part a

the easiest path is always mined.

part b

the other paths are also mined.

[read more >>]

For the past week or so, my Firefox on Mac OS (10.5.5) has been crawling. Previously, it had periodically done this — after a while just stopped working, sometimes necessitating a hard reset of the lappy.

This did not make me happy.

[read more >>]

YC

today was the last day for YC Winter signups. word is pg was out of the country, and hasn’t looked at things until now. i’m stoked. i think we’ve got a really good shot.

fun with textile

i put textile into this thing way back, i just hardly ever bother using it. like many things that would make my life easier, i just seem to have trouble remembering to take advantage.

the life.

the last two weeks have been somewhat rough. lots of work, trying to get enough cash on hand to get me through. i’m only living month ahead right now, which makes me sad. it’s easy for me to build up a lead, but that requires more work that isn’t flowmingle, which i’d like to avoid if possible.

my support structure needs some shoring up, if i’m ever going to accomplish the hard parts of my personal goals. too much static on the wire lately to focus on any of the small things.

i really need to clean up my bedroom. and start packing.

now i have a search button. ho ho ho.

moved this site to git.

phase 2: opening up the code on github. (which mostly means checking to see if I have any passwords or suchlike in the dern thing that i need to move to yml files.)

phase 3? probably setting up cap, though on dreamhost this has proven .. problematic.

i’ve done the math. i have numbers. i can work with numbers. to that end:

102,500 calories to go. 29 lbs.

it won’t matter if i cut them out of my diet, or burn them on the trail or the bike or in the gym. that’s how many i have left to hit my target.

it works like this:

my resting (basal) metabolic rate is around 2000 calories / day. take that, plus the exercise i do in a given day, and subtract the amount i eat. i’m trying to keep things in line at around 1000-1200 calories a day for food.

so here’s the plan:

1/4 cup of oats for breakfast (150ish calories). been doing that for a while.

either no lunch and dinner, or a late lunch and no dinner. something filling, but not terrible.

(a naked chicken burrito at qdoba with cheese and habañero salsa is 750 calories, it turns out.)

a piece of fruit or something similar if i’m desperate.

no beer. okay, maybe one. (100 cal, or thereabouts)

with no exercise, that’s 102 days. with around 500 cal/day’s worth of exercise, it’s 62 days. (riding my bike to work would yield 500 cal/day.) i intend to count this thing down. at the end of it, i should be at 180 lbs.

next checkpoint: 85000. i should be weighing in at around 200. wish me luck, and i’ll keep you posted.

i’ve been digging around lately for interview questions to use when interviewing a ruby and rails candidate.

there are few good resources for this:

ritirisi

joe sniff

i’m adding a few more with some solutions, designed to test the breadth of someone’s knowledge.
h3. what do you not like about ruby on rails? identify its weak points.

the answers i expect here are fixtures, routes, scalability. bonus points for identifying the weakness in using multiple databases.

a good followup on scalability is: how have you in the past dealt with the scalability problems, and what does your preferred deployment environment look like?

what is the difference between a symbol and a string? when should they be used?

a symbol has a shorter reference number, which makes it faster to look up. if you’re using something as a reference string, a symbol is a good idea. if you’re planning on a string being editable, then a string is a better idea.

good information on this here: 13 ways of looking at a ruby symbol

when would you use request.xhr?

to test for an XmlHttpRequest, if you were writing a single method to deal with each request type. bonus: this has been dusted somewhat in rails 2, wherein you deal with the response where it belongs, in the response:

1  def action
2    # .. some code
3    respond_to do |format| do
4      format.html { ... }
5      format.js  { ... }
6      format.xml  { ... }
7    end 
8  end

when would you use has_many :through?

to create an association without creating a new table, if the information can be related through an existing table.

when would you use a polymorphic association? is there a better method?

the better method is has_many_polymorphs . generally, you want to use a polymorphic association when you want to treat a group of objects uniformly from a parent’s point of view.

when is it appropriate to use a helper method? where should that helper method live?

helper methods should generate markup. that is all. the helper method should live in the controller of a particular object if that markup is particular that object, especially if it is similar or has the same method signature across a number of objects, and each is handled differently (but share partials). generally applicable helpers should live in the helpers … [read more >>]

applied for a few jobs today .. got a bunch more in the email box that i didn’t apply for. that’s the way of the job hunt now for a guy like me.

don’t read this wrong: flowmingle is still alive and well, we’ve launched our signup page and as soon as we get good populations we’ll start putting together jumbles for everyone. but as this phase of the project’s development comes to a close, we’re either going to need to seek funding or find some contract cash to keep the lights on. the heavy lifting’s done. now it’s about the waiting. and the advertising. and the supporting cast.

