pedrovera.com
Pedro is the author of The Insomniac Coder and is also Pedro Javier's dad. He is a web programmer and aspiring novelist stuck somewhere around the DC metropolitan area.
Nov 13th, 2008 @ 11:50 am
Parallels 4 clashes with VS.net 2005
There is a problem with the way that Parallels 4 does documents folder synchronization. What it does is to point to your home folder on the OS X side with an UNC path. It works great as long as the windows programs that look for that folder understand UNC.
Visual Studio 2005 is not one of these. The first thing that caught me cost me two long miserable hours of troubleshooting. I was installing Subsonic and it would not see the add-in. After all of this misery I realized that the problem was not that Subsonic was broken, instead it was because VS couldn’t see the folder where Subsonic installed the add-in.
Turned off home folder and desktop sync, now everything works.
Like I said, the problem here is Windows (XP), not Parallels.
Oct 18th, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
Perception of time in programmers
It is interesting how wildly the time seems to vary when you are writing code. I would think that after programming for more than twenty years, close to ten years of that professionally, I still feel like time stands still for certain projects, while others just eat the hours without barely a blink.
Between yesterday and today rewrote one of our applications from scratch, with brand new workflows, interfaces, the works. I wrote it in two stretches, and I can’t remember much from either. There is nothing broken, and as far as I can tell I don’t owe the customer anything significant.The damn thing is even open-ended and flexible, which is amazing if taking into account how little time I put into it.
At the same time, I have a couple of projects that just drag out forever. Not only that, but just the act of opening the project seems to suck my soul away. Maybe the whole time perception thing is related to the degree of satisfaction when working at a given project.
Oct 12th, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
Amazon Kindle
Reading or or two books per week can be a hassle when you own the books and you don’t take into account storage. Two books per week is over a hundred books a year. If each book is one inch thick, you are eating over 100 inches of bookshelf in just a year.
Now imagine that you are married, and your wife (14 years and going) also reads two books per week. Oh, and you live in a 1,000 square feet condominium. Where the hell are you going to store 14 years’ worth of books? Even if you re-read, it is still an insane amount of books, enough to convert a room into a library.
That only takes into account space. But what about organization? How the hell do you find a book that you want to re-read? Do you keep his and hers bookshelves? Alpha? By year? Genre?
Then there’s more: Upkeep: Books get dirty and attract bugs. You have to pull them out of the shelf every few months to make sure everything is clean. Who has time to do this for thousands of books? Also, books break. Paperbacks fall apart after the third or fourth re-read unless you are very careful. Over the years I have replaced every Tom Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin book that I have purchased at least twice. Sometimes I bought multiple copies of the same Clancy book.
When I learned about the Amazon Kindle, I was not blown over by the gadget appeal, the ease of read, electronic ink, etc. Those are nice things, but the one thing that I noticed on the spot is that it would solve many of my long term concerns:
- The device, by default, holds about 200 books.
- The device has a SD slot, which means that storage capacity is measured in thousands of volumes.
- Purchased media can be re-downloaded as many times as you wish. No need to back up DRM’ed media, as long as the Amazon content servers don’t shut down.
- Instant gratification, I can buy books directly from the device.
- Try before buying. I can download a sample, then if I like it I can pay to read the full book.
- I would always have extra material to read. I spent years carrying an extra book in my bag in case I finished my current read halfway through a trip. There is nothing as frustrating as finishing your book on the first 10 minutes of a 2-hour bus+train commute.
- I don’t have to pay Amazon to publish my books for sale on the Kindle. Publishing is free, they take a cut of the sale price.
Ivette reads as much as I do, so these issues benefit her too. I purchased our first Kindle in August, and I expect to pick up a second unit around Christmas.
The Kindle is far from perfect, but the current model shows the potential to turn into the iPod for books. If you compare the original iPod to the current iPod touch, the changes are mind boggling. That doesn’t make the original iPod a piece of shit, it still holds itself pretty well.
The Kindle is the same. It is an awesome piece of engineering, and if Amazon doesn’t drop the ball it is destined for greatness. The prepaid wireless connectivity is pure genius: the device costs more, but there is no monthly service fee. You can even surf the web with it, if you don’t mind the rudimentary browser.
Eventually people are going to write extra software for it. Amazon would be stupid to not plan for an open API, all they have to do is see how the iPhone and iPod Touch are doing.
So far I have purchased four books, and downloaded a ton of freebies. Purchasing has so far been painless, and I have never had to wait 5 minutes for the purchased book to show up in my Kindle. The longest book I have read so far was 1008 pages when it came out as a paperback, probably twice as heavy as the Kindle!
What I don’t like:
- The case is shaped weird.
- Too easy to hit the previous/next buttons by accident.
- It is slow when you have a few hundred books in the device.
- The back cover falls off too easily.
- The binder is too difficult to secure properly.
