BillSaysThis

Twitters for 2010-04-29

@Fahrni "extremely hard to find Chubby Hubby." Look in the mirror, at least that's what TS1 tells me 😉 #
RT @darpandinker just blogged "Comparing Schooner features with InnoDB 1.1 (MySQL 5.5.4 DEV release)" : http://lnkd.in/neiBSv #

Twitters for 2010-04-28

I'm attending Chatter Appathon, are you? http://chatter-appathon.eventbrite.com (at @hackerdojo) #
@ufez Which also assumes there's blame to be assigned and we all know what assuming does in reply to ufez #

Twitters for 2010-04-27

@rbucich I agree, though not sure its quite as good as Band of Brothers in reply to rbucich #
Unless Nashville pull one out of their ass, Sharks play winner of Phoenix-Detroit next. Oy! #
RT @egghat bloggt: Nochmal in eigener Sache … Kachingelt mich und ich mach die Werbung aus: Ich halte ja Kachingle… http://bit.ly/aJVtKX #
@support Is it possible to view the tweets by an account's followers, directly or as a list (assuming public)? #twitterquestion #
Another (short) bike ride, another "oh my god my lungs my lungs" #exerciseisourfriend #
@akalsey My wonderful wife uses http://fitclick.com, tonight she made Parmagian Tilapia for us #yummy in reply to akalsey #

Twitters for 2010-04-26

Late season surge makes it look like I may win NYC Kopites #EPL fantasy league http://fantasy.premierleague.com/M/table.mc?id=187858 #lfc #
@BryanJacobson6 Agreed, same for me and TS1 #goodmovies in reply to BryanJacobson6 #
What are odds that 2 people I follow, @delraydiva and @chadfowler, neither of whom live near ity, would tweet about DC Metro 1 after other? #
@chadfowler Are you saying you know @delraydiva? in reply to chadfowler #
@NyLiverBull Liverpool win 2x, spurs/city draw against each other, spurs, city, villa lose otherwise–and we're in! #EPL #lfc #scum #chavs in reply to NyLiverBull #
@ifindkarma Did you try plugging the phone into your Mac? in reply to ifindkarma #
@kitt I wish my air-conditioned @hackerdojo was here already, sigh 🙂 in reply to kitt #

Short Video: Sydney Rolling on the carpet

He’s just so cute!

Twitters for 2010-04-25

First bike ride today after a gazillion years, lungs need to catch up with my expectations. #
Last year 7 Trojans in 1st 49 picks, this year 1st Trojan taken at 49th pick #nfldraft #usc #
@mhartl Canonical? Is that some kind of meat? in reply to mhartl #
Just made anniversary dinner reservations at http://www.bacarsf.com/ for TS1 and me #happiness #
@Fahrni watch out for the knives in reply to Fahrni #
Sharks showed Avs why empty net is a two-edged sword. Twice. #sjsharks #thisistheyear #

Twitters for 2010-04-24

@akalsey Great, thanks for sending it! in reply to akalsey #
SEC staffers watched porn as economy crashed http://bit.ly/bad7YK This is why people have low opinions of gov workers #peopleshouldgotojail #
@carllerche Great talk last night at SVRuby, can you post the me.com URL for your slides–problem git-cloning the GH repo #ror #
Writing a #wordpress plugin for @kachingle so I'm signed up for @wordpresscampsf next Saturday–wonder what time it starts #
@akalsey I always assumed 'everything' included mansions, warehouses, etc. As Southside Johnny sang so well, "All I want is everything!" in reply to akalsey #

Twitters for 2010-04-23

@Fahrni Blog post doesn't have the usual email answer link, nor comments either but I know it–Iron Man@ in reply to Fahrni #
ROFL! RT @MikeG1 A *real* coding samurai would cut off your pretentious hipster head and piss down your neck afterwards. #
A fourth Law & Order? And set in (CSI-free) Los Angeles? Really? #tvexecsdrinkearlyandoften #
@SoccerByIves: "Kiper and McShay ready to kill each other over Jimmy Clausen." Not sure this would be a huge loss to fans 😉 #
@sogrady Do you read @fenwaynation? They just added @kachingle if you want to show your support. #
SVRuby Meetup tonight was awesome, @carllerche and @wycats giving a Rails 3 intro/overview #ror #

Twitters for 2010-04-22

@beaulebens When are you releasing a #WordPress plugin for OpenGraph? in reply to beaulebens #
RT @sogrady "First! The Commodification of Journalism": http://monk.ly/cUPzZt #kachingle #

A couple of years ago I posted that TS1 and I had become true Apple converts. Since then I’ve gotten a MacBook Pro (parting gift when I left Aptana) and we got my dad’s Mini when he decided to go back to Windows. The Mini is our entertainment computer, hooked up to the living room big screen, which let us get rid of the DVD player.

