geek on SWiK

Joe Gregorio | BitWorking | RESTful JSON

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:55:24 -0700

for haskellian - hpaste

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:48:40 -0700

a direct literate haskell translation from a python script, implementations interleaved. better performance. code relates to the netflix prize. references: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.haskell/browse_frm/thread/9e33e4fbc786471a#

Free as in Freedom: Table of Contents

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:51:39 -0700

Paranoid Engineering: Make your Eclipse rock

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:23:07 -0700

Tweaks for Eclipse

nfs vs. smb

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:16:07 -0700

350MB file on an Infrant ReadyNAS, copied to a generic Linux box. Same directory, same file, only difference is mounting over NFS vs. mounting over Samba:

$ time cp /mnt/nfs/file.bin . real 0m2.662s user 0m0.084s sys 0m2.504s

$ time cp /mnt/smb/file.bin . real 0m57.294s user 0m0.008s sys 0m0.452s

Update a few hours later: I think caching fooled me. A new test for a different file that is 321MB shows NFS at 10.9 seconds versus SMB's 49.6 seconds. Still an extreme difference, but no longer uncomfortably close (over 130MB/sec) to the theoretical maximum speed of a typical SATA hard drive.

Tell me about your digital music collection

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:14:14 -0700

If you have a lot of CDs and have set up a good home system to listen to them online (i.e., on a hard drive rather than having to pop each physical CD into the player to listen to it), I'd appreciate some advice. If your goal were to put the physical CDs in the attic forever, no matter what fancy encoding technology appeared in the future, which format would you choose? Would single-file-per-album FLAC plus embedded cuesheets be sufficient? Or is there reason to drop to an even lower level, such as ISO or BIN?

I don't care about file size; if it takes 747MB per CD, so be it. I do care about the archive format being usable; hence the attraction of FLAC, which my Squeezebox can play, versus ISO/BIN, which are cumbersome as an audio source. I don't care about hybrid data/audio CDs. I definitely do care about gapless playback.

I made a mistake back in 2005 and ripped my collection to a lossy format. My penance is re-ripping the whole batch. Please help me do it right this time.

www.davep.org: Home

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:05:19 -0700

mutt user, emacs user, sawfish user, slrn user, Palm user, Mini owner, Yorkshireman, Net Cynic, Roy Harper fan, Nick Harper fan, Billingborough resident, SPA member, BAA member, amateur astronomer, amateur photographer, GNU/Linux enthusiast and Debate Unlimited addict.

How Can: Sharing Your Codes to the Git Hubs?

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 10:05:27 -0700

"These days it seems that everyone is on the github tip – cloning like a shitty star wars prequel, forking and pulling like a lobster banquet."

MisterHouse

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:05:34 -0700

Home automation via Perl and X10. Sweet!

Yet another "Dell sucks" blog post

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:14:19 -0700

Early July: One of our new employees agrees to a start date of August 11.
July 21: I order a Dell PC and a 24-inch monitor for this new employee.
July 25: I get an email from Dell saying the purchase has shipped.
July 31: The package arrives.
August 11: First day for our new employee. Unpack the box, discover the monitor's broken. It flickers, and when it's not flickering, twisting lines of blue and green pixels shimmer on the display. We swap cables, computers, identical models of monitors, etc. We upgrade drivers. We reset the monitor to factory settings.
August 11: Navigate through Dell's website and submit exchange request.
August 12: Nothing happens. Once again, navigate through Dell's website and submit another exchange request.
August 12: "Sorry, your 21-day exchange period has expired." My response: no, it hasn't.
August 12: "Hi, sorry you can't figure out how to hook up your monitor. Have you tried our technical support department?" My response: look, it's really broken.
August 13: "Sorry, your 21-day exchange period has expired." My response: no, it hasn't.
August 13: "Hi, sorry you can't figure out how to hook up your monitor. Have you tried our technical support department?" My response: hey, we've gone through all the troubleshooting steps. Just give me the RMA.
August 14: "Oh gosh, we're sorry about all this. We'll be happy to replace the monitor. One question though, was the box damaged when it arrived?" My response: you already asked me that when I filled out the original web form. To repeat myself: no, the box was OK. Their response: "Hi, sorry you can't figure out how to hook up your monitor. Have you tried our technical support department?" My response: RMA, please. Don't make me dispute the credit card charge.
August 15 (this morning): "Sorry, your 21-day exchange period has expired."

