The Mossy Blog

Upgrading to FlexUnit 4 for larger projects using FlexUnit .9

2010-01-14T15:06:00.003-05:00

FlexUnit 4 is a much more powerful solution to unittesting in Flex than flexunit .9 was, but the documentation is a little sparse for right now. I've found over an over again the promise that it's backwards compatible with .9, and only one place that showed an example. Unfortunately, the code in that solution doesn't really work for larger projects that have many test classes. It took me a minute to realize that FlexUnit 4 doesn't need to be told specifically how to run a given test case, it will take a look at it and try to guess whats needed. The solution, then, because quite simple. Build a Suite like so:


// Metadata tells FlexUnit4 that this is a Suite and
// specifies a runner to use with it
[Suite]
[RunWith("org.flexunit.runners.Suite")]
public class FlexUnit4TestSuite
{
    //simply make public variables inside the suite
    //with the test cases or suites that you want
    //run.
    public var baseMediatorTest:BaseMediatorTest;
          // ...
}

Then you pass this suite into the test runner like so:


public function onCreationComplete(evt:Event):void
{
   core = new FlexUnitCore();
   core.addListener(new UIListener(uiListener));
   core.addListener(new CIListener(1028, "localhost"));
   core.run( FlexUnit4TestSuite )
}

Much more maintainable.

Google finally revived collaborative note taking

2009-05-29T10:45:00.002-04:00

Yes!! It took longer than it rightly should have, but Google has finally re-enabled the world to do collaborative note taking, my hands down favorite part of my early PyCons. See this for example. I miss SubEthaEdit all the time. I hope that the SubEthaEdit guys aren't forgotten, now that Google's picked up the collaborative editing torch.

This is a very, very powerful, useful tool. Thanks Google!

Soda.. or Airline?

2009-04-29T08:07:00.003-04:00

I knew it! Pepsi changed their logo last year, and when they did it, they put up all these crazy viral ads (for lack of a better term), that just had the logo a couple times in random words. One had like two or three on one bill board. I'm a little behind the times, not having TV, nor really being a soda drinker (Coke, when I do, thankyou), and I was trying to figure out why in the world any airline would advertise like this. I spent a good week wondering which airline it was.. Northwest? A new American Air logo? Finally, I see a new Pepsi can. Oooh, it's for Pepsi. That's the worst soda logo I've ever seen in my life. Here's an excellent breakdown, and they agree with me, it looks like an airline logo. Ahh, satisfaction.

Obama == Hope?

2009-01-20T12:55:00.003-05:00

Stumbled across this.. on Flickr, a related tag to "Obama" is "hope".

PureMVC Gotcha

2008-08-26T15:49:00.002-04:00

Don't send notifications that you're expecting a response to in your mediator's constructor (or during construction). Instead, override the onRegister() function and call them there. Your Mediator won't receive notifications it's interested in until after the registration process is finished. Seems pretty obvious, but you can loose track real quick of what's going on in the background when you're using a system like PureMVC that just seems to work.

Crazy Flex DateField Insanity

2008-08-21T15:55:00.005-04:00

So, I've been busily putting together a Flex application at work, and we ran into a curious issue where Flash would infinitely loop and crash itself/the browser. (Not tested in Air) To give a little background first, we're following the convention of keeping our data in data objects (or data models), and binding both the visual component to the data model field and the data model field back to the visual component. All of our code is dynamic, so it's written in Actionscript, not MXML.
The problem occurred when we had two DateField interface components pointing to the same data model field. The two DateFields would be hooked up to a single data model field, and we saw the following behavior:

If we bound the DateField.selectedDate to the model.birthday (as an example), with one DateField Instance, all would work. Underneath, it set off the bindings twice when you changed the selectedDate, but that was OK. With multiple DateField Instances, it would crash as it tried to create the second DateField. (This happened when we preinitialized the DateField and without preinitializing the DateField) Underneath, it would set off the bindings between the three items infinitely.
If we bound the DateField.data to the model.birthday, it would never infinitely loop, but model.birthday wouldn't get updated when DateField was changed. I think that the code for DateField.data is screwy, but according to the documentation, it seems like this is the property you should bind to.
If I tried binding the DateField.data to the model.birthday and the model.birthday to the DateField.selectedDate, it would also loop infinitely.

Finally, I created a ChangeWatcher on the DateField for when the selectedDate changed. On change, it would call a function that checked to see if DateField.data == DateField.selectedDate, and if not, it set DateField.data = DateField.selectedDate. At first, this didn't work quite right, but I changed it to check the DateField.data.time, which is just the number of seconds since Epoch, and that magically worked.

My theory is that Date comparisons are broken or behave oddly, and if you just compare Date.time, it works as expected. I'm assuming this is why the binding went forever, but I can't be sure.

Hope this helps someone else.. some also possibly helpful links:
http://devel.teratechnologies.net/steve_examples/Flex_BindingProblem/DateTest.html
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-15618

Ant Property Trickery

2008-07-23T16:15:00.003-04:00

I needed to change a property in my ant build task. (Backstory: Flex has poorly documented ant tasks, and they seem to require that you set FLEX_HOME as a property so that the tasks know where to find the Flex compiler. I have 2 sdk's that I want to use, one has a code coverage tool called FlexCover built in, but I can't pass in something like FLEX_COVERAGE_HOME, since the ant task silently uses FLEX_HOME anyways.) Ant properties cannot be changed once they are set.

My solution? Import the build.properties file which does not set my target property (FLEX_HOME), then in my tasks, set the target property depending on which one I need (FLEX_REGULAR_HOME or FLEX_COVERAGE_HOME).

PureMVC Documentation

2008-06-12T09:49:00.003-04:00

So, at work we're doing a big Flex project in PureMVC. (I don't know anything about ActionScript, nor Flex, so this should be interesting). We chose PureMVC over Cairngorm because it looks like it might support the huge code base we're going to have cleaner. Plus, I can wrap my head around the framework a little easier.. probably from my Python MVC roots. I think people just think Cairngorm is simpler because they're used to it.

Anyways. I just wanted to point out that PureMVC has some of the best documentation I've ever seen. I printed out the pdf of the Framework overview, double sided to conserve paper, and it has exactly one page of written text and one page of diagrams per section, so you get the text about the view, and on the facing page, all the UML.

The little things make me happy.

Regular Expressions

2008-04-16T11:49:00.002-04:00

Does it ever strike anyone else as odd that regular expressions are like Microsoft Office? (Except much more useful and less aggravating) I mean, 95% of regular expressions use only 5% of the regular expression syntax, meaning that there's enough time between looking up a particular syntactical construct that you forget it and have to look it up again. My two favorite reg exp tools out there, though I'm sure there are more:

Internet Explorer 7, Clears and Floats?

2008-04-07T13:01:00.002-04:00

Working on a project, I'm have a form, where labels (containing fields) are all floated. In order to force a label to a new line, I put a class on it with "clear: left", but that, for some reason, causes the words to be smushed to the left. If there's a label text with a space in it, IE7 renders it as

first
second

instead of

first second

Anyone run into this before? I'm not css problem savvy enough to know what to Google for. I ended up just putting br's with a "clear: both" class on them in between rows, but it's not as clean as it was before.

PyCon 2008: Collaborative Notes?

2008-03-14T10:12:00.002-04:00

I'm in the keynote at PyCon 2008, and I'm wondering if there are going to be people doing the SubEthaEdit Collaborative note thing this year. The last con I went to (2005), we took quite a few of these notes, and it was really a lot of fun. If you guys are out there, drop me a note: I'm Linden Wright on Bonjour and Kusmeroglu on AIM.

Grails Date Trick

2008-03-06T17:16:00.003-05:00

If you have a Date field in one of your domain classes, for instance:

class Person{
String Name
Date Birthday
}

and you're struggling to figure out a way to get stuff into it without explicitly creating a date and converting strings or integers into it, Grails provides a handy (yet not documented?) set of properties for you. In our example, I could set birthday_year, birthday_month, birthday_day, birthday_hour, etc.. I found this by digging in the scaffolded views and figuring out how they render the tag. Now, maybe you don't have to dig.

Font choices, anyone?

2008-03-02T09:50:00.002-05:00

I've run into this a couple times, and I find it quite handy, so I'm sharing it for all. It's a list of common windows fonts, their mac equivalents, and the fall back font-family specifier. Plus, everything is in it's own font, so you can see what you're choosing.

Just another css developer's link. I'm on a roll here.

Color Scheme Generator by WellStyled

2008-03-01T23:08:00.002-05:00

Perhaps one of the best color scheme tools I've run across. Simple clean interface, great set of options. I like the rest of WellStyled's website as well, an interesting way to deal with multiple languages.

Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet

2008-03-01T22:22:00.003-05:00

I took latin in high school and college (after a failed attempt to take Chinese.. love drawing the characters, hate trying to translate spoken Chinese), so the latin text popular to layout designers and typesetters always appealed to me. Here's a useful site that will generate as much of the text as you need, in paragraphs, lists, bytes, etc. I've used it a couple times before, just thought I'd share it with everyone. (Hint, View Source to copy/paste the useful stuff). Ah, good old Lorem Ipsum. As an aside, someone took thequickbrownfoxjumpsoveralazydog.com. Is it strange that that phrase reminds me of my childhood?

Gotcha: Grails Auto Recompile Doesn't Do GSP

2008-02-29T10:51:00.001-05:00

Grails does the auto recompile thing, much like Turbogears etc., but it doesn't seem to work for gsp pages, in particular, main.gsp. Which can trip you up, if you're trying to make a couple simple changes to your first Grails app.

