thoughts to blog

From Chuck Norris

I have two speeds… walk and KILL!

I don’t sleep… I wait

Superman wears a pair of my pajamas

How do you kill a circus?

Go for the juggler

kah-dunk-ching

So yeah… I used my Product Replacement Plan ($59.99) and got me a new Xbox 360.

AND it works so far!

Everyone always has mixed feelings about Product Service / Replacement Plans from Best Buy…

I have some guidelines:

• Buy them for items that are replaceable and over $200… aka iPod… Xbox 360.


• Buy a service plan for TVs… $200 is not bad for them to come to your house and fix ANYTHING wrong with your TV.


• Don’t buy them for software or games, how often do you break/abuse or need replacement for that kind of thing?

People always wonder, why do this instead of normal Manufacturer warranties? Well… the manufacturer warranties don’t last as long… and it’s a LOT faster to get the replacement and/or parts from Best Buy. It might be purely a conveinience factor… and that the money might not be worth it… but if you’re impatient like me, $59.99 to get a “no questions asked” exchange for brand new Xbox by walking in, it’s good enough for me!

So you’re using Prototype Helpers in your new Ruby on Rails application…

Just be warned

If you plan on using observe_field with a radio input field (for each field), it’ll only fire the FIRST time you check the radio button.

The reason:

The Form.Element.EventObserver keeps track of a lastValue… and when you have a fresh radio, the lastValue is null… and when you click it, it’s value changes to the radio’s value… which btw, doesn’t change. So the next time you go to select the radio, it’s previous value hasn’t changed.

The fix:

Go old school? register the onClick? I haven’t tried this approach as it’s a Friday and I’m done messing with JavaScript.

Maybe I’m wrong, someone enlighten me?

I finished Ruby for Rails last night… excellent book!

It takes you through a natural progression of learning enough Ruby to get into Rails…

This puts the book at my #2 spot for “What books should I read to get into Ruby on Rails?”

1. Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd Edition)


2. Ruby for Rails


3. Programming Ruby (aka Pickaxe)

Google has released a new service called Google Co-op…

Basically, it allows you to brand and target searching. Searching based on topics and customized search results and branding.

Example: rubyinside.com Ruby Search

How cool is that? Well… let me explain what I think will happen with this.

Step 1: Google builds giant search engine / indexing system. Provides good results for search queries but not perfect.

Step 2: In search of perfection, Google decides to offload topical search and data statistics onto users, thus entering Co-op.

Step 3: User creates a search focused on Ruby sites and what he/she thinks is important… organizes the search results… all the data being collected by Google.

Step 4: Google takes ALL of this data, from topical search results and trends from Co-ops and integrates it into it’s larger search mechanism…

Step 5: Google now provides improved search results as a benefit from letting users create more important data for their indexes.

See what I’m talking about? Think about it in this way… I can provide an answer to you for any question, but it might not be right. I provide a room for you to sit down with an expert who will provide better answers, but I will be there listening… Now when someone else asks a similar question, I can respond with the knowledge I gained from the other experts.

Brilliant

Check out the new Gears of War trailer…

it’s production like this, that makes me want the game even more!

Notice the Gary Jules - Mad World (from Donnie Darko)… SWEET!

Yeah BOY! That’s my team!

TILF (read: Team I’d Like to Fuck)… Kickball Champions!

But Chuck Norris

You’re wrong… evolution is real…

:: hides in fear of a roundhouse kick to the face ::

I decided to bring in a potpourri of information that I’ve consumed in the last few days…

• 30 Products and Services We Miss Most… In the article it mentions the Nokia 8260/8290, my favorite cell phone I’ve ever had.


• Why doesn’t Microsoft and/or game companies do more replacement of hardware to find bugs… For example, Splinter Cell keeps freezing on my Xbox. Why wouldn’t Microsoft or Ubisoft want my particular Xbox to do testing on? Find out other potential problems? Seems to me like they’d want to do something like that to find the edge cases… The logistics would suck, but I’m just saying…


• each_slice is the coolest thing since sliced bread… haha, if it worked without a require ‘enumerator’…


• I use The Google too!


• The shuttle launch from the ISS article w/pics


• Saw Nacho Libre last night… kinda funny.


• What should I be for Halloween?

That’s all I got for now…

When I left my last company, I was just finishing up some performance increasing fixes for a Windows Forms application…

And when I hopped onto space150, I immediately walked onto a project that already had some major iterations and most development work was done. So guess what… more performance testing / fixing.

This is Ruby on Rails though… shouldn’t it just magically be done for you? / sarcasm

In Windows Forms (or .Net in general), you can attach traces and watch logs… and attached perf monitoring tools. In Ruby on Rails, the standard toolset comes with a few pieces of data, but with the addition of some great tools… you can easily pinpoint problems and fix inefficiencies.

Here’s what I use:

tail: standard *nix file tailing application… tail -f <filename>

query_analyzer: puts “explain” statements in your log files for SQL queries. Awesome.

mtop: it’s like top, but for mysql…

Slow Query Log: logs all slow queries over a threshold for a MySQL

query_trace: query traces in your log files… nice

Siege: lay Siege on your web application… perf test it! Love the name!

A few things to watch out for with Rails?

• Add indexes to your tables: add_index :table, :column


• Use fragment caching intelligently, but use it.


• Watch your log (use tail) and check for actions that require a lot of queries and bring that down.


• It’s relatively easy to keep your rendering down… just be careful about MySQL


• use some memcache, it’s pretty fast :)

What does everyone else use? What things do you guys look for?

So yeah… I love my Xbox 360, but sometimes I have to scream about it.

Recently I purchased Dead Rising and Splinter Cell: Double Agent

Both games looked to be fun and, graphics wise, looked gorgeous!

