Zero motivation

Sounds dumb, but when I'm home by myself I've got zero motivation to cook. When Laura's come, I want to cook, make it look pretty, do fun and interesting things. Try and make her say "wow" when she sees the plate. When I'm by myself it's just a chore - nay, it's a hassle. It's just too difficult to surprise myself.

Rsync files based on extension

Using the includes / excludes with rsync always gives me a headache. The best that I can say is that it's confusing, but when you finally get it to work, it works well. But that's the hard part.

Yesterday I was trying to sync all files that have a given extension (*.mp3 or *.m4a) from a slow external drive to local to figure out which ones should I need to import into iTunes (can't import them all since that would create duplicates).

I found a helpful post that show that you can use the unix tool find and then have rsync use those files. Very, very helpful since I'm much more comfortable using find than rsync.

Here's my solution for sync'ing mp3's or m4a files from a mounted shared drive to a subdirectory (called "music") from where the command is being run.

find /Volumes/Shared/ -name *.mp3 -o -name *.m4a | rsync -av --files-from=- / music

One in the hand is worth two in the bush

That phrase makes me giggle, but it's a very good lesson. The other day I had posted about having a hard time deciding on how to start solving a problem because I was aiming for perfect. Talking this over coffee with Andrew, he asked if I was trying to solve the problem, or was I trying to learn something new. If it was solving the problem, go with the tools that I was most familiar with and get it done. Otherwise I could go with the whole "learn new stuff and take 10x as long" path.

It's good to figure out what the actual goals of any project are. After thinking about it for a while, I figured out that it was actually solving the problem, even if my solution didn't benefit anyone else.

So I hacked some code out that did 2 things. The first code for migrating our existing pictures in flickr or a set that I created. That way I had a "status quo" set of pictures to put on the frame. The second chunk of code pulls all pictures from the "picture frame set" on flickr to the local drive (as a cache), sorts them by vertical vs horizontal, and removes any files from the cache that have been removed from the set. Then I just rsync the files to the SD card to put into the frame.

One benefit of this that I had not thought of when I started was that I don't actually need the original sized images. The "large" size on flickr is more than large enough. The file size dropped by at least an order of magnitude, so we can fit so many more images on the same card. It even works better in the frame - the pictures load faster. It seems snappier.

While it's great to provide a nice tool for others to use, most likely that altruistic thinking will be enough to prevent me from actually getting the project in a "works right now" state. Better to have a finished hack than project ideas sitting on the shelf.

Windows XP on my macbook

For a while now I've been stalling on getting winXP running on my macbook. Mostly I have not had any need for it since if I really needed windows I could always use Laura's laptop (IBM thinkpad). Said laptop is just shy of 7 years old, the "t" key works only about 1/3 of the time and I fear the potential spyware that is running on it. (aside: I'm highly annoyed with the tech's at U of O for issuing laptops with OS update set to "off" and no firewalls or virus protection). I suspect that computer is not long for this world.

The problem: Laura needs to be able to use IE 6 on win XP (or Vista) for work. We had updated her computer to have IE 8, but the software she uses does not support that. I find it ironic that it's to use a "secure" site that it requires the most insecure browser.

First issue: Since Laura would want to quickly log on, bootcamp was out. I was debating between parallels and vmware, but had not made a final decision before going out and paying 100 $ for the software. After talking to some guys at work, they highly recommended VirtualBox. Getting it up and running without reading the doc's took me just a couple of minutes. Really easy.

Second issue: For our XP computers, I could not find any install disks and I couldn't find a license key. I was expecting to have to go out and buy a new copy of XP because even though I was lent a legit OEM disk, I didn't have the key. I had looked at the computer for the license sticker, but had not found it. Today Andrew pointed out that they put the stickers on the bottom of the computer. I had to turn it over... I feel like the biggest idiot, but I think that I'd feel like an even bigger idiot if I had gone out and paid the 200 $ for a new license.

After everything was installed, including the guest additions, my only thing that I didn't know how to do from my macbook is right click. A couple of forum searches later I figured out the trick was "place 2 fingers on the trackpad, then click the mouse". Apparently this is a setting under system preferences (in my mac), but I didn't even have to change that.

Total time to get things up and running, not including waiting for the XP install to finish, probably around 1 hour. Now we have an XP install that's much faster than our hardware install of XP. Good times, good times...

GUI toolkit is one of the first decisions

It's weird. My blocking point for learning new stuff seems to be that I don't know how to learn to start.

I want to do some small home projects, and I think that these would be useful to other people. But I can't provide an app that would be "okay, now go out and install library x, open a command prompt... oh, make sure you are using OS [fill in name here] version y". So I figure that I need a cross platform GUI toolkit for stand alone projects. If they contact a service, it probably won't be any server that I am running so trying to make it as a webapp would be pretty pointless - and difficult.

