Daylight savings time
I hate daylight savings time, as do many others.
Anyways, read this:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2JhMmQxNjRkNjljZTdmNDM5MzFhNjcwMDc0YjE4ZDE=
Vaelden is going strong
Today, Vaelden bought vaelden.com. This allows us to start advertising and delivering our website, as vaelden.ath.cx, frankly, screams "FREE" in the same sense as .tk domain would. Plus, some people are confused at the notion of a non-[.com|.org|.net] TLD existing. And nobody can snatch it up from under our feet now and force us to pay them obscenely high amounts to buy it.
After buying Vaelden.com, we immediately set to work on a placeholder page which is viewable at http://vaelden.com/ now. Then, we started the 3x wavers competition, which is a random draw for 2 available Wave invites (just follow @nathangrubb, @dn_desaku, and @vaelden on Twitter to apply). It's still running as of the time of this writing, by the way 
.
Google Apps has also been setup at our domain, allowing us to use our favorite webmail client (Gmail) while still having a vaelden.com email address and collaborate with Google Calendar/Docs.
Of course, all of this has given us an excuse to tweet plenty. Vaelden isn't kicking the bucket anytime soon!
High-level language fun.
So, let's say we wanted to list every file and directory in /a/directory/ at the top level, and display it on screen ("print" it.) Let's compare how it's done in a few high-level programming languages. Note that these examples include error checking if needed.
Python:
import os
for i in os.listdir("/a/directory/"):
print i
Ruby:
Dir.foreach("/a/directory/") {do |i| }
puts i
end
Perl:
use strict;
opendir my $dirHandle, $ARGV[0];
my @contents = readdir $dirHandle or die "Error";
foreach my $i (@contents)
{
print "$i\n";
}
PHP:
if ($handle == opendir("/a/directory/"))
{
while (false !== ($i = readdir($handle)))
{
echo $i;
}
closedir($handle);
}
Toast, a shameless plug
Toast is a new forum, founded by myself and a friend recently. It's a community of programmers, focused on the core team of developers, Team Toast.
Well, that's about it.
If you missed the link in the first sentence, see http://toast.ath.cx/
howto: remove pulseaudio, install esound
If you're using Ubuntu and your sound seems to be broken (i.e it randomly restarts, is laggy, or is just plain not working), removing the newer sound server pulseaudio and installing the older esound may fix your problems.
Now, I'm not saying doing this is going to magically fix every problem, or that pulseaudio is even the problem; you'll want to see if Ubuntu has issues with your sound card and such first.
Anyways, let's get started, shall we?
First, remove pulseaudio:
sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio
The purge should remove all configuration files, but if not, run these commands:
rm ~/.pulse-cookie
mv ~/.pulse ~/.pulse.backup
Now, we install esound:
sudo apt-get install esound
If you use a gstreamer application (Such as Totem, included by default with Ubuntu), you'll need to remove the pulseaudio gstreamer plugin:
sudo apt-get remove gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio
And then install the esound plugin:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-esd
After you've finished, you'll need to restart the audio server:
sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
Hopefully, your sound is fixed. If it isn't, try rebooting; if it still isn't, you may want to post a help thread on Ubuntu Forums.
Note: I've had some issues with gstreamer applications 'taking over' my sound (no other applications can make sounds) -- I still haven't fixed it, but I'm running alpha software (Kubuntu Karmic alpha 4), so problems like that are to be expected.
grubby.ath.cx has switched to Django
In a move that nobody anticipated (or cared about), I have switched grubby.ath.cx from running Python CGI + Django templates to running pure Django. The only "exciting" thing about this is that I'll be able to write web apps (moreso, dynamic webpages based on user submitted content) much more easily than in pure, vile CGI.
Resource usage and 286es
I am sick and tired of people complaining about resource usage of applications when they have computers from 2004. Especially when it's a large application that isn't meant for old computers. Sorry your Intel GMA can't run Crysis, but chances are Crysis isn't meant to run on that.
Just because an app uses, say, 20% of your RAM while (seemingly) not doing much doesn't mean it's necessarily poorly written, it usually means that your hardware is out of date. An application using 100 MB of RAM is not a resource hog anymore, and one that runs poorly on a Pentium 3 isn't either.
If it's that big of a problem, upgrade your computer. If you can't afford a new computer, run applications meant for lower hardware specs, or just stop complaining.
Writing license
I hadn't really thought of this before, but I'd like to point out that all writing is now under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Unfortunately, I cannot put this in the footer (for now.) I will add it to the footer as soon as I can (if ever.)
Shared hosting, get your fucking ass in gear
I was recently researching a shared host for one of my friends. He needed to run a Python app another friend wrote. Of course, there's always this weird thing with shared hosting companies and Python versions. Hostgator ran 2.3, and I heard of another company that ran 2.1. In this case, the company (justhost) ran 2.4.
I'm not even going to contemplate how that happens... 2.4 was originally released in 2004. Folks, that's 5 years ago. Are your servers still running Debian Sarge? What the fuck, guys?
But no, justhost has up to date version of PHP, Perl, and probably Ruby (Since it brags about RoR.) So that theory is out the door.
It's almost like they ignore Python because nobody that uses Python signs up for plans with them, except that nobody that uses Python signs up with them because their versions are so old. What a paradox.
Oh well...
Sleeping schedules
Recently, I’ve gotten a bit of flack for my sleeping schedule. People are requesting that I adjust my sleeping schedule to theirs, so I have more time to spend with them.
I’m not going to, and here are a couple reasons why:
- If I don’t sleep when my body wants me to, I end up feeling like shit. During the (public) school year, I went to bed at 22:00 and woke up at 07:00. It took me until at least 12:00 to feel awake, my limbs ached, and I was exhausted by the end of the school day.
- I like being fully awake late at night/early in the morning. I get more work done then, especially since there are less people or issues to bug me. I imagine this is going to help a bit when Vaelden has a lot of clients.
- I’m home schooled and have a job on the internet. I do not have a reason to sleep ‘regular hours’ when the above points are valid.
Another thing with the “I sleep when I need to” idea is that the time I go to bed varies day by day. For example, yesterday, I went to bed at 14:00. The day before that, I went to bed at about 12:00. And that affects when I wake up, too. Yesterday, I woke up at about 00:00. The day before that, it was 21:00. If, incidentally, I have the same schedule as you one day, cool. But I have as much right to demand a change in anybody else’s schedule as they do to me, and I’d like it if you all respected my sleeping schedule.