But what was the problem?

They both freeze when I try to start the game… with Dead Rising, I could fix it by taking off my hard drive, starting the game, saving and reloading with the hard drive. It works, but its the kind of problem that drives you absolutely fucking nuts.

With Splinter Cell, I can start the game… and anywhere from 2 to 30 seconds later… the game freezes. Forces me to restart the xbox. The more I want to play the game, the more I try… and the more pissed off I get.

It’s frustrating. None of my other 360 games do this… and BOTH companies have not acknowledged the problem…

arg

[UPDATE 1]
So I exchanged my copy of Splinter Cell… only to bring it home and once again, find it freezing… I also tried playing the new Rainbow Six demo… and lone and behold, it froze as well… Good thing I bought the Product Replacement Plan from Best Buy… $35 saved me from buying a new 360. I’ll exchange it tomorrow and let you guys know how it goes…

[UPDATE 2]
I got the infamous 3 Red Lights of Death / Circle of Death… Taking it back this morning.

I’m creating a new music genre:

trip scre-emo-abilly

Electronic beats + screaming suicidal lyrics + slap reverb

Hodnick and I are going to create the first band…

It’s name? Beat the Postal Goons Down

Watch out for us…

Sorry for the site being down… strange Apache FCGI crap goin down.

Boo!

We’re back in business.

Holy crap I had a blast this weekend… the lovely Katie and Kandace put on a huge party on Saturday night… in celebration of Octoberfest!

We had two drunk buses full of people (60 or so)… Each bus drinking 2 x 750ml of Jagger! Yesss… Let’s just say that we had an awesome night! The title says it all… Oktobervest! Your entrance fee was $20 and a vest! There were some crazy vests out there… let me tell you!

Buses dropped us off at Gasthof’s… I love that place!

My legs are tired from doin the Polka! I think I danced with 8 or 9 different women… hahaha including an older lady (read 40 y/o) who picked me up with this line… “Let’s see how you can handle an older woman”. Brilliant!

Some cute blonde completely pulled one on me… Dancing with me, flirting, for well over an hour… and then ran off with my vest!

Good times had by all.

It’s the end of my 3rd week at space150… and on a MacBook Pro.

Here are my observations:

• There are definite learning curve issues when going back and forth between OSX and Windows. Its tough!


• Love Parallels… it’s golden.


• Having a terminal rocks!


• Need your *nix fix? MacPorts (formerly Darwin Ports) to your rescue.


• You know… there are actually good applications on the Mac to get anything done…


• And you know what else, Mac applications *DO* crash just as regularly as Windows applications. FireFox is the WORST.


• The drag and drop application installation (from .dmg files) is cool, but I always feel like I’m missing something… like it’s too easy.


• Gotta dump the single button mouse as quick as you can… holy cow that’s annoying.


• The MacBook Pro runs freaking HOT. I mean… you can literally cook an egg on it!


• Things are clean… slick, fast. I don’t really notice the slowdowns as often.


• The hardware on this particular MacBook Pro freaking screams! Core Duo 2.16 GHZ + 1.5 GB RAM.


• iTunes has some neat interface changes from the Windows version that make it sweet… integration rocks!


• I miss Visual Studio… Parallels to the rescue again!


• Mac Office Support is… shall we say dated? Mac Office 2004. Yikes.


• Expose is beautiful… Witch rocks… TextMate rocks… Growl is cool.


• I can use my NXT kit on it! w00t!


• Universal Binaries is a cool concept. Have multiple architectures for your OS? Package up applications into ONE bundle that can support them all…. Rosetta (PPC emulator) is cool, just wish it could access the BT stack.

Those are just a few… I’ll make sure to keep posting more details as I figure them out.

Last weekend I picked up the new Lego Mindstorms NXT kit… If you haven’t figured out yet… I’m quite the kid. Have to play with Legos and video games!

At any rate, busted it open… saw all of the wonderful new features:

• Bluetooth Communication


• Supports Mac OSX


• New Sensor Types


• Open Source (Soon to be) OS (32 Bit AMR7 processor)


• Supports Microsoft Robotics Studio… SWEET .Net Code!


• ruby-nxt is in the works…

Here are some pics I took of the Alpha Rex:

Johnny 5 ALIVE!

And in case you were wondering… I *am* the proud owner of RIS 2.0 (Old Mindstorms):

Tune in, I’ll be posting more as I create them!

So let’s talk about a few entertainment related items that I’ve encountered recently…

Games

• Picked up Bubble Bobble Revolution… wow that brings back memories. The old school version is WAY more fun than the new one. Primary reason is because the new version is dual screen and the gap between screens is hard to adjust to when you’re going so fast.




• Also snagged NBA 2k7. Looks great, feels great, has some cool features… and a new download already




• Bought the Xbox Live Vision Camera (Add me: GooberDLX)… that’s fun!




• Grabbed Doom for the millionth time. Goodness… it’s still fun

Movies/TV

• Bought Thank You For Smoking… we’ll see how it is this weekend.




• What else can I say? The Office (NBC) keeps getting better and better! I really want to see where Jim goes. They finally gave a BIG hint that the new hot chick in the Standford branch is going after Jim. The branches are going to merge, just wait!




• Heroes is still something I can’t quite figure out if I love or hate just yet. It’s starting off very slow but very crammed. You have like 8 or 9 different hero characters evolving their own plots… and only 2 episodes in and they are still introducing characters and one large connecting plot. Time will tell

Well…

That pretty much sums up what I have going on in the world of entertainment… anyone out there doing some other cool shit? Games? Movies? Shows? Let’s hear it!

I about fell outta my chair when I saw this: