The short-form week of 8–14 Jun 2009

15 Jun 2009; last modified 13 Mar 2011

The week in review, 140 characters at a time. This week, 81 messages in 70 conversations. (With 3 favorites.)

This document was created automatically from my archive of my Twitter stream. Due to limitations in the Twitter API and occasional glitches in my archiving system, it may not be 100% complete.

In a conversation that started on Sunday at 03:37pm

So @johncleese has a video podcast site (headcast.co.uk) but the vids cost $2.50 each. How odd.—@njbartlett

@njbartlett @papiojarrod I also have a completely free podcast http://johncleesepodcast.co.uk—@JohnCleese

@JohnCleese Bah. Requires Flash? Poo!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 04:29am

I've finally, I think, got my head around #xproc parameters. I'm not sure I like it, but it's starting to allow me to do what I want!—@philipfennell

@philipfennell Any advice on how to make them easier to undertstand?—@ndw

Monday at 06:39am

I don't wanna seem cranky, but spy masters, I'm going to start unfollowing you. Things that require you to spam your followers are ... spam—@ndw

Monday at 08:10am

Upgrade to 10.5.7 caused weirdness. "Undefined subroutine utf8::SWASHGET" in MacPorts version of Perl 5.8.9. Hoping port upgrade will fix.—@ndw

Monday at 08:28am

I just deleted the wrong forest of 200,000 documents. #monday #fail—@ndw

Monday at 08:45am

Loaded 180 documents into the wrong forest. Is this really what today is going to be like? Can I start over, please?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 09:40am

No, upgrading MacPorts didn't help, but fixing the symlinks in /usr/bin to point to MacPorts perl did.—@ndw

@ndw have you tried "port selfupdate" before the "port update perl" (just to ensure latest packages are loaded) ?—@ruidlopes

@ruidlopes Yes, I always do the whole selfupdate/update/pirouette twice under a full moon dance with port when I'm updating/upgrading—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 10:16am

Anyone think we can talk the W3C into rubber stamping RELAX NG as W3C XML Schemas 2.0? Nothing else need be done to declare victory.—@elharo

@elharo Well, no. And some folks really do want typed object graphs. I think you could get them from RNG, but no one's demonstrated it yet.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 10:18am

@ndw - I feel your pain! I messed up so badly I am uninstalling and reinstalling ML - considering it a learning experience.—@harveybetty

@harveybetty Yes. Never use "foo2" as the name for the testing database for "foo". And never answer "yes" to the confirm dialog w/o thinking—@ndw

Monday at 01:47pm

Sore throat. Post-nasal drip. General malaise. Hello, Summer Cold. Long time, etc.—@ndw

Monday at 03:45pm

Inst. Acrobat 8 Pro to get "preflight tools" for debugging claims to "repair" shared components. I wonder if PhotoShop will still work?—@ndw

Monday at 03:55pm

Dear Spotligh, please fscking stop indexing USB drives when I attach them, ok!?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Monday at 04:14pm

@ndw We are Spotlight. Your files will be indexed. Resistance is futile!—@fsanders

@fsanders Heh. If you're determined to index, how 'bout indexing something useful like my mail. Oh, no! Those files don't have extensions...—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 12:31am

Now that SimplifyMedia supports FLAC, rediscovering stuff from my (remote) music collection.—@ebruchez

@ebruchez SimplifyMedia will stream FLAC to iTunes? I can burn all those stupid MP3 copies? Sweet! /me runs off to test—@ndw

@ndw Re FLAC yes! Is that working for you?—@ebruchez

@ebruchez Nothing worked for me. Couldn't get iTunes to see the shared library at all. Gave up.—@ndw

Tuesday at 09:55am

Totally failed to get anywhere with SimplifyMedia. An FAQ and a searchable knowledge base are not a substitute for actual, you know, docs—@ndw

Tuesday at 10:08am

To whomever is putting shards of broken glass in my saliva, can you please stop? I'd like to stop wincing everytime I swallow. #summercold—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 01:17pm

Does anybody still use delicious.com ? If so, why? It seems like all of the things it does are better handled by sharing links on FB/Twitter—@Carnage4Life

@Carnage4Life I do, but much more for my own personal organization than any sort of sharing/social aspect.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 02:18pm

Trying cua-mode in #emacs: working out OK, except that I keep hitting Ctrl-V to scroll, pasting the clipboard at point each time.—@david_megginson

@david_megginson I've toyed with CUA bindings in #emacs too. But PgUp/PgDn are *so* inconvenient and Ctrl-v/Alt-v so convenient....—@ndw

Tuesday at 02:27pm

Oh, for pity's sake! CDATA sections are ignored by #firefox? Serves me right for authoring directly in #html, I guess. Grrr...—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Tuesday at 04:18pm

To the marketing/sales genius who decided pasta should suddenly come in 14.5oz boxes instead of 16: eat flaming death.—@ndw

@ndw Save some of the flaming death for the marketing genius who replaced 8oz yogurt containers with 6oz.—@astevens

@astevens You bet. If I'd had more than 140 characters, I would have given him some at the same time.—@ndw

