Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/11/squirrel-cat/
I heard a squirrel clomping up a tree. I looked and looked and couldn’t find him. But then I saw Maxwell was climbing higher than I had ever seen him climb.  He climbed as high as the second floor, hoping to sneak up on the Mourning Doves. The doves were wise to his approach, but he ascended and descended safely.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/19/gag-me-quickster/
Left a comment on the Official Netflix blog:
What I have always liked about Netflix is that it was a one-stop shop that knew what kind of movies I like to watch, and could make smart suggestions. Netflix had a huge selection and could send me just about any movie I could want. The streaming was a nice addition, but you lose a lot of control that you have on the DVDs like selecting aspect ratios or subtitles. Sometimes the instant gratification is nice but what was important wasn’t a red envelope versus a streaming video, it was that one way or another, Netflix would get me movies I wanted to see.
Then you decided that what I really wanted had little to do with movies or brand loyalty and everything to do with having a medium preference shoved down my throat.
If the streaming is such a fundamentally new business model start a new business and be done with it. Call it Streamstr. Partner with old-fogey Netflix and their stupid red envelopes so their retarded users can stream a few videos. Better yet, be the Netflix I knew and loved so many years: deliver movies I want to me. If I have to pay more for postage or more for some streaming movie that is really “hot” that is totally cool.
But what you are doing right now is some sort of bizarre unsettling brand seppuku. Why is such a great company working so hard to come up with new and innovative ways to scare away its loyal customers?
Netflix used to be about people watching movies. End of story. Movies. Movies. Movies. Its not about picking the winner between VHS and Beta, its about your customers and their love of movies and about your love of getting the movies to your customers. No nonsense, no bull, no false choices. And now? You’re tossing that advantage aside, and I am just as well served by your competitors.
Making the experience more complex for your customers is just plain dumb. =(
Good luck with your brave new spin-off model. It was a nice ride while it lasted.
-danny
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/21/chicago-architecture/
We were in Chicago this past Labor Day. Here are a few photos taken with my G2 Android phone . . .
Trump's Tower in Chicago
Marina City, a distinctive pair of residential towers built in the sixties.
The Merchandise Mart, once the largest building in the world, as seen looking South down Wells St, on the Chicago Architecture Foundation's model of downtown.
Under construction . . .
Shimmering Alleyway
Chicago Remembers: with its own Vietnam War Memorial
The profile of stairs leading down to the Vietnam War Memorial on the Chicago River are mirrored in the skyline.
The Old republic Building smiles at the sun.
Mei photographs the Bean, as all visitors to Millennium Park are obliged to do.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/22/hot-milk/
HOT ITEM of the week! milk $3.49
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/23/high-plains-couch-potato/
Watching "High Plains Drifter" via Amazon.com on the Roku, and on the laptop. On the one hand, the laptop can do high definition. On the other hand, it has to sit on my belly.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/27/tenagra/
A note board in an abandoned cubicle records a last message. Some time back I added a note regarding Darmak’s location. Today I noticed that someone caught on to my note and put in an annotation for Jilad.
Sweeet!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/28/orthodontia-for-america/
At the beginning of our current economic crisis, I embarked on an infrastructure project to make needed improvements to my existing jaw line, and to stimulate the economy through orthodontic stimulus spending. This spending was completely paid for by my personal revenues, and did not contribute to any deficit spending on my part. At least three orthodontic professionals, one oral surgeon, one x-ray technician, and countless support staff received their paychecks as a result of this infrastructure program.
This morning, we took the scaffolding off to unveil my new and improved smile.
The economy could use a little more stimulating, though. With any luck I can make a contribution to consumer confidence by smiling at people.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/06/rip-steve-jobs/
. . . and thanks for all the fonts!
You will be missed, even by us non-Apple-fanboys.
UPDATE: Glenn Kelman has written the most eloquent words I have read that explain why Steve was an inspiration:
Many eulogies celebrate Steve in terms of his “products” — those mass-produced little gadgets that we love for letting us check email in front of our friends — and lose sight of his grass-strained spirit. What always moved me about Steve was the calligraphy and the LSD, the passage to India and his firing from Apple, his struggles at NeXT and his return from the wilderness.
The insistence on Steve’s perfection, on the vast difference between him as a producer and us as consumers, seems inhuman and even lonely to me. I wish we could take a moment in eulogizing Steve to grieve for him as one frail human to another, and feel in his passing the miracle of every human life; so many other people, geniuses on a smaller scale, are struggling his struggle. It hurts me that we have so much love to give to Steve and not to them.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/08/hack/
Enjoying Dmitri Samarov‘s new novel about driving a taxi in Chicago, I looked up at my cafe table in Mountain View, CA and noted that mine was the only analog screen. Technologist that I am, I’m just not ready for an e-reader yet. I’m too attached to hardbacks and paperbacks.
My mother, however, has a Nook. She used to drive a cab in Chicago.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/11/cloudflare-free-cdn/
What it is: a free CDN!
What is a CDN? A Content Delivery Network is a service that caches parts of your web site at different points around the world. This makes your web site load faster in foreign countries, and it reduces load on your server, which is really useful if there’s a traffic spike.
Why is it free? Apparently, they started as a honey pot. A honey pot is a trap where you leave something sweet out for spammers and hackers, who will come and try to taste your honey. The honey pot keeps track of where the bad guys are coming from and what techniques they are using, and this data is then analysed to improve security. They also have a bunch of apps they can sell you, and honestly when you’re looking for a paid service for your company, the first thing that will come to mind is the service you already use for your personal stuff.
I personally have never set up a CDN before, but it has always sounded like a pain in the rear. So, I was pleased to see that Cloudflare made it braindead simple: they did a pretty good job of guessing out the contents of my DNS zone file, which I was later allowed to upload in full, then a quick update of my registrar’s NS records and yes, I was using Cloudflare inside of 5 minutes.
How does it work? It basically replaces your world-facing, web-serving A records with its own IPs, which it then answers HTTP/1.1 style. If you need dedicated IPs for SSL, that costs money. You set some A records to go straight to your server, so you can, for example, use SSH. It hands out the same IPs around the world, then magic network routing that I haven’t learned about takes care of the rest.
You're sharing IPs now, so HTTP/1.1 will work fine, but you'll need to set aside an A record if you need direct access.
Configure your A records: orange clouds will be fronted by CloudFlare, grey clouds will go straight home.
So, is it faster? Results from just-ping.com look very promising. I see an average latency of 62ms for CloudFlare versus an average latency of 144ms for direct access to my server in Chicago.
An interesting aside, here’s a bit of the just-ping.com output for CloudFlare:
Mumbai, India: Okay 64.1 64.5 67.4 173.245.60.121 Chicago, U.S.A.: Okay 0.3 0.5 1.4 173.245.60.121 Nagano, Japan: Okay 5.5 5.7 6.1 173.245.60.121 . . . Lisbon, Portugal: Okay 58.8 59.1 59.4 173.245.60.121 Chicago, U.S.A.: Okay 1.8 2.3 2.7 173.245.60.44 Dallas, U.S.A.: Okay 1.4 1.6 1.7 173.245.60.44
And for my direct IP:
Mumbai, India: Okay 286.8 288.1 293.1 173.203.101.184 Chicago, U.S.A.: Okay 1.9 2.0 2.5 173.203.101.184 Nagano, Japan: Okay 165.8 165.9 166.1 173.203.101.184 . . . Lisbon, Portugal: Okay 151.1 152.7 153.6 173.203.101.184 Chicago, U.S.A.: Okay 0.2 0.3 0.5 173.203.101.184 Dallas, U.S.A.: Okay 25.3 25.5 25.9 173.203.101.184
This shows two things. First, CloudFlare thoroughly reduces my latency anywhere outside Chicago. Second, and really just interesting for the biggest nerds, just-ping’s first Chicago node is closer to CloudFlare’s Chicago node, and just-ping’s second Chicago node is closer to my RackSpace-hosted Chicago node.
Okay, what about actual page-loading time? Well, I just happened to be doing some basic latency testing last month. Here’s what page load looked like in Google Chrome then:
Google Chrome's Developer Tool Network view last month.
Here’s what a page load from California looks like just now:
Page load time from California with CloudFlare enabled.
So, a basic test shows that the initial round trips go from 275ms to 136ms, and the total page load time is reduced by about 1/3. Now, the difference between 750ms and 500ms isn’t a huge deal, but the second you step overseas it makes a big difference. Above you see that the latency from my server in Chicago to Lison is 150ms, and 165ms to Nagano, and 290ms to Mumbai. With the latency goggles cranked to 200ms my page load times went from .75s to nearly 2s. So, my web site feelsfelt sluggish for people in Europe or Japan, and frustratingly slow in India. CloudFlare removes that frustration. Now, Mumbai can browse my site as comfortably as I could from California the day before. (Mumbai should be even faster once Cloudflare adds a node in India.)
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/14/leaving-on-a-jet-plane/
Flying down to LAX to visit the wife. I booked at the last minute which means I paid a bit more for Main Cabin Select on an otherwise full flight. That means I get to go through security in the short line and board the plane first. A good start to the weekend and time enough to post a photo.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/17/asleep-at-lax/
In most public places, curling up in the corner to catch some sleep would be taboo. Anyone who has flown enough has experienced this rite of passage.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/21/yahoo-urls-cafe/
It is a little thrill to query Google Maps for “yahoo urls” — URLs is the name of one of their cafeterias, where I am right now for a Meetup.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/21/hawaiian-airlines/
In the morning fog, my ride to tropical sunshine waits.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/10/25/javascript-hack-hide-an-element-on-a-page/
JIRA is an issue tracking system that is really flexible, but sometimes presents irritatingly arbitrary limitations.
I have been working on a screen which uses multiple tabs. The tabs are there to make it easier for the user to find the fields they want to edit, without scrolling through a single long, complex issue. But every tab has a Comment field rendered on it, which makes things confusing, and makes each tab look like it needs scrolling.
So, just remove the Comment field from the Screen, right? No, it isn’t in there. So, can I remove Comment via the Field Configuration Scheme? No, it is mandatory. Damn your arbitrary limitation, JIRA!
Anyway, I don’t normally speak JavaScript, but I managed to gin up the following snippet to paste into a Field description which appears in the screen I wanted to tweak. It finds the element containing the Comment, and sets its style display attribute to none. As the page loads, the Comment box is rendered, but once the page load completes, the Comment box disappears.
<script type="text/javascript"> function hideCommentField() { var elements = document.getElementsByClassName('field-group aui-field-wikiedit'); elements[0].style.display = 'none'; } // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/807878/javascript-that-executes-after-page-load if(window.attachEvent) { window.attachEvent('onload', hideCommentField); } else { if(window.onload) { var curronload = window.onload; var newonload = function() { curronload(); hideCommentField(); }; window.onload = newonload; } else { window.onload = hideCommentField; } } </script> |
It is ugly, but effective. Also, it is helpful for me to learn JavaScript!
PS: Thanks for the Guidance, Ed Burns!
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