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Thoughts of the Bored » Archived Thought » UNIX palindromes #1

There exist a “test” command and a “tset” command, but tset does not do the reverse of test. I consider this a lost opportunity.

I’ve got a new (well, soon to be replaced, apparently!) MacBook Pro on order, and due sometime this week. I’m seriously deciding whether to move away from Google Calendar, and back to iCal with the new machine. With a laptop, which I may have with me a fair amount of the time (we’ll see!), the requirement of a web-available calendar application may subside. It might also be time to reconsider Mail.app over Gmail (still using Gmail for hosting, though). There’s just a few things I don’t like about Gmail/Google Calendar. The main one is that I can’t edit the calendar in iCal, and that occasionally when I go to edit a calendar entry I get all sorts of non-registered clicks. Kinda hard to explain, but if you’ve come across it, you’ll now. I’m actually a bit tempted to go down the hosting route, with someone like DreamHost, and perhaps move this blog there, and run some other stuff off the same account. Including web-available calendars, which are controlled/uploaded by iCal. I think I’d like the flexibility of my own Wordpress installation, with the availability of plugins, and updates. And better XMLRPC support (I can no longer upload images via ecto to Blogsome). Not to mention my own domain working better than here.

Born Again • Supergrass • Supergrass ★★½

People often bag Ikea, and, especially in terms of their kitchens, think the build quality is poor, and the kitchens somehow substandard. I think it has to do with the cost, as well as a somewhat elitist attitude, but people who think themselves above the mass-market appeal that Ikea offers. I’ve actually always quite liked Ikea. Most of their stuff is well designed, and in some cases, well made. The first stuff we bought (before Ikea opened in Adelaide) was some crappy CD racks, and wasn’t that good, but it was only a few dollars a rack. Most of the things we have bought, especially recently, has been very good. So, having set the scene, we have bought about $7500 worth of cabinetry and doors for our kitchen. I’ve put together a few of the cabinets, and the rest of them are in the queue. One of the best things about going the Ikea route was that I haven’t had to deal with anyone, other than the person we gave the list of parts to, and the one who bought out the full trolleys. Because we had meticulously planned the kitchen, and it has some quite tricky stuff going on, it was much easier for us to come up with the design, and do all of the ordering. And from the conversations with the clerks in the store, it is a little unusual. There is a wide range of bits that Ikea do, carcasses of 300mm through to 900mm, as well as a couple of unusual sizes. If we had bought, or planned the kitchen before cutting the hole in the wall, then I wouldn’t have had to cut any carcasses to size, but because the space is a little less than desirable, I have to cut one of the units, and re-drill some of the holes. I need to remove 75mm, which is a bit annoying. Otherwise, it’s all easy, except for the fact that Ikea seem to have decided that side panels (made from the same finish as the doors/drawer fronts) do not extend to the floor, but are in fact just the same height as the cabinets, and we have decided the opposite. So, I have had to buy oversized panels and cut them down. At $90-$120 a pop, you don’t want to fuck up the cut! If you are playing at home, we have gone for the Abstrakt White finish, which apparently is the most expensive, and the new handles, which are called Annars. The benchtop, which we aren’t getting from Ikea, will be custom made a bit later. I really like the soft drawer closers, which allow you to push the drawer shut, and the last 10mm is a soft close, meaning no thump. I kinda think that the drawer runners have been designed to ‘heavy close’, just so you have to buy the soft close extenders. Maybe that’s just Cynical Matt poking his head out again. I’ve probably gone a bit overboard with the wall attachments. I’ve used big (ø12) dynabolts for the large larder, and ø6.5 ones elsewhere. The feet can apparently hold up to 125kg each, and I’ve used four on each base cabinet, but I don’t want to take any chances. All of the wall-fixed cabinets (and there are only three that aren’t, which go under the main table, and are only shallow wall cabinets I’ve modified to sit on the floor) are double dynabolted, and where possible I’ve also put a supporting piece (with dynabolts) underneath, above the skirting. Although this is probably a little overkill. We’d be able to do the whole kitchen, except we need gas connected for the stove, and are also having the gas pipe run through the roof to the heater in the lounge. We have all of the appliances, but we will do the other side of the kitchen first, until we have found a plumber for the gas. Know anyone?

Grey Gardens • Rufus Wainwright • Poses ★★

I had an incident nearly two weeks ago where I injured my back at work, and when I went to the doctor, which is walking distance from work, I found a turtle. Yes, that’s right, there was a ~20cm turtle just walking along the footpath. I took him into the doctor’s surgery, and asked if they could try to find who he belonged to, since he was clearly a pet. I kept asking how he was going each time I went back. They didn’t have any luck finding a missing owner, so I took him to work, where the Biology department said they will look after him. However, the enclosure he will be going in doesn’t quite hold him, so he’s staying with me. And he’s taking up heaps of time. We were planning on buying and assembling some of the kitchen, but it’s after lunch already, and we still haven’t left the house. Oh, and he has a name now: Wilfred. Like the dog.