Gotcha: Grails Capitalization

2008-02-27T16:03:00.002-05:00

So, apparently Grails doesn't like Controllers starting with multiple capitol letters (i.e. TLAcronym). If you create a domain class with all lowercase, it will capitalize it for you, but if you try to create TLAcronym, it happily plays along. Then if you generate-all or do scaffolding for that domain class, you won't be able to access your controller. I've raised an issue for this here: GRAILS-2541.

Acegi on Grails Tutorial

2008-02-14T16:30:00.004-05:00

So, neither the information on the Plugin Page for the Acegi Security Plugin, nor the info in the acegi tutorial actually work completely. Here's a real tutorial for doing this. (Step 6 is where the existing documentation fails)

Step 1. Install Grails

Step 2. Download the Acegi Security Plugin. (I downloaded version 0.2 it as a zip file, to %GRAILS_HOME%/plugins/)

Step 3. Create a new Grails Project, and cd into the new project folder:

grails create-app SecurityTutorial
cd SecurityTutorial

Step 4. Add the Acegi Security Plugin. Note that you can install plugins by name using some lookup service, but the Acegi plugin won't be found.

grails install-plugin %GRAILS_HOME%/plugins/grails-acegi-0.2.zip

Step 5. Installing the Acegi Plugin will add some new scripts to your project:

create-auth-domains [PersonDomainName] [AuthorityDomainName: this creates the domain model needed by the plugin, Person, Authority, and RequestMap classes, login and logout controllers, as well as the login view. You can give optional names as arguments to replace Person and Authority.
generate-manager: creates the scaffolding controllers to add new Person, Authority, and RequestMap object in your database
generate-registration: create a register and captcha controller, as well as matching views, and an emailer service.

Run each of these commands.

grails create-auth-domains
grails generate-mapper
grails generate-registration

Step 6. Setup BootStrap.groovy to contain some sample data, as follows:

// ProjectFolder/grails-app/conf/Bootstrap.groovyclass BootStrap {

   def init = { servletContext ->

// get a AcegiSecurity AuthenticateService
def authenticateService = new AuthenticateService()
// use it to create an encoded password
def md5pass = authenticateService.passwordEncoder("pass")

// Create two sample users
// NB: you must specify all the Person attributes, otherwise
//     Grails will fail quietly to add these to the database
def user_root = new Person(username:"root",
   userRealName:"Root User",
   passwd:md5pass,
   enabled:true,
   email:"root@example.com",
   email_show:true,
   description:"Desc").save()
def user_admin = new Person(username:"admin",
   userRealName:"Admin User",
   passwd:md5pass,
   enabled:true,
   email:"admin@example.com",
   email_show:false,
   description:"Desc").save()

// Add some sample Roles, add the users to those roles
def role_superuser = new Authority(description:"Superuser",
   authority:"ROLE_SUPERUSER")
role_superuser.addToPeople(user_root)
role_superuser.save()

// See AcegiConfig.groovy, at the bottom, there's a defaultrole
// setting, you must make one to allow registration to work.
def role_user = new Authority(description:"User Role",
   authority:"ROLE_USER")
role_user.addToPeople(user_admin)
role_user.addToPeople(user_root)
role_user.save()

// Create some Request Maps
new Requestmap(url:"/captcha/**",
  configAttribute:"ROLE_SUPERUSER").save()
new Requestmap(url:"/register/**",
  configAttribute:"ROLE_USER").save()

   }
   def destroy = {
   }
}

We also have to edit the RegisterController.groovy to fix a bug.

// ProjectFolder/grails-app/controllers/RegisterController.groovy                    // Line # 159-161
        person.save(flush:true)
        def parMap =['j_username':person.username,'j_password':params.passwd]
        // change this line:
        // redirect(controller:'login',action:'../j_acegi_security_check',params:parMap)
        // to this:
        redirect(controller:'login',action:"auth")

Step 7. Run the application

grails run-app

Step 8. Play around. Notice that you when you try to go to the register controller, it asks for a login, then, since you're already logged in, the register controller just shows you your info with a redirect(action "show"). Go delete the RequestMap for the register url, make sure you logout, then try again. See how the captcha is broken? Go remove the captcha RequestMap, and try again.

Thankyou Markmail

2008-02-14T11:19:00.002-05:00

So, I've been trying to dig through codehaus's mail archives for the Groovy Lists. Oh wow, what a terrible interface, and miserable search. A lucky Google search later, and I stumble on Markmail's Groovy Site. Not only do I find the mail thread I was hoping for which solved my problem, but a fantastic interface to some of the larger tech mailing lists that has a fantastic interface and great search. The date restraints and graphs are nice, but even nicer: Awesome, awesome thread display, really nice interface for checking out attachments, perma-links, and powerful search features. Good job guys, I saved enough time to write this :)

It's not easy being dorky

2008-01-15T14:54:00.001-05:00

So, I was hanging out with some of my friends the other night, and we watched the 2nd ep of the new Terminator show, which they had DVR'd. I didn't see the first one, because I don't really watch TV, but it was a pretty good episode. It was odd seeing Summer Glau playing a robot, but not surprising somehow. Anyways, as John leaves the store in the mall, the address of the store is '1337', so I say "haha, leet" (obviously, what else would you say?). No-one in a room full of guys, including the one I'm dating, had any idea what the heck I was talking about, even when I tried to explain. I'm not even sure how to take that.

o.O

Rock Band is Awesome

2008-01-09T10:38:00.000-05:00

So, I've been playing Rock Band like a mad fiend since late last year. I never got into the Guitar Hero thing, but I truly love drumming. Singing is also fun. My crowning achievements so far: 621 note streak on Medium with The Strokes song, and singing hard Say It Ain't So while playing the drums on hard for the first time without redlining.

Anyways, the fun stuff for you: I made a list of the music videos for the standard Rock Band songlist. (At least all of the ones I could find) Here's the html and rss feed from my del.icio.us account, and here's the list (not in any particular order):

Documentation stuck in the 90's

2007-12-07T16:04:00.000-05:00

I'd just like to put this out there: It's high time that in-application documentation systems adopt tabs. They're obviously using web browser technology, and since we're so familiar with that model, and using tabs, it's highly irritating that they don't follow suit.

Fuel! Cell! Consumer! Model! ....!!!!

2007-11-20T10:31:00.000-05:00

I'm almost embarrassingly excited about this.

Last night, I saw this IMHO awful commercial with the most amazing ending ever - a fuel cell car that will be commerically available!

Wikipedia had this to say about the Honda FCX Clarity:

In 15 November 2007 at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show, Honda unveiled the FCX Clarity, the first production model, and announced that the car would be available for lease beginning in the summer 2008. Initial availability will be limited to the Southern California market, with availability expanding as hydrogen fueling stations become available...

...The new FCX utilizes several interesting new features. The new V Flow fuel cell stack can operate at temperatures as low as −30 °C. This is achieved by allowing the gas to flow vertically in the fuel cell stack. The tanks can store up to 5 kg (171 litres) of hydrogen at a pressure of 350 atmospheres, thanks to the new hydrogen absorption materials used. This allows a longer range of up to 350 miles (570 km)...

...To support the hydrogen fuel-cell technology, Honda also introduced the Home Energy Station (HES). This home solution can convert natural gas to electricity, heat and hydrogen to refuel fuel-cell vehicles. This allows consumers to refuel vehicles with hydrogen at home, important until hydrogen stations become widespread. Alternatively, the hydrogen can be used in the HES's built-in hydrogen fuel cell, providing up to 5 kW of normal or backup electricity and/or hot water for the home.

Apparently there are 20 already-leased 2002 prototypes, some of which are here in New York. What especially excites me is that they've come up with with a home refueling solution! With a range up to 350 miles that sounds like it might be a practical enough solution to make up for the lack of hydrogen fuel infrastructure.

I wish mass production might get started sooner than 2018..

Best Gaming News All Year

2007-11-15T10:14:00.001-05:00

I'm super duper stoked about the news that they're going to be making Lego Batman games. I love Legos, I love Batman, and I love the Legos Starwars Games. (My awesome sister bought me the complete saga for the Wii as a birthday gift this year) Life doesn't get any more exciting than this. :)

Toscawidgets Forms: Passing Compound Widgets

2007-09-26T14:39:00.000-04:00

For lack of documentation's sake, and because it wasn't initially obvious to me after poking around in the code (in fact, I got led astray, thinking there was some dot notation I would have to use), this is how you pass values into Compound Widgets in Toscawidgets:

Say you have some Widget like this:

form = Form('FormName',
          children=[
              FieldSet('FieldSetName',
                  children=[
                      TextField('TextFieldName')])
         ])

and displayed in your template like this:

${ form.display(**form_args)}

then you can pass values into it from your controller like so:

def controller(self):
  return dict(form=form,                 
              form_args={'value':{
'FieldSetName':{ 'TextFieldName':
                  'Desired TextField Value'}}})

I guess it's pretty obvious in retrospect, in fact, the compound Form outputs something much like this (minus the outside dictionary), and those values can be passed right back into the Compound Form again. Perhaps, had I been actually using a Model, or gotten more sleep, this all would have been more natural - but hopefully this helps someone else.