Hat tip: LogiTech makes a very nice, free iPhone app called TouchMouse so the phone can be used as wireless mouse and keyboard.

We’ve resisted buying matching iPads. So far.

One other thing we bought some time ago was some Apple stock and that’s the reason for today’s post. The company just released their Q2 numbers and they blew the doors off expectations. Stock was down a little in regular trading–normal the day earnings are announced–but in after hours trading it shot up about 6% to $260. Probably won’t open at much over $250 tomorrow but still awesome.

Twitters for 2010-04-20

@JPBarlow Would have loved to have been a fly on that wall! in reply to JPBarlow #
#ror Anyone getting strang hangs trying to install rails 3 beta3? Specifically on GET http://production.s3.rubygems.org/latest_specs.4.8.gz #
@jeffbarr having serious issues retrieving files hosted on S3 (rails install), can you point me at a help resource?? #

On the ownership of Liverpool FC

A recent SpoFi discussion on Tom Hicks and George Gillette’s quality as owners of the team brought this response from me:

Liverpool finished second in the Premiership last season, despite a horrendous number of draws (if three of them had been wins we’d have won the league), and made the Champions League semi-finals. This season has been less successful but we might still win the Europa League as consolation prize.

Under Hicks and Gillette we’ve bought Fernando Torres. Last Summer, okay we sold Xabi Alonso but with Real Madrid calling there was little chance of him not going. Meanwhile Benitez was given plenty to spend and paid millions of quid for Glen Johnson–good buy but injured much of the term–and Alberto Aquilani, a complete waste of well over $40M. Thankfully Lucas, a youngster Benitez has groomed filled in reasonably well considering its his first season as a regular starter.

Speaking of injuries, other than Dirk Kuyt and Pepe Reina almost all the team’s important players have missed meaningful chunks of the season due to them.

I agree that Hicks and Gillette should probably not have taken on quite so much debt BUT if the economy had not gone so deep in the toilet the last two years I’m pretty sure this would be a non-issue for us, Man U and probably even Portsmouth.

Twitters for 2010-04-18

Friends from Oz are in town, visiting with them at CA Academy of Sciences #saturdayfun #

Twitters for 2010-04-17

@Fahrni Use your jujitsu moves–don't try so hard to leave earlier! in reply to Fahrni #
Great response/comment by @typaldos RT @mbauwens Just wrote: Kachingle – do voluntary payments to blogs have a chance? http://bit.ly/bDUxHx #
You must be a happy boy today @nyliverbull #lfc #ynwa #
Congrats @harlancoben on CAUGHT rising to the top of the NYT bestseller list! Can't wait to read it. #
@ufez LOL, Fox Soccer plays some weekdays when they can't stomach yet another repeat of a weekend match in reply to ufez #
@NyLiverBull H&G news, silly! in reply to NyLiverBull #
Very smart: RT @daringfireball ★ It’s Not the Control, It’s the Secrecy: http://✪df.ws/f2a #

Playing with Python

As part of the Events team at Hacker Dojo (where I’m more or less happily spending most weekdays now), I’m helping to write a new events application. Jeff Lindsay started the app before any of the rest of us got involved and he chose to write in Python for deployment on Google App Engine.

Never having worked with Python before (eww, indentation denotes code sections) has been a bit of a challenge. But the app is straightforward in functionality and I can often copy Jeff’s original code as a starting point. Also there are a bunch of Python devs here at the Dojo who I’ve bugged for help.

Can’t say as I’m inspired to jump ship from Ruby on Rails, at least not yet, but learning a new language appeals to me.

