watch this  

Comment Spam is out of control!! I’ve updated my blacklist, but the spam is still coming in. Until I can fix this, I’ve turned off comments. Sorry.

Update: Comments are back on. I’m hoping Spam Karma will help.

Last night, I actually had a nightmare that I was forced to start working on this monstrous J2EE web site that I worked on 3 years ago. They wouldn’t let me re-write it, just tack-on new features. Shudder.

Ruby made it all better. Come along, won’t you?

• Coming to Ruby from Java
• Ten Things a Java Programmer Should Know About Ruby

The best review of Mac Mini I’ve read yet.

When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware - none of which are available for the Mac platform - it doesn’t make sense for me to “switch” to a Mac at this time.

Reminds me of that 2.4.0 kernel release that was bug free.

Excellent.

Via Pitchfork

I was just looking back through some Apple Insider news when I noticed this article about one of the latest Tiger builds.

One such feature is reportedly called “Home Sync.” While little is known about the feature, a short description present from within the operating system says that Home Sync requires a ‘portable home’ folder. To create a ‘mobile account and portable home,’ Tiger then directs users to the system account preferences where an option to create and configure a mobile account should be present, but is not.

Oh, I’m intrigued! I know that Sync is going to be a big part of Tiger and that the API will be opened-up. Could this lead to some cross-platform, portable-home lovin’? That would be excellent. Oh, how I wish I was an ADC seed member and could get my hands on a Tiger build… I’ve got some Dashboard ideas and now this!

Also of note: the inclusion of a Dictionary/Thesaurus called “Dictionary”.

If you’ve been watching my del.icio.us, you have probably noticed that I have recently become enamored with Ruby. I won’t rehash what Ruby is - as that has been covered extensively elsewhere - but will say that, for me, it seems to strike at that sweet-spot right between Perl and Python.

I’m starting a new data migration project at work. Nothing too technically challenging, mostly translating and moving data around. This is, of course, a perfect task for Perl/Python/Ruby. I have used Perl and Python plenty in the past and saw this as a perfect opportunity to explore Ruby. The Ruby On Rails article at O’Reilly just seemed to confirm it!

My first task was to find and test the database drivers. Thankfully, Ruby (like Python) uses a Perl-style DBI interface. Though the Ruby Oracle modules don’t seem quite as mature as Python’s or Perl’s, they are certainly functional. By adhering to the DBI API, I’m not bound to either one of the Oracle versions, though Ruby/OCI8 is certainly more active than Ruby9i.

Later, I’ll post the side-by-side Ruby, Python, Perl DBI comparison I did before deciding on Ruby. But, in the meantime, I guess what I liked best about Ruby was being able to do stuff like this:

<pre><code>
def save_record(column_one, column_two, column_three)
    # ...
end
dbh.execute("select * from table").each do |row|
    save_record(*row[0..2])
end
</code>

Plus, the Ruby community seems very Mac-friendly! Good Ruby Resources:

• Ruby Highlights
• Ruby for Perl Programmers and, even more generally applicable, Syntax Across Languages
• A good starting point, Getting Started with Ruby
• And, as always, you can watch the Ruby tag on my del.icio.us!

Well, I finally received my iPod Shuffle on Thursday. Unfortunately, it appears to be a lemon. It worked sporadically - I was only able to load music onto it once. Whenever I inserted into my G5’s myriad USB ports, nothing would happen. So, I finally broked down and called Apple. They were very helpful and after an hour of futile plugging and switching, agreed to send me a replacement. Secretly, I did not tell them that - against explicit instructions—I did, in fact… try to eat the iPod Shuffle.

2,000-ton mountain of cow manure spontaneously combusts.

Via Yahoo! News

WTH? This review of M83’s new album, Before the Dawn Heals Us, is this most cockamamie piece of writing I’ve ever read:

Also built on rock’n’roll, “Fields, Shorelines, and Hunters” punts a precipitous Milky Way barnstorm of cascading feedback, drum buildups, and vocal cut-ups that lead into the even headier ”*”, which breaks orbit, uncoiling the previous track’s static energy with a patch of cathartic shoegaze glaciers from Saturn.

Um, what?

Gentoo for Mac OS X is installed and up-to-date! Pretty straightforward. I’ve got my build settings and USE flags tweaked… now I just need some packages! Not surprisingly, most of the ebuilds are masked. Though, there is an RSS feed for stable packages. Very helpful.

I noticed a thread on the Gentoo forums comparing and contrasting portage and fink. A good point was brought up about the advantages of fink’s separate directory structure. I certainly agree that it is preferrable (though collision protection is great).

It’s encouraging to see that gentoo may be pursuing the separate directory structure path, too.