wirelessness

Movin’ On Up

hoist2k — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 04:08:24 +0000

It’s official. This blog has moved to http://benjaminste.in

Please update your feed URLs accordingly and I’ll see you there!

Why Computer Programming is Hard II

hoist2k — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:18:15 +0000

I’ve written in the past about why computer programming is hard. I think at the time I blamed invisible things like .files and \r\n.

A client sent me the following string of text to include in his application:

“We’ll add it to our database”

What’s wrong with that String? Can anyone tell?

Here’s a hint. Compare it to this one:

“We’ll add it to our database”

Exactly! The single quote in we’ll is a curly quote in the first sentence! I’m guessing the client probably uses Microsoft Outlook and it automagically makes straight quotes into curly quotes. Usually not such a big deal until you start encoding the string into other character sets and wondering why the world is broken.

That is why programming is hard. That, and refactoring algorithms to take advantage of multicore processors.

Smoothie, a New Gadget to Get, and Transactions

hoist2k — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:31:32 +0000

Banana, apple, 2x protein, the last of the frozen strawberries, milk, and cran-apple juice.
Blended a lot b/c I don’t like apple peel in my mouth.
Tasted alright, but not cold enough b/c of the lack of frozen fruit.
Need to re-up.

On an unrelated note, Western Digital has a new portable USB drive that is line powered and 250GB. $199.
That rocks.

Oh, and have I mentioned lately how much I love Spring & AOP? I just added a delete operation followed by a create in one of my functions. I annotated the class @Configurable and the method @Transactional and voila! You know you love it.

Haystackin’

hoist2k — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:11:06 +0000

Some friends of mine have launched a new music sharing community site called Haystack that you should check out. My awesome Haystack profile is here. I haven’t populated my playlists yet, so there is still a glimmer of hope that I won’t completely frack it up.*

* As you all unfortunately know, my Pandora playlists asymptotically approach Hootie, so I generally don’t like to share my playlists with the public. Or even worse, Kennyb. I’ll make an exception in this case. Enjoy!

700P update delayed

hoist2k — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:27:30 +0000

According to Palm’s blog, the 700p firmware update is being delayed for Sprint and a release date isn’t even announced for VZW.
Maybe I should give them an ultimatum: get the update out by June 28th, or I’m gonna camp out for an iPhone and not buy a Folio.

Ads???

hoist2k — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:38:07 +0000

Do I have ads on this site??? I just viewed my blog from a computer that wasn’t my own for the first time, and there are friggin google ads on it! Who knew???

How to do Database Transactions in Rails

hoist2k — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 22:13:07 +0000

It took me a surprsingly long to time learn how to do transactions in Rails. I assumed it would be dead simple (it is), but try googling for rails transactions. Useless. Especially when compared to something like hibernate transactions.

Anyway, this is how you do it:
transaction do bob.withdrawal(100) sally.deposit(100) end

Source: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Transactions/ClassMethods.html

Today’s Smoothie

hoist2k — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:58:55 +0000

I went with a cran-apple base instead of my usual vanilla soy milk base.
Also used fresh strawberries instead of frozen.
Used the usual banana, frozen raspberries, and vanilla whey protein.
It tastes really stinkin’ good!

New Google Maps Street View

hoist2k — Tue, 29 May 2007 20:39:37 +0000

Wow.

Game changing.

Not sure if this link will work the way I expect it to, but if it doesn’t, just click “Street View” to see my apartment:

Zonbox

hoist2k — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:51:20 +0000

This looks really frackin’ cool. Could possibly replace my need for a Mac Mini (except for the whole lack of iTunes problem, of course)

http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2007/05/post_98.asp