(By the way, yes, I have called their tech support department. Early morning I haven't been able to stay on hold longer than a few minutes, and in the evening they say to call back the next day.)

Dell hardware is fine. But Dell the company sucks.

Update 10:09am Friday: On the phone now for 39 minutes. Spoke to Mark Garcia, an unknown other person, Misha 143497, Virginia 869237, and now on hold for the last 12 minutes being transferred again to a "technical support specialist." Each time except for Virginia I explained most of the story all over again. Verified name 4 times. Verified mailing address twice.

Dell, if you're listening, my incident number is 617570338.

10:14 "Please wait."

10:15 Hey, what a great idea: liveblogging my defective Dell monitor return experience.

10:16 The "Please wait" every 30 seconds for the last approximately 20 minutes has just changed into music, as well as an occasional recording urging me to hang up and figure out the problem myself on the support website.

10:21 Sigh, looks like the switch to music wasn't a sign of imminent human contact. But on the bright side, I now know that Dell's set up a "community" site where people can help each other diagnose their problems with Dell machines.

10:22 "Many times a simple restart will resolve issues. Try restarting and see whether the problem persists!"

10:24: Don't like being on hold? Buy "Dell On-Call Support"! What a great value!

10:25: The Dell community message. Also ensure your virus definitions are up to date. I've heard that one at least three times now. Ooh, but I missed that visiting the site can give you access to free virus software. Wow!

10:26: Now they're telling me HOW to turn off my computer to restart and "see if the problem persists." Buy Dell On-Call Support. "Do you think spyware is an issue?"

10:32 The music stopped for about a minute. Was hopeful this meant I would get someone to answer. Nope, just got reminded about spyware again, then more music.

10:34 I just realized it's been forever since I heard someone say "forward-slash" when reading a URL. But I've heard it probably 60 times in the last 40 minutes. "Visit dell dot com forward slash support blah blah blah blah blah...."

10:38 Searching my Gmail for from:US_CAG_Customer_Care@dell.com returns 25 distinct emails. That means I've gone through 12 and a half email round trips with Dell.

10:39 Ooh, the music stopped again!

10:40 Nooooooooooooooo! "Many times a simple restart will resolve..............."

10:41 On the phone now for at least 1 hour, 11 minutes.

10:42 "forward slash security tips"

10:43 I wonder how many of their users type a space between "security" and "tips" when typing in that URL. Why couldn't they have picked a single word like "security" or "tips"?

10:44 I love how they say "issues" instead of "problems." I know everyone does that in the tech industry, but it's amusing to analyze how thoroughly they've cleansed the language of these recorded messages.

10:47 It looks like the music stops about every seven minutes. It must be a loop. So unfortunately there's no meaning in the fact that it stops.

10:50 Here's a screenshot of the email:

10:51 "Scan for viruses for free!" More music.

10:52 Here's my attempt to transcribe the music into text: doo dee.... doo doo doodly-doo, bwap bwap bwap bwap (repeat verse), boop boop twang

10:54 will have been on for 90 minutes soon.

10:55 "then restart to see if the problem persists." Technically it should be "whether," not "if." Otherwise you're literally saying that you should restart your computer ONLY IF the problem persists. But how would you know, unless you restarted your computer to find out?

10:57 bathroom break. Hope I don't drop the call.

11:01 Hi, this is Mike. I'm totally not brainwashed or anything. I just wanted to ask my loyal readers a simple question. Did you know Dell is here for you 24/7, all year long? doo dee.... doo doo doodly-doo......

11:04 Oh, this was weird. This time the music stopped for 9 seconds. Historically it takes from 5.5 to 7 seconds before the tape loops.

11:05 Thinking of hanging up and redialing.

11:06 I'm also thinking of designing a T-shirt people that people could wear to show their support for my cause during this phone call. I've been happy with cafepress in the past -- any better suggestions?

11:09 So here's the thing about hanging up. Remember that quote from Boiler Room? "there is no such thing as a no-sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can't." Does this count as a "call"? Then if I hang up, what have I bought? I mean, besides a broken monitor?

11:12 Oh, wow, must be a slow news day. I'm on CNN! Read the article here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/15/mike.vs.dell/index.html

11:14 Ha ha, made you click.

11:15 Coming up on TWO HOURS ON THIS DELL PHONE CALL. Hanging up now.

