Twitters for 2010-04-27

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Twitters for 2010-04-26

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Twitters for 2010-04-25

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Twitters for 2010-04-24

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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 #

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Apple Fanboy Family Update

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.

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 2010-04-17

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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

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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

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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.

My morning in (small claims) court

To cut to the chase, I don’t know the outcome since the commissioner feels the need to review plaintiff’s submitted documents.

Last summer I made the poor decision to do some hourly computer work for a person I thought was a friend. To say it turned into a nightmare that is hopefully now going to end is an understatement.
This person initially asked me to show how to use Twitter, Facebook, clean up some old stuff on an existing computer and see why backups were apparently not working. However just before I got to the office the additional request of selecting and setting up a new netbook was added.
Over several weeks I did 25 hours of work, though really we never got to the initial requests as getting a working netbook kept getting in the way. To put this politely, I reached the tolerance limit for working in an increasingly negative environment.
Some weeks later I started getting emails requesting additional help and then a refund of most of the small fee I’d charged. I refused but as the emails (and snarky remarks when we happened to be in the same place) kept coming in, despite my repeated requests to leave me be, I unfortunately got increasingly negative in response.
On a number of occasions this person threatened to sue me. Finally a month or so ago I was served and today was the specified appointment.
Small claims is interesting, and generally a good idea. You don’t tie up real courts and require expensive legal assistance to resolve small dollar value claims. There are even volunteer mediators who attempt to get parties to settle without going before the judge.
The process is also informal: the plaintiff makes a statement, the defendant makes a statement, if either side brings a witness those people make statements and each side can make a rebuttal. The judge can ask questions at any point he or she deems fit.
The person suing me brought a thick volume of printouts–amusingly this person was suing their homeowners association as well and gave the judge the wrong set of documents–while I brought none.
What really surprised me is how differently the plaintiff and I recall the events in question. Memory is so subjective! Of course I believe I told the truth and I won’t say the plaintiff feels different about their statements. The plaintiff brought a witness, a mutual friend, but I think his testimony helped me as much as it did the plaintiff.
I hope the decision goes in my favor since of course I feel I did nothing wrong. Also, I did some research on the State of California website and couldn’t find any legal basis for the plaintiff’s claim so there’s that too.