I can’t remember exactly when, but at some stage in the not too distant future, iTunes/iPod Podcast handling got a whole lot better. It used to be that if you started to listen to a Podcast, it was marked as “Not New”, and was no longer synced to the iPod. This is no longer true - it now syncs all Podcasts that have a play count of 0. It kinda caught me a bit by surprise, when I came across some Podcasts I was sure I’d listened to, and when I played them, I only got the last few seconds. I must have started a new track playing before the end.

Well, after (carelessly) letting my Eve-Online subscription lapse, by not putting enough cash into my VISA account, I’m without a MMORPG. I loved playing WoW when I did, although I miss it a little, I’m not really about to get back into it. I really don’t know if I’ll renew/reactivate Eve, since I only ever really played it a little bit. Probably wasn’t getting my money’s worth out of it. I may download the WoW expansion, but it’s a fairly hefty 3.5GB, and then I only get a 10 day trial, with characters limited to 1XP below Level 61. If I had a really speedy connection, and limitless data transfer, then I would do it. I might see if any kids from school have downloaded it. Although, realistically, that would be the PC version, and I’m really loving OS X at the moment. Perhaps that’s one reason I haven’t been playing Eve much lately. No Mac version, although it does work with Cross Over Office, although not on my Dell for some reason. As soon as I get my MBP, I might give it another go.

I’ve just finished developing a fully-AJAX website. It’s somewhat static in the sense there is little interaction, but I’ve used XMLHttpRequest instead of links for the pages. You can see it at http://jaquiehagan.com. Basically, the home page is the only one that needs to be loaded. If you click on any of the dropdown menus (done with CSS, rather than JS, to make it more compatible; this includes using csshover.htc for IE, since they aren’t simple A tags), it loads the side menu from the server. Choosing an item from this side menu loads the final menu, and the image(s) that need to be displayed. This final menu swaps out the different images in the main image pane. Why do this using JS? It might make a difference to the bandwidth used, although I probably overcompensate for this in that I preload images rather than wait on the user to click on them. More importantly, and if you turn off JavaScript and load the page, you will see the effect I had to remove. This site uses hidden-frame forwarding to allow a nice URL to remain in the address bar, even though it is hosted on a different server. By doing this, on a refresh the frame turns grey before loading, which causes a flash of grey, which is unnerving. I guess more than this it was a proof of concept that I could build a site that uses JavaScript for navigation, making it more like a multimedia site than a plain website. It does break one usability guide, which I am still working on. If you click on the back button in your browser, it will take you out of the site. Finally, it degrades nicely if a user doesn’t have JavaScript turned on. The required pages are all there (and generated from the list of images and menus), and are used by older browsers.

The Awakening [Mellow Mix] • York • The Chillout Session

As I sit here, home from work with a back issue (funny story about that: remember how teachers always told students off about pulling out a chair from behind someone as they are about to sit down is dangerous? I can confirm that indeed it is. One of my students did it to me on Monday, and my back, including bits which are nowhere near the impact points, is totally screwed. And I’ve got State selections this weekend… but I digress), at least I have a light shining at the end of the tunnel. MacBook Pro, 15“; 2.16GHz/2GB/200GB On order now. My first laptop computer. Not a moment too soon. OS X on a Dell is better than Windows, but there are still some issues (random application crashes, inability to run VMWare Fusion and CrossOver Office properly, Missing Sync doesn’t run at all).

The Key The Secret (Glamourously Developed Edit) • Urban Cookie Collective • The Key : The Secret ★★

Boom Swagger Boom:
Firefox Mac OS X Native Form Controls Preview
Now, there’s really only one reason I use Firefox, other than the fact I can then use the same browser on Windows. Okay, I guess there are two then… I’ll try again: There’s one big reason I use Firefox on Mac over Safari or Camino. Simply, I’m not that big of a fan of the Aqua controls. Sure, they are okay as part of an application, but, when building web sites, and viewing them, it’s kind of nice to be able to change the appearance of buttons and other form controls. Admittedly, Safari using the new WebKit builds works, as seen here: Firefox: Safari: Camino: WebKit: Minefield: Now, as can also be seen, Minefield, the Firefox linked to above, also supports restyling buttons. So, this looks okay from my point of view. It defaults to the Aqua buttons, but if savvy web designers re-style controls, they are displayed as such. So, that leaves my big complaint about Firefox. It doesn’t access any of the cool OS X features, like Keychain, and better integration with the system. Camino and Safari both will share saved passwords and the like, as they are all stored in this Keychain. Meaning it is easier to test stuff in multiple browsers, I don’t have to keep remembering site passwords and the like. Apparently this is coming in a future version of Firefox.

Obsession • Sugababes • Taller In More Ways [Mutya Version]

Most of what comes up on xkcd.com is nerdy humour. Nice to see something teaching-related: I have other reasons for considering alternative careers to teaching, but this one counts a bit too!

Slow Down • Morcheeba • Charango (Instrumental) ★★★½