Twitters for 2011-08-14

  • Reds started so strong today but came out for 2nd half looking like they missed naps– @Dirk_18_Kuyt should've started! #ynwa @LFC #
  • Gervinho's red was weak but deserved, Barton should've gone too and Song before both for the stomp #goodforliverpool #
  • RT @ozjimbob Saturday's outcome suggests Iowa GOP have a taste for major league pranks… statesmanjournal.com/article/201108… #ftfy #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitters for 2011-08-13

  • @The_Pornlord Have you read Charlie Stross's latest, Rule 34, yet? Seems right up your, er, alley. #
  • @1Password Thanks for making software worthy of recommendation! #
  • Candidate's words always fair game | Questioner under fire for asking Bachmann what being a submissive wife means http://t.co/1bltW9k #gop #
  • @mahalramos Not at all, just hard to believe a "submissive" wife will not take unelected hubby's decisions as policy #
  • @mahalramos Not sure she can, word means what it means, though IMO that's hardly her biggest obstacle to nomination #
  • @mahalramos That's reasonable, but MB's use of specific Biblical term + self-professed religious beliefs are diff animal #
  • .@perezd "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, off by one errors & naming things." #ftfy #
  • Wearing my @Dirk_18_Kuyt jersey, PSYCHED 4 @LFC 2 open the next great season @ Anfield tomorrow /cc @John_W_Henry @pauldalglish #
  • Had an awesome 1:1 brainstorm w/our new VP Product this afternoon, @zuberance is rockin' #ilovemyjob #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitters for 2011-08-11

  • Why am I not surprised? #CalTrain just cancelled my train, 5 mins after it was due, w/o announcing a replacement #fail #
  • And of course a northbound just blew right through the station #CalTrain #fail #
  • Train is so packed even standing room and vestibules are overstuffed #CalTrain #fail #
  • Blog: @Comcast: Cut the BS on Fox Soccer in HD and just answer already! http://t.co/8Y9u88X #fail #lies #
  • @alienvenom LOL I keep a phone browser tab open to it for months now! @caltrain #
  • Great novel, #recommended RT @amendlocke "The Restoration Game" is out in US from Pyr: amzn.to/rodE03 via @anynewbooks #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Comcast: Cut the BS on Fox Soccer in HD and just answer already!

[This is the email I sent to Comcast, for all the good it will do.]

I’m getting fed up with the BS line the customer service people are told to give as an answer when I call to ask why I have to pay extra for Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV.

I was told, after waiting ONE FREAKING YEAR since my last call, the same BS: that Comcast cannot carry these channels in HD because the networks won’t allow it.

Fox, of course, says that they’d be happy to have the ONE OF THE TWO LARGEST CABLE COMPANIES IN AMERICA carrying their network.

Clearly one company is not telling the truth. Given that Fox can only gain from carriage the logical answer is that Comcast is not being honest.

What, is $250 a month for TV and Internet not enough to be at least treated with respect???

As it happens last summer I spoke with a manager after getting the standard BS line and he told me that Comcast was planning a network upgrade that would increase HD capacity but it wouldn’t be ready until about June of this year. Well, its August and I see I can get WGN and KCSM in HD but still no Fox Soccer Channel.

Why is Comcast not willing to answer honestly and openly? Look at the hottest thread on the customer forums, http://forums.comcast.com/t5/Channels-and-Programming/FSC-HD-Fox-Soccer-Channel/td-p/756830, over 400 posts from customers begging or telling of switching to a different provider and yet all Comcast Larry can say is he has brought the request to the team’s attention.

Answer already!

SmallCommunities and J2: My New Rails Projects

I’m happy to tell you that we recently launched J2, a new version of JHTC.org, and that I’ve spun the core code off into an open source project called SmallCommunities. SmallCommunities is available on GitHub and I would love to see some other folks join in and help me move it forward.

The purpose of SmallCommunities is to provide a self-hosted subset of Meetup.com’s capabilities that allows complete customization of the site’s visual design while avoiding the, er, difficult to control quantity of emails sent by the Meetup service. Also, the current code expects events to be monthly, plus occasional extras, and membership to be paid while Meetup of course does not, though I think this could be easily altered.

The next version of JHTC.org will be an instance of SmallCommunities. If you think SmallCommunities might be of use to your group I’d be happy to work with your web team to get you up and running!

The code is written in Ruby on Rails 3.0.x and uses Devise for authentication, Compass, Haml and Sass for views and styling, RailsAdmin for managing most content and jQuery for active interfaces; SmallCommunities has a modest test base, mainly rSpec.