Hint: If you're overriding templates, be sure that you're still passing the right values in to fetch the children arguments, i.e.:

${section.display(value_for(section), **args_for(section))}

Aardvark: Must have Firefox Extension

2007-09-24T15:24:00.000-04:00

Any discussion on Firefox Extension recommendations must include the obligatory "Firebug is the most amazing tool ever" note. (Because it's really fantastically useful, and it just keeps getting better)

Today, I'd like to mention Aardvark. It's super useful for isolating parts of the page for easy printing, and quite easy to use, once you learn the keystrokes. I use it all the time for printing out comics and lolcats for posting on my cubical walls.

Gotcha: Toscawidgets and Mochikit

2007-09-24T14:20:00.000-04:00

So, after much annoyingness, I've finally realized why I was having so much trouble using the Mochikit extension to Toscawidgets. As the Toscawidgets docs state, you need to include this template if you're using Genshi, which basically adds these lines (plus matching matching body top and bottom lines):


<link for=\"css in tg_css\" replace=\"css.display()\">
<link for=\"js in tg_js_head\" replace=\"js.display()\">

Now, if you're silly, like me, and don't really pay attention, you just include it, without looking too hard at your master template, which includes these lines by default:


<link for=\"css in tg_css\" replace=\"ET(css.display())\">
<link for=\"js in tg_js_head\" replace=\"ET(js.display())\">

As soon as you put the widget in your controller:


from toscawidgets.widgets.mochikit import mochikit
class Root(controllers.RootController):
   @expose("genshi:mumapp.templates.sections")
   def info(self):
       return dict( form = InformationForm,
                    js = mochikit )

You start to get funny Genshi errors, mine was "AttributeError: 'Stream' object has no attribute 'tag'" which prompted me to try various combinations of adding ET() and HTML() to my templates, when the problem was that Toscawidgets cleans that whole ET/Genshi issue up and breaks when you leave them in.

So, long story short, add the site template and remove the conflicting lines from your master template. (Though, if you are mixing Toscawidgets and Turbogears widgets, you'll have to do something like what's outlined here.)

Security Camera Shenanigans

2007-09-12T13:27:00.000-04:00

One of the funniest things I've seen in a while: At the Port Authority in Tampa, they have a whole bunch of security cameras, in a really nice movie looking setup. Unlike the movies, though, a whole colony of ants has built a highway across one, so it looks like something out of Them!.. and on another camera, a huge fuzzy spider crawling about a pier. It was quite alarming at first, out of the corner of my eye, but ultimately quite amusing. I wish I could have taken a picture, but I doubt they would like me whipping out a camera in their security room.

Announcement: GenshiColumnTemplate

2007-09-11T00:31:00.000-04:00

I've made a quickstart Genshi template for Turbogears that gives you a ready made 3 column layout, using the excellent 3 column layout from A List Apart's Holy Grail article. If you spent 5 minutes, you could do it yourself, but it's kinda nice to have something ready made. I pull out the layout css in a separate file, and relaid out the welcome page to use 3 columns. The master.html template uses Genshi's Xpath select function to pull content together into the columns.

To Install:
easy_install genshicolumntemplate

To Use:
In your templates that include master.html, make divs that have ids of 'left', 'center', 'right', 'footer', and 'header', or just add your static content to master.html. The only caveat is that there must be some sort of other element inside the positional div wrapping your text, it can't be just text, as xpath won't select it for replacement.

ToDo:

Documentation. It should be mercifully short, yet I still haven't done it
Fix up the welcome page a bit
Figure out some sort of decent unit test for templates
Wait for suggestions, criticisms, etc :)

Please let me know if you try it out.

Python Cheeseshop and Eggs

2007-09-10T20:34:00.000-04:00

I've been playing with putting a package up on the Cheeseshop, Python's Package Index. There isn't a lot of documentation out there, but there really doesn't need to be, it's pretty easy. I cheated and modified someone else's egg for my own use, but the file setup isn't all that hard, and you can get paster to make a ready-eggable template for you.

Anyways, the quick commands to use, after creating an account and setting up your egg and metadata:

python setup.py register
this creates an entry in the cheeseshop for your project and populates it with the metadata from your egg. If something is wrong, just fix it and rerun this command.
python setup.py sdist upload
this creates a source distribution (the egg folder tarred and gunzipped) in dist/ and uploads it to the cheeseshop
python setup.py bdist_egg
upload this creates a binary distribution (the egg folder all zipped up) in dist/ and uploads it to the cheeseshop

Super bonus hints:
python setup.py develop installs the egg using a link to your source code instead of putting it in the site-packages folder, so you can test things.
easy_install -m package_name takes the package name out of the appropriate places, allowing you to uninstall a package by deleting it from the site-packages folder.

Toscawidgets and Paster

2007-09-02T01:31:00.000-04:00

So, I'm playing around with making a bunch of Toscawidgets (Toscawidgets widgets?) and found, by hunting around a bit, that you can get a pretty handy package template by using PasteScript. Try:

paster create -t toscawidgets

and answer the questions. For a list of what other templates paster create has, try:

paster create --list-templates

For some reason, figuring this out took me way longer than it really should have last night. (Thanks Daniel)

A super bonus bbedit command line hint: bbedit *.py --new-window

Genshi Templates: include and select()

2007-08-24T14:02:00.000-04:00

Hint for today: If you don't know Xpath select stuff at all (like I didn't a couple minutes ago) and you want your Turbogears templates to be a little more intelligent about column content placement, you can do something like this:

<!-- in master.html -->
<div id="centercontent">
 <div id="status_block" py:if="tg_flash"
   class="flash" py:content="tg_flash">
 </div>
 <div
   py:replace=
   "select('//div[@id=\'centercontent\']/*|text()')">
</div>
<div id="rightcontent">
 <div
   py:replace=
   "select('//div[@id=\'rightcontent\']/*')">
</div>

<!-- in welcome.html -->
<div id="centercontent">
 <!-- all your base here -->
</div>
<div id="rightcontent">
 <!-- navigation stuff here -->
</div>

Breaking down the Xpath select statement a little more (removing the quote escapes):

//div[@id='centercontent']/*

//div == in all 'div' elements
[@id='centercontent'] == where the (@) attribute 'id' is equal to 'centercontent'
/* == select all the children elements

Coolest Hotel Design Ever - Eco-Aqua Hotel in a Quarry

2007-08-14T13:50:00.000-04:00

It won't be completed for at least another 2 years, but I would so fly to china just to stay here:

http://atkinsdesign.com/html/projects_hotels_songhotel.htm

It's already cool enough that they're apparently using an old quarry as a lake, so the whole thing is sunk into a pit and looks like an especially fantastical Bryce creation, or that they're using geothermal power. The thing that drops my jaw is the ginormous *waterfall-like elevator* that apparently runs over the glass face of the building. A
t least, I think it's an elevator.

Really nice flash sketch widget

2007-08-14T11:55:00.000-04:00

I really like the texture aesthetic of this online sketch app, it's the best I've seen. I really like the background "paper," he thinner-line tools resemble actual penstrokes (after they're scanned, anyway).

http://www.odopod.com/sketch/

If only I had a spare second to doodle :)

Really Awesome Ad.

2007-08-09T11:41:00.000-04:00

This is the best ad I've seen in a long, long time. Well, the iphone ads are really, really good and everything, but they do lack in a certain... initial bafflement. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsBvMvHk1BE

Website Teaser

2007-08-05T04:10:00.000-04:00

It's coming! Got my MossyStone.org domain name, got hosting through Webfaction, who gives half their turbogears related signup fees to the turbogears project. They keep on top of tech, I like it, and I like the hosting so far. Site is running in Turbogears on Python of course.

More to come in the future. :)

Turbogears Banner

2007-08-04T03:51:00.000-04:00

I couldn't find a small Turbogears banner / logo / powered by image to my liking, so I just whipped one up. Also, here's a Python logo I found through a google search. Enjoy.

reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books

2007-08-01T23:30:00.000-04:00

This is by far the coolest captcha service ever. (Blogger, you should pick this up) Out of Carnegie Mellon, this service aids in digitizing books. It gives you two words to type, the first is a known word, the second is a word that their OCR algorithm couldn't figure out. If you get the first word right, it assumes that you also got the second word correct.

I think it's a fantastic idea, putting captchas to a good purpose. :)

Gotcha: Turbogears Form Widget

2007-08-01T15:00:00.000-04:00

So, I had one of those barking up the wrong tree moments this morning, where I was sure as can be there was something going on with SQLObject caching, but it turned out to be much simpler than that. I have a simple sort of application linking products to the company that makes them, but when you added a new company, then tried to add a new product for that company, the company didn't show up in the pull down box. (a SingleSelectField)

As it turns out, when you create your form widget:

editform = widgets.TableForm(
  fields=EditFields(),
  action="/editsave")

the field class gets created once, at the controller load, and that's it.
Therefore, if you populate your fields when you create the form, they won't be updated, possibly causing you to learn more than you wanted to about SQLObject caching. I found the solution on this page. Similar to passing values, you just pass a dictionary of the options to the appropriate widget. Since I have a generic CRUD controller, I created a function in my EditFields class that returns a dictionary of all the options fields and updated values, like so:

def updatelists(self):
    """Return a dictionary of any lists
 that need to be updated due to new objects"""
    companylist = Company.build_list(
      'name',
      orderBy=Company.q.name)
    #in my form, companyID is the
   #name of the SingleSelectField
   return dict(companyID=companylist )

(using the build_list method here) then, in my controller:

return dict( form=self.editform,
             values=objvalues,
             options=self.fieldswidget.updatelists())

and finally, in my model:

<div py:content="ET(form.display(
  value=values,
  options=options))">

(I'm using Genshi, which is why I have the ET function there)

Unfortunately Linden

2007-07-26T17:39:00.000-04:00

Ran into this little exercise of Googling "unfortunately [yourname]". My results, removing all of the Linden Labs press release junk.

