Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/04/24/guy-1/
I like this guy. Another alien type, with a melty look.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/04/25/wordpress-251/
There’s a notice on the WordPress dev blog that WordPress 2.5.1 is out. Alas, they neglected to link to the upgrade documentation. My favorite? Upgrading via Subversion:
0-11:17 djh@ratchet ~> cd public_html/toldme 0-11:17 djh@ratchet ~/public_html/toldme> svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5.1/ [ . . . ] Updated to revision 7839.
When I logged in to post this little note, it blocked me and ran the upgrade procedure, then I had to log in again, and here I am!
There’s a further note about the secret key setting:
Since 2.5 your
wp-config.phpfile allows a new constant calledSECRET_KEYwhich basically is meant to introduce a little permanent randomness into the cryptographic functions used for cookies in WordPress. You can visit this link we set up to get a unique secret key for your config file. (It’s unique and random on every page load.) Having this line in your config file helps secure your blog.
It leaves me to wonder: if the secret key can be randomly generated by a machine, why not go ahead and do that and then stash it in the database? There may be a good reason for that . . .
In unrelated news, I upgraded to the newer Ubuntu release at home yesterday. The only trick I have noticed so far is that it runs with Firefox 3.0, which is beta, and I lost use of my foxmarks plugin, for now. So, I’m waiting until that is supported before I upgrade my workstation.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/04/28/sate-vs-satiate/
Use of the word “satiated” tends to annoy me. I figured one is “sated”. I just spent some time looking at dictionaries, thesauri, and my etymological dictionary to figure it out once and for all. Google and Google Trends imply that “sate” is the more widely-used term, though this appears to be in large part because journalists keep mis-spelling “state”.
The word “satiated” looks to derive from Latin “satis” which means enough. (Satisfied?)
“Sate” derives from older English, Dutch, and Germanic, and apparently shares the same root word with “sad”.
The Brooding Northern European part of me wonders if my ancestors had some keen understanding of the connection between satisfaction and sadness.
Merriam-Webster boils down several synonyms in terms of “repletion”:
SATIATE and SATE may sometimes imply only complete satisfaction but more often suggest repletion that has destroyed interest or desire. SURFEIT implies a nauseating repletion. CLOY stresses the disgust or boredom resulting from such surfeiting.
At any rate, I see that there’s nothing wrong with being “satiated” yet it is perfectly fine for me to stick with sate and sated. (Though I do enjoy the word “satiety”.)
I am satisfied with this state of repletion. I am sated.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/04/28/yahoo-hostile-takeover/
Marc Andreessen had some lawyers do an analysis of the current situation between Microsoft and Yahoo, and then posted an excellent summary on his blog on what could happen, what is most likely to happen, and how things work. It is a good read, and a compelling conclusion:
We are learning that hostile takeovers have arrived in our industry. This is the second major hostile takeover so far — the other was Oracle’s takeover of Peoplesoft — but there will be more.
This is significant because historically hostile takeovers practically never happened in technology. Potential hostile acquirors assumed that hostile takeovers wouldn’t work because the target company’s employees would bail and the target company’s business would collapse.
It turns out that as technology companies become larger and more mature, acquirors are becoming increasingly convinced that neither of these assumptions hold. Perhaps employees of large tech companies aren’t that bonded to current management, and perhaps many of them would actually prefer to work for a larger, more dominant combined company. And maybe as a consequence, the target’s business would do just fine in the wake of a hostile takeover — in fact, maybe it would do better, due to advantages of combined size and scale.
My bet is that hostile takeovers, particularly of larger and more mature companies, are going to become increasingly common in our industry.
One theme is that Yahoo’s corporate structure leaves it more vulnerable to a hostile takeover, and that as hostile takeovers becomes more commonplace in the technology industry, you should see more companies willing to adopt conventions like the dual-class share structure you see at Google.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/04/29/choose-an-adventure/
“The art of having adventures is simply that of saying, “Wow, that is dang cool!†and then having the courage to let go of all the doubts and the what-ifs long enough to grab hold of the adventure and go, trusting that you’ll be able to solve problems along the way. This is just as true in the creative arts as it is in adventure travel.”
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/01/guy-2/
Again, at the Danish cafe in Kata, Thailand. This green man and the blue bookshelf are on the same page as the coffee cup.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/02/bottled-water-vs-tea/
Earlier this week Eva posted a summary of the carbon footprint for bottled water:
Curious about the results?
Well, energy use embedded in 1 L drinking water delivered to Berkeley CA are:
Calistoga Water –> 1.0 kWh
Fiji Water –> 1.7 kWh
Aquafina –> 1.4 kWh
EBMUD tap water –> 0.0003 kWh
[BTW, if you leave your MacBook Pro on for 16 hour, that’s about 1kWh…]
Our boundary includes transportation, packaging, end-of-life, pipes, dams, treatment plants, supply…almost everything.What about raw water? 1 L of drinking water is equivalent to…
Calistoga Water –> 3.9 L raw water
Fiji Water –> 5.1 L raw water
Aquafina –> 5.8 L raw water
EBMUD tap water –> 1.2 L raw waterAll the embedded stuff mostly comes from the PET bottle, which we tracked all the way back to petroleum extraction. Don’t drink that crap. THE END.
