iTunes Match is Live
YAY! I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time.
iTunes Match processing.
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Archive Posts (Page 45)
Hoodwinked
SOPHIA: Will you read to me after dinner?
ME: Maybe.
SOPHIA: What?! Why maybe?
ME: Let me rest a bit and then get some stuff done and we’ll see.
[…5 minutes pass…]
SOPHIA: Can we play 20 Questions while we eat?
ME: Sure.
SOPHIA: OK, you think of something first.
ME: OK, I’m thinking of something.
SOPHIA: Remember you have to answer “Yes” or “No”.
ME: I’m well aware of the rules.
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The New Oxford American Dictionary Defines Punk
- Punk (n)
- A loud fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music, popular in the 1970s and early 1980s.
- An admirer or player of such music, typically characterized by colored spiked hair and clothing decorated with safety pins or zippers.
Jony Ive's Steve Jobs Eulogy
Steve used to say to me (and he used to say this a lot), “Hey Jony, here’s a dopey idea.” And sometimes they were — really dopey. Sometimes they were truly dreadful. But sometimes they took the air from the room, and they left us both completely silent.
This is Not a Parable
I’m not sure why I love this lyric so much, but I sure do.
This is not a parable
This is a terrible…
This is a terrible thing
Yes I will rhyme that after…
After all I've done today
I have earned my wings
It Happened Today, by R.E.M, released 2010
Ways Coda Could Improve Rails Support
You asked for it. This is my off-the-cuff list. I’m sure I’ll think of other things.
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This Boggles my Mind
They’re called “essential” for a reason, Bill.
I’m not sure making the world a worse place for everyone just because some loser didn’t pay for Windows is a good idea… This is like a law that if someone steals they are no longer allowed to get vaccinations. Only in this alternate world, 80% of people steal, and so disease runs rampant.
I mean I feel Microsoft’s pain here. They experience more software theft than anyone else by a long shot.
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Trailer: Alien vs. Predator 2: Surrogate
[ed: I wrote this utter nonsense as a very extended joke with a friend of mine. Enjoy.]
EXT. JUNGLE — DAY
A dark shape rocks gently among the foliage. The camera approaches and the shape resolves into the unmistakable outline of an Alien from behind.
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Peach Crème Brûlée
Put a peachy twist on one of my favorite recipes.
Peach Crème Brûlée, a little treat for my family.
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Somebody Out There Thinks I'm a Skeeze
I have the unfortunate habit, when I’m distracted by work, of engaging in conversations without being aware of what’s being said. A few years ago I was working on site with a client in Tempe. I had use of a private office and a keyboard, mouse, and screen to which I could attach my laptop. But I prefer the laptop mouse and keyboard in most cases, so I would connect only the screen, as a secondary display, to make use of on occasion.
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There's a Lot Going On On This Sign
It takes a depth of understanding of human language to know this says “2 2 20.” Even more to know it means a beer costs two dollars.
Dollar two two twenty.
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Teenagers: A Poem for Isabel
I wrote this for Isabel on their 13th birthday.
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Isabel's Off to the Santa Fe Opera
A birthday surprise from Grandpa Coffey. My pretty little person.
Isabel and their Grandpa Coffey.
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Is There a Way to Accept This Thing With the Keyboard
Mac OS X Lion does iPhone-style autocorrect as you type. I’m leaving it on for now to see if I like it. If it autocorrects something, you can press Escape to ignore the correction, but sometimes I’m typing and not paying attention, and a correction I don’t want is applied. Like on the iPhone, you can back up to the word that was corrected and it will show a popup like the one below so you can quickly restore what you originally entered:
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Deception Inflection
Sometimes I’m accused of being a good person, and I have to remind people that it being evil and appearing evil are only positively correlated for sufficiently small values of evil.
The deceoption inflection.
Here it is with some data points:
Evil corporations.
Note, for instance, that Exxon is doing it wrong. They only need to be a little more evil to appear completely good. Google, on the other hand, totally has it figured out.
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At the End of this Road is Mexico
Looking forward to an extended week of focus and beautiful sunsets.
On the road to Puerto Peñasco.
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This is My Office for the Next Few Days
I’m not really a beach person but I genuinely love the solitude of this beautiful place.
The view from the balcony of Jesse’s condo in Puerto Peñasco.
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OAuth is Right for Twitter
There’s been some grumbling recently about OAuth and the Twitter API. Gruber posits that this is a bad thing dressed up to look like a good thing. But really, it is a good thing.
The whole point of OAuth is to allow me to authorize one service (like Flickr, Posterous, FourSquare, Instagram, or, yes, even a full Twitter client) to interact with another service (like Twitter) on my behalf without giving them my password.
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Guinea Pig: A Poem
I wrote this poem for Isabel’s friend, who was collecting poems about Guinea Pigs for a project:
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Stay Daddy
I had to put this in some documentation I wrote for a client.
Go Daddy will try very hard from now on to “up sell” you with additional names and services. You do not need to purchase other related names (and there is no benefit to you to do so unless you’re trying to protect a recognized brand) so avoid the extra check boxes. As you proceed, look for the “No Thanks” buttons, which will bypass all the unnecessary add-ons.
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The Dead Forest Celebration
I grew up on the cul-de-sac end of a long suburban street. The neighborhood this street was part of backed up to a small strip of young but wild wood about a quarter mile wide, and this, beginning with a long downward slope, formed the barrier between our back yard and the farm fields and county roads beyond. My brother and I spent long afternoons in what we called “the ravine,” climbing trees, chasing squirrels, and generally reveling in a place protected from parental view.
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Quirrell
Sophia can do wonders with a blanket…
Sophia “dressed up” as Quirrell from Harry Potter.
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Sewing Party
My wife (not pictured) is teaching kids to sew today.
A whole pile of kids learning to sew.
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Vonnegut's Humor
I’ve been a Vonnegut fan since I was in high school. Of course there’s a lot to like about his work. But one thing I’ll mention here is his dry humor. This, for example, is one of the greatest things ever written:
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Inferi?
I bought something on Amazon today and this promotional banner popped up:
Inferi?
This immediately made me think of the Inferi from Harry Potter. Apparently Voldemort wants me to buy a swim suit. Creepy.
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Duped by a Nine Year Old
True story:
SOPHIA: [Loudly, to the room in general] What is 7 times 6? It isn’t in my homework or anything, I’m just curious.
ME: [Distractedly while I work on my laptop] 42
SOPHIA: [cackles with glee, writes the answer on her homework sheet] Thank you!
This reminds me of another Sophia story worth recounting. When she was 4 years old, riding in the shopping cart at the grocery store. I turn down the alcohol aisle looking for cooking wine for a recipe.
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Lost Connection to MySQL Server During Query When Dumping Table
I’ve seen this error a time or two. It happens sometimes when I dump/load a database to copy it on the same server. Today I decided to fix it on my development machine. These entries in my my.cnf did the trick:
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Submit!
This is what you see when you start the process of filling out a passport application on the State Department web site.
Submit?
So far as I know, the word “submit” only has two meanings. Since I haven’t even started my application, I’m clearly not presenting an application to a body for consideration. The only other meaning of “submit” is to yield to a superior force, so…
Wait, never mind. It makes perfect sense.
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Body Awareness in Stoner
I love the novel Stoner by John Williams. [ed: Since this was written I’ve read Williams’ Augustus twice and it has become one of my favorite novels.] One thing I appreciated is the way Williams writes about Stoner’s awareness of his physical self, especially his hands.
For example here where it seems to symbolize Stoner’s anxiety:
Stoner wet his lips and shifted on the chair. He tried to fold his large hands together so that they would be invisible.
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Anybody Care to Explain this Control
A checkbox and yes/no radio buttons for a single option. Just for emphasis.
Yes, you can turn the checkbox off and set the radio to “Yes.” Or turn it on and set it to “No.” Heaven only knows what it does then.
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Anybody Who Can Write Like This…
…will forever be admired by me.
Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightening glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world. All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy, pub. 1992
This is What Custom Software is All About
It was fun to read this email forwarded from our contact at a client today:
Mark this day in the calendar,
I took a phone call for the dreaded DUPLICATE CARD REQUEST!!! In the past this has been one of the most time consuming, aggravating and plain worst thing to do. BUT!!!!
I was able to pull up the students name, run her credit card, and generate and email a receipt to her all without leaving my desk.
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An Anachronism
I discovered this anachronism lurking on my doorstep.
A “Phone-Book” (archaic).
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Fixing uninitialized constant MysqlCompat::MysqlRes
For reasons I don’t fully understand, using ActiveRecord in Rails 2.3 (or at least 2.3.11) with the MySQL gem version 2.8.1 on Mac OS X 10.6 (or at least 10.6.7) produces this error. With other versions of Rails, you may get a different error, but the underlying cause is the same. The internet is rife with suggestions that may or may not be helpful with various version combinations. But none of them helped in my case.
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Anthropomorphize
[the smoke detector in our house chirps a low battery warning]
SOPHIA: “Ugh! I hate that noise.”
ME: “That noise was just telling me how much it loves you.” (laughs)
SOPHIA: [tears begin to well in her eyes] “Don’t! You’re making me feel bad for the chirp!”
Rotated Text in FileMaker
Matt asked if there was a way to show askew text on a FileMaker layout. (Rotated something other than 90°.) You can’t do this directly with the text object, but you can get the same effect using a web view with HTML + CSS.
Here’s an example HTML snippet:
<html> <body> <h1 style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; -webkit-transform: rotate(-3deg);"> Matt Petrowsky </h1> </body> </html> To embed this in a web view, use a data url (which can be the result of a calculation):
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Thank you everyone for wishing me a happy birthday. Same to all of you on the various days.
PS: I’m good at facebook. I got all my birthday wishes done. Yay.
A Little Math Help?
Anybody want to help me with some math? Consider:
Diagram 1
I know angle A, distance D, angle AΔ and distance DΔ. I’m trying to find angle A?. This is what I came up with:
The proposed formula.
At first I thought I was all good, but this doesn’t work for all A and AΔ (which is obvious in hindsight). For instance, this works fine if A is negative:
A working case with negative angles.
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My New Kindle Case
This is my glorious new dinosaur kindle case, courtesy of Mamie and a Saturday afternoon at her sewing machine. ❤️❤️❤️
My new one-of-a-kind Kindle case, closed.
And here it is opened.
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The Chillier-Than-Usual-Pocalypse
It is upon us here in Phoenix.
Sophie warming up by the fire with a hot bowl of oatmeal.
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Isabel’s Second Helping of Ratatouille
Strangely, this has been Isabel’s favorite dish since they were two and a half years old. “Ooh want!” they used to say at the grocery, holding a shiny black eggplant as big as their head…
Isabel with their favorite meal.
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I Tried to Read an Article
Chris and I were discussing online reading. He sent me a link to an article about people using apps and devices to convert online content into more readable forms. This is how the article displayed in my browser. Ironies.
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