally be tied to something else (like "flip flop").

He uses the word because it activates the "arrogant" neurons in the listener. Of course the "Negro" neurons are also active (when considering Obama) and if you even have "uppity negro" neurons those get fired by association. If you don't have them (don't have the ingrained association) then probably this doesn't make sense. But it works pretty well. He's just increasing the chance "uppity negro" and its associated emotional resonances come into play.

Zink : Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:38:22 PDT

Buy Budweiser

It really puts an axe into the head of Belgian pretensions that they have in any way retained or valued their national legacy of quality brewing, but it looks like a Belgian firm will relieve America of its warhorse of sugar-syrup pseudo-lager Bud. Good riddance to you, Bud, and the horse you rode in on.

ceej : Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:22:57 PDT

Once again...

iPhone 2008 == Danger hiptop 2002.

The power of marketing and a brand name: I will never again underestimate it.

ceej : Fri, 09 May 2008 11:59:16 PDT

Pointer

I'm updating over here more often these days.

ceej : Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:11:28 PDT

Most eye-bleeding page ever?

Today's contender. Discuss!

Zink : Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:56:59 PDT

FreeBSD: why so lame?

Here's a simple task: you have no FreeBSD systems in your world. You want one. You have a new box, but it's weird enough no off-the-shelf pre-compiled BSD seems adequate.

What you naturally want to do seems simple: make a directory. Unpack a bunch of FreeBSD stuff into that directory. Configure, configure, configure and make. Install the newly made OS onto a CD-Rom or a SanDisk or some other place. Boot and go. (actually, I want it on my PXE server).

What you actually get after a great amount of digging is a source tree with Makefiles designed for "FreeBSD make" which does many weird things, the most important of which is NOT BE PRESENT on your existing O.S.. And the Makefiles just don't work with other "make"s.

It's like the comfort zone for the FreeBSD people is "overlooked".

ceej : Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:45:10 PDT

Project rewrite building steam

My Python rewrite of my project is now on parity with the ruby version, only with a bunch of bugs fixed. (As usual in a rewrite, I'd imagine.) The Python code looks messier than the Ruby code, and I find myself missing some of Ruby's syntactic sugar.

For instance, properties are ugly: write a predictable getter and setter (less typing than Java would force on you, but in the same category), then type
title = property(fget=lambda self: self.getTitle(), fset=lambda self, v: self.setTitle(v), doc="the title, no really")
over and over. Note that this isn't the obvious way to do properties, but it's the way you have to to get the results you expect. Lame.

On the other hand... woah faster. Woah yay sensible string slicing.

Though I am still catching up with the changes in Python since 2.4, which was the last time I really paid attention. Decorators improve some of the clumsy syntax.

Zink : Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:05:04 PDT

I shoulda been a lawyer

Then I could help innocent people get the death penalty. Imagine the power in that. The sheer sense of personal satisfaction. I love the slippery slope argument proposed as justification: "Once you start saving the lives of innocent people, who knows what might follow? Guilty people might receive just punishment!"

There's a clear difference between a Legal System (like we have) and a Justice System. The goal of Justice System is—well—justice. The goal of a legal system is public entertainment, with teams competing against each other under constrained and archaic rules, all the more exciting because the stakes are high. And really, no one gives a damn if justice is served.

If you're bored, google "Alton Logan". It's kind of sweet. Just this once, lawyers did too little, too late. But it's so much more than anyone expected them to do.

ceej : Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:31:22 PDT

The Python choices

To replace merb + Datamapper + haml:
TurboGears + SQLObject + Mako.

Mako's a step up over haml, and I liked haml so that is a compliment. I also considered and rejected Breve (not allowing html directly in templates is insane) and kid (XML in templates is insane).

SQLObject is a step down in usability from Datamapper, and here is where I think there's a giant opportunity for an intrepid python programmer. Datamapper isn't even at 1.0 yet, and it's dripping with the sort of conveniences I used a lot in a mere 700 lines of code or so. A little more convention in place of configuration, please. Learn a few lessons from the Ruby ORMs (data finders, a first() method on classes, better naming).

TurboGears itself, hmm, I don't know yet. I haven't rewritten the web app segment yet. That'll be this weekend.

ceej : Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:52:24 PDT

Ruby vs Python

Ruby's not ready. Somebody attempts to evaluate Ruby+Rails and compare it to Python+Pylons. Link via cjd.

It always comes down to this for me: Rails and its successor frameworks are wonderful, and Python's frameworks aren't yet competitive. But Ruby+libraries is so deficient in comparison to Python+libraries that the framework suckage is overcome.

So... why is Ruby getting the mindshare and the interesting new packages right now? Hopeless trendiness?

ceej : Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:50:30 PDT

Snicker

Okay, that calendar bug is funny. I think I'd better fix it.

ceej : Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:00:58 PDT

Yargh

Spent today moving extremely slowly through building the skeleton of my first merb app. The near-total lack of documentation for DataMapper and merb itself makes progress somewhat glacial. And the not-really-finished nature of the packages I'm using didn't help. (I wasted two hours trying to figure out why a DataMapper object validation was returning false, because there's no way to get errors bubbled up from subobjects. Printf debugging ftw, as ever. On the other hand, I like the DataMapper approach to ORM, so I retain my patience.)

HAML is pretty nice, though. Definitely something to consider instead of the messy erb.

ceej : Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:11:57 PDT

I earned a new geek merit badge recently

The Glasgow Haskell Compiler is a robust, fully-featured, optimising compiler and interactive environment for Haskell 98, GHC compiles Haskell to either native code or C. It implements numerous experimental language extensions to Haskell 98, for example: concurrency, a foreign language interface, multi-parameter type classes, scoped type variables, existential and universal quantification, unboxed types, exceptions, weak pointers, and so on. GHC comes with a generational garbage collector, and a space and time profiler.

Huh. Space and time, you say?

What are all these knobs?
What these? Instruments.
These are for controlling our flight.
Flight?
Well, yes. You see, we travel around in here through time and space.
Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't laugh. It's true.

I installed it anyway, despite the obvious dangers.

ceej : Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:03:00 PDT

Also

As of right now I'm taking steps to ensure I never see any content served from snap.com ever again. Internet death penalty time for them.

ceej : Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:00:24 PDT

99 problems with fill in the blank

99 problems with Python
99 problems with Ruby
99 problems with a language I've never heard of before and probably never will again
The 99 problems, originally intended as a Prolog problem set.

ceej : Sun, 30 Mar 2008 19:18:38 PDT

Tile lust

I'm having lust for this tile.. Why yes, I went to Home Despot today, and looked at the various expensive ways I might turn my kitchen from a pit into a place where I can cook without hunching and bake with confidence that the temperature is what I want it to be.

ceej : Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:11:36 PDT

Dumbledore revisited

I pretty much think Daniel Hemmens is right flippin' on target about JKR here.

ceej : Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:57:59 PDT

Twitter for personas

What I need is a multi-login Twitter client. Does this exist? I have two accounts and two sets of friends, and never may the twain meet. But it's a pain to track whichever one I'm not logged into Twitterific/my own client with.

I've handed over my hiptop Twitter client to somebody else, who's supposed to finish it, but I might fork it and write this feature in. Though twice the polling: ugh.

ceej : Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:45:47 PDT

The OED says

That "crapula" is an old word for a hangover. And further that crapulence is about the same. But I am not buying it. I think it's an evil plot. "Crapulent" is a back-formation and a play on "opulent", and you can't tell me otherwise. NO NO NO NO.

Yes, I know, it can be both. Shut up.