revjim.net - Latest Comments

Re: MacOSX and “natural” mouse scrolling

Daniel — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:43:19 -0000

I had never looked at it like that. You're right though. If the notion is that it is a wheel sitting on a piece of paper, then the "natural" scrolling would be backwards. However, if the notion is that the wheel IS the paper, then the "natural" scrolling makes more sense.

I guess, in that way, it depends on whether you see the wheel as a device on top of the page, or if you see the wheel as the page itself.

Re: MacOSX and “natural” mouse scrolling

Steve Crane — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:32:57 -0000

It does make sense for touchscreen devices and possibly for touch mice (is that what they're called?). But not for wheel mice where the metaphor is one of scrolling a page that the underside of the wheel is resting on. Rotating the wheel in one direction causes the surface it rests on to move in the opposite direction. Hence rotating the wheel down to push the page up makes perfect sense.

Re: Mac OSX Lion vs Windows 7 vs Ubuntu 11.10

Daniel — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:53:19 -0000

Like I said, "If Apple is interested in making Mac OSX something for EVERYONE" blah blah blah. If they aren't, then my already nearly worthless advice becomes completely worthless.

Their stock has more than doubled in the past two years. It's grown by 50% since January. They are clearly doing something that people are happy about.

But, at this point, Mac OSX simply cannot be for everyone. There are too many requirements (from wallets, to hardware, to software) that Mac OSX simply doesn't meet. Windows, even if people don't like it, it suited to just about everyone. From pricepoint, to hardware, to available software, almost anyone can "get by" with Windows if they have to. The same does not hold true for Mac OSX or Ubuntu.

Re: Mac OSX Lion vs Windows 7 vs Ubuntu 11.10

FarrisGoldstein — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:40:54 -0000

"They need to come up with a hardware approval program that dictates the bare minimums. And then need to allow the Operating System to be installed on machines that meet or beat that criteria."

Man, I hate wee-weeing on your beautiful and thorough explication, but it always makes me giggle a bit when I see somebody saying "What Apple needs to do..." followed by a list of stuff so far away from Apple's business model that it's hard to believe they're talking about the same company I'm thinking of. Just why does Apple "need" to spend the lawyer-money and the certification-setup labor it would require to give people a sanctioned method of installing their tightly engineered OS on hardware outside their supply chain and therefore completely incapable of giving any return on that investment?

I don't think I'm a Mac Fanboy at all, but just from an unscientific survey of my experience with people who like Mac products, I doubt there's any money in moving to a more Microsoftesque (or Canonicalesque, even) paradigm for OS distribution.

And if you really want to put that OS on other hardware, it's actually possible. I've done it. If you get lucky (or plan well) with the hardware selection, it's not even that painful.

Yeah, it'd be nice if it were easier, and I'd probably do it a lot more if it were. But I just don't see it happening, nor do I really see a need.

Re: upon a stranger’s time

Daniel — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:11:46 -0000

Thank you kindly.

Re: upon a stranger’s time

Jacqui — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:10:34 -0000

I know this was posted years ago, but I fell upon it today and it is beautiful. Crying now...

Re: Things I hate about Zend Framework

Daniel — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:38:02 -0000

Zend_Db looks pretty. SQL statements are easy to read, easy to edit, and genuinely work well. However, I find myself regularly confused over what to expect as far as output from the fetch/find/fetchAll family of methods. Do I get a Row? Do I get a RowSet? What if there are no rows? Do I get a NULL, or a false, or a RowSet with count of 0? In this regard, it all boils down to expectations and documentation. I like consistency, and comprehensive documentation, especially if consistency is an issue. I also have some performance issues with Zend_DB. It seems to leak memory. When I write scripts that need to process 10s of thousands of rows, I have to write them in such a way that they only process a thousand or so at a time and then restart the PHP script, or I run out of memory, even though I'm not saving any row data each time I move on to the next.

Zend_Config is awful mostly because I can't seem to find a well documented way to get Config info anywhere outside of Bootstrap.php without pulling a getOptions and stuffing it in the registry. And that works, but it seems like there should be a better, cleaner way. And maybe there is. Maybe documentation is the issue again.

Zend_Session_Namespace only annoys me because of the trickery around trying to view the session that you've just altered. In real use, this probably isn't an issue, but it makes debugging a bit of a pain. I actually made an action called "spitoutsession" that I can pull up just to see what is in my session at any given time, which seems silly.