Unfortunately Linden seems to be content with generating bullshit instead of pushing the state of the art. (ouch)
Unfortunately, Linden doesn't include enough of them, nor explore their implications sufficiently, to do justice to his argument.
Unfortunately, Linden has not been the tonic for the offense that I was hoping for.
Unfortunately, Linden was completely sold out of their Cabernet Franc. (damn)
Unfortunately, Linden is still around to fret, cry, whine, and hesitate in Covenants stead.
Unfortunately, Linden is a 23 year old corner outfield prospect who has yet to crack an 800 OPS in two attempts at AAA. (I am 23, and also not good at baseball.. creepy?)
Unfortunately, Linden's future in the 21st century is threatened by a combination of factors. (oh noes!!)
Unfortunately Linden lifted the ban on fireworks after that "little" rain last weekend.
Unfortunately Linden was there.... refusing to leave, dag nab him. And I believe that the elbow and knee combo, to the right of shot, belongs to Mr Krad.
Unfortunately, Linden's papers have disappeared, and Land is forced to piece together the story behind the discovery with the dubious aid of Linden's young mistress (woo!)

Much fun. :)

Gotcha: Turbogears urls

2007-07-25T16:35:00.000-04:00

So, this didn't really waste too much of my time, but watch for trailing slashes in your links. If you have a setup like (Stolen from the SimpleFormsWidgetTutorial):

comment_form = widgets.TableForm(
 fields=CommentFields(),
 action="save"
)

@expose(template=".templates.form")
def add(self, tg_errors=None):
 if tg_errors:
     flash("There was a problem with the form!")
 return dict(form=comment_form)

@expose()
@validate(form=comment_form)
@error_handler(add)
def save(self, **data):
 #...

And, for whatever reason, your user ends up at "host.com/add/" instead of "host.com/add", the form will display fine, but will point to "host.com/add/save" instead of "host.com/save". Then you'll get all kinds of fun errors, like "TypeError: add() got an unexpected keyword argument ''", and you'll scratch your head, wondering if you got an error that the validation somehow threw and the form error handler somehow didn't catch. Or, at least, I did.

open.ended

2007-07-20T00:18:00.000-04:00

Yay, arstechnica, my absolute favorite newsite (they have just enough news to keep me busy, but not so much I can't keep up, plus it's all the stuff I care about), is opening a new open source journal. I'm very stoked, since this is the last geeky interest that they didn't cover specifically. (I follow their gaming, mac, and science journals)

Go ars, go. =)

The Movie Entertainment Standard

2007-07-19T12:33:00.000-04:00

Back in State College, PA, our little social group of gaming dorks used the Movie Entertainment Standard to determine what was worth spending money on. I think this was a function of our being poor college students, and also completely addicted to MMOs. Basically, you compare whatever purchase you're considering to watching one movie. So, monthly subscription to FFXI was $15, which gave us (way too) many hours of entertainment, compared to the 4 hours that we would get watching 2 movies for the same price. (Actually, 3 movies, since we got the student discount) Games are getting more expensive, but it's a neat way to justify dropping 50 dollars on the newest release, since you're bound to play the game for more than 10 movies worth (20ish hours). Movie prices have gone up quite a bit recently, but it evens out, since average movie lengths have also increased.

Puzzle Pirate's Subscription FAQ is the first time I've seen this concept written out, though I'm sure it's pretty common. (No, I don't play Puzzle Pirates, but it's always appealed to me. If only they'd make a Ninja themed puzzle game)

Turbogears Interpreter Goodness

2007-07-17T14:30:00.000-04:00

I'd just like to say that I officially love working with Turbogears. It's just so great to be able to run interactive commands, with the environment that your code is working in already loaded up. (This isn't advertised enough in the Turbogears docs. They should have you do it in the tutorials) I hope it's still this fun when they switch everything over to Pylons, Genshi, and SQLAlchemy in 2.0. Maybe I am just odd, but it brightened up my so far kinda crappy week.

Gotcha: C# Windows.Forms Madness

2007-07-10T17:07:00.000-04:00

So, if you are ever creating dynamic forms in C#, and things aren't showing up for some reason, and you sillily left one non-dynamic thing there, just to be sure that you're not loosing the whole container, check that the dynamic stuff isn't being created underneath other things. For some reason, I expect them to show up over older stuff, but apparently I'm wrong. (I.E. set form.Location = new System.Drawing.Point( [not 0], [also not 0]); )

[Spell check doesn't think that sillily is a word. Pssht.]

Gotcha: Unicode Error with SQLObject + Turbogears + mysql

2007-07-09T19:23:00.000-04:00

I spent a bit of time this morning trying to figure out why the code I wrote at 3am last night wasn't working. I kept getting a crazy Unicode conversion not supported error, and all the solutions that I found Googling were not satisfactory. Eventually, I found that I had used the wrong validator on one of my fields (specifically, a Date field, though I imagine this will happen with others as well). If you run into this, double check your validators before you do anything crazy like change your model to use all UnicodeCols.

Also, on the subject of validators in Turbogears, I recommend using the FormEncode documentation directly, it's much more complete than what you find listed in Turbogears docs.

Python Syntax Goodness

2007-07-09T15:05:00.000-04:00

List comprehensions in Python are awesome. I saw one for the first time, knew exactly what it did, and started using them immediately. Yay for Python! Boo for me not being on top of these things like I should be. (PHP, I shake my fist at you)

Wii!

2007-07-06T23:54:00.000-04:00

Woot! I got a Wii. I'm stuck without a car for the weekend, because my mechanic took it half apart and discovered he needed to replace some sort of cam shaft seal. So, it's a good excuse to spend the last 2 days running everywhere and trying to find one in stock, right? (I bicycled home with it ^^)

Anyways, I bought Elebits, a game I've been fascinated with. It's a lot of fun, very unique sort of gameplay. After getting past Nintendo's incredibly finicky credit card authorization, I just downloaded the Opera browser (6 days ago, could have gotten it for free.. oh well). I'm pretty sure I won't be using the Opera browser for reading the news, the text doesn't display well at all on my screen, and zoom is annoying, but I've tried YouTube, and I think I'll definitely be using this as an internet solution for my home theatre. (Full Screen mode looks good, and I have the sound going to my surround system, the Grayson trailer looked good, sounded great)
Google Maps works OK as well, I'm glad that this version of Opera isn't limited in the realm of flash and javascript, like the DS was.

Oops, I spoke too soon. Flickr worked well, until I tried a slideshow, and got an out of memory error after 3 pictures. :( I was pretty stoked about slideshows during parties and whatnot. Anyone know if there's a way to get around this?)

Now, I'm off to look at Virtual Console stuff, the reason I finally decided to plunk down the money for this thing in the first place.

[I've been going nuts on the blog recently, there's so much stuff I've been meaning to post, now I have some time, it's all getting pushed out of the queue]

[Update: wow, if they brought out Marble Madness for Virtual Console, I'd rush home, and take all of tuesday off just to play it. Virtual Console is just as amazing as I had hoped. Childhood memories, here we come!]

NPR Car Talk

2007-07-06T09:19:00.000-04:00

There are a few loves that I've inherited from my dad, as if transferred directly from his heart to mine at some nebulous point in my childhood. One of these is my love for sail boats and planes (particularly the older ones). We used to build models when I was little, I think I've spent more time working with balsa wood than any other 3 dimensional medium, including Legos and playdough. Another is my love for Apple computers, on which I was raised; and, also in the vein of brand names, my unflinching respect for BMW's.

Anyways, my father and I used to get in the car (always a beamer), and if we were really lucky, Car Talk would be playing on NPR. I have so many fond memories of listening to Car Talk with my dad, just hearing Click and Clack's voice makes me smile. Not to mention that they have a great show, and I learn interesting things about debugging cars. Which is good, since my car is starting to do funny things.

Since I don't really drive much during the week, I've downloaded the Car Talk podcasts, and I'm listening to them on the bicycle ride to work in the morning. It's fantastic, helps me wake up a little more, and starts my day off right. I would highly recommend it.

ExKate - Coolest thing on 4 wheels, evar

2007-07-06T00:37:00.000-04:00

So, the reason I've been thinking about all the activity I do is that I'm completely enamored by this amazing contraption of fun, back to the future style. Wireless remote controlled electronic skateboards, who would have thought? Hidden behind an awesome toy is actually some interesting technology. It boasts: "It is the first time in the history of mankind where the human body is used as an antenna between a transmitter and receiver." Basically, you hold the control in your hand, and it uses the body as the link between controller and skateboard, so when you fall off, it actually stops. The thing is pretty heavy with batteries, but it gets a 10 mile radius, and speeds up to 22 mph. I dug around in the FAQ, and they mention regenerative braking, which is a fantastic idea, I'd love to see more stats on that. It also has a really awesome turning radius.
Wow, I would love to have one of these. I do wake board, and the control scheme is pretty similar, toe/heel flexion to steer. It would really help my balance. That's a good reason to buy it, right?

