Happy Administrative Professionals Week (( Probably over by the time you read this. Administrative Professionals Day was Wednesday, April 25. )) (( I got a mug. )).
Monthly Archives: April 2007
What’s this?
I just got this at the top of a search for “ruby rake” on Google.
Ruby — Rake: 4 According to http://jimweirich.umlcoop.net/index.cgi/Tech/Ruby - More sources »
The url under “More sources” goes here. All I can figure is that this is some kind of authority thing, or like the wtf feature on Technorati. jimweirich is a 4 or something. Maybe this is nothing, or maybe this is the beginning of semantic categorization on Google!!! ??? Why is this important? Well, if you search for Martin Luther King, one of the top links goes to a white supremacist hate page. It may be that Google is moving away from its raw algorithm, which can be gamed, and toward a trustweb system. Actually, it just occurred to me that that result could be from the Google search results tagging system that is already in place. So, is this old news?
religion.
12:00 PM me: Does [your company] use whitespace or tabs?
12:01 PM Ian: you mean spaces?
everyone uses spaces.
four spaces, in fact.
It’s Guido gospel.
me: But spaces suck.
12:02 PM Ian: not even remotely.
me: I know that’s the gospel, but it doesn’t make sense.
Ian: It makes excellent sense.
Easier to deal with. Only one kind of whitespace.
me: Do Windows and Linux use different tab characters?
Ian: no.
12:03 PM me: Dude, two-space tabs.
Google uses two-space whitespace, btw.
Ian: well, nobody else does.
me: I know. It drives me crazy.
12:04 PM
Ian: I like four. Everything lines up properly.
def myfunc():
____blah
me: Eh. I use two-space tabs in Ruby, and I don’t like to change when I program in Python. Gajim uses tabs, though.
Ian: We were never told this, it’s just the general rule.
12:05 PM me: Well, it’ll break if you mix them.
Ian: I am aware.
me: That’s retarded.
Ian: Not really. It has to break.
12:06 PM me: I know, but it’s still retarded.
12:07 PM
Ian: I mean, it’s been the standard forever. Tabs are bloody annoying, since they look like spaces but aren’t.
me: But tabs are semantic! Just turn on printer’s symbols if it bothers you.
12:08 PM What’s annoying is backspacing and it goes back…one…character…at…a..time.
12:10 PM I swear, future generation will look back on this as utter madness.
|
|
6 minutes |
12:17 PM Ian: well. I don’t have to do that.
Vim does tht for me.
12:18 PM me: I thought so.
Ian: it backspaces a tab at a time if appropriate, otherwise space. It’s perfectly natural.
me: Well, that’s not so bad.
Ian: but my code will always render in exactly the same way on everyone’s machine. Lines will have the same length.
12:19 PM if it’s 79 chars, it won’t wrap on somebody else’s editor who has their tabs set to 8 or something
me: I’m right, though. But it is utter gibbering insanity.
What is sacred in web pages is verboten in code. This is ridiculous to me.
12:20 PM Ian: what is sacred in web pages?
whitespace is ignored.
me: Tab means indent!
Ian: tab doesn’t mean a damn thing in a web page
me: User sets the indent!
I know. Using space is like using <br /> in webpages.
12:21 PM You’re trying to control display.
And you call it a virtue.
Ian: well, yeah. html isn’t for content.
me: Madness.
Ian: indentation is set in CSS
me: Yes!
That’s my point.
12:22 PM Tab means <indent />
Ian: But it doesn’t.
In a web page, “beginning of paragraph” means <indent/>
12:23 PM there’s no tabbing.
You can’t artificially insert a tab character.
me: If someone said, don’t use <p>, use <br />, some users change the margins on paragraphs, you’d say he was an idiot.
Ian: You can’t double-tab.
no users change the margins on paragraphs. My own CSS does.
me: I understand. I’m saying tab means indent, a semantic element. It means level of scope in Python.
12:24 PM Ian: but it doesn’t. whitespace means level of scope.
me: But if they wanted to, they could. Then it wouldn’t display properly. Best to use <br />
Ian: no, they couldn’t.
me: Ahh!!!
12:25 PM Yes, they could. They could change the default stylesheet, and make it !important.
Ian: The end user doesn’t control the display of a web page, except for text size.
me: Ugh.