given monday’s run (1 mi @ just under 10min) i think my foot/knee is in reasonable shape to move forward. let’s hope.

life continues to be strange. there’s a holding pattern here that i’ve trod into a deep rut. it might be necessary to break out of it, we’ll see. several of the jobs i’m being looked at for are far enough away to form a separation from my current life. curious to see how i’ll handle that in the face of free capital flowing my way.

don’t get me wrong — i’m pretty sure i could make just doing short remote contracts. especially given that i do have some savings, and my rate is not terrible. the real question is the house.

yes, the house. i’ve put a lot of work into this little baby, and it just needs a little spit and polish at this point. but the market.

there’s a lot about my life i want to change. still has to be done one thing at a time.

5.15 mi, 4/1 intervals. 70°, 85% humidity.

haven’t run in a while, as the good ankle and bad knee remind me pointedly.

the way this route works is a .1 mi warmup, followed by three 1.4mi laps, then a .85 mi route. after two of the long laps, i was 1:00 behind where i wanted to be, which isn’t that bad all things considered. after that things fell apart. i’m going to keep running the intervals for a little bit to get back into the swing of things. there’s a 5k on the 27th i’d like to run in, but don’t expect great shakes.

in the fall, i try and wax whatever car i’m driving as proof against winter salts and because it makes me feel good. did this over the weekend and got sunburned where my sleeves should’ve been. now i have that slightly tired system shock that comes from a sunburn.

i’m pretty sure that jumble is going to launch on saturday in full registration mode, though we’ve changed the name. i will of course link here.

having learned of certain health tendencies in my family, i’m making more of a concerted effort to lose weight. the bike has new (road-friendly) tires, and i’ll be riding it to work on days where it’s not likely to rain (unlike today).

we really need an office. anyone want to donate $20K to an ongoing effort to make me rich if not famous?

in the night when the cold wind blows
no one cares if nobody knows

bill c, speaking at the dnc yesterday said a lot of things i can get behind, particularly that a lot of the world’s problems demand uniquely american solutions, and that by increasing our standing in the eyes of the world and taking the reins of that leadership, we and the rest of the world will be the beneficiaries.

that said, a fair amount of his speech was tripe, aimed at the usual voter who doesn’t bother to understand context or look back in time more than ten or fifteen minutes.

with that in mind, a few fact checks:

“The American dream is under siege at home… Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting, with incomes declining, job losses, poverty, and inequality rising, … health care coverage disappearing, and a very big spike in the cost of food, utilities, and gasoline.”

incomes are not declining, the poverty rate remains the same (see here for some perspective. more people have health insurance now than at the same time last year. and the cost of food and utilities had not risen enough to justify the phrase ‘a very big spike’.

not so for gas — its price has gone nuts. also, the unemployment rate is high for the united states, but still on par with other unemployment rates in the western world.

classic fear politics at work here.

" American workers have consistently given us rising productivity… what did they get in return? Declining wages, less than one-fourth as many new jobs as in the previous eight years, smaller health care and pension benefits, rising poverty, and the biggest increase in income inequality since the 1920s."

income is up across most of the country (with the exception of the northeast), pension problems have largely been the fault of the unions, poverty is holding steady percentage-wise. most of that paragraph is simply incorrect, at worst, dishonest. more fear politicking.

there’s also a problem with the idea of ‘income inequality’. as the country progresses forward in time, the wealth of previous generations are passed on. the top end of the income ladder is naturally going to proceed upward. this is natural, unless you do away with inheritance. also, some industries are producing more revenue than previous generations were capable of (think technical ones) .. in short, the notion of ‘income inequality’ is wholly fallacious.

“What about the assault on science and the defense of torture?”

the assault on … [read more >>]

giving the code tags in the syntaxed code a width, then setting the overflow. not urgent, but a nice to have.

thanks to phillip.

.. which is sometimes all i have.

0.5 mi @ 4:24. climate controlled.

after a 30-minute circuit routine and around 9 miles on the bike, mind you.

in august i’ve somehow managed to put on 6 lbs while keeping my body fat % the same. i wanted to see that number go DOWN.

i’m expecting my weight to go up over the next couple of weeks as i try to slice off some bad habits (eating late, drinking too much, etc). afterwards, i’ll probably hit some kind of detox, through month of october.

it’s good to have dreams, right?

i need to widen the display just a bit, and maybe shrink the dates down.

so to speak.