Sports, Whee

2007-07-05T23:47:00.000-04:00

So, I've started roller blading with my friends, I've stepped up running to twice a week, I go to swing dancing once a week(ish), wake boarding maybe twice a month, I'm still playing volleyball 3 times a week, and I've been bicycling to work 5 times a week for a couple months now. I'm contemplating doing stance training with some of my friends. I bought a Nike+ sensor for my iPod, something I've been meaning to do for a while (the reason I got a nano instead of a video iPod when someone stole my precious 1st generation 5gb iPod), partially motivated to do so by ars. Also, I'd like to do get some sort of bike trailer so that I can do groceries and picnics on my bike (though I might stick with my backpack), and I'd like to get some snorkeling gear to play with, as soon as I find a decent, easy way to get to a beach on the gulf side. I really do miss swimming, and I'm confused as to why I don't do more here, I suppose the water in the bay isn't really the best. I really am trying to get back into shape, I think the next step is to actually get back into martial arts.

Whew, typing all that made me tired. At least I'm not sitting in front of my computer dorking out *all* the time. Speaking of dorking out, I've really got to write that sample AJAX program in Turbogears for the next Tampa Bay Python Meetup.

Fireworks Photos, Again

2007-07-05T23:09:00.000-04:00

Well, I got a flickr Pro account, because I'm quickly running past 200 photos on the thing. Put some more fireworks photos up, and a couple older ones. Have a looksee here.

Edit: Holy mackerel, I had over 300 pictures.

Ask A Ninja

2007-07-05T22:48:00.000-04:00

Bill was cheering me up today by playing Ask a Ninja episodes over lunch. We watched Ninja Omnideuce, which is definitely one of my favorites. I couldn't help myself, had to make this picture. The Ninja answers the question "Why do I suck at life?".

Probably, though, you should just watch the episode. It's much funnier when he says it. :) Other gems from the episode:

What is the most deadliest move you know? "Probably, from New York to Florida. People don't come back."
Hey are there self help books for lousy ninjas? "Yes, they're called funeral directories."
How many people have you wrongly killed? "Just one, but I went back the next day and I killed him correctly."

If you haven't seen this yet, go and watch them all. There's even a handy podcast. Do it, do it now.

Epic cute!

2007-06-01T13:26:00.001-04:00

from the flickr comments, this says it all -

One turtle to rule them all
One turtle to find them
One turtle to bring them all
And in the cuteness bind them

The madness that is interior decor

2007-05-31T22:23:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been utterly consumed with moving, & trying to set up house now that I'm finally over here. This has been consuming my every waking thought (all my will is bent on it) - and I didn't even realize just how much until like 25 out of 30 of the tabs I have open in firefox are home-deco related. 0_0

I have stumbled upon some utterly astonishing stuff in my wanderings, some more useful than others -

Apartment Therapy has a ton of photo tours of people's apartments, some of it is just jaw dropping:

This apartment has some really insane stuff in it, like the cityscape relief cut into panels as art in the dining room! And a crazy awesome chandalier that I want an excuse to try and make myself.

This loft/apartment has some things I would never do for sure, but so many amazing elements - like the icechest/cabinet with the vases, and the crazy rounded (reverse?) column shelves designed for climbing on! I'm very intrigued by the clear chairs, I looked them up and dang, are they pricey, but a cool idea. Also the fireplace is just jaw-dropping, although I do wonder a tiny bit about its fire-safety... plus I would probably want it to be more of a faux-slate type effect.

I like from a different apartment the use of this way more awesome clear chair much better... also the textures and stencils in this apartment are insane!

And this apartment is just HELLA cool.

On a more practical front, this blog is all IKEA hacks, which I am so totally down with. In fact out of all the many IKEA things I have, I can think of maybe one that I have used 100% as is intended by the manufacturer : )

My favorite "hack" by far - I would so do this in a second. Too bad I don't really have any doors that I can do up bat-cave-entrance style.

The other thing I found today was Rollerwall.com. Which, knowing well the evils of wallpaper, I think I have actually thought up before :)

Flavored Vodka

2007-05-24T14:27:00.001-04:00

Pandora keeps advertising vodka at me, which is my alcohol of choice. (Creepy, or coincidental?) A couple months ago, Absolut came out with a pear flavored vodka which is not really good for cranberry juice, but quite wonderful in Sprite. Now, Smirnoff has a black cherry vodka, which they're suggesting be mixed with Coke. I'd very much like to try this.
I used to be not a big fan of flavored vodka's, but I've learned that it's neigh impossible to get a decent cosmopolitan these days, and the Poor Man's Cosmo, cranberry with citrus vodka is the next best thing. Plus, you really can't argue with a great tasting drink that can be made by pouring two things together in a glass with ice.

My New Favorite Caffeine Source

2007-05-23T13:38:00.000-04:00

So, I never found Bawls on sale in Pennsylvania, but they have it in Publix down here in Florida (one more reason to like Florida). I love this stuff, it's tasty, has an awesome blue bottle, and gives me just the perk I need in the morning. Especially when I need to pore through startup logs of huge unwieldy java applications. Also, since I don't drink coffee, and coke is just too harsh before lunch.

Infinite Loops

2007-05-18T17:23:00.000-04:00

Ooh! Infinite loops are so cute! I almost forgot about these things, just ran into one and it made me smile. There's definitely something wrong with me. :)

When syntax highlighting affects coding practices

2007-05-16T15:56:00.000-04:00

In eclipse, using the php extension, both 'and' and 'or' get colored in a bold dark purple, but && and || don't. Normally, the symbols are interchangeable in my head, I've coded for long enough by now, but I find myself preferring 'and' and 'or', just because it makes my code look more readable to me due to the syntax highlighting. Unfortunately, there's a difference in meaning, the operator precedence goes like:

||, &&, ... =, ... and, or

which could be a problem for me if I'm not paying attention some time in the future, and expect the wrong behavior. (And is also kinda goofy, this is why we use parenthesis)

o.O

Geek Laws

2007-05-14T09:53:00.000-04:00

I love this stuff:

Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Godwin's Law:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Benford's law of controversy:
Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.
O'Toole's Corollary of Finagle's Law:
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.
Hanlon's razor:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

(You can find more here)

Weekend of Fun!

2007-05-14T00:59:00.000-04:00

So, this was a fantastic weekend. Friday, I watched an ep of Band of Brothers with some of my friends. I've discovered people that like WWII films, but haven't seen it yet, and I'm determined to right this wrong. If you're reading this, like WWII films, and haven't seen Band of Brothers, please go do it now. Really, it is that fantastic. The style is unbeatable, and really pulls you into the moment, and probably the best parts are the interview bits before and after each episode with actual surviving members of the 101st Airborne. It just doesn't get any more real than that. We made yummy burritos for dinner.

After that, I went to Blues Dance, a party held by my good friend Bill, which starts at 1am, and goes until early in the morning. This was a very successful party, even though I didn't dance much, I had a fantastic time talking all night with another geek. (Look, I found another person I can geek out with. Awesome.)

Saturday was consumed by sleep and going to the Tropical Heatwave concert in Ybor city, Tampa. We got there early to get a good parking spot for the mobile home, and walked around a bit. If you ever go to Ybor city, and you like crepes, you must try out Le Creperia Cafe. Not only is the atmosphere delightful, but our waiter was definitely one of a kind, and the food was amazingly fantastic. I would love to go there again with someone for a relaxing meal. Ybor, by day, is a really neat place to walk around. They have a great motif going, the brick, tile, and iron wrought architecture has a lot of character. There's even a trolley that goes through it. Tropical Heatwave was also very good. I really liked Poetry n' Lotion, though most of the bands we saw were quality. The only issue I had was the loudness of the sound system in the Cantina. For crying out loud, it was actually painful to stand in there towards the end of the night. Saturday night, we went to a friend's house and played Katamari Damacy, Guitar Hero, and watched FLCL. FLCL is funny, strange in a crazy way, and has a good soundtrack, but the best part is the graphics. Some of the artistic style is truly unique, all of it is very well done.

After a little sleep, I went to North Shore to play Beach Volleyball. Again, the crew I play volleyball with is full of great people. Nothing beats hanging out on the beach and playing some good games of co-ed doubles. I went home, got dressed, and went to Swing Dancing in Tampa with Bill. Most of the swing dancers I've met are pretty cool, and all of them are nice. It's an interesting crowd to hang out with.

Well, that brings me to now. Quite a good time, but I have to get to sleep and go to work in the morning. Cheers.

Rasterbation Part 1

2007-05-11T00:10:00.001-04:00

Bedroom
Originally uploaded by Kusmeroglu.

Here's the first poster I made. I got white wrapping paper, and used lots of spray on glue, so that I can take it up and down pretty easily. If anyone else wants to do this, I *highly* recommend spray glue, just be careful not to spray it on too thick to wet the paper, and you're golden. Catwoman is by far my favorite comic book character. I hope that they make a new batman movie with her in it. I would die so, so happy.

Rasterbator

2007-05-08T10:50:00.000-04:00

Funny name aside, Rachel pointed this out to me in an email, and it's freaking awesome. So cool, that I was obsessed until I found the perfect pictures to rasterbate. (My house needs some decor, haven't had a chance since I moved in to really do anything) My pictures? Batman for the living room, Catwoman for the bedroom. Both Bruce Timm (of course.. remember this?)

Spiderman in the Rain

2007-05-08T00:43:00.000-04:00

So, I've been telling people about this piece for years, I saw it a long time ago and it's stuck with me all this time as my favorite Spiderman picture, but never found it again. Apparently I hit the right Google terms this time, and I've finally found it. Too bad it's so expensive. Anyways, done by John Romita. There was a scene in Spiderman 3 that reminded me of it, which is why I brought it up again.

Kentucky Derby: Street Sense

2007-05-05T12:39:00.000-04:00

So, it looks like Street Sense is already a favorite, but I'm going to have to agree. He's a great looking horse. Plus, he's part Irish, and who can argue with that?