At first I look for something for Ruby. All signs seem to point to shoes, which has been difficult to read about after the lead developer committed virtual suicide. I need to look into it more, but when the creator disappears, I wonder if the people left can keep the flame going.

Then I looked at eclipse RCP since I know the java community and I figure that I could make good progress in it. But then my body sighs - it would seem too much like work. The point of doing a home project would be to learn new things as well as scratch my itch.

Any MS specific solution is pretty much a no-go since I'd like to support my current OS. As for python, I don't even know where to start there either. We'll see how long my patience is for this type of work.

Features through flags

Wasting time on the 'net is one of my favourite things to do, especially when I'm learning new things. I stumbled upon the flickr developer blog and a post about how they use source control: features enabled using flags. Here's one quoe that I found really interesting:

Flickr is somewhat unique in that it uses a code repository with no branches; everything is checked into head, and head is pushed to production several times a day. This works well for bug fixes that we want to go out immediately, but presents a problem when weíre working on a new feature that takes several months to complete. How do we solve that problem? With flags and flippers!

For a site that has a huge load in hits as well as content, this really surprised me. My first thought was "wow, you have to really trust your developers" followed up with a general "wow". At work from the code commit to going to prod it usually involves much more process and work that I think is worth. I'm all for pushing for shorting the feedback loop so that the developers know about problems right away, but the scale of this shortness had never occured to me for a large and "corporate" site like flickr.

This kind of thinking, feedback, and speed is what Ryan was always trying to get me to see. This type of thing is what he would say "would leave everyone else behind who couldn't keep up".

They don't want you when you're damaged

One of the frustrating things when we were traveling in SEA was using US currency. Some places prefer it, but all the places require that it was in mint condition. I ended up taking a photo of a 10 $ bill that was refused by over a dozen people in 4 countries because it was missing a small piece. I'm not sure why they wouldn't take it because in north america it wouldn't be a problem using it. Mostly it was a pain because people wouldn't want to give change for a 20, and they wouldn't accept a 10 like that, so you get a bit stuck.

Winterlude - best when cold

Sometimes you luck out with the schedule and weather gods. Sometimes not so much. We always like to check out the snow sculptures during Winterlude. Over the last couple of years we've had mixed luck checking them out. A couple of years ago the weather was cold, clear and sunny. It made for great pictures.


Another year we went and we were so early that the snow was still formed into huge blocks and carving had not even started. I didn't even bother to take pictures that year.

This year we went late in the festival on a grey day. The snow was all pitted and the pictures didn't turn out great because there wasn't a lot of contrast between the snow and the sky.


Next year we're going to have to go early, on a clear (probably cold), day. Something that will give a better chance of trying to capture it well.

An archivist's nightmare

I have spoken about Project Archive before. My scanning slowed down to a halt, mostly with just the rest of Life getting in the way. My grandmother, whose slides I had borrowed in the first place, bought a scanner and offered to scan the slides since "she's got nothing but free time". My grandmother is 86 and very computer savvy, considering her age.

On Sunday we were hosting a dinner and she mentioned how she had gone through the slides, picked out the ones she wanted to scan, and thrown out the rest. Already picked up by the garbage men. I have no idea what she actually saved, but I would guess it's close to 5% of the original slides.

I was, and am, heartbroken.

Of the few slides I had scanned before, I have ones from parades from 1958 (I think - the box with the details is not probably at the dump) as well as the one below - which is one of my favourites. It has my dad and his brothers, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents. My only great-grandparents that I remember. The best part about the picture is the coffee table which is in use in our basement.

Short of destroying everything, I can't think of anything worse for an archiving project that someone selectivity destroying artifacts. If my grandmother had called me in the middle of the night with a "if you're not here in 30 minutes I'm going to burn them", I would have been there in 15 - and it's a 20 minute drive.

I'm just so upset. I want to go and take them all away before more get thrown out, but I can't. They are her's and what she decides to do with them is her decision, even if I don't agree with it. And that breaks my heart.

I think that it's time to shop for a bulk slide scanner.

Biking bliss

Yesterday we took the bikes out and went around for a peddle. I think that this is one of the earliest times of the year that we've ever taken them out - mostly due to the small amount of snow this year.

I've been lazy this spring and carpooled with Laura, but it looks like soon I'll be biking in, weather permitting. It feels so good to be out on a bike. The only problem is that my ass callus is gone, so after a while my bum was getting sore. I find that it takes a week or 2 of biking 5 + days / week to get to a point where I don't get sore after 30 minutes of riding.

YAY BIKING!