Wednesday at 06:44am

Trying to catch up on the overnight tweet traffic when is.gd is down turns out to be not particularly satisfying.—@ndw

Wednesday at 07:04am

Do I rejoin FB just to grab a good vanity URI? How vain am I?—@ndw

Wednesday at 07:11am

I love #fluid apps, but why do the always seem to be chewing up CPU, even when they're basically idle?—@ndw

Wednesday at 07:14am

For people who are so certain there's an after-life, they sure are anxious to punish people in this life.—@CcSteff

Wednesday at 07:58am

Forest merge failed due to insufficient disk space. Well fsck me!—@ndw

Wednesday at 08:39am

@mdavid The internet has diminished all our expectations. And raised them all as well, I suppose.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 08:45am

Oh, and BTW... For anyone who wants their finger on the pulse of the /REAL/ Internet, follow @ndw. He invented or spec'd 1/2 of it. At least—@mdavid

@mdavid *snort* Not I.—@ndw

Wednesday at 08:53am

Reindexing/refragment ng in progress; 69,606 fragments to be completed. Estimated completion: 999999. Please kill me. Kill me now.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 09:18am

Maybe it's just that I'm impossible to work with.—@JeniT

@JeniT My experience suggests that's unlikely to be the correct conclusion.—@ndw

@ndw Just very difficult, right?—@JeniT

@JeniT In Bizarro World, sure. http://bit.ly/hrSTa—@ndw

Wednesday at 09:52am

Struggling to make jQuery Treeview asynchronous without author's original PHP goo.—@ndw

Wednesday at 10:12am

The perfect music app: one that would let me shuffle songs from #pandora_radio with my local library—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 10:50am

Twenty minutes lost because JSON doesn't enforce well-formedness with draconian error handling. XML FTW!—@ndw

@ndw How do you mean? simplejson enforces JSON syntax so strictly that I can't use it for delicious.com "JSON" feeds.—@hsivonen

@hsivonen I was adapting to a jQuery ext that expected JSON back from PHP. I sent back broken JSON. The app went sideways. 20min later...—@ndw

@ndw Norm, how exactly is that a JSON problem rather than (say) a boneheaded application programmer problem?—@alecmuffett

@alecmuffett Yeah, I'm boneheaded. That's why I like technologies that tell me explicitly when I fsck-up. Rather than, say, silently failing—@ndw

@ndw Not a case of "...blames his tools"? I don't see how data representation is at fault, or why is <better>XML</better>. ps: vi || emacs?—@alecmuffett

@alecmuffett I left off a "]". In XML, that would have been a WF error caught imm. As it was, it just went sideways.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 12:19pm

ok i am now officially looking for your answers folks- who is Bad Monkchips? #badmonkchips—@monkchips

@monkchips Bad Wolf's semicousin.—@ndw

Wednesday at 01:08pm

To "Kevin in the power washing industry" please tell your robots to stop calling me. The answer is no, not ever. And if ever, not you.—@ndw

Wednesday at 01:26pm

Sigh. Hack JS to accept more JSON encoded values, or hack JS to accept XML instead of JSON?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 01:33pm

I've posted an exclusive on my blog -- a timeline of the future of Facebook Usernames: http://bit.ly/fufacebook—@anildash

@anildash +1. A+. 5 Stars. ROTFL. So funny it'd make me blow milk out of my nose if I was drinking milk. And all likely to be true, too.—@ndw

Wednesday at 03:45pm

Bah, found J1-related blog post in '24 hour hold' folder. Let's pretend it was yesterday, kthxbai—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 05:28pm

@ndw Found you through @MrTweet. Thanks for everything you do! Had a great time in San Fran at #mluc09. See you again soon.—@scottabel

@scottabel Hi Scott. Thanks & thanks for all your help. Be seeing you!—@ndw

Wednesday at 05:50pm

Terrorism is an auto-immune disorder. It provokes the country's defenses to harm itself & attack life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.—@webmink

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 06:04pm

nice job devaluing everybody's miles, United Airlines. Good thing I switched to Air New Zealand...—@mnot

@mnot What has UA done now (web searching only finds something from 2007)? I've actually had pretty good luck using miles recently.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 11:11pm

Fabulous write-up of "Most Absurd Time Covers" (aka: how Time Magazine perpetuates moral panics): http://bit.ly/uSE4v (via @boingboing)—@zephoria

@zephoria Their reward metric is "# copies sold". I expect sensational covers work well, even if they make rational people cringe.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 12:39am

Dongle Ep 2 finally out http://is.gd/YBgZ #dongle Sorry for delay. Something to do with how long it takes for iTunes store to "digest" ...—@stephenfry

@stephenfry Sneaky boy, you got us hooked on Ep 1 then raised the price. Ah, well, easily worth 1/4 cent/sec.—@ndw

@ndw Please don't download it. We are adjusting the price back down.—@sampsonian

@sampsonian I couldn't wait. I clicked immediately. Ah, well. For $2 maybe I can guilt Stephen into letting me buy him a pint someday. :-)—@ndw

Thursday at 04:43am

of the web-apps he still uses, the ones with longevity have archival purposes, Delicious, Flickr, Dopplr. The rest are too transient.—@briansuda

