Live Development

Today working on Lighttpd

fit and fit2 - I'm learning Korean! It's a lot of fun, and the teachers are very engaging. I've got my classes to finish up this quarter, so you might think that I am taking on too much. Not so, I am easily distracted, and it's actually a big help to walk around wearing headphones.

Just hope I don't get hit by a car ;)

Step 1: I wanted to be able to edit my code in place. I am coding in Haskell for Axel's Programming Skills class; it's a very interesting functional language, and it can do anything that C can do. In fact, the haskell compilers can actually produce C. You probably want binaries.

Step 2: I was sitting down at a mac and something convinced me to visit a Korean website! This website was produced by a korean; at least he has a korean name. Neither here nor there; I was sitting at a mac, and I was very impressed that when I pasted Korean text into my code, it lived in the terminal! I was using gnome-terminal, forwarded from my irie-eth0.rit.edu ssh host.

Windows is not so easy.

So what happens if I wanted to document my code in Korean? Korean developers can't use Windows! Unless... if it was a web application! So long as they have the correct fonts installed, Korean developers with a web browser could read and edit my code in place.

OK, so they could e-mail me too. But, my phone doesn't handle Korean either... I needed a good project that won't run out of problems, and this was it.

Back to the mac, I started learning on the 2-set keyboard layout. That means consonants are on the left, and vowels are on the right; the top row consonants can be repeated to indicate aspiration. An aspirated consonant is P instead of B; I hope you can hear the difference!

I thought it might be inconvenient to install the Asian keyboard layouts, especially if a system administrator has denied you permission to modify your keymaps. So, this particular system administrator hasn't done it... he hasn't installed the east asian fonts where I can get at them, and he hasn't installed files for complex script (joining) or right-to-left languages.

Those boxes are grayed out.

What does it mean? Even if I can get the fonts, I can't guarantee that my keyboard will send Korean signals to the program input. I need a function to translate english language characters to hangul, and it's not transliteration. Unless... does a tree fall in the forest?

Were you paying attention? I'm saying that the sounds on the Korean keyboard are not in the same place as a QWERTY. They're not illogical, they're just different.

Yes, they're actually stepping on your toes.

The Casino Out Behind Nick's

I had the greatest dream, I was at Steve T's (formerly Nick Tahou Hots) and the fire was out on the grill, it was getting cold or hey buddy was cleaning it or something, and I had to wait for my plate so I did... then when they served me, actually I don't remember if they ever served me, but I got shown to this great casino room in the back with a bunch of absurdly huge slot machines!

Hey buddy was there, and I brought out $10 and another $10, and maybe a dollar besides... I couldn't resist the temptation to gamble in that casino, well I played the first $1 in a dollar machine and another $10 and for that $10 I was standing next to a beautiful blonde girl that was trying on a pair of thong underwear, some red gap shorts with a picture of Mao in the crotch, and she wanted to take my place at the machine so I let her... I didn't see any more of her then...

Anyway the machines were all dispensing these novelty Giant Dime Balls that were some marked as "this is not money, don't take it with you or its stolen," some not marked at all because the lettering had worn off—eventually I found the machine where you go to redeem them, and it spit out this gnarley looking quarter... then I kept looking and I found it was dumping a shitload of $20 bills and ones and fives, concert tickets and nacho cheese fries, it was like some glorious dreamland behind Nicks, and was Hey Buddy ever smiling!

I was trying to figure out how it could possibly be legal to gamble at Nick Tahou's and Mike Kush showed up, took a few dollars from my winnings, and just walked the other way while I figured out how to pick up and collect my nacho fries...

"The Magic Beer Hat," or "Beer Dues: WTF"

Here is the story of how that case of beer we bought after the Modest Mouse show turned into a magic beer hat... in case I become an alcoholic and suddenly can't explain where all my time and money is going, and because I didn't sign this into the lease, but it seems like it should get written down somewhere anyways

We bought that 30rack after the Modest Mouse show, Jason said "Well, I'm gonna drink some of those, I'll go buy an 18 pack, same brand" now he's drank most of those, and he says "hmm I'd better replace them" ok so we're up to 66 beers from the initial investment of $20... sounds pretty nice of Jason, eh?

Come to find out this particular day he's not happy about someone owes him some money. Apparently Regina has been consistently paying rent late every month, and Jason has been covering it out of his own pocket because he's such a nice guy.

This month, he can't do it. He wants to increase everybody's rent by $20 so that extra $208 doesn't come out of his own pocket for the 11 or 22 days it takes Regina to getting around to paying it.

Is $208 enough money to keep 8 people drinking for 30 days? I don't know, but I'm afraid I just bought a $208 slice of Jason's credit while we all decide if we want to share our alcoholism or keep separate checks.

Have you ever got some money and you spend it twice, just because you have the credit available that particular day? That's how I live, that's why I have over $10k credit card debt, that's why I don't grant someone a pass to use my credit on their own discretion.

Personally I'd rather see that money go towards things that everyone can use, like a working dryer for the house (which will cost as much again in electric as it did to buy outright, don't forget to spend it twice!) or some repairs for the second bathroom (shouldn't the landlord pay that, or the person who made the hole in the sink? nah, neither of those are fair...)

*SNARL* I'm fuming mad!

Java Server Faces

OK so I know it's a pain supporting legacies sometimes but this is just absurd... 6000 by 9000 pixels? How am I supposed to print that with any less than an enormous (and surely expensive) plotter, like the HP DesignJet? I don't like having schemas if I can't keep them on my wall, and my office printer puts out 8.5x11 sheets, well I don't know if that can even print this many pixels on a sheet.

So CTAF, the common testing automation framework, is pretty big and complicated. The myThomson application, on the other hand, is GREAT and seems to be full of a lot of useful content, like this introduction to Java Server Faces. I wish more people would use it!



I don't know if that link is going to work for you. It works for me! My Repo is password protected, and if you haven't logged in then you probably won't get the image. You've probably seen Windows screenshots before, not missing much. Whatever the case I'm quite sure this software could be simpler than it is.

What's the old adage? You can't fix all the bugs... that's what they say anyway, but I heard a rumor that you can actually fix all of the bugs! Must have been someone in the US Marines told me that, all programs can be shortened to one line that doesn't work.

We'll get there some day, my friends :D