Selfish Crab

NYTimes Obit:  Charles L. Brieant Jr., Longtime Federal Judge, Is Dead at 85:

Judge Brieant graduated from Columbia University in 1947. He had originally been a member of the class of 1944, but served in the Army Air Forces in World War II. In 1949, he received his law degree from Columbia. (Emphasis added.)

# 2008 Jul 29    {Columbia}    #

Really?  Lil’ Wayne is the top-selling rapper of the year, and poised to win a Grammy?  Really?  Granted: “Better wear a latex / cuz you dont want that late text /that “I think I’m late” text/” is high poetry, but a Grammy??   Okay, maybe his flow IS an unpredictable flutter, but the timbre of his voice, my god, sounds as if Tom Waits transformed into Gollum, trading obsession with Precious for an avarice for bling.  We shall monitor the situation closely and provide updates if necessary.

# 2008 Jul 28    {Life}    #

The upcoming, new James Bond flick is called Quantum of Solace.  Not sure about the marketing power of that title.  Do Americans know either of these words?  It might as well be called “????? of ????? Yknow the New James Bond Movie”.

# 2008 Jul 28    {Life}    #

NY Times on the things brides make their bridesmaids do, ranging from botox to, well…:

But for every accommodating pal, there’s another who feels going under the knife is beyond the duty of bridesmaid. Becky Lee, 39, a Manhattan photographer, declined when a friend asked her — and five other attendants — to have their breasts enhanced. “We’re all Asian and didn’t have a whole lot of cleavage, and she found a doctor in L.A. who was willing to do four for the price of two,” said Ms. Lee, who wore a push-up bra instead. (Emphasis added).

Also, the commenters are ripping the profiled wedding parties to shreds.

# 2008 Jul 25    {Links}    #

George Carlin (1937-2008), comedian, linguist.  Carlin was obsessed with language and diction (think:  William Safire without the pomposity) and devoted much of his routines to it.  A routine of his, “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television,” was at the center of a prominent 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision, FCC v. Pacifica.   The Court sustained the FCC’s power to fine the radio station that played the routine unfiltered.   Many scholars largely regard the decision as wrong or, at best, a one-off.   He did not attend the University, but grew up in a building behind the Teacher’s College.  (see also, Google Maps).    That’s good enough for me.  RIP.

See also, Remembering George Carlin, Fresh Air, June 23, 2008.

# 2008 Jul 22    {Columbia}    #

“Hockey Night in Canada” (HNIC), a Canadian cultural mainstay akin to “Monday Night Football”,  lost rights to its theme song of nearly 30 years in a recent copyright/songwriter spat.  It was a big deal; think, MNF’s theme song.

Song-less, HNIC’s solution to this problem was to turn to the great masses, hosting an online anthem contest, promising $100k to the winner, with rights and royalties.    Do you see where this is going, friends?   Here is the top-rated anthem, courtesy of our friends at the Something Awful forums.  Please, everyone, teh internets is not for democracy.

See also, previously.

# 2008 Jul 18    {Life}    #

1. Remote
2. Facebook
3. Google Mobile App
4. Light
5. WeDict
6. NY Times
7. Bloomberg LP (wow, Bloomberg does not mess around)

Reviews to come.   Suggest your own in the comments.

# 2008 Jul 16    {Life}    #

this photoset brought to you by Budweiser by selfish crab.

# 2008 Jul 12    {Life}    #

Well, today was not  productive, considering I spent half the night setting up version control.  I did mess around with the models and the cake-bake auto generation of code.  A form has neither been generated, nor has data been saved.

CakePHP developers, have you never heard of a string constant?  The entire framework uses carefully-arranged associative arrays and switches and not a single constant is whispered.

Also, I am this close to giving up on emacs because I can’t find my old AITGOC .emacs file and the default tab-widths are driving me crazy, and I do not feel like re-learning LISP right now.

# 2008 Jul 10    {nerd}    2

In which a law student re-learns how to code:

1. Cue the AITGOC mix: Prince, David Bowie, Cure.
2. Decide I want to install CakePHP via a Subversion checkout.  (30 min)
3. Realize I need to install Subversion first. (1 min)
4. Struggle, then re-learn how to compile from source and install Subversion into a 1&1 shared hosting UNIX account. (20 min)
5. Wrestle with .htaccess files despite the heads-up. (45 minutes)
6. ((Wow, is my entire system’s security reliant on mod_rewrite?))
7. ((Wow, why is it impossible to do nested lists in wordpress wysiwyg editors?))
8. ((Nothing portends success like combining two unknown, nascent development frameworks.))
9. Success! See the default index page.
10. Set up database– ((aw fuck, table names are plural??))  (20 min)
11. Make new custom controller (5 min)– er… Research where to put custom controllers (30 min)
12. Take a quick 5 minute break to re-learn ‘find’ and ‘grep’ in order properly hunt down this elusive app_controller.php I’m supposed to override.  (45 min)
13. Cut and paste code from demo.  (2 min)
14. Update demo code for CakePHP 1.2 (as opposed to version 1.1).  (15 min)

By the end of day 1:  CakePHP installed, connected to database, created a custom controller,  installed facebook libs, connected to facebook api, created custom view that outputs all your facebook friends.

My first impressions:  all the magic of the framework honestly makes me nervous.   I love coding style guides more than the next guy.  But binding class names, database names, and filenames to a coding convention, and dynamically doing it at run-time?   Hairy affair.   Maybe this is the solution for development teams and their bosses that are unable to stick to a coding convention?

# 2008 Jul 7    {nerd}    3

For a new pet project, I was going to learn Ruby on Rails, but then I realized I had to fucking learn Ruby, then Rails.  As a general policy, I do not spend my time learning some compsci professor’s jackoff pet language.  That said, I am warming to using a pre-rolled MVC framework.    Anyone have any experience with CakePHP?

My coding abilities have atrophied quite dramatically.  I can barely roll my own error handling function.   I really wish I had dumped a copy of my old AITGOC work.  Perhaps a good samaritan can slide me a tarball of Project Oneoff, yknow the under-utilizied, student-council-hysterics-driven slop I spent at least 80 man-hours on?

# 2008 Jul 2    {nerd}    6

Oh god, I think I just fired off a birthday e-card announcing a birthday gift about a week too soon.  DEAR eBAGS.com DEVELOPERS, NEXT TIME PRE-FUCKING-POPULATE the “FUTURE SEND DATE” select box with my PREVIOUS CHOICE  AFTER I HAVE FINISHED EDITING MY E-CARD TEXT.

Future note: leave less time-crucial tasks for 2 AM.

# 2008 Jul 2    {Life}    2

Wikipedia: List of problems solved by MacGyver, wherein #68 is How I Should Spend My Tuesday Night. (via)

# 2008 Jul 2    {Links}    #