There are three key open features:

  • A flexible non-event page templating system
  • Photo uploads for events, members and non-event pages
  • Multi-level navigation menu support

While SmallCommunities isn’t a CMS it does need to support some static-ish pages such as About, Memberships and so on. I plan to adapt the sample code from Jose Valim’s excellent new Rails book, Crafting Rails Applications, so that these pages can easily reuse existing components without the person maintaining the site content to know Rails (and not require the site admin to do this work).

J2 is hosted on Heroku. I really like their service and was very happy to see them acquired by Salesforce.com last year because of the added resources and stability, and our site’s traffic is low enough to fit on the free service tier. However one drawback is that Heroku doesn’t allow apps to upload files to the server; instead one must use an alternative such as S3 and those are paid services and for now we hope to avoid hosting costs to the extent possible.

Accordingly any images must be included in the application when deployed to the server and uploaded separately to, say, Picasa (Google Images). I expect there’s a suitable free service, at least for the less that 2GB worth of images we might need, just need to do some research and then loop in the appropriate Ruby gem or jQuery plugin.

There are a number of good multi-level menu solutions available, this isn’t a new requirement by any means, but the first couple I’ve tried ran into issue with some of the existing Sass/Compass CSS and I’ve just not had a need to solve it.

Note: PayPal is the only payment mechanism currently supported, to avoid the need for–and substantial hosting costs of–SSL, though I’m open to patches that add, say, ActiveMerchant, and the database schema is mostly prepared for such a change.

Twitters for 2011-08-07

  • Happy 100th, we all love Lucy! #
  • @whump If you're not here yet, it's SRO #neenerneener 😉 #
  • @pauldalglish We call it Telemanjaro /cc @rcade #
  • Charlie Stross about to start here at Borderlands reading from Rule 34, room is overstuffed #sfinsf #mefi #
  • Stross: Bernie Madoff ate my original Rule 34 plot #sfinsf $5B just wasn't a big enough theft #
  • Stross: Merchant Princes series were "economic meta-fiction for emerging economies and the traps therein" #
  • @al3x You just recapitulated the history of Goldman Sachs in a tweet #banksters #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitters for 2011-08-06

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitters for 2011-08-04

  • Only Wed morning and already a second train this week has been cancelled, great job #CalTrain #fail #
  • Replacement train is itself late and reportedly already packed #CalTrain #fail #
  • Replacement train stuck at Cal Ave, already half hour behind schedule–how can #CalTrain have 2 f'd up NB trains in 1 morning? #
  • Now replacement train cancelled so we deboard and wait for yet another ride. F U #CalTrain #
  • @Zonal_Marking look at new signing, new manager impact after first month or two played #
  • Conductor told us to walk down, under and up to SB platform. New train pulls up to NB platform #CalTrain #idiots #
  • @steno Only worked because it matches expectations #justsaying #
  • Idiotic list and of course only CEOs/VCs are men | 15 Worst-Dressed Men of Silicon Valley: GQ http://t.co/idBKrb4 #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitters for 2011-08-03

  • Misundertstanding, what a load of crap | Rep. Lamborn apologizes for ‘tar baby’ remark on Obama policies http://t.co/RwU9YYH #gop #fail #
  • One down RT @LFC Liverpool confirmed this evening they have reached agreement with Anderlecht for the transfer of Milan Jovanovic. #
  • RT @whump Google can solve the jobs problem, send unemployed Chromebooks and have them review software-driven decisions to suspend accounts. #
  • RT @maddow Senate recesses til Sept 6th without re-upping FAA. Taxpayers lose $30 million every day that it's shut down is.gd/9PyDKp #FYW #
  • @WWLoriHC is it moonlighting as an Angry Birds server? #netdhumor #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitters for 2011-08-02

  • The Growth of the Internet and the Happy Recession http://t.co/Imm6CH1 via @DigitalDD #newneweconomy #
  • Love @jQuery software, hate software powering jQuery forums / @zoho I'm lookin' at you! #
  • @zoho Fix the back button and when searching in a forum, give results for only that forum #jQuery #
  • @zoho Your forum replies from year+ ago promised fast resolution, what's taking so long? #jquery #
  • @akalsey "first grandchild" #
  • @Fahrni Prob with native especially on mobile is must get user to install many apps #
  • @Fahrni problem if you're basing a business on the app #
  • @Fahrni you're absolutely correct but an install adds an extra, high, hurdle so value has to be that much more #
  • @flannelenigma Sadly, not on @Comcast Bay Area–we got KCSM (PBS) & WGN #useless #
  • @flannelenigma Of course that's the one I really want but despite paying extra still no sign of it /cc @comcast @foxsoccer #

Powered by Twitter Tools

Twitters for 2011-08-01

Powered by Twitter Tools