Zend_Application_Bootstrap_Bootstrap is awkward because there are all of these _init* methods, and apparently, even more can be created, but there doesn't seem to be any documentation indicating which ones can exist and in which order they fire. I tried to initialize a DB connection (to a noSQL DB) in the initDbRegistry method, only to find that it fires before initAutoload does. And since I needed a library to use my noSQL DB, I either had to manually require the library or deal with that DB connection at the end of initAutoload instead.

Zend_Form drives me crazy because the only way to really work with it well is through this series of arrays of arrays of arrays. On top of that, there are piles of options and it's never quite clear which elements take which options. I tried to figure out how to use it "correctly" to decorate a table row for a shopping cart display and it failed so miserably that I just used a html decorator and nearly coded it all by hand anyway (the implementation of which, was also poorly documented).

The ActionName CamelCase issue is also a matter of consistency and documentation. I made an action called getShippingInfo. But when I tried to call that action, ZF complained "getshippinginfo" action was not found. "Oh," I think, "it wants lower case.". I rename my action to "getshippinginfo". The URL in my browser was still "getShippingInfo" and I just pressed refresh. It loaded the action as expected, then complained that it couldn't find a view named "get-shipping-info.phtml". So it lowercases when looking for action name and hyphenates when looking for view name. In the end, even though I figured it all out the hard way, I opted to just use all lowercase action names and view names and URLs.

Re: Things I hate about Zend Framework

Rob... — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:49:27 -0000

Fancy expanding on why? That way maybe we can improve for ZF2.

Regards,

Rob...

Re: the Reverend and Religion

Daniel — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:58:15 -0000

I believe in universal truth. As you say, truth either exists or it
does not. While personal things can be true for one person and not
another, universal truths are, well, universal. But religion is not
about "truth". It's about "belief". Those are very different words.

Re: the Reverend and Religion

Susan — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:44:50 -0000

My goodness what a muddled bunch of new speak. Do you believe in any truth or simply in the truth of the day as you see it on any given day. Truth either exists or it does not, something can not be true for one and untrue for another anymore than a fish can be a fish for one person and a bird for another.

Re: divorce, death, and the afterlife

Sheridan — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:35:58 -0000

I just re-read this. Thank you for this, I'm glad you shared. Reading thoughts like these help me since I am very much at the "think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel" point myself. Basically everything you said here resonated with me exactly.

Re: I choose not to smoke today

Daniel — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:26:44 -0000

I'm very glad to hear it.

Re: I choose not to smoke today

Dianacoster123 — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:51:37 -0000

Excellent, I've chosen not to smoke for the past 8 days, and will continue to choose not to.

Re: Disqus vs IntenseDebate: wrap up

James — Tue, 25 May 2010 02:24:36 -0000

I use IntenseDebate now with Comment Luv built in! If you don't know what Comment Luv is, it's a commenting feature whereby the commenter gets to leave a link of their last blog post. It's "link love" and encourages more comments. As a blog writer, we know that we love comments.

Re: a common goal

Daniel — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:42:54 -0000

Yeah. High Real Estate plus low Job Availability equals High Barrier to Entry.

But I'm going to give it a shot.

There are some interesting neighborhoods in DFW too. So I can fall
back if I need to.

Re: a common goal

amanda — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:40:48 -0000

I definitely agree that in an ideal world, there would be different types of living arrangements to suit different people. Right now, I think we're mostly all pressured into a certain model that doesn't work for everyone. People have different needs and values. I'm personally kind of inclined to be a loner, and Stephen is even more so, so living communally in the same dwelling with others doesn't work for us. But I think I would like some kind of more communal arrangement involving separate dwellings -- really, just a very close knit neighborhood of people who get along and care about each other, maybe with some regular neighborhood meals and something like a shared garden. Right now, my neighborhood is like that to a degree -- we know each other and generally look out for each other, though we don't spend a ton of time together and the only big neighborhood event is a yearly Memorial Day party.

Austin really is the best place in Texas. The only downside to Austin is that it's a small city but lots of people want to live here. So, it doesn't have the job infrastructure to support all the people who want to live here. I was really worried I'd have to move after law school because the legal community here just isn't very large -- most legal work in Texas is in Dallas and Houston. But thankfully, I lucked out and found my job, so I didn't have to. Also, the real estate is the most expensive in Texas. But it's worth it for me.

