wxfz :: Blog

Cramming on Distributed Systems…

wxfz — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:58:08 +0000

There’s a whole lot of work on just the idea of managing the idea of causality. When did an event occur? What does it depend upon? Fascinating stuff. Lots to learn (or re-learn… or un-learn…)

Filed under: Programming Tagged: distributed systems

Taking the Colemak plunge (again)

wxfz — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:47:43 +0000

Although I’ve already slipped– I plan on practicing it. I can’t seem to go cold-turkey without getting frustrated at the lack of proficiency. There are times where it feels good to type in Colemak (a better rhythm or more balance between the hands) and other times where I’m fighting everything.

It seems easy enough...

One of the first things you do is map some hot key to switch layouts. On Ubuntu, different applications can have different active maps, so get used to watching the indicator in the system tray area.

Filed under: Utterances and Scribbles

Do you have a liberal arts degree in English and want to be in the competitive intelligence business?

wxfz — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:12:13 +0000

Then http://projects.csail.mit.edu/soylent/ is your answer. Being a crowd sourced editor that “outsources” semantic work to Mechanical Turk workers Soylent is going to get a lot of people in trouble. At this level of integration, everyone writing papers for school will turn in work that is orders of magnitude ”better” than their best individual effort. As people leave academia having used systems like these, they will find it very hard to un-use. Think about your own use of search engines like Google—if you have been using search for more than ten years, could you stop and still be effective in your work? If this catches on, you’ll have a new information security issue of preventing tools from crowd sourcing sensitive content and a ready pool of thousands of competitive security agents monitoring for ideas… or more.

Filed under: InfoSec

12 Must-Have JavaScript Snippets for gEdit for those missing TextMate

wxfz — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:07:35 +0000

You don’t get to have TextMate on Ubuntu—but that doesn’t mean you can’t pimp out gEdit to take up the slack. gEdit however, doesn’t have a great deal of JavaScript Snippets, so I created some for the kinds of JavaScript I’m constantly pounding out. Besides, all of the existing TextMate bundles for JavaScript are for the major browser utility libraries (jQuery, YUI and Prototype)— you’ll be getting the following snippets with this download (activated with a tab):

cl → console.log()
dict → { }
de → dict entry
dw → do-while loop
wl → while-loop
if → if-then
ife → if-then-else
sw → switch
fi → for-item loop
fl → for-loop
vnv → var name = value
fn → function

Many of these snippets will pre-fill comments marking the end of their blocks, which can be useful for catching dumb mistakes with deeply nested blocks, which you should try to avoid anyway.

Download the bundle for gEdit here.

Update: Wouldn’t you know it, there is a bug in gEdit that will defeat you from importing snippets. Looking for a work-around.

Filed under: Programming

xkcd: Dilution

wxfz — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:37:32 +0000

via xkcd.com

Unfortunately, believers will never repent.

Filed under: Uncategorized

PayPal Hates Conferences – Especially OpenCamp

wxfz — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:29:57 +0000

via openca.mp

PayPal showing its crazy—earning more Justified Internet Hate. After OpenCamp bends over backwards to provide PayPal financial information (much of which isn’t anything that PayPal should require access too), PayPal locks their account anyway.

PayPal is discriminating on a business model and stonewalling reason. How long before your innovative business (or even ordinary business) gets derailed by a clique of PayPal “risk managers.” Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? indeed.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Whyday: 19 August 2010

wxfz — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:31:17 +0000

Check out this website I found at whyday.org

A positive celebration of Why the Lucky Stiff’s Internet suicide.

Filed under: Uncategorized

“Fashion axes” are the new substitute good for open-carry?

wxfz — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:53:56 +0000

via buzzfeed.com

I sense that this axe quivver/holster should be something you can find at an Etsy shop real-soon-now.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Vuvuzelas making music in Soweto

wxfz — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:12:51 +0000

via youtube.com

Orchestral Vuvuzelas in Soweto.

Filed under: Uncategorized

BROS ICING BROS « Take a knee and chug

wxfz — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:36:37 +0000

via brosicingbros.com

This is a brilliant way to increase sales of the less popular flavors… not so good for your livers. Now if it where Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA… there’s a game there.

Filed under: Uncategorized