[Edit: I win!]

Snowy Lotus Elise 8

2007-05-01T11:36:00.001-04:00

Snowy Lotus Elise 8, originally uploaded by Fleur-Design.

With an Apple sticker! Dude, you are my hero. *drool*

python.struct

2007-05-01T00:17:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of work on translating data spit out by various sensors recently, so I now know intimately what bit-twiddling means. At one time in my life, when I was more impatient, I swore I would never enjoy this sort of thing. Python's struct module sure does make it easy, if not enjoyable(ish). If only bit-twiddling in C was this quick..

Cygwin is my secret hero

2007-04-30T23:06:00.000-04:00

In trying to develop in C on my Windows machine at work *nails scratching on blackboard here*, I installed Cygwin. At first, I only used it when I had to, but today, I noticed myself using it constantly. Thank the gods for decent command line on windows. And GCC. I was getting tired of lugging my personal laptop in just to do some coding. I guess when you learn everything in a *nix environment, it's just a pain to get anything done in windows.

ls > dir any day of the week.

Spring In Florida

2007-04-30T13:01:00.001-04:00

Purple Trees
Originally uploaded by Kusmeroglu.

I've been taking pictures all over the place, this is an awesome place to live for photo-ops. We don't have season changes, the *only* difference between winter and spring so far has been the slight rise in temperature, and these gigantic purple trees. They're quite surprising at first, when you're driving along, and there's a shock of purple over the road.

Fireworks Photos

2007-04-16T00:33:00.000-04:00

We watched some fireworks off of the St Petersburg pier from a boat this weekend, and I went a little crazy taking pictures of fireworks. Some of them actually came out really nicely, as long as you cropped them right. Very abstract-arty. You can check out the lot of them here on flickr.

Florida

2007-02-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

So, I live in the world of beaches and sun now, tomorrow will mark my one month anniversary of moving down. Everything here is strange and different, but in a good way. The weather is fantastic, the winter here is like spring or summer up in Pennsylvania. I'm told that the summer will be unbearably hot and humid, but I've never been one to complain too loudly about such things. The plants and animals are all odd, there are squirrels, but just as many lizards, the palm trees out number normal trees, and there's spanish moss hanging off of everything, giving the scenery a hint of the exotic and ancient. The sunsets are fantastic, and even the crappy beaches have a hint of clear blue water. Living between the gulf and the bay, I see water all the time.

The people at work are all great, I haven't had a bad experience yet. Things are hectic and the politics are at an extreme because there is a lot of upheaval going on, but everybody is still nice. People down here are nice in general, except when they are behind the wheel. Everyone has this friendly, laid back sort of attitude in the city. (I hear it isn't so in other places nearby) I just ate at The Chattaway, which is this adorable 'best burger in st. pete' type place. I've never ate somewhere with such an interesting and comfortable setting. On the way there, I passed my neighbor, Moe, and her husband, who asked if I was going to "the chatty", since it's only 3 blocks from me in an otherwise residential area. The guy I ate with is my new beach volleyball partner, V, a truely nice guy. We ate and sat by a firepit type thing and talked about life and relationships, then chit chatted with a couple who were also sitting by the fire.

Charlie, one of the guys from work, invited me out to play beach volleyball, and got me totally hooked. I played for the first time on tuesday, and I've probably logged 20 hours since then (thursday, saturday, and sunday). V wants to train me for a co-ed team and participate in tournaments. Apparently I'm a natural beach volleyball player, I'm picking it up much quicker than I did indoor volleyball. I blame martial arts and wallyball for my quick reflexes, and the scenery and company for my enthusiasm. Everyone I play with is really cool, and spending hours out on the beach can't be beat. Between games, you get to lay back and watch the boats go by on the water, or the sunset. I should have a dark tan in no time, which is odd for me, since I don't have the patience to lay out.

The nightlife down here is odd, it's all beer, wine, and music. There's a lot of jazz and blues down here, and most of the places have live music, then there's First Friday, where they shut down a couple blocks on Central Ave and have a band playing out in the street. Everybody drinks beer all the time. I'm assuming that it tapers off in the summer, when beer becomes heavy, but I wouldn't be suprized if people just switched to wine. It's very vacationy. Even people that have lived here their whole lives remark on how it's like a vacation everyday. (I think this is where the laid back attitude comes from)

Anyways, I just wanted to chat about my thoughts on moving to Florida. I like it here very much, I'm keeping myself busy seeing new places and trying out new things.

Google Calculator and Suggestions

2007-01-24T12:30:00.000-05:00

(Woo, Trebuchet is my favorite font. == happy with new dashboard)
So, I just noticed today that if you have Google suggestions turned on, like in my search bar in Firefox, you can do the calculator stuff, and it will pop up as the first suggestion. I use Google for a calculator, spell checker, and thesaurus all the time, this just makes my life two buttons easier/faster.
If you're not familiar with the calculator stuff, check this out. You can type stuff like "1440 minutes in hours", and the conversion (=24 hours) will show up as the first suggestion.

One Picture A Day

2006-12-19T14:55:00.000-05:00

So, apparently there was a one picture a day video making fad that I completely missed. (I think I miss them all, and that's okay by me.)
At any rate, this is definitely worth a minute or two of your time:

http://www.oldeenglish.org/podcast/one-picture-every-day

It's especially worth a couple minutes of my not ~~cramming~~ studying for exams time. 22 hours from now, I'll be done with all of my undergraduate studies forever! Woot.

Wacky Google and Saving $

2006-12-18T13:24:00.000-05:00

1st of all, Happy Belated Birthday to me :)

I haven't posted much lately, I have a backlog of wacky web findings - I think I found something about DNA barcodes? - and also google not only now owns blogger somehow but increasingly the rest of the universe - but I'll have to dig them up at a time when I'm not just procrastinating. For now I will only indulge my bargain-hunter-ness :)

A certain thoughtful and generous Mossy Blog owner got me a thinkgeek gift certificate for the Bday! a Whoo-hoo event enough already, but then in the process of trying not to pay for shipping and googling for coupons, I ran across this.

http://www.bigcrumbs.com/crumbs/frontpage.jsp?r=tamarwhite

At first I thought, this has to be a pyramid scheme? But I googled into it further, and it appears legit - and makes a lot of sense in the context of affiliate marketing.
Internet marketing is a wacky, complex, and often expensive business, it even makes a business out of advertising *itself*. Basically banner ads and ad-blogs and all sorts of permutations thereof exist.
I gather the idea here is, instead of paying a banner advertiser etc per click-through or per purchase, bigcrumbs pays *the customer*, and also lets the customer profit from further advertising.
And they gave me 6.3% cashback from my thinkgeek purchase. With a giftcard to pay for it, it's not just cash back, it's free money :)

Apocalypto

2006-12-17T10:24:00.000-05:00

I was quite entertained by this movie, I would recommend it, but then again, I've always like Mel Gibson movies. (No, I didn't watch Passion of the Christ).

At anyrate, the movie opens with this quote:

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
- Will Durant

which I think, along with the general plot of the movie, is quite fitting for this day and age. Go Hollywood and your social commentary.

Tom Bihn shopping

2006-12-05T16:08:00.000-05:00

One of the things I take most seriously in my life are my bags. I'm not your standard purse toting sort of girl, and after putzing around with some canvas bags from the local army navy store, I bought a bag from Tom Bihn. The Medium Cafe Bag is awesome, it just fits a folder with my papers and one or two small books for class, as well as gum, cell phone, pens, flashcards, and wallet.

Now that I'm looking at finally getting my Mac Book Pro, I'm turning again to Tom Bihn for my laptop case, and found this interesting tidbit that has me completely sold: Apparently some of the bags have a
Treason Tag, which hides the statement "We're sorry our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him." hidden in French amongst the washing instructions.

Happy Halloween from Indiana Jones

2006-10-31T17:56:00.000-05:00

My halloween costume this year was Indiana Jones, which was remarkably easy to do since I already had boots, slacks, a button down shirt, a whip, and the hat. I went out and bought a couple belts and a Indy looking bag, and all was well.

Overheard in State College

2006-10-20T14:22:00.000-04:00

Girl 1: "What are we going to do if the party is cancelled?"
Girl 2: "What party?"
Girl 1: "The one with all the floats."
Girl 2: "The parade?"
Girl 1: "Yeah.. the parade."

Ahh, homecoming, how I will not miss you at all.

Railroads will save the world

2006-10-10T16:55:00.000-04:00

I was very excited this morning to read this article in USA Today. I spent all day excited about it, and even showed it to some people, who were decidedly Not As Excited (tm) about it. This is probably the best news that I've heard all month.

The article is talking about Norfolk Southern Railway, which is updating some railroad tunnels and bridges as part of a new rail corridor from Norfolk, VA to Chicago. Points to take home with you from the article: The federal government is paying for over half of the project out of funds earmarked for highways. (Various state governments are also contributing money to the project.) The new corridor can handle trains that are double stacked with standard size containers (the same ones used for shipping all over the world), saving shippers around 500$ a container. With double stacked trains, Norfolk can actually make money. One train "replaces about 300 trucks".