Re: lunch break

Daniel — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:10:49 -0000

That's what I was thinking... I'd get one for me and one for C and one
extra. Then ... snacks and road-food are a breeze. :)

Re: lunch break

Laura — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:20:53 -0000

this is Laura L.. I have a lapgop lunch box as well.. loved it for years.. good for the kids too.

Re: a common goal

Daniel — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:31:59 -0000

I've never had the means to be a Philanthropist. But I love the idea
of being able to build something that people I love and care about can
not only enjoy for themselves, but pass down to their kids, friends,
and family to be enjoyed for more years than I will see on this
planet.

What the council of five has going for them sounds nice. Not exactly
what I'm hoping to find and/or create, but close. I think that, in an
ideal world, there are lots of different living scenarios that better
suit certain types of people. For instance, in your situation, given
the same costs one way or the other, even single and without child,
I'd have opted for the co-living arrangement. But that's just how I
am. While "saving money" is one aspect of what I'm trying to build
here, it's not the most important goal.

On a more personal note, I believe that of all the cities on all of
Texas, Austin is the closest thing to perfect for me. And I've now
renewed my goal to get that way thanks to some help from some like
minded friends already living there. I have some stuff to work out
with my baby momma but, I'm hopeful we may soon be "neighbors". :)

Re: lunch break

amanda — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:19:24 -0000

It's the cutest ever. Also, it actually does motivate me to bring my lunch more frequently. I actually have two of them now because Stephen got sick of having to wash mine every day after I got home late.

Re: a common goal

amanda — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 08:17:02 -0000

My best friends here in Austin have actually lived in a "mini-commune" of sorts for about 15 years. They call themselves the Council of Five. It was sort of accidental. Basically, my friend J.P. has always been well-off and generous (he comes from some money and has always worked very hard while being very frugal). He went to Rice with several of the others. He got a job in Austin during the tech boom and bought a large house as an investment. He invited his friends to come live with him to help split expenses, and eventually a few of his friends from Rice (a couple of single people and a married couple with a young child) came to live in J.P.'s house. They all did well during the tech boom and built a custom house in Central Austin. The custom house has two sides, each with its own kitchen, small living area, and some bedrooms. The sides share a great room. The married couple now has 4 children, so they have one side. Another one of the single people (J.P.'s best friend) married and had two kids. That family lives on the other side along with J.P. and the other single folks (the original single folks moved out when they got married, so various other friends and family members have moved into the other side). They don't share cars and the sides don't usually eat meals together. They spend a lot of time together, though, and help each other out. They also send out a group Christmas card every year. They're all geeks, so they're in it for efficiency.

J.P. is a lot of the reason this arrangement remains, I think. It's a mechanism through which J.P. can give to his friends -- he lives in a small room but foots a portion of everyone else's expenses. J.P. has always been single and is inclined to remain that way, and helping his friends live easier lives is a big goal of his. He's a sickly guy (has several autoimmune disorders), so I think that's another reason he's created a way to always have his friends around him.

I don't know if their arrangement is necessarily financially superior. They invited Stephen and me to move in at some point, but it would have cost basically the same as it costs for us to live where we do now, so we decided it wasn't worth giving up the privacy, etc. (though we are over there most Friday nights). We live three blocks away from them, but they live in a new, eco-friendly custom-built home and we live in an old duplex without central air.

Re: lunch break

Daniel — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 07:48:38 -0000

I want one now too. So bad.

Re: lunch break

bonnie — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:16:17 -0000

Cheryl has one of those. I just realized that I want one!

Re: lunch break

Daniel — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:32:49 -0000

Those are CUTE!

Re: lunch break

amanda — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:26:54 -0000

I bring a mostly-raw lunch to work every day (it's all raw except for a small portion of hummus if I'm eating carrots, or occasionally a small amount of good quality cheese). One thing that motivates me to stick with it is that I put it in a cool lunchbox. I have one of these:

http://www.laptoplunches.com/

I love the removable sections because when I'm feeling hungry, I can just grab a section, eat everything in that section, then put it back. I like things planned and orderly, particularly during my work day, so this is nice. Also, the portion sizes are good ones for me.