Stunt Show

I just had some really flakey connectivity last week which was totally foreign to me. Normally if I have no access to the net I can adjust and not think about it. But for the majority of last week I had a really weak wireless connection that kept dropping out every few minutes. Totally frustrating.

The connectivity issues were a side effect of joining a new project and having to jump through the necessary hoops to gain access to the right systems etc. Add to the mix the standard background reading requirement and you get the idea that I’ve been plenty occupied at work.

We had internet put on at the rental place where I’m currently staying (the use of ‘living’ here would not be truly representative) but the environment isn’t really condusive to creative thinking.

Anyway I’m battling through that and on the weekend I got started with Python. It’s a slight departure from the o-o lifestyle I’ve led for the last 7 years so I’m looking forward to hooking right into it though. So far I have the PyDev plugin for Eclipse running reasonably smoothly thanks to this article.

Despite the flak that technorati is getting at the moment, I want to see if I can hook into its public API via python. I have a little idea for a bit of a composite web service which could be cool. Although, the AJAX front end I’m thinking through is probably a little beyond my reach but I’ll see how far I can run with it.

Also noteworthy was last nights setup of ubuntu. I put it on a virtual machine on my laptop and the install process went kind of smoothly. I think something may have broken so I ctrl-c’d a few things here and there that looked to have stalled, I’ll have to see what happens when I configure it. My mate Paul had the ISOs and I’d already heard good things from the likes of Sam Ruby. The impetus for this was to try out a new distro in a tidy little sandbox, and have a linux instance handy while both my general workstation and file server, both slackware, are in storage.

Hopefully I’ll publish some updates later in the week.

Triple J are running a competition asking the punters to select 10 (only!) live recordings from the J archive which spans 30 years. It’s called the Impossible Music Festival and I understand they plan to play the most popular ones.

After scrolling their list of 500 sets (they’ve picked these highlights from an even larger archive), I came up with the following shortlist:

At the Drive-in – 2001
Cosmic Psychos – 1992
Custard – 1997
Dallas Crane – 2004
Dandy Warhols – 2000
Dave McCormack & The Polaroids – 2003
Death Cab for Cutie – 2003
Eeels – 2003
Eskimo Joe – 2004
Faith No More – 1995
Fauves – 1996
Foo Fighters – 1998
Franz Ferdinand – 2004
Fugazi – 1991
Get Up Kids – 2004
Grates – 2005
Green Day – 2000
Grinspoon – 1999
Hives – 2005
Interpol – 2003
Jebadiah – 1999
Jeff Buckley – 1995
Live – 1995
Living End – 1998
Marcy Playground – 1998
Mars Volta – 2003
Mess Hall – 2003
Nirvana – 1992
Not From There – 1999
Pearl Jam – 1998
Powderfinger – 1998
Radio Birdman – 1977
Ramones – 1980
Rage Against The Machine – 1999
REM – 2001
Screamfeeder – 1996
SideWinder – 1997
Skunkhour – 1997
Something for kate – 1999
Superjesus – 1998
Tex Perkins – 1996
Tumbleweed – 1996
Whitlams – 1998
Wolfmother – 2004
You Am I – 1998

I’ve highlighted the final 10 that I’m planning to nominate. Let me know if you think I’m making any huge mistakes! Voting closes on the 19th August so get there, and let me know what bands you choose.

Just days after the 60th anniversary of the the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I feel more than a little uneasy when I read about Uranium trading.

Yesterday there was a report that Australia is holding discussions with China to decide on a ‘nuclear cooperation agreement’. Alexander Downer assures us that the agreement will make certain any traded Uranium is used for peaceful purposes.

It’s that same uneasy feeling I had when I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial; that too many innocent lives were lost and that so long as countries are producing enriched ²³⁵U, it could happen again. Hopefully it doesn’t.

If I’m wrong here, please let me know.

Technorati needs to make it easier to search a particular blog. I can search for words/phrases I’ve used in post here using the embedded Technorati box in the side bar (they provide a javascript which you paste into your blog template). If I want search another blog that doesn’t have the search field then I’m stuck because there is no easy way in the Technorati UI to specify that you want to search a particular blog.

I think its a pretty important use case too. Often I think of a post that I’ve read in the past but can’t remember exactly when, or what it was titled… I just know that it was published to a particular blog.

Google supports this with the Domain Search feature (put site: in front of the domain you want to search) but Technorati is the first search engine I think of when I want to search blogs so they need to make this easy for me.

I think the update would be pretty simple. Next to the standard blog search field there’s an ‘Options’ button that adjusts the UI to show some extra parameters like “contain all these words:”, “contain this exact phrase:” etc. An extra field here that says “from the Weblog at this URL:” would suffice. All that needs to happen is the contents of the field be included in the request URL as a ‘from’ parameter. Just like this this

I just subscribed to The Daily WTF, whose catchphrase is ‘Curious Perversions in Information Technology”.

I am especially pleased with The false Detector:

public boolean checkFalse(Boolean bool) {

   if (bool.booleanValue() ==

          Boolean.FALSE.booleanValue()) {

     return Boolean.FALSE.booleanValue();

   }

   else

   {

     return Boolean.TRUE.booleanValue();

   }

}

Happy Friday!

Now I’m no expert on this type of thing but hear me out. Both logic and a vague memory of past events leads me to believe that reliance on mobile networks for communication during or shortly after a terrorist attack is not the best idea.

It will involve a security alert system being activated and the managers of the 1,500 building sites across the city will be sent a SMS text message from an emergency command centre.

SMS to alert Sydney CBD site managers of terrorist attack. 05/08/2005. ABC News Online

From a recent IBM developerWorks article, JUnit antipatterns::

A class or method should have a single responsibility. It should do one thing and do it well. The single responsibilities of the methods should support the single responsibility of their class. You can extend this principle to various levels of the system. For example, a component (an aggregation of tightly cohesive classes) should also have a single responsibility.

As you shift layers, the individual responsibilities become increasingly abstract. A method may be responsible for splitting an e-mail address into a user name and a host name. A component may be responsible for authenticating a user.

A good read for tdd newbies like me. I picked it up from the del.icio.us tdd feed ;-)

I’m seriously craving a new gadget so I think it’s time for a new phone. I don’t really need it and I’m trying to save some coin for another snowboarding trip to Japan at the end of the year. But I sooooo like the looks of the Nokia 6680.

I saw it in a store on Saturday and kinda got hooked on the idea. It comes with a memory card slot and the ability to play mp3s. This would let me consolidate and not have to carry around a separate mp3 player.

It’s also G3/EDGE capable so when the all the providers roll out their next generation networks and the price war ensues I’ll be able to get on a high-speed data plan.

Last, I jest went to GPRS into the new Mobile Technorati site and my 6100 doesn’t recognise the file format. Bummer.

The Series 60 interface should be heaps cool too.

Go drool over it at Russ’ Notebook.

Jon Udell: GreaseMonkey in Crisis

I’ve uninstalled GreaseMonkey until a full fix is available. I hope its soon cause its a great little plug-in that I use it all the time. Keep an eye on the GreaseBlog for updates.

You know The World’s getting smaller when the word-of-mouth channel for an Aussie beer advertisement flows via some bloke in Redmond.

Check out Carlton’s Big Ad.

Funny stuff although I don’t drink Draught much. Homebrewing is where it’s at! Speaking of which, if you have a good recipe why not put it in a comment here or email it to me.