For the record, “raw water” is in the aquifer. It costs 20% extra to be treated and delivered via tap.
Anyway, the thing with bottled water is convenient hydration. Plus we have it infused with various flavors and fizziness, never mind the sodas . . . anyway, I just went to the company kitchen and passed up the beverage refrigerator for a mug of tea. And I have to wonder at the carbon footprint there. It is probably way way less than a plastic bottle, and while a tea bag can travel quite far, it also weighs much less than a bottle of water, so it is a lot more energy efficient. (How you heat the water could matter a great deal: we have a hot-water dispenser her at work, but at home I burn a lot of natural gas to boil a kettle.)
All I’m saying is, maybe tea can be promoted as a more conscientious and classy hydration alternative to bottled water. It’s tap water, dressed up a bit.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/06/what-time-utc/
I wanted to know what time it was in UTC, but I forgot my local offset. (It changes twice a year!) I figured I could look in the date man page, but I came up with an “easier” solution. Simply fudge the time zone and then ask.
0-20:57 djh@noneedto ~$ env TZ=UTC date Tue May 6 03:57:07 UTC 2008
The env bit is not needed in bash, but it makes tcsh happy.
Update: Mark points out an easier solution:
date -u
Knowing you can set TZ= is still useful in case you ever need to contemplate an alternate timezone.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/07/cafe-pay-honor-system/
I have long felt that it would be sensible for retail service outlets to round prices to the quarter, and account for sales tax: just like every bar I have been to! Well, it appears that at least in Canada, there’s one place that does just that, and then takes it a step further:
When Bergen and his partners first started discussing the concept of the City Café Bakery, Bergen was more interested in how things would be done at the business . . . will you [not] see a cash register in the bakery. Instead, customers add up how much they owe themselves and drop their money into a fare box from an old bus.
“I liked the idea of simplifying things and … the honour system made a whole lot of sense,†Bergen says. “What irritated me about going into Tim Hortons, for example, was waiting in line for something as simple as getting a donut and a coffee. So the thought was, someone can pour his own coffee, grab his own bagel, cut it himself, throw the money in, and walk out. We don’t touch 60 per cent of the transaction.â€
The article says they have only once come up short, and they have had to kick out the occasional deadbeat jerk, but that in fact plenty of people tend to overpay a bit if they want to get in and out and don’t want to bother asking for change.
I have noticed as well, at the local Irish bar in my neighborhood, regulars pay by piling money down in front of them at the bar, and the barkeep leaves it there until it is time to settle up the bill.
(Thanks for the tip, Jason.)
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/08/lady/
I was doodling in a cafe or a bar in Thailand and a woman told me to draw her. Obviously I am not a portrait artist and this woman looks a bit odd. But I like this drawing somehow: I think its the eyes, and how she almost comes out right but since she is off-kilter she is more interesting.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/12/bread-machine-recipe-cinnamon-rolls/
I found this recipe on the Internet somewhere, halved it, and recently adapted it to weight measures. Makes about one dozen cinnamon rolls, and can easily be doubled.
Combine:
135g water (2/3 C)
1 egg
1/2 stick butter (set aside the other half stick for later)
315g flour (2 1/4 C)
35g sugar (3 tbsp)
7g salt (1/2 tsp)
4g yeast (1 tsp)
Run on “dough” setting (90 minutes)
Flour work surface and hands, remove dough ball, and knead out and flatten the dough into a rectangle. (If you are doubling this recipe, flatten half the dough at a time.)
Pretend you’re making a pizza, and top the dough to taste. I use:
1/2 stick butter (slice into pats and spread like pepperonis on a pizza)
a handful or two of brown sugar
a sprinkling of cinnamon
a dash of cardamom
raisins!
Roll the prepared dough into a “jelly roll” and slice that thing into cinnamon rolls of desired size: I tend to get 12-15 pieces. Lay these out on a cookie tray, cover, and let rise for about 45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375F. Bake cinnamon rolls 10-20 minutes. Make sure they taste good, then share them with someone you love, or someone you would like to love.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/14/canon-i250-hardy-heron/
The Ubuntu upgrade broke printing. Among other things, it removed my canoni250.ppd file. I struggled with it to no avail. Then I went back and pasted the commands in from last time and now it all works.
Yay.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/15/lines/
I had started with the lines of a womans face, and how her hair flows in a way that conveys motion, then played with the idea of scan lines. Food for thought, anyway.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/15/do-you-see-a-sign/
As seen on Judah:
Do you see a sign “Leave your
junk here”? No you don’t see
a sign “Leave your junk here.”
Do you know why? Because this
corner is not a junk yard. Try
putting your crap in a garbage
can.
There is a certain practice in San Francisco of people disposing of unwanted stuff by leaving it on the curb. Alas, for stuff that nobody wants, that means crap piling up on sidewalks. Someone expressed their disapproval in the form of an homage to Quentin Tarantino.
I couldn’t agree more.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2008/05/15/gay-marriage-legal/
SAN FRANCISCO — — The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.
Awesome!
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