^(almost) murphy.de

Did you know?

Every time you run the Ruby 1.9 test suite, a child dies :(

Piet leidet noch an globaler Erkältung.

^(almost) murphy.de hat zur Weihnachtszeit ein neues Layout.

• Die Farben habe ich mit ColorBurn ausgesucht (This Is On My Side, 14. Dezember).
• Der Hintergrund für die Titelzeile ist mit Inkscape gemacht – meine erste SVG-Grafik.
• Wem der neue Stil nicht gefällt, der kann auf den alten wechseln. Im Firefox geht das mit Ansicht / Webseiten-Stil / Original Style.¹
• Der Footer ist jetzt nicht mehr “fixed”, sondern einfach am Ende des Blogs – sieht besser aus so, und verwirrt Safari nicht.

¹ Sieht nicht so aus, als würde Safari alternative Stylesheets unterstützen…traurig.

Frohes Fest!

I wrote a simple version of the UNIX directory disk usage tool du (disk usage). Its output should be exactly the same as du -sh. Call it with the name of a file or folder.

Update: This is the second version, using a better method for the bytesize output and guessing the system’s blocksize.

I find this incredible (needs Flash). And this, too (needs Java).

All Episodes of Road Runner, on YouTube.

Teaching Rails more languages is now as simple as:

• downloading example locales,
• putting them in your config/locales folder, and
• adding a method to ApplicationController that detects the user’s language:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_filter :set_locale
  def set_locale
    I18n.locale = request.env.fetch('HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE', '')[/(?:,|^)(de|en)\b/, 1]
  end
end

You have to adjust the regexp to allow automatic recognition of more languages; I haven’t found out yet how to get a list of all available locales without using I18n.load_path, but maybe the community helps me out.

It’s cool that changes to the locale files are applied instantly in development mode! A great improvement :D

I just love Sinfest.

Missing argument in line 2.

heise.

So far, ever stinking attack from the McCain/Palin campