Nonfocussed Personal Blog

Read this: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/22/opinion/phones-instagram-apps-stern/

( Then read my ranting essay in response to that guy's self-entitled ranting )

In Perl, some people will do funky stuff like this:

  package FooBar;
  use constant {
    CONFIG_VALUE_A = 'foo',
    CONFIG_VALUE_B = 'bar',
    };

If I want to override those values (e.g.: while running your application on my system, or building a test suite) I have to use a construct like this:

*{FOOBAR::CONFIG_VALUE_A} = sub { 'my new foo' };

Please don't use constants for things which might vary (such as hostname, database server, database name, user name or password). Constants are for things like Pi, or G or h (and even then, the cosmologists tell us that h is not really constant in space or time).

To handle configuration variables, I recommend tools such as Config::IniFiles.

That is all.

In which I contrast the Kobo Touch, Sony Reader and iPad 2 in terms of reading books.

Let me cut to the chase: If I was forced to choose only one of these devices, it would be the iPad. But for the purposes of exclusively reading books I would choose the black Kobo Touch.( No photos, sorry. I can't capture the bedazzling effect of the Sony Reader's shiny bezel. )

Some points to consider when reviewing your backup strategy: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/poremba/bulletproofing-your-data/?cs=49333

Note the last point especially: have you tried recovering your data onto a brand new computer?

And remember that tomorrow is St. Valentine's Day. You can buy a 1TB drive for the price of a dozen roses :)

Oh, and another story about losing stuff: http://www.documentsnap.com/carbonite-ceo-and-i-join-the-idiot-club/

Due to my weak and undisciplined nature I have succumbed to "more shinies syndrome" and now I have a Kobo Touch. I have a large collection of O'Reilly books in ePub format, which work just fine on the iPad, but crash the Kobo. So I set out to massage my O'Reilly books to the point that they are usable on the Kobo.

( Details of my book massaging behind the cut )

A huge THANK YOU to O'Reilly for being sensible and releasing their publications with no DRM, which allows me to edit my copy as I see fit. This is why I buy your books (in addition to them being technically excellent).

Before you get to my post, here is some background reading. They're short, so please go read them now:

• If a stranger grabs your camera and snaps a photo, who owns the copyright?
• Photos must be the product of human authorship to be copyrightable
• Shutter-happy monkey turns photographer

( This rant is about copyright and who owns it. )

( Computer geek stuff behind the cut )

       My traceroute  [v0.80]
Lancelot.local (0.0.0.0) Tue Nov 29 23:16:29 2011
         Packets               Pings
 Host  Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1.     1.3%   159    8.0  15.2   2.0 252.8  30.0
 2.    25.2%   159  127.3 11728  88.6 41193 13142
 3.    28.9%   159  124.6 11540  73.8 41163 13464
 4.    28.3%   159  132.1 11576  97.7 41127 13406
 5.    27.0%   159  188.2 11795 117.6 41994 13570
 6.    28.3%   159  136.3 11676 118.5 41948 13640
 7.    27.7%   159  132.4 11671 117.4 41867 13569
 8.    28.3%   159  211.5 11623 114.7 41875 13617
 9.    27.7%   159  140.0 11566 124.5 41723 13539
10. ???
11.    30.2%   159  121.8 11486 117.5 41682 13623

Yes, that's a 41.7s ping time. After every lighting strike in the neighbourhood, it takes a while for the traffic to start flowing again.

Here are some ways that Kindle (App for Mac OS X) fails me:

• Does not support code blocks (i.e.: pre formatted text)
• Has poor widow/orphan control (i.e.: page breaks between headings and the subsequent paragraph)
• Touching my scroll wheel will send me many pages back or forth through the book, leaving me to waste my time getting back to where I was.

If anyone from Amazon is reading, I'll let you know that I'm not enjoying the experience. I only buy books from your store because that's the only place I can get some of them.

Really easy: use Locomotive. It'd a defunct project, looking for some motivated people to pick it up and run.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

This was a response response to John Cromartie's "Getting Started in Rails is Insane."