5.5 mi @ abysmal. 84°, 45% humidity.

i was reading through my old entries from 2006 the other day – and many, many posts were concerning my running times. granted, they’re all pretty sad, but in recording them, the idea was to look back on them and see my growth over time and laugh, noting what a slow, fat bastard i was back then.

boy, is my face red. i stopped running regularly, and now i look back at the times and distances with pride and envy.

is it a deadly sin if you envy yourself?

in an attempt to keep myself on the straight and narrow running-wise, i’m going to start writing down my times again. i might make up a special partial for it, we’ll see. stay tuned.

and try not to laugh.

i’ll just grab my shit and leave

so today i’m filling in the missing parts of this travelogue. there’s a period of about six months starting in june of 2006 that i’ve skipped (save the fic) since i’d rather not remember anything i don’t have the scars to remind me of. added tags too, though that was trivial. there’s a strange double-post thing going on sometimes as well. not sure what the deal is there, but i’ll hunt it down when i feel like i want to dig through the code some more.

i really need to add a search feature. as in, really. the tags are intended to make finding things easier by category, but until i get everything labeled it’s still going to be a bitch and a half to navigate.

so here’s the wish list, not in priority order:

search: cuz, why not? might just use google though.

tag cloud: pointless at the moment, maybe less so in the future. beats having a directory.

excerpting and a ‘more’ page: these pages can get long.

pagination for the tags listing pages: could also get long.

fixing all the auto-markup, whether by direct exclusion in the markup finder or by fixing the text on a case-by-case basis.

directing back to the post after edit to save a round trip.

some links and such to my usual haunts: delicious, flickr, etc.

there is a world next to this one .. only, it’s not really, it’s only in my head .. only it’s not that either. it’s a lot different than i thought; more dangerous, and much, much more real.

i have been exploring it for years. now it wants to explore me – and you – and the place where we live. things are about to change, and not for the better.

and i have a feeling it’s all my fault.

sorry.

james awoke with a strangled gasp, sweating. he sat up, the motion sensors in the room telling the home’s expert system to raise the lights just enough for him not to trip over his shoes.

6:45am

to his left, jamie stirred. she woke with him, as she always did, regardless of the reason.

“another nightmare, baby?” she asked through sleepily lidded eyes.

“something.” he blinked the sleep away. “central: open morning news.”

the wall ahead swam with information. video feeds sized by freshness and james’ arcane inference rules. scrolling text feeds harvested from the blogosphere on a number of topics. weather. a city overlay with air quality, traffic patterns. all the king’s men. the program adjusted the audio based on where his eyes landed on the wall, some streams crisp English, others the smooth sexless voice of the translator.

“so noisy,” she said. he smiled.

“trying to wash the bad dreams away.”

“with more bad dreams?”

yeah. he knew. he reached for the manual controls to adjust the audio volume. (the concept of ‘video volume’ occurred to him, as it always did. he vowed once again to do something with it someday.)

gone. odd.

“hey, where’s the remote?”

Jamie mumbled something, rolled over. she would be insufferable if he didn’t get up and around, and let her have her beauty sleep.

not that she needed much, he thought, smiling. that flash of beauty had stolen the last of the cobwebs from his consciousness, and with them the … [read more >>]

‘ran’ this morning, which means at this point, a bunch of running and a bunch of walking in between. nearly three miles, abysmal time. but i got up early and went, and i think that’s the important thing.

life’s funny sometimes. funny, to quote the apotheosis saga, like a fist in the gut.

fixed a couple of things with this site this evening. mostly because adam wouldn’t stop pestering me about not having an xml feed up.

so there it is. right there. now shut the hell up.

a few other tweaks, nothing major. about to start putting in permalinks, because .. well, i should. tightened up security just a hair. added some in-place editors if you happen to be logged in.

my last day with RS is thursday. i’m somewhat adrift.

was shooting for the smallest, most extensible preferences class i could get. email me any comments — i’d like opinions on this.

 1  class Preference < ActiveRecord::Base
 2    belongs_to :user
 3    
 4    #FIXME descriptions should be in a config file?
 5    COMMON_DEFAULTS = {
 6      :email_on_message => [true,
 7        "Email when you get a message?"],
 8      :online_status_visible => [false,
 9        "Status visible to everyone?"],
10      :public_profile => [false,
11        "Full profile visible to everyone?"]
12      
13    }
14    
15    
16    class << self
17      def description_for(key)
18        (COMMON_DEFAULTS[key.to_sym] &&
19         COMMON_DEFAULTS[key.to_sym][1]) || 
20         nil 
21      end
22    end
23    
24  end