Linden LAN

Tally Ho! Olympic Medal Rankings Should Be Weighted

Brian — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:15:41 +0000

The Olympics are over. However during, it annoyed me how the media outlets ranked the medal totals either counting total medals or counting total golds. Neither option accounts for the relative values of the medals. The former treats all medals as equal, whereas the former disregards the value of the other two medal colors. As others have proposed, a weighted medal count makes the most sense, the simplest being gold = 3, silver = 2, and bronze = 1. With that the top five rankings are as follows:

(more…)

Share This

How To Better Manage Your iPod/iPhone Podcasts

Brian — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:50:21 +0000

I like to use my iPhone for viewing podcasts. However, managing them through iTunes leaves much to be desired because some podcasts I like to view and then trash them, while others I like to archive and have synced at all times. iTunes does not have an obvious way to set this up.

(more…)

Share This

Easy_Update Upgrade All

Brian — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:53:48 +0000

I like Ruby, but I don’t like its performance, so I’m really anticipating Ruby 2.0. Meanwhile, I’ve been dabbling in Python. Learning a new language and comparing and contrasting them, really helps with determining each language’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, you can easily update all your Ruby gems. Unfortunately, python doesn’t have a direct way of doing this using easy_install. Very odd. I tried using the shell script method, but for whatever reason it just didn’t work as advertised. So I wrote a bash alias to take care of it.

(more…)

Share This

My First Bite Of An Apple

Brian — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:00:32 +0000

January, last year, I had thought perhaps my switch to Apple would begin with the first rev iPhone. By the time the iPhone debuted it didn’t provide a good enough value proposition for me then. Fast-forward to July 12th, and you would have found me standing in line to buy an iPhone 3G.

(more…)

Share This

Half-Priced iPhone 3G: Not So Fast

Brian — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:57:01 +0000

Are you really saving any money? Not really.

2-year contract	iPhone (8GB)	iPhone 3G (8GB)
Phone	$400	$200
Voice	$960	$960
Data	$480	$720
Total	$1840	$1880

(more…)

Share This

Restyle Google Calendar 3

Brian — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 05:46:09 +0000

MyGoogleCal2 no longer works 100% in Internet Explorer. A runtime error occurs when navigating month-to-month or when switching to Agenda mode. The workaround is to simply hide the navigation interface. Now, I don’t know if this bug was introduced when Google updated the code last month, or if it’s always been there and I just never noticed. In any case, the runtime error occurs when //"+a.host+"/calendar is replaced by //www.google.com/calendar. Given the poor debugging available in IE, I didn’t get very far with figuring out why IE breaks. I suspect that when IE makes an XmlHttpRequest, it’s double checking that the request URL matches up with the server host, or something to that effect. Since Google obfuscates the Javascript code, it’s just way too hard to try and fix it. Instead, I’ve opted to create a new version of MyGoogleCal that uses the original technique for IE but uses the technique from MyGoogleCal2 for all other browsers.

(more…)

Share This

Pin The Tail On The Donkey

Brian — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:56:55 +0000

If you’ve been keeping up with the US Democratic primary, you’ve probably heard what a piss-poor job ABC did conducting the Pennsylvania debate. It sometimes floors me that Jon Stewart et al. often give more credible news and commentary than the major news outlets. One of the more bothersome bits to come out of the debate was ABC handpicking Nash McCabe for a voter question. It wasn’t so much her obvious bias that bothered me; another voter could always be interviewed to provide a counterpoint (not that ABC did). What bothered me was that her vote comes down to whether or not a candidate is willing to wear a lapel pin of the American flag. Some may think big deal, until you realize that she’s probably not alone in how she makes political decisions. That somehow one’s appearance is a reflection of one’s performance. That one’s patriotism is measured by how often you’re willing to display the flag. That somehow symbols are greater than words and actions. (A Digg commenter aptly referenced the scene from Office Space where Joanna quits because her manager hounds her about wearing flair despite being a productive employee.) It’s really depressing to think that people do make important decisions based on such trivial criteria. Just another example of why the US education system needs improvement.

(more…)

Share This

How To Install MyGoogleCal2.php

Brian — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:12:37 +0000

One of my readers asked for a step-by-step set of instructions to install MyGoogleCal2.php. My original posts for restyling Google Calendar did assume a certain level of expertise. This should hopefully help those who are still confused.

(more…)

Share This

RSpec, Autotest, and Ruby-Libnotify

Brian — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:35:37 +0000

After many false starts, I decided that I really needed to wrap my head around unit testing when writing Rails applications. I more or less completed a Rails 1.2.3 application without any formal tests, and I would like to upgrade it to 2.0.2 and make it RESTful in the process. At the same time, I’ve moved from a Windows development environment to a *nix one after installing Xubuntu on my laptop (an old Compaq Presario). I’ve also switched from Cream to Emacs. Despite my Windows desktop being more than twice as fast as my laptop, I just could not stand not being in a true *nix environment. Too much of the Windows idiosyncrasies got on my nerves. And my switch from Cream to Emacs was because I just didn’t like the instability of the hacks required to make Vim less of a modal editor. If I tire of Emacs, I may try pure Vim instead, but I remember installing Cream simply because I didn’t like pure Vim to start with. So with these various changes going on with my Rails programming environment, I figured it was an ideal time to learn to formally test my applications. Of course the first part is setting up the testing environment so that it is easy to use, stays out of your way, and is informative.

(more…)

Share This

Wolf Around the World

Brian — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:06:38 +0000

I watch anime. That, Lego blocks, and video games are the three childhood vices I never outgrew. It’s just that my hobbies have matured along with me. I now prefer games that are rated M even though I still enjoy those that are rated E. I now prefer Technic sets over LEGOLAND Space sets. I now prefer anime that deal with mature themes (e.g. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Seirei no Moribito) over those that are juvenile (Pokemon). I wish more animated shows in the US were more like those from Japan.

(more…)

Share This