They have a degenerative sight disorder that requires the paragraphs to be widely spaced.
12:27 PM I’m saying the principle that is sacred in web pages is considered a liability in code, and only really in Python and shell scripts, because indentation is just for looks in C++, Ruby, Java, etc.
Ian: But no one will ever do that. I don’t understand how this is at all relevant. Code display has nothing to do with layout. The goal is to do it the same way as everybody else.
and that sacred principle is…?
i still don’t get it.
Since there are no tab characters in web pages.
12:28 PM me: Let the user determine presentation. That’s the principle. If they want to apply another stylesheet that makes your page look stupid, so be it.
Ian: But that isn’t a sacred principle in web pages.
me: Yes it is.
It’s why we don’t use tables and <br /> for everything. It’s why we don’t compose web pages in Word.
12:29 PM Ian: No, it isn’t.
We don’t do it that way because it’s extremely limited.
And it won’t display the way /we/ want it to.
me: Dude, wtf? Use flash if you want to control display.
12:30 PM Ian: But that’s totally wrong! That’s warped!
me: I understand that the user usually views a page the way you want him to.
But he doesn’t have to.
Ian: Always. Unless they’re hacking it.
In which case I don’t care.
12:31 PM Build the page to deal with big text and small viewports, but otherwise whatever.
me: What are you talking about? They can view a page in Lynx, or with a screen reader, or using a Greasemonkey script, or whatever.
12:32 PM
Ian: There aren’t other variations, except for the extreme outliers where people hack your CSS.
me: If it’s important to have code displayed with a certain size tab, you could include a hint at the top.
Ian: People using greasemonkey scripts know the page will be fucked up. Lynx doesn’t apply, since it strips CSS. Screen readers are a completely different thing.
12:33 PM me: I am horrified.
Ian: I dunno where you get this insane idea.
me: I don’t know why you’re fighting me on this. The whitespace thing, sure. But not this principle.
12:34 PM Ian: You can’t account for all users. Especially not if they are making up their own CSS.
me: <br />This is a paragraph.<br /> See, it’s better? Works every time, no matter what the user does.
Ian: It’s impossible to predict that.
Except you can’t do anything. That’s idiotic.
12:35 PM me: Yes, because it’s attempting to define display with markup.
Ian: but <p> tags aren’t for the benefit of the user
they are boxes with default CSS that you, the designer, change.
12:36 PM They’re roughly semantic, but you don’t use them wherever you have text.
me: Okay, I get you.
But a screen reader would use the paragraphs to know where to pause, for example.
Ian: They certainly don’t mean “paragraph,” and they’re only indented if you explicitly set text-indent.
If it’s a screen reader, you have a different style sheet
12:37 PM me: Yes!
Ian: and you use pause-before:blah
in the CSS
me: Do you define a css audio stylesheet for your pages?
Ian: Hell no.
me: So they use the default settings.
Ian: Certainly not for [my company].
12:38 PM me: It’s whatever they want.
And you can override stylesheet settings with !important.
Ian: Also it strips out all layout, so it’s irrelevant.
me: Huh? That’s layout. It doesn’t read them in any order.
12:39 PM Ian: WHO can?
The blind greasemonkey users?
me: Yes.
Ian: I will never, ever design a page for a blind greasemonkey user.
me: Argh.
Please see the analogy.
12:40 PM
Ian: I see what you’re getting at, but I think you’re totally wrong.
The user /can/ define presentation, but only by /breaking/ the original code and rewriting it.
Or using an application that discards certain things, like a screen reader.
me: “As god is my witness, I will never allow another programmer to view my code at anything but four spaces to an indent level. I would rather die.”
Ian: Or lynx.
12:41 PM So if you really want to, you can, before editing any code, translate all spaces into tabs, then do your editing, then retranslate and save.
That is roughly comparable.
It’s a simple greasemonkey script.
me: You’re saying it’s something freaky, because it’s rare. But it’s just rare. It’s something that’s built in to html.
12:42 PM
Ian: if you just have to have your indentation be a certain width, you can. But who the hell cares? The end user of code is the computer.
You make it useful for future coders, of course
me: You do know that all the CSS Zen Garden sheets refer to the same page, right?
Ian: Make it readable and whatnot
Yes.