Now, why are trains so important? Trucks are a terrible and inefficient way to transport goods. (By inefficient, I mean both physically and economically) Trucks get involved in many accidents on the highways. Trucks cause congestion on highways. Trucks damage highways to the tune of millions of dollars a year: one truck driving down the highway does the damage of 10,000 cars (Schwartzman). [Think about this: 1 Train = 300 Trucks = 3,000,000 Cars = lots and lots of your tax and toll money saved] Tires on pavement are way less efficient than wheels on tracks, not to mention that you're basically moving each item separately and with a diesel engine. Trucks pollute orders of magnitude more than trains, especially when you look at pollution per pound of goods transported, and in light of global warming, this is especially important. Trains are cheaper than trucks, these days, cheap transportation is everything.

Really, I'm mystified by the fact that we don't use trains much more than we do, in fact, we use trains even less than we used to. It just doesn't make sense in any way. Trucks should be limited to local delivery, the rail infrastructure should be updated and expanded, and something really has to be done about Amtrak. At any rate, you can see why this made me so happy. I hope this is the beginning of a new trend. Thank you, Nick Rahall, keep up the good work.

Princess Layla the Bubble Killer

2006-09-27T20:37:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post, to introduce Layla, hunter of bubbles. She has to catch every one, and we need more bubble solution to help burn off her excess energy.

This is one good photo I took out of 40. She decided to play Blur the Picture.

I think it might be a favorite game of hers. Others include:

Steal Stella's Shoe and Prance Around With It
Chase the Ice Cube
Run Flying Puppy circles Across the Room for No Apparent Reason
Leaping Lick the Face
and
Wrestle the Kitchen Rug.

Now all we need is the flying cars

2006-09-27T19:56:00.001-04:00

The future is now! As we were just saying on the phone :D

First of all, Philips introduces "Lumalive" Fabric, which is just, as a concept...

0_0

There's also a youTube vid.

Now if only they could crank up the resolution... but still.

So as I was saying - the future is, kinda, now. Ipods have finally gone way down in price, *and* are with video. In 2003 my parents paid $500 for a 3rd gen 30GB! Playstation 3 and the next Nintendo system (HTH does one say "Wii" and not sound like an ass..?) are actually finally COMING OUT. Wikipedia is for better or worse becoming the effective repository of all human knowledge, which gives me oddly giddy geek I-told-you-so feelings for some reason, and mapquest and maps google have totally changed the way everyone I know navigates. And you can zoom in on your HOUSE. Our neighbors have some crazy pools apparently. Suddenly *everyone* has a site on the internet, thanks to MySpace & co., no matter how Ba-Dong the design can be.

Google has become a freaking VERB.

And of course there's the Best ScreenSaver EVER - Electric Sheep.

Now you don't even have to download nuthin to see check it out, although personally I think in terms of sheer *pretty* the current flock WAY outstrips these videos. I just found that some of the sheep guys are now on MySpace - They have some youtube stuff, and some google vids. (Tons of free video and image hosting - yet another flyingCarsIsm.) Also hifisheep.com did what *I* was wishing for all along.

Creator of Electric Sheep on MySpace

He also has a google vid somewhere where he did a lecture at google, it was lengthy at an hour long, but so very informative. It answered a ton of questions I had about the sheep.

Awesome Sheep designer's myspace

Opposite of a desert tree at sunset

2006-09-20T23:09:00.000-04:00

Opposite of a desert tree at sunset
Originally uploaded by Kusmeroglu.

I've been looking through pictures tonight, a little cruise down memory lane, and found this one, which I always meant to put up somewhere. I think it's a unique sort of play on the familiar desert tree picture. The background is the shops along college ave, picture taken in a winter storm twilight at penn state, 2005.

Research Project

2006-09-12T23:00:00.000-04:00

I'm doing an undergrad research project on combining social bookmarking information with internet search. I'm trying to determine if adding tags to search results speeds up the process of finding the page you are looking for. Please help out by filling out this 5 minute questionnaire, I need all the responses I can get.

Thanks!

Aikido

2006-09-12T00:38:00.000-04:00

I've taken a couple Aikido sessions with Penn State's local Aikido club, and I have to say that it's a lot more interesting than I originally thought. I've always been big on cross training, but Gung-fu always has the sweet spot in my heart. Gung-fu and all the other circular arts resonate with me much more. (I guess I'm just not a brute force linear kinda girl) At any rate, Aikido seems to have perfected the circular-ness of martial arts. It's so good, that even having some experience in martial arts (though I'm still very much a beginner), it still seems like magic when you execute a move right, and your partner just falls over. (Likewise, when someone gets a move right on you, and you find yourself on the ground) I also really like Aikido manner: they don't have any aggressiveness to them at all, no hands up in guard position stances, they just chill out and wait for the attack to be their opportunity. I'll have to drill breakfalling more, so I don't break any more collarbones, but I definitely suggest anyone that's into martial arts to at least try Aikido out, or practice with an Aikido student and let them show you what it's all about.

Disturbing things in the newspaper

2006-09-07T20:23:00.000-04:00

I picked up a copy of USA Today to browse over lunch. (Apparently the new policy of not eating or drinking in classrooms means that people aren't leaving newspapers around for me to read second hand) It's been a while since I had the time to look in a paper, and I was surprised as some things I found in there. The article on higher education statistics, for one: The US only has a 35% college participation rate, and a measly 17% completion rate. 17%! I assume that community colleges and the like are a larger part of this than Penn State, but that still seems like such a low number, especially coming from my point of view. Craziness.

The other thing that I thought ridiculous: A book review of 'World War Z' by Max Brooks (review by Deirdre Donahue). I've never heard of the book, but zombies are always interesting, unless you say this about the book: "Brooks' clever premise is that a virus has turned people into the undead. Hordes of flesh-devouring zombies roam the earth, hunting down and infecting the living. Governments, armies, doctors, economies collapse in turn." Wow, how original and clever! Wait.. I must have missed something, that's the same premise of every zombie story I've heard of. (Doctors collapsing?) I'm going to go ahead and assume that Brooks' way of telling the tale might actually possess "more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles", but still.

The strange thoughts one has late at night

2006-05-15T02:04:00.000-04:00

So, I've been really sick recently, one of those colds that hits you hard and takes you down before you realize what's going on. Also, I can't sleep. I'm a night person, so I'm actually feeling pretty good right now, and not sleepy at all.

Anyways, I got to thinking about drugs, which led to thinking about yuppies, which got me to thinking about the idea of 'normal'. I don't know if this is a phenomenon elsewhere in the world, my thought is that it's localized to the good old US of A. Now, everyone has different reasons for this, but I've never met a person who thought they were anywhere near normal. (If you don't believe me, name one person who doesn't think their family is crazy) I think this is the secret behind the Power that the Media has over people (Americans?). All these trends and things, the crazy stuff people will believe, people following the big names in entertainment closer than, well.. anything important that's worth following, you get my drift. It's just a whole bunch of people striving for some non-existant normalicy, which the Media will apparently show them, with the zeal of moths to flame. Okay, it's kinda obvious, but the key here is Yuppies, damnit. Or maybe it's the Tylenol PM.

Google Maps version 2

2006-04-17T23:12:00.000-04:00

In a previous post, I complained that google maps only displayed points on one world map tile at a time, so if you had it zoomed all the way out, and scrolled around, the points would dissapear from one view of the world, and reappear on the next one over. They fixed that, so as you scroll across the pacific ocean, the points migrate themselves over at an appropriate time. It's nice, I like it. Actually, I really like everything they did in the version 2 API, at least as far as I've worked with it.

Hopefully my mysterious problems where the maps only seem to work reliably on my own computer will also go away.

Paul Graham: How to Do What You Love

2006-01-24T18:25:00.000-05:00

Good article on .. how to do what you love. Okay, obvious bits over with, I've always liked Graham's articles. I wish more people understood that liking what you do it extra important. Especially this bit: "You have to like what you do enough that the concept of "spare time" seems mistaken."

It jives very much with the fact that I just finished the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (also, very good).

No Updates?!

2006-01-18T21:25:00.000-05:00

Ah, it's been a while. I think I wrote a couple posts, but it must have been in my dreams because they are certainly not up here. Oh well. Life is busy, but good.
Python, my dearest, I have not forgotten you! (Even if I'm not dragging my butt to Texas for PyCon) Still letting that R.A.T. idea simmer in the back of my head.
In other news, Halo 2 is addicting.
In further, and also other news, I'm trying to muster up some inertia for a webcomic. I know you guys think I'm joking, but I'm serious. If these guys can make their own decks of cards, then there's gotta be some left for me.
Back to studying latin..

I worry sometimes

2005-11-16T15:40:00.000-05:00

Things like this, and more obviously the increasingly terrible "grammar" (I use the term very loosely) used in instant messageing make me worry for the future. Now, I know and openly admit that I can't spell at all, nor am I very good at grammar, so this affects me more than others. I'm like a bad spelling and grammar sponge. Think of our kids, and the next generation, growing up surrounded by all sorts of errors and misuse. Oh the terror.

In other news, that A List Apart site is a really good read. I stumble across it looking for css and javascript (blech) solutions everyonce in a while, and always stumble away feeling more knowledgeable.

Nasa.. UFOs... Doinks... Oh my. O.o

2005-11-15T13:11:00.000-05:00

So I'm googling along, minding my own business, and I run across this in a search for NASA space images on images.google -

... 0.o ?

Here's where it comes from - it's basically about how you can't trust things like image processing in the wrong hands (or possibly even the right ones..?). Brain not doing so hot without the sleep, so further commentary is sluggish in the forthcoming...

