obfuscated.org

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A project I’m working on using Ruby has a bunch of functions that are usually run in groups but from time to time will need to be run individually. My initial solution to this problem was to create a whole mess of shell scripts to run the individual pieces. However, that looked like it was going to require a lot of typing, and I don’t much like to type.

Faced with actual work, I remembered the Rails console. This struck me as the ideal solution. It does command completion, so I wouldn’t have to remember the specifics of every little command. It turns out that the console is nothing more than irb with a few flags. Specifically:

 irb -r irb/completion --simple-prompt

Given this, I created a file with shortcuts for the pieces of code that I would want to run:

 #
 # shortcuts.rb
 #
 require 'project/important_stuff'
 require 'project/other_stuff'

 def do_thing_a
    ...
 end

 def do_thing_b
    ...
 end

 def something_else
    ...
 end

 def whatever_more
    ...
 end

And created a shell script to wrap the whole thing up:

 #!/bin/sh
 #
 # console.sh
 #
 exec irb -r irb/completion -r shortcuts --simple-prompt "$@"

So now I can run “console.sh” and type things like “do<tab>a” or “wh<tab>” and have an easy way to run my code. This pleases me.

So Jill mentions a blog that from time to time posts weekend things to do with the family. This is braggable. I’m always looking out for that sort of thing.

However, the site doesn’t seem to have per-category RSS feeds. (That, or I’m just too lazy to find them.) I’d like to read about things to do, but the main content of the blog — wireless technology — is something that I have a real hard time getting in to. This struck me as a fine opportunity to give Y!Pipes a go.

Man was it easy. Enter the URL in to a box that sounds like it will pull the data down and up pops a debugger to tell me what it’s found. There’s a handily-named “filter” box that will do what you expect. Drag the little bits from one box to the next — the “what does the pipe produce now” debugging output always current — and you’re done.

I usually can’t say enough snarky things about my former employer, but I have to give them credit here. Pipes really is cool, very well implemented and stunningly easy to use. This is easily the most well-executed Web 2.0 “version one” that I’ve ever used. Kudos, Yahoo.

I don’t know why nobody notified me of this not entirely recent development. I’ll try not to be too hurt by this. Anyway, there’s a program called Seashore. It’s a Cocoa implementation of The Gimp, which is, as everybody knows, the one true raster image editor. (At least for people too cheap to pony up for Photoshop.)

I’ve been a fan of the Gimp for years, and under Windows or (especially) Linux, it’s a delight to use. However, on OS X it runs much like it does under Linux or Windows, making it seem comparatively super-klunky. It’s a real captain comedown. Nobody should have to use things that smell like Windows when they’re working on a real computer.

Seashore aims to make the Gimp behave like a proper Cocoa application. It’s still pretty beta — sometimes dialogs dissappear and windows refuse to refresh, etc etc — but it’s definitely usable.

I hadn’t planned on going, but if they’re going to send me a card this rad, I sort of have to.

This image would be a lot funnier if I didn’t go over to http://news.google.com/ and get the same error message. I wonder what’s up.

SvN links to and discusses a study regarding the environmental cost of different cars. The original article discusses the energy cost per mile to build different cars and concludes, amongst other things, that the Hummer H3 takes less of an environmental toll than a Honda Civic Hybrid.

And while many consumers and environmentalists have targeted sport-utility vehicles because of their lower fuel economy and/or perceived inefficiency as a means of transportation, the energy cost per mile shows at least some of that disdain is misplaced.

For example, while the industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 was $2.28 cents per mile, the Hummer H3 (among most SUVs) was only $1.949 cents per mile. That figure is also lower than all currently offered hybrids and Honda Civics at $2.42 per mile.

Which makes sense. Pickup trucks — which are all the more H3’s really are — have been around for 1,000,000 years, are very well understood, and are relatively inexpensive to maintain. Hybrids, on the other hand, are newer, less well understood, and more costly to replace parts for.

Of course there are many other things to consider — safety, which pickups lack relative to modern passenger cars, future savings from developing technologies used in hybrids, or other harder to objectively measure costs of dependence on fossil fuels. Still, it’s interesting to see environmental costs put in to perspective in this particular way.

SvN’s conclusion rings particularly true.

There’s nothing wrong with buying a hybrid to save on fuel costs, but maybe it’s time to put down the “I’m doing it for the environment” flag and put up the “I’m doing it to save money on gas” one. And there’s nothing wrong with that, of course.

Ha ha. Just kidding.