11:15 Redialing 800-624-9896.................

11:16 "Welcome to Dell...."

11:24 got someone

11:26 I think he's in the States. Score!

11:27 It's actually possible that he is genuinely shocked that I was on the phone for two hours.

11:28 "You're in the wrong queue" OH GOD NO

11:28 "But since you were on hold so long I can make an exception and process this matter for you..." Do miracles happen?

11:30 Describing the problem, won't fall into previous traps.....

11:31 As I'm fumbling to describe the snake-like flickering pixels, he suggests "like an ink spill"? My goodness gracious, a man who speaks my language!

11:32 "Yeah, that's bad." (His words.)

11:33 I'm "verifying" my shipping address. He wouldn't ask that unless something were being shipped there, right?

11:35 aw, crap, he's doing it to me. I'm going to have to call someone else.

Was it something I said? I thought we had a really good relationship.

11:39 We're still talking. Maybe we can save this thing.

11:40 "I'm picking the part for you now." I am not sure what that means, but it's better than "Sorry, you're 19 days into your 21-day exchange period, which means your exchange period has elapsed."

11:44 Off the phone. "Scott" says they're going to send someone out to replace the monitor. No need to call anyone. He says I should call up "Dell Customer Care" and explain what happened and "I'm sure they'll do something for you."

11:46 I got a confirmation email from him proving the last conversation really happened.

11:48 end of liveblog, for now. Back to work. I have vastly improved my state of mind, now elevated to "F*** you Dell, you f***ing shameful excuse of a customer service organization." Let's see what happens next.

Bug Labs

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:05:00 -0700

Mindfuck: The Reverse State Monad @ The dreams that stuff is made of

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:04:32 -0700

"Someone in the #haskell IRC channel mentioned the “reverse state monad” explaining that it used the state from the next computation and passed it to the previous one. Well, I just had to try this!"

Haskell Programming: Types - Polyvariadic Functions

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:04:52 -0700

"It is sometimes claimed that Haskell does not have polyvariadic functions. Here we demonstrate how to define functions with indefinitely many arguments; those arguments do not have to be of the same type."

Y Combinator in Haskell

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:04:40 -0700

"Apparently one can define the Y combinator with lambda expressions in Haskell. The problem with fix f = (\x -> f (x x))(\x -> f (x x)) is that one needs a solution to...

Dev : Firefox Chrome URLs - MozillaZine Knowledge Base

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:06:19 -0700

Sex can wait for Engineers on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:04:05 -0700

XML 10 @ W3C

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:04:54 -0700

XML 10 @ W3C

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:04:48 -0700

Open Source Mobile Calendar and Contact Synchronization - Zimbra :: Wiki

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:08:13 -0700

Electric Sheep

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:09:51 -0700

Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver

Main Page - Openmoko

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:08:55 -0700

The 56 Geeks Project

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 04:11:08 -0700

Sanguino.cc: What is Sanguino?

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:08:59 -0700

It has much less acceptance in the wider hacking community vs. Arduino.

Pen Testing the Web with Firefox

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:09:32 -0700

torrent

Open Source Edition Backup Procedure - Zimbra :: Wiki

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:07:56 -0700

Haskell Cafe - A handy little consequence of the Cont monad

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:07:40 -0700

(TODO: Grok this.) Cale demonstrates a one-liner that is "generally useful whenever you have a bunch of with-style functions for managing the allocation of resources, and would like to turn them into a single with-style function providing a list of the...

Blocking an IP address

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:08:52 -0700

For example, if a script kiddie is trying to ssh from address w.x.y.z as adam, betty, charlie, dan, ed, etc.:

iptables -I INPUT -s w.x.y.z -j DROP

The login attempts are generally harmless (unless they succeed, of course), but they can be distracting if you're debugging something related to processes (e.g., atop or ps).

Declutter user manuals

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:03:36 -0700

Lately, when my family buys anything with a user manual, part of my unboxing ritual involves going to the manufacturer's website, downloading the user manual as a PDF, and putting it somewhere safe. Then I throw away (er, I mean, recycle) the paper version. Less physical clutter, and searchable product documentation -- no matter how the manufacturer reorganizes its website in the coming years.

real_programmers.png (PNG Image, 740x406 pixels)

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:49:56 -0700

minor emacs wizardry

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:50:45 -0700