Just Looking

Python gotcha

Wed, 2 Jun 2010 15:08 CDT

Python is so intuitive.

This is a list:

['foobar']

And so is this:

['foobar',]

This is a tuple:

('foobar',)

This is a str:

('foobar')

That's completely obvious.

Bikes to Cars

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:18 CDT

I knew about the connection between cycling and the 1880s-early 1900s Good Roads movement which ironically lead to cyclists being run off the roads by the cars they enabled.

However, I just read Pedaling Revolution and Jeff Mapes makes an interesting point I hadn't heard before: that the freedom of truly personal transportation provided to the masses by the bicycle directly lead to the success of the car. Prior to the bike, most people couldn't afford horses, so you walked where you wanted to go, took a street car, or a train. The development of the bike allowed people to go where they wanted to go, whenever they wanted.

The bike became established through much of the world in the years around the turn of the twentieth century. In Europe, the bike became an accepted means of transportation and achieved an enduring place in adult society. But in the U.S., the bicycle seemed to literally pave the road for the motorcar.... Hiram Maxim, who worked with [bicycle pioneer Albert] Pope on his first automobiles, described the bicycle not as an end in itself, but as the consciousness raiser that led to the car:
The reason why we did not build mechanical road vehicles before this, in my opinion, was because the bicycle had not yet come in numbers, and had not directed men's minds to the possibilities of independent, long-distance travel over ordinary highway. We thought the railroad was good enough. The bicycle created a new demand which it was beyond the ability of the railroad to supply. Then it came about that the bicycle could not satisfy the demand which it created. A mechanically propelled vehicle was wanted instead of a foot propelled one and we now know that the automobile was the answer.

So the invention of the bicycle held the seed to its own destruction.

Bill Gates's recommended energy/climate books from TED 2010

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:07 CST

I enjoyed Bill Gates's talk on innovating to 0 net carbon emissions at TED 2010. You can watch it in the embeded player below or at the TED site.

At the 17:00 mark Bill suggests some books to read. I squinted hard and was able to make up a list of 7 of the 8 books. Here they are:

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air by David J. C. MacKay
Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems by Vaclav Smil
Global Warming: The Complete Briefing by John Houghton
Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet by Oliver Morton
Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines by Richard A. Muller
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
Our Choice by Al Gore

I cannot read the last one, which appears to be a web page. If anyone knows what it is I would appreciate it if you could share that information with me.

2009 Books

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:40 CST

As in previous years ( 2006, 2007, 2008) I recorded the books I read in 2009. Here they are, all 44 books.

Galactic North , Alastair Reynolds

Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds

Far-Seer, Robert J. Sawyer

JavaScript: The Good Parts, Douglas Crockford

Making Globalization Work, Joseph E. Stiglitz

Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Years in the Making, L. Sprague de Camp

Fossil Hunter, Robert J. Sawyer

Foreigner, Robert J. Sawyer

The Third Chimpanzee, Jared Diamond

Enterprise Rails, Dan Chak

The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas, Robert H. Frank

Stuff White People Like, Christian Lander

The Underdogs / Los de abajo, Nariano Azuela

The Dreaming Void, Peter F. Hamilton

The Temporal Void, Peter F. Hamilton

Major: a Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to be the World's Fastest Human Being, Todd Balf

Spook Country, William Gibson

This Immortal, Robert Zelazny

Mockingbird, Walter Tevis

The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad

I Can Haz Cheezburger? A LOLcat Colleckshun

The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime, Michael Sims (ed.)

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, David A. Kessler

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Michael Pollan

Captain Gault: Being the Exceedingly Private Log of a Sea-Captain, William Hope Hodgson

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver

A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin

A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin

Orion Shall Rise, Poul Anderson

The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis

A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin

Israel is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and its History, Rich Cohen

The Cassini Division, Ken MacLeod

The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, Henry Hitchings

The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World, Thomas M. Disch

The Family Trade, Charles Stross

Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief, Maurice Leblanc

The Hidden Family, Charles Stross

The Clan Corporate, Chrales Stross

The Merchants' War, Charles Stross

The Revolution Business, Charles Stross

Flashforward, Robert J. Sawyer

The Zimmermann Telegram, Barbara Tuchman

Tripping

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:37 CST

Talking Points Memo reader MB on the Democrats' cry-baby antics over the Massachusetts election result:

To me, it's like getting ten feet from the summit of Mount Everest, tripping on some ice and declaring that not only can you not make it any further, but that surely you are doomed to die of frostbite on the mountain. Well, if you just lay there feeling sorry for yourself, surely you will. But if you dust yourself off and keep walking, you'll probably be fine.

NYT snark

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 10:35 CST

'Public Option' Keeps Toehold in Senate Deal on Health Bill:

The fight over the public plan has never been about its short-term impact. Opponents fear it will lead down a slippery slope to a fully government-run, single-payer health system like those in many European countries.