But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WiMP11 will take your rights away too. If the ‘Copy protect music’ option is turned on, well, I can’t top their 1984 wording. “If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times.” This says to me it will keep track of your ripping externally, and remove your rights whether or not you ask it to. Can you think of a reason you would need to connect to MS for permission to play the songs you ripped from you own CDs? How long do you think it will be before a service pack, masquerading as a ‘critical security patch’ takes away the optional part of the ‘copy protection’? Now do you understand why they have been testing the waters on WiMP phoning home? Think their firewall will stop it even if you ask? [Link]

So, um… turn that “Copy protect music” option off, I guess. Why would anybody want that in the first place?

I fired Speakeasy today. They had been my ISP for the last year and a half or so. For the most part I’ve been happy with them. Uptime was never a problem, nor was bandwidth. However, the customer service — which along with their liberal terms of service was what I originally hired them for — took a huge nose dive when I tried to move my service to my new home. Here’s a brief timeline:

8/17

I fill out the form on Speakeasy’s web site to move my service from my old home to my new home. Later on in the day I receive an “Out of Office AutoReply” from the person presumably responsible for setting up such a move. The response suggests that he’ll be back on the 23^rd

9/1

The first scheduled date for my install. At some point between 8:00am and 12:00pm they’ll be sending somebody over to hook me up. When this doesn’t happen, I go down to the coffee shop, check their on-line status form and discover that my install had been postponed. How I was supposed to know this while at home, without internet service, waiting for the installer is beyond me. It’s worth noting that Speakeasy never used the up-to-date contact phone number to call and let me know that the install was off.

The reason stated for the delay was “too many white spaces” in a form going between Covad — Speakeasy’s line provider — and Verizon. When I called in to see what was up, I was given a number for an “install coordinator” who would, I imagined, coordinate the install.

9/4

Install, part two. I go in to work and learn via Speakeasy’s on-line status form by the middle of the day that once again, and for the exact same reason — white space for Verizon — the install isn’t going to happen. It’s re-scheduled for Friday. Once again, no phone call from Speakeasy.

9/7

Third try, third cancel. Again I learn of this through the on-line form and not proactively from Speakeasy. I talk to somebody at Speakeasy who tells me that they finally cleared up the issue between their subcontractors and, honest, somebody will be by next Tuesday to get it installed.

9/12

There are two installs scheduled today. One is a regular phone line installed by Verizon. The other is the dedicated line for the DSL connection. (I didn’t have a land line at my old place, and for the sake of simplicity I elected to just move my service rather than move and change it.) At the end of the day there’s a note in the door from Verizon saying that the phone line is in and that Covad should have no trouble doing the work to get the DSL line in.

A quick trip to the coffee shop reveals that Speakeasy’s on-line status page hasn’t been updated. I call to find out what’s up, this time a little ticked, and am told that Verizon hadn’t gotten back to them and that they probably would first thing in the morning. They had better.

9/13

Sure enough, there’s an update around noon saying that the final install will be done on the 22^nd. That’s a full three weeks after it was supposed to be done, which is nuts, so I call in and ask if it couldn’t happen sooner. It turns out that they usually give their clients time to plan the install dates, which is why they pushed it so far out. I’m allotted an earlier time later on that week.

9/15

At home again doing the 8:00am - 12:00pm thing. At 11:30 the Covad guy shows up to work his magic, and within ten minutes he tells me that Verizon never did install the second line and that he can’t do his work.

Waltz. Tango. Foxtrot.

I call Speakeasy and get all manner of “we’ll open a ticket with Verizon.” We explore some other options and come up with 5-7 business days as being the earliest that they could get me up and running. In 5-7 business days, I could get less expensive yet higher-speed service from somebody who hadn’t been jerking me around for the last three weeks, so I tell them to cancel my service.

What happened?

Things like this happen all the time. You can’t hire any service without there being some sort of glitch. There are several things, however, that make this a fireable offense. First and most damning is that not once did Speakeasy call me to let me know that they weren’t going to do what they told me they were going to do and indeed what they had me agree to stay home from work to let them do. That’s crazy. They had a contact phone number. It was up to date. There was no reason for them not to use it. Missing a deadline is bad. Missing a deadline and wasting somebody’s time is awful. Shame on you, Speakeasy.

Next is that every time I talked to somebody at Speakeasy the attitude I got was “we’re sorry, but really it’s Covad/Verizon’s fault.” You know what? I don’t care if it’s Covad or Verizon’s fault. I’m not paying Covad or Verizon. I’m paying Speakeasy. If you’re screwing something up — and if subcontractors you’re paying are slipping, you are indeed screwing up — it’s your fault. Own up to it.

Finally was just the number of slipups. Any one of them I would have let slide, and indeed did let three blown deadlines go. All four of them together, on the other hand, are pretty hard to ignore. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me won’t be fooled any more than four times in total.

So now I’ve hired DSLExtreme for about the same price and double the speed. Their install estimate? 5-7 business days. But they’ve blown four fewer install dates than Speakeasy so far this year, so they get the nod.