No show stoppers there. I am very happy with mine, and Ivette is looking forward to getting hers for Christmas.
Sep 30th, 2008 @ 5:28 pm
This is the new pricing table for http://gopedro.net
Most prices from my wholesaler went up by less than a dollar, this is ICANN’s way of sticking it to us micro registrars, so I have no choice but to raise mine too since I know that I won’t be getting a Federal bailout to subsidize my customer’s domains.
Sep 26th, 2008 @ 9:11 am
Chinese spacewalk mission enters orbit
Our shuttle fleet is a handful of flights away from getting shut down for good. The Russians have money for a war in Georgia, and for deployments to Venezuela, but somehow not as much money for space.
And the Chinese? They got their act together and are sending manned missions to space.
I was, still am, obsessed about the space race since I was a child but this is the first time in my life where the USA is falling behind.
What is happening in 10 years? Unless the Chinese do something really stupid, they will have even more money available to pump into their space program. We, if we get lucky, may have a new launch system, since the shuttle has to be scrapped.
Maybe we should stop manned flights altogether and use the UAV model for space exploration. We already walked on the moon, why send people there unless we are going to colonize it? Send frickin robots! If the vehicle blows up, all we lose is money.
Mars? Still 25-50 years away from any realistic plans.
Sep 24th, 2008 @ 4:09 am
Fringe, and the start of the Fall TV season
If you know anyone that writes for TV, hug him or her. Buy them coffee and food. Then hug them again.
Be nice to them.
The Fall season started with a hell of a lot less fanfare than what I am used to. I almost missed a few episodes but the PVR saved my sorry ass. I did miss a few, my fault for not checking ahead to make sure that the PVR was programmed properly.
Oh, well.
I am also displeased that HBO is being a little lazy about posting their Sunday shows to On Demand on a timely basis. And where the fuck is my HBO HD content On Demand? Showtime is doing it, so why is it that there are no HBO HD shows in their On Demand channel?
Quickies:
Fringe: This show is awesome. It has a convoluted plot, just like Lost with a heavy dose of X-Files, yet it is never a chore to follow. It is a cookie cutter show with an overall theme that ties the chapters, which is perfect for a broadcast series.
Bones: The season started with a bit of bullshit divorce drama, but so far it is taking shape very well. I was worried about the shrink type, but so far he is bringing some interesting balance into the mix.
House: Too early to tell, but the show is starting to switch directions. This sucks because it is going to have to build up across at least a half dozen episodes.
CSI Miami:Can’t comment about the season opener without spoiling it, but Ivette figured it out faster than I did. That pisses me off because I figured it out in the first ten minutes, she did it in maybe five.
The Shield: It’s starting to look like a clusterfuck. Great show but this was supposed to be the last season of the show. We’ll see what happens.
Heroes: HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP!!!!!!
True Blood: I am liking this show a lot, and so far we have both noticed tiny little touches here and there that make you think twice. It’s always the little stuff, I am keeping a close eye on this one.
Entourage: I am very happy that Jeremy Piven got that Emmy, they should start giving the Ari Gold Memorial Emmy to the most brilliantly annoying type A character. The man is a natural.
Sep 22nd, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
Thanks to Novembird for the theme.
@ 6:25 pm
The dead hours
Ask anyone that works in software programming, and they will immediately confirm the following:
No real coding work can be done before noon on a Monday, or after noon on a Friday (weekends don’t count).
Monday mornings are crisis and regrup days. This is when all of your customers stampede in, each with a crisis that came up over the weekend that must be addressed NOW. While this is happening, you are also trying to get your weekly scheduled organized.
The lucky ones manage to look at code before lunch.
Fridy afternoons are HOLY CRAP THE WORLD IS ENDING afternoons. This is when all of your customers, some of which you have not heard of since, yeah, Monday morning, show up, each demanding that you drop whatever is it that you are doing so you can address THEIR needs.
My favorite is when a customer sends me a very sternly worded email demanding that I fix whatever, sometime before 5:00 PM. This sends me into a panic: I have to figure out what the hell is going on, then I have to figure out if it is a quick fix or if it is long term. If it is a quick fix, I jump at it and deal with it. If it is a long fix it means checking with dear Leader to make sure that I don’t commit to something that we can’t deliver in terms of our scheduled work.
My favorite? When I send my email reply, and I get an immediate out-of-office announcement that explains that this customer, the one that had just lit a fire under my ass on Friday at 5:00 PM, is on a business trip to Aruba for a week.
Or something like that. And worse, if you spend the weekend fixing the problem, they send you an email saying “Thanks, I’ll look at it on Monday.”
Grrrrr.
@ 5:43 pm
We moved!
If you can read this, then it means you are seeing the blog at its new home. If you are looking for the old entries, they are still available at http://pedroalbertovera.blogspot.com/
