The short-form week of 22–28 Oct 2012

29 Oct 2012; last modified 30 Oct 2012

The week in review, 140 characters at a time.

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 04:08pm

Derp? RT “@washingtonpost: First Native American saint to be canonized http://t.co/9LrTunsj”—@kendall

@kendall Saw that in the paper today. Thought about it for a few seconds. Decided I didn’t f’ing care.—@ndw

Sunday at 05:06pm

Memtest failures point to a reason for my occasional server crashes, don’t they? *sigh*—@ndw

Sunday at 05:55pm

New memory ordered. Fingers crossed.—@ndw

Sunday at 06:05pm

RT @AlecMuffett: Rowan Atkinson's speech at Reform Section 5 Parliamentary reception - YouTube # MUSTWATCH http://t.co/MVfLO7mw—@ndw

In a conversation that started on Sunday at 06:10pm

I have been using Perl for roughly 18 years. Abject failure to deal with a UTF-8 encoded CSV file a few days ago may have been last straw.—@ndw

@ndw That's weird, Perl has good UTF8 support. What were you doing?—@robinberjon

@ndw Even if everything in your locale is UTF-8 aware? Strange. Any "use utf8" anywhere? I trashed it years ago and haven't looked back.—@sunny256

@sunny256 I think everything is utf-8 aware. Every attempt I made to change characters produced bizarrely misencoded results.—@ndw

@ndw Really strange. You'd think that UTF-8 problems would be a thing of the ancient past. Do you have an example of a mangled sequence?—@sunny256

@sunny256 It was a Google csv of contacts. I s/\n/\\n/g and got a bunch of random characters instead of literal “\n"s.—@ndw

@ndw @sunny256 echo '∀ x φ' | perl -pe 's/\n/\\n/' works for me on Ubuntu 12.04. Perhaps OS/perl installation or specific to that data?—@jkingdon2000

@ndw Tried this yet? open(my $fh,'<:encoding(UTF-8)', $file)—@grtjn

RT @ndw I have been using Perl for roughly 18 years.[...] Perl is Cowboy Woody and python is Buzz Lightyear. Cmd.exe is Rex, sh is Sarge.—@icing

@ndw Really time to move on. Really. Come over to the Dark Side. As in Dark Red.—@timbray

@timbray Yeah. I guess. As good at string/regex hacking?—@ndw

@ndw @timbray or the old stalwart #Tcl. #utf-8 #regexp—@bcharder

@ndw Isomorphic, more readable/maintainable, slower.—@timbray

@timbray That sounds like a net win.—@ndw

@ndw Also, this may sound weird, but Ruby makes you smile.—@timbray

Sunday at 06:16pm

RT @briansuda: “Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” — George Jean Nathan http://t.co/W27xKI0y So True.—@ndw

Monday at 07:07am

XML Stars, the journal nouvelle édition http://t.co/cd9sLTFc ▸ Aujourd'hui à la UNE: @ndw @JeniT—@dominixml

Monday at 07:20am

Tardis materialization sound: best Gentle Alarm ringtone ever.—@ndw

Monday at 09:07am

The @xmlprague call for papers is open!—@ndw

Monday at 09:09am

yes it is ... ! RT @ndw: The @xmlprague call for papers is open!—@xmlprague

Monday at 01:45pm

@ndw could you add http://t.co/Oj0fVXAW to http://t.co/A6MqKFxx please? I would like to add some minor links—@olea

Monday at 03:06pm

When DARPA originally designed the internet, they were totally like "why don't we just host everything on Amazon"—@stevenf

Monday at 03:16pm

Twitter is mostly great, but encourages people's worst habits to overrate the marginal utility of new information.—@fivethirtyeight

Monday at 03:55pm

RT @sacca: Let's ask a conservative newspaper in the biggest Mormon city on earth who should be President: http://t.co/wgbRwqar—@ndw

Monday at 07:42pm

Took me quite a while to work out that that checkmark icon (in diff place) was the new way to spell "Done" in updated #Evernote client. :-/—@ndw

Tuesday at 11:11am

"profitability is not in itself a purpose for business, just as breathing is not the purpose of life" http://t.co/YA1g7KGL—@codinghorror

Tuesday at 02:12pm

I assume the point of iPad Mini is to increase the price of iPad.—@kendall

Tuesday at 03:05pm

No, I don’t want to perform a system upgrade on my phone from an airport on my way out of the country for 2 weeks. But thanks for asking.—@ndw

Tuesday at 03:38pm

Romney's “I believe we are all sons and daughters of the same God" is so consistent with the most vile, awful acts imaginable.—@kendall

In a conversation that started on Wednesday at 02:11am

Automobile to AUS; planes to IAD, BRU, and next to TLS. Then a train to Carcassonne. There's a movie title in there somewhere, I'm sure.—@ndw

@ndw If it's Wednesday this must be Belgium :-)—@docum3nt

Wednesday at 09:30am

Dear #Android, when I said "later" to the system upgrade message I meant in, like, a week maybe, not the next and every time I use my phone.—@ndw