It’s a basic HTML structure.
12:44 PM divs with some ps and uls
me: Anyways, I can’t change the whitespace to tabs. People would yell at me.
Ian: Well, then you change it back, before saving.
me: Whywhywhy?
Ian: Because code isn’t written for you.
It’s written for everyone.
12:45 PM I take that back: it isn’t written for anyone.
it’s written to be run.
You make it readable, not pretty
more to the point: you make it /editable/
12:46 PM (which web pages aren’t)
me: What’s so bad about tabs??? They only occur at the beginning of the line. If there’s one, it means one level of indent, two two levels, etc.
If the user chooses to view them at 4 spaces per tab, they display like that, if 2, then that.
12:47 PM
Ian: Nothing in particular, except it’s a whole nother character to deal with. If “whitespace=space” it’s easier.
From a coding perspective.
I don’t have to wonder if there are tabs anywhere, because they’re all spaces.
12:48 PM me: The thing is, it doesn’t even matter in Ruby! I can write the whole script without any beginning of line spaces at all! It’s only Python that cares! And Guido bases it on the C++ coding standard, where it also doesn’t matter!
Ian: If I want to indent only one space, I can.
If I want to line up my dictionary values, I can.
12:49 PM me: In Gedit, tabs are arrows and spaces are dots.
Ian: If you turn that shit on. But most people don’t. Most people use emacs and vim.
me: Well, okay, there’s something.
12:50 PMThings only get out of whack if you mix tabs and spaces, it’s true.
Ian: mostly it’s just annoying to have arrows and dots scattered throughout your code.
me: It makes it clear for me.
12:51 PM I don’t understand why “knowing if whitespace is a tab or a space” is more important than knowing that you haven’t accidentally backspaced and set a line to three space indent instead of four.
That happens all the time.
12:52 PM Ian: that never happens.
I have autoindentation on.
me: It’s happened to me. It’s happened in code that I’ve downloaded.
Ian: Then someone wrote it poorly.
12:53 PM That happened to me when I used gedit, which is a stupid application.
or notepad or something.
me: All this effort for a marginal problem of “knowing whether a character is a whitespace or tab” when it introduces another marginal problem.
Ian: But there are no problems.
12:54 PM My code is always clean, no matter who looks at it.
me: Just like there were no problems with the five year plans!
Umm.
12:55 PM Ian: Unless they have their line width set to something short. But then they would be an iiot.
idiot
me: Google uses two spaces! Four spaces is too much!
12:56 PM Ian: Google uses two spaces because fewer spaces translate into less downloaded.
me: Let the programmer decide!
Ian: Any web programmer worth his or her salt packs their code before uploading.
12:57 PM me: No, because code shouldn’t be nested beyond more than two or three levels anyway.
So it should be easy enough to read at two spaces.
Ian: ?
12:58 PM I mean, yeah, code rarely gets that deep
Except not really, when you have vars inside functions inside functions inside classes.
me: Most Ruby code uses two spaces and it’s easy to read.
12:59 PM About four or five levels.
Ian: Well, if Ruby takes over the world, perhaps other people will do it that way.
Idea
I just had an idea, similar to the Atmosphere concept (good picture here) from the My Dream App contest. It’s an added wrinkle, actually. Your desktop changes your wallpaper and window theme based on whether you’re at work or not. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah.
No, really. Just imagine it. It’s mainly neat for people who use the same system at home and for work. So you get up in the morning, and let’s say there’s a picture of a cup of coffee and a newspaper — with functioning news feeds. God, I’m a genius. Then it rolls around to the time when work starts. A cartoon work whistle blows. Suddenly your desktop resembles a cubicle wall, featuring a randomly selected Dilbert cartoon and a humorous or sentimental clipping of your own choice ((No, it doesn’t look like a physical desktop. That would be stupid. )). If you use MacOS (( or Ubuntu, yo. )), the interface for all applications now looks like Windows 98. Access is restricted to all websites except http://www.howtobeabetteremployeetoyouremployer.com. Noon comes. A dialog appears, asking if you “brownbagged it today”, or if you want Rich down the hall to include you in his lunch run to Wendy’s. An old-fashioned TV with rabbit ears airs all the relevant clips from last night’s Dancing with the Stars for you to talk about in the lunch room. Okay, and then at 5:30, your desktop just goes crazy. It becomes a total disco inferno, with wacky strobing special effects and fake confetti and everything. Like, for a minute. And then it becomes this chill space jazz lounge, with cool relaxing music…
I sorted of pissed on this, but it might actually be cool to have your desktop bring up certain programs at different times of the day, and maybe use different configurations based on whether you’re in work-mode or not.