So, having basically not slept at ALL last night, I I'm thinking to myself, "Self, does this not strike you as ... more than just a tad odd?" (Yes, sadly, an actual quote from my stream of conciousness. Le Sigh.) My brain is not fitting pieces together so good just now. I'm not sure I can put more coherent thought into it than that at the moment, as fish-mouth-eyed (?? o_0 ??) as I feel right now, and plus I have actual, honest, cross-my-heart work that I need to Google for space photos for (oh, the irony).

But... Well, here goes nuthin'...
I'm having odd thoughts about the persistence of the UFO mythology / whatever - I think mostly about the possibility of some deeply rooted Jungian archetype type racial memory ... So maybe the reason people around the world see UFOs is because of media exposure and already having heard stories, or maybe it's because they're really "out there" and swinging by now and then to give us The Meaning Of Life or perhaps as crazy college-kid-aliens swinging by and playing pranks on us on weekends, or maybe we have some kind of UFO idea embedded in our psychological makeup to begin with. That would certainly make us look for the things regardless of whether they're there or not.

..Which of course, if our species is wired to believe in not only dragons and heroes, but also UFOs, would have all sorts of possible explanations by itself, and certainly doesn't exclude the first two possibilities.

The whole ideal of a racial memory does beg the question of external interference anyways.
My favorite example would definitely be the Vorta from ST:DS9 . (Unbelieveably insanely awesome show... dang do I miss it...) They were genetically engineered to believe that the species that altered their DNA were Gods.

Overall, odd and creepy thoughts to be having while this low on the sleep-o-meter.

Hawkgirl & Mystique - Halloweenies

2005-11-09T11:34:00.000-05:00

First of all, I can't resist but point out the following delightful incongruity.

This photo is of Linden from this Halloween, who *wrote the post preceding this one*:

If you have the slightest familiarity with the Marvel universe, you probably recognize Mystique. (also here's a more succinct & faster loading article on Mystique)

Here's us together, I'm Hawkgirl from DC's Justice League (the Bruce Timm animated cartoon network version). I really, really just adore her, and the Green Lantern - they're both just so non-corny and overall kick-ass characters. We prove our geek street cred, yes we do! ^_^

I just moved, and I was about 1/3 unpacked at the time of this photo. That's why the messy background. :)

The wings I did in about a day, it was pretty nuts. I really still can't believe I pulled that one off. The mace I did in a flurry of late-night insanity, and I sorta accidentally made a real weapon out of paper, hot glue, and a styrofoam ball... how *do* I manage these things?? I didn't think you could make a dangerous *mace* out of craft store supplies... but I guess if anyone would do it *by accident* it would be me...

Here's some more of our pictures, with bonus costume switching ; )

Computers make the world go.

2005-11-08T22:28:00.000-05:00

I've been mulling over a project in the back of my head, and thinking about computer/human interfaces in general recently:

The thing that we (and I'll presumptuously speak for all mankind for a moment) want is computers that do more automatically for us. The whole point of a tool is to make things easier. Sometimes I wonder if tasks are actually quicker, now that we have computers. They are, but not as much as people would like to think. There's all the buying, learning, upgrading, and dealing with quirks, bugs, and crashes. I would love to spend less time on that, and more time reading The Fountainhead.

The problem with computers doing things automatically is that we never want quite exactly the same thing. Even if computers do learn to automate a series of repetitive tasks, the second we want something slightly different, we run into the problem of how to tell the computer to do something different. As an example, when you pop a blank cd into a mac or pc, it realizes that the cd is blank and pops up a little dialog asking you what you want to do with the cd. There's also a little box you can check if you want it to always do the same thing. If 99% of the time you want to burn a music CD, you can tell it to always do that, but it's not simple, if not impossible, to tell it to stop doing that when you want to burn a data CD. Thankfully, that doesn't lock you into anything, you can always close the music burning software and open something else; but it's a good example.

So, the problem is finding an intuitive way to represent automating tasks, one that isn't in your face like so many Microsoft Office tools are. We are all gradually picking up this terrible JustClickYes syndrome. I think I might have something with the R.A.T. idea, where the burden of teaching the computer what you want is hidden behind an artificial life interface. The limitation of that is that I wouldn't want any sort of rudimentary (or advanced, for that matter) AI actually making changes to any of my files. Maybe there could be some sort of visual, but simple, task/activity monitor that keeps track of any sort of automated changes the computer made, and allows you to roll back in case you didn't want something to happen.

... kind of like version control systems. Ooh. Wouldn't that be something. Like a more complex and better looking Photoshop History, but with logic similar to Subversion. Then, the computer can run around and do whatever the hell it wants, and you won't mind, since you can always easily and quickly undo anything it gets wrong, but meanwhile, it will save you time. Time is of the essence and all that.

Gotcha: Google Map quirk

2005-11-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

Since I've been doing nothing but playing with google maps recently, I discovered an interesting little quirk. You can zoom all the way out (or almost all the way out) so that you can see the entire world, but repeated to the right and left, which allows you to scroll and look at the pacific ocean. If you have a set of markers displayed on the map, it will only display on one world tile at a time. So, consider some markers located in Australia, and some markers located in Alaska. If you attempt to scroll so you can see both, you will only see the markers in Alaska, or the markers in Australia. At least in my case. Interesting little quirk though.

Comic Art Community- Leia By Bruce Timm

2005-10-03T17:25:00.000-04:00

Woah. How cool is this?

Very Cool. (In case you weren't sure)
Bruce Timm, btw, is the artist whose style is the one they used for the Batman and Justice League cartoons. He is my hero.

Rodent Aggregate Tool

2005-09-19T15:06:00.000-04:00

Take a Lookie!

This is my new project, which I'm really excited about. (This is one of those projects that came to me about an hour after I went to sleep) The more I think about it, the more I like it! (Also, I'm much happier on the inside now that I've made the decision to go Mac only)

The current development plan is to do it in Pygame and use PyObjC to handle drag and drop to/from the OS. Python makes me happy. Doing development on my Ti makes me happy. Lots and lots of drawing and scanning and animating to do, which also makes me happy because I've always wanted to try my hand at animating things.

The only things that make me unhappy art that my mac isn't internet connected right now, which stems from the fact that it doesn't get wireless signal where my PC does; I don't have a proper desk setup yet (pending on moving issues and money); and I have like no time right now to work on it.

But I am still excited about it. :)

'Magic brush' paints visual world

2005-09-18T13:35:00.000-04:00

This BBC news article is an interesting little tid bit. Kimiko Ryokai invented a brush that has a camera in it for picking up color or movie clips, and a electronic canvas for painting on. I think kids' response to it was really interesting, turning a painting into a story.

Can you play Sudoku with your fingers crossed?

2005-09-11T10:46:00.000-04:00

So, I'm trying to segway myself out of posting stressed-out rantings. Towards that end, I'm walking around with crossed fingers this morning. This is mostly because I have to help move an ungodly heavy mattress across 3 states today. And guess who I'm moving it with. I'll give you a clue - I'm related to them, and they don't have mossy blogs. : (

But since I have drafted my Extra-Large-And-Awesome Michael to help on the NY end, I'm hopeful that things will not be a disaster. It's good to hope, right?

So here's the good news:
I found a free sudoku site! on the web!

http://www.websudoku.com/

I can live with not being able to leave notes in the squares, what with the cross-platform-ness and free-ness and everything.

Breathe, that's the key...

2005-08-17T12:49:00.000-04:00

... I feel the need to, I don't know, almost apologize, or something, for what I just posted below. Rereading, it was a bit incoherent.
Plus, angry, with ugly text.
Eh.
Maybe not apologize, but calm down.
Even though my stress level is through the roof, I can still function and stuff, I guess.

..I'm just gonna stop and take a few breaths.

Sheesh, I started typing random subjects into random places in the post, so that roach issues are both longer than and above my brother's mysterious headaches and chronic vomiting issues.

Well, all I can think of to say right now, is that we come from a long line of highly intelligent and deeply stupid people, and hopefully we're some kind of mutants.
Or something.

I think I'll just pick up the remains of my brain and scurry off to non-blog activities now.

facepalm BLEH! best myDad impression 0_o

2005-08-17T12:24:00.000-04:00

So now we're getting spam in the comments.
Magnifico.
Spendiferous.

Less sarcastically,
*UGH*.

There's so far chandaliers, and some nonsense about lumber or something.

DAMmit.
*shakes fist*

In Other News, I've been having a rather intense couple of days of BS, smack-myself-in-the-face-inducing stress, and frustration. Spose I'll vent here.

The bold & intense blue text thing reflects my mood, I guess.

Roaches are crawling out of the woodwork and then dying in my apartment.
I hope an exterminator never comes within a 5 mile radius of me, ever again. Mostly I just get hives from the poisons, *especially* Borax, & can't take out the garbage because the shute closet is filled with it, and get the roaches IN MY APARTMENT rather than in the garbage shute.
There's really nothing like finding roaches belly-up next to the surge protector, next to the couch, in the middle of the floor, on the rug, to brighten your day.
Mysteriously, those unobtrusive RAID or whatever traps actually seem to work magic whenever I have used them, including in apartment buildings - of course, provided that your neighbors don't do dumbass things like leaving OPEN, still-liquid-having orange juice containers in the damn garbage closet. Then they just come back eventually.

My family is supposed to go on a "vacation" (more like a "torture-by-senile-psychotics") next week. NO idea what's going on there... well, because. partly...

Last night my brother just had a spinal tap. And yes, I mean the actual spine-puncturing test, and not the movie.
I have no idea so far if this was a wise precaution or just more medical BS.

Because of this and (even more) other assorted crap, I'm just a twitchy mess at work.

Ok, I feel midly better now...