Thursday at 06:28am

RT @briansuda: of the apps he uses, the ones with longevity have archival purposes, Delicious, Flickr, Dopplr. The rest are too transient.—@ndw

Thursday at 07:17am

Is it just me, or is the CSS on adbard.net not working at all in Firefox?—@ndw

Thursday at 07:22am

Apparently, it's just me. I wonder why? But not enough to spend a lot of time investigating, I'm afraid.—@ndw

Thursday at 07:57am

@Balisage 2009 program as a Google calendar http://tinyurl.com/ljhm6d—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 11:10am

AT&T: "Login being verified. Depending on your connection speed, it may take a few minutes for this process to complete." Um. No.—@nazgul

@nazgul Ha! I saw the same screen yesterday, had the same reaction, and almost tweeted it!—@ndw

Thursday at 12:02pm

What is MailChimp? ... professionally-branded HTML email campaigns. Eeeeewww! Please, no.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 12:56pm

Attempting for about the third time to train myself to use RTM instead of scraps of paper—@ndw

@ndw RTM? Help - I'm surrounded by scraps of paper myself, and have more post-it notes at the ready to try to solve the acronym mystery...—@fiberartisan

@fiberartisan RTM=rememberthemilk.com—@ndw

Thursday at 01:35pm

Dagnabit. I can't make heads or tails of the Python rtm API.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 02:08pm

crazy Java expression of the day; myvar.toLowerCase().startswith("/")—@distobj

@distobj Gotta watch for those upper-case slashes!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Thursday at 04:33pm

OMG we're all going to die! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8093005.stm—@JeniT

@JeniT Every last one of us.—@ndw

Thursday at 06:35pm

@burningbird Don't get me wrong, I'm gonna try to live forever—@ndw

Thursday at 06:56pm

Hmm. Tried nambu because it looked like it unified Twitter and Identi.ca. But I can't add any Identi.ca accounts. Beta bug, I guess.—@ndw

Thursday at 09:03pm

He was cute and all, but how did the bat get in the house?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 03:24am

RT @marcosc: Something big is coming http://www.opera.com/freedom/—@innovimax

@innovimax Gosh, that's awfully sweet of them, but really, I wasn't expecting presents. I wonder what I can reinvent on their birthday?—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 07:46am

The bat. http://tinyurl.com/nx55hg—@ndw

@ndw What name does he listen to?—@vojtechtoman

@vojtechtoman Beats me. I was happy just to get the little guy out of the house. Leather gloves (and an exhausted bat) FTW!—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 10:29am

Highlight of yesterday: Lunch with Connie Weiss, one of the best managers who make a real difference and great supporter of women in tech—@umityalcinalp

@umityalcinalp Connie is great. Tell her I said "Hi" next time you see her!—@ndw

Friday at 01:49pm

You can fix perf problems you can measure. Fixing what you "think" might be the problem, without measuring 1st, is probably wasted effort.—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 02:43pm

@ndw Do you have ML installed on your Mac? Wondering whether it's possible.—@JeniT

@JeniT wouldn't it be lovely to have a Mac distro for OSX? For ubuntu you should be able to unpack the RPM, and work it all out from there.—@migueldemelo

@migueldemelo There's a little fiddling with startup because one or the other dist isn't exactly following the LSB. Email if you need clues—@ndw

@migueldemelo But I have no ubuntu :( And right now my Vista machine's occupied. Maybe I'll have to invest in some kind of VM on my MacAir.—@JeniT

@JeniT VirtualBox is free and I've heard good things. Haven't actually gotten around to trying it yet...—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Friday at 08:41pm

some people are just touched in the head, plain & simple: http://bit.ly/bAeLb—@dhmspector

@dhmspector Wow. In fairness, I never believed, but now I know where hell really is.—@ndw

Saturday at 08:01am

@burningbird I've lost all my iPod tunes so many times, I've stopped even trying to reinstall them. iTunes is the suck.—@ndw

Saturday at 08:20am

Client request: please expand all the shortened URLs. Just because I can't send more than 140 chars doesn't mean you can't display more.—@ndw

Saturday at 03:58pm

Deb's winning streak ends at 13. I finally won a game of Scrabble. First win since March and by only 2 points.—@ndw

Sunday at 09:37am

Did not much yesterday, but too much. #summercold back with a (hack, cough, snort) vengance.—@ndw

Sunday at 11:29am

Because we're just geeky enough to keep actually records, I can say that my odds of winning Scrabble against Deb are a hair under 1:3—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Sunday at 12:37pm

OK, let me rephrase. apparently *I* am the only one with a cold. Now sneezing and it's finally found its way into lungs. First cold in while—@bkdelong

@bkdelong Were you in Western MA recently? Maybe you got my (hack, snort, cough) fscking #summercold.—@ndw

Sunday at 04:36pm

Trying to pick shoes. There are people who enjoy this awful, stressful, unreward process?—@ndw

Sunday at 05:08pm

Come on, @zappos. If it's not in stock in my size, then it's not available in my size, right? How about filtering that way? kthxbai—@ndw