Update: I am a stupid idea god. This article says that Apple filed a patent for this. Ahem: “For example, the color gradation may be computed based on the time of day to mimic the changes in the colors of the sky.” This is kind of a bullshit thing to patent, btw.
Using xsl to import a phpmyadmin xml file
Yep, following the last post I have to explain what I just did for the LazyWeb (( Ironically, there doesn’t appear to be an entry on Wikipedia for Lazyweb. I understand it as asking on your blog for help with answering a question (“Dear Lazyweb, …”), i.e., you’re too lazy to research the topic yourself. I’m extending the concept of LazyWeb here to include the posts and forum threads that help you when you’re out googling for a solution to a problem. )) . This is going to be boring and technical, folks.
If you’re like me, you’ve exported a MySQL database as an xml file through PhpMyAdmin. In general, you shouldn’t do this. You want the SQL file. I don’t entirely understand it, but phpmyadmin does not import the format that it exports. If you throw away the database, you’ll be stuck with an xml file that can’t be easily imported. Okay, and if you already threw away the database? In my case, it’s an old Texpattern db that I want to get into a WordPress db, so if I can just get it into RSS form I’m home free. Here’s what you do:
- Take a look at this explanation of XSL (XML Stylesheets).
- Create an XSL stylesheet like this (name it stylesheet.xsl for this example):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:template match="/"> <rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"> <channel> <title>Stupididea</title> <link>http://www.stupididea.com/</link> <description></description> <language>en-us</language> <xsl:for-each select="stupidid_text/textpattern"> <item> <title><xsl:value-of select="Title"/></title> <link></link> <description><xsl:value-of select="Body_html"/></description> <dc:creator><xsl:value-of select="AuthorID"/></dc:creator> <dc:date><xsl:value-of select="Posted"/></dc:date> </item> </xsl:for-each> </channel> </rss> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>
- Include a line like this at the top of the xml file you exported from phpmyadmin:
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="stylesheet.xsl"?>
- Open an xsl-aware browser (most of them) and try to save the page as an rss file. Note: this was quirky for me. Sometimes the browser would just save the original file, sometimes it would save the stylesheeted output. Try with different browsers.
- (WordPress) Import the RSS file after checking that it is valid.
This is the general solution for any case where you can recover your database by transforming the phpmyadmin xml into an importable format. You’ll have to play around with the options based on your use-case.
A minor victory.
For a long time now I’ve been somewhat of a GTD guy, although I’m not religious about it and I’ve never been quite able or willing to implement it fully. Basically, all this means is that I keep a todo list that I review when I’m feeling conscientious about my life (( Actually, I keep several todo lists, which is a big no-no in GTD. I use Tomboy on my laptop and stikkit.com when I’m at work. )). One of the tasks that has been sitting in my list for a long time is Migrate old blog articles. Now I can cross it off! Look, I’m crossing it off: Migrate old blog articles. God, that was satisfying.
Yes, I finally managed to import all the posts from my old Textpattern blog (( Some of them reference pictures that I’ll have to dig up and upload. )). These go back to the days when I was working at National Geographic in DC, and had a lot of free time during work hours to do fun things like investigate cmses and purchase web domains. (( That’s the origin of the name Stupid Idea. The original stupid idea was to create a website that would be a kind of clearing house for “stupid” ideas — ideas that were deeply flawed but worth preserving on and improving. There was a MediaWiki installation that held about 100 articles before I switched web hosts. )) Some of them are written in a half-ironic high philosophic tone, others are intended to express minimalist pathos.
This minor victory was achieved not without some casualties. I have a peculiar knack for smashing up virtual servers (( Try this on a Linux host that you have root access on: `sudo rm -rf /`. Note: please don’t. )) , clobbering databases and borking filesystems. So, uhh, I’m very sorry but we lost the old comments.
Stupid Idea 