Twitters for 2010-04-16

@aaronsw Maybe because Framinghamites sounds vaguely distasteful? #thursdayhumor in reply to aaronsw #
The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going – ProPublica http://bit.ly/b8IdaX #banksters #
Excellent analysis of last weekend's Barcelona win over Real Madrid http://bit.ly/aSzcPk #futbol #
Is anyone alive in #ror besides those of us asking questions?!?! #
.@dpickett @eladmeidar @mikeg1 Can you look https://gist.github.com/9ee7144bb17c5a6a0e57 & see if you can help, please? #currentlyfoobared #
@eladmeidar Indeed… worked fine with beta 2, now f'ed in reply to eladmeidar #
@eladmeidar Okay, will do. Been sitting in #ror but no answers there in reply to eladmeidar #
@MikeG1 no worries, thanks anyway in reply to MikeG1 #
Politics post: Tea Parties: Wealthy, educated and willfully ignorant http://bit.ly/9QHTz8 #
@ufez Let me know what you think of it–I thought it was okay but not great in reply to ufez #

Twitters for 2010-04-15

@wordpress Will an article on moving a 3.0 install from a subdirectory to root directory be posted in Codex anytime soon? #help #please #
Right wing ridonkulousness: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-13-2010/that-s-tariffic #
9th Street Chill #songprequels #

Gone to WordPress

For more than nine years, beginning with Stones to be rolled into Sopranos and continuing for over 4,000 more posts, I’ve been an active user and frequent evangelist for Google’s Blogger. Heck, my use predates Google’s acquisition of Blogger by quite a margin. But today I cut over the new version of BillSaysThis and it uses WordPress.

I wasn’t looking to make this switch and I’m not happy at having to do it. But Google has forced my hand. The company has never put all that much in the way of resources to the Blogger team, as best I can tell from the outside, but as they’ll be removing a key feature, one on which I’ve always depended, on May 1 I have no choice.

The feature is Publish via FTP. That means after you click the Publish button on the Blogger post writing page, any new or changed pages are generated and transferred to a remote host. This feature allowed us to use Blogger but host the blog on our own sites. The published reasoning for the change is that the feature takes too much effort given how few blogs use it but this seems to be putting the best face they could think of on it rather than the real reason.

Fortunately for me, WordPress 3.0 is out as a beta and works well enough to use already. WordPress has a decent import tool so, with a bit help from my friend/inside connection Beau, I was able to get all the posts into the new system. Color advice from Garret helped too.

One of the best new features in 3.0 that made this a much easier choice and solution is support for multiple blogs from one install of WordPress. Previously you had to install separate copies for each blog and do maintenance, plugin installs, design and so on separately for each. I already had two WP 2.x blogs, bill:politics and Bill’s Movie Reviews, so I created new blogs for each in the 3.0 install and with a few clicks imported the old content.

Some of my old pages depend on custom PHP code and so either will take a bit more time to port or stay in the old format. C’est la vie.

Looking forward to nine years (at least) with WordPress.

And, oh yeah, one last thing: Comments are open, at least for newer posts.

Twitters for 2010-04-14

@rcade Can this be independently verified? in reply to rcade #
@beaulebens Is there a way, beyond unanswered forum posts, to get some help on a Blogger import issue (issue: import too big)? #wordpress #
Couldn't resist, got the new Jeff Beck CD (hat tip: @dangerousmeta) #rockandrollforever #
RT @bruceallen: Support BSMW Through Micropayments with Kachingle http://goo.gl/fb/PF3hx #
Being a @hackerdojo keyholder is cool but not when I'm the only one here and need to leave! #

Oscars 2010 Predictions

‘Cuz why not?

Picture: Hurt Locker (why fight it?)
Actor: Colin Firth (about time)
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (such a good bad guy)
Actress: Meryl Streep (doesn’t she always win?)
Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick (plucky twist on type who caused the current financial ruin)
Animated: Up (Avatar not eligible?)
Director: Hurt Locker (see #1)
Adapted Screenplay: An Education (voters love sexy smart)
Original Screenplay: Inglorious Bastards (Tarantino goes crazy in such a terrific manner)

What are your predictions? Send them to me at @billsaysthis.

Author: BillSaysThis