Many of the most ardent supporters hope that it will lead down a slippery slope to a fully government-run, single-payer health system like those in many European countries.

I love our new clients

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:11 CDT

FanChatter is live with our new clients, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and their fans are pretty awesome.

more Roughriders fan photos

OMG

Sat, 4 Jul 2009 17:53 CDT

Happy 4th of July everyone. I made you a LOLBuilding.

Senuti goes payware

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 20:01 CDT

Formerly GPL'd program Senuti (used for sucking music off of an iPod - it's "iTunes" backwards) has gone payware.

I share Sho Fukamachi's sentiment:

This pisses me off, yes - but it's not even really anything to do with Senuti. It's the fact that I can't copy songs off MY FUCKING IPOD that I OWN. While there was a free program that worked so well, it was easier to ignore. Now that program demands payment and Apple's contempt for its paying customers is rubbed in my face.

For what it's worth, Sho has a copy of the last GPL'ed version of Senuti, 0.50.2. It still works for the moment.

Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat

Fri, 22 May 2009 07:35 CDT

Best. Keyboard cat. video. ever.

Announcing VeloTweets, Pulse of the Peloton

Sun, 10 May 2009 13:20 CDT

I'm pleased to announce VeloTweets, the pulse of the peloton, a curated collection of professional cycling Twitter activity. The idea and driving force came from Jamie Thingelstad. I did most of the development, and Norm Orstad designed the site. Chris Hatch helped a lot on the back end, providing a list of cyclists on Twitter, filling out profiles and affiliations, and doing research.

What's Different about VeloTweets?

We wanted to make VeloTweets different than the other subject matter aggregators out there. We wanted a hook that would combine the immediacy of Twitter with pro cycling in a compelling way.

Here's what we came up with.

First, we focused on who to include. Instead of everyone who's talking about cycling, this contains only pro cyclists (and a few others associated with the sport, like managers or team mechanics).

Second, we extended the data that is given to us by Twitter. We can enter every cyclist's real name, nationality, and team, as well as expanded biographical data (here's Lance Armstrong's profile for instance).

Third, we collected cycling events in a calendar that's displayed on the site, and added a Message of the Day that's tuned to what's happening in the racing world each day.

Forth, we brought in photos from the tweets (only TwitPic is supported right now). We store references to the photos in our DB so we can show the latest photos, along with photos that individuals have posted, and all of them. This turns out to be really cool because where else are you going to see photos like this one as they happen?

After all this we still weren't totally satisfied with what we'd come up with, because it still looked too much like Twitter (long list of messages in reverse chronological order). Then Jamie came up with the idea of only displaying each cyclist's most recent tweet in a grid. We really like how this works because people who tweet a lot (like Lance) don't dominate the page. It gives you an overview of what the whole peloton is talking about without letting a few people dominate it.

Developing for Twitter

I've been doing a number of Twitter-related projects lately. The first was Twistr, which combines Twitter and Flickr LOLcat style for occasionally amusing results. Then Barry Hess and I built Follow Cost, which tells you how much someone tweets before you follow them. I created a prototype for FanChatter's next product based on Twitter conversation aggregation. Now comes VeloTweets and another project that's not public yet.

I really enjoy working with the Twitter APIs. It's fun to develop applications that utilize the platform that the Twitter folks have built.

On that front, I recently received a copy of Twitter API: Up and Running (Follow Cost is mentioned on page 70!) which I will give a full review to soon. You don't need a book on the Twitter API to develop applications for it, but it does provide some ideas and a useful reference, as well as details on some interesting aspects of Twitter (for example, I did not know that direct messages disappear if they are deleted by either party.).

Puff

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:12 CDT

Portrait

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:22 CDT

Kate Sommers took photos for me and Jenny today.

Here's a sneak peak.

(I am apparently a "hip program writer" :)

Oh yeah!

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:37 CST

Winter Bike Upgrade Project

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:00 CST

One of my goals for this winter is to ride my bike to work. In late November, I realized this was not going to happen without some upgrades to my bike.

My friend Garrick hooked me up with a sweet deal on components and helped me (read: I helped hold stuff) perform the upgrades over the course of two Saturdays in January.

I rode my bike over to Garrick's when it was -11° F out. Brrr!

We planned to install:

Before:

The fenders presented the biggest problem (hah, I thought they would be easy).

The front mounting bracket did not match up with the hole in the fork. Fortunately Garrick has an insane amount of tools including a shop drill, so we were able to drill a new hole (photo by Garrick).

The whole process of putting on the fenders took about 3 hours, so we called it a day.

The next weekend we finished the job. Putting on the handle bars was the biggest part because we had to run two new cables. After that, getting the lights and kickstand on was a snap, and we were done!

After:

So, how is it?

I like it! The fenders are great for keeping the slush off. The new handlebars probably need to be a bit higher but they are much more comfortable and a lot easier to ride with gloves.

More photos of the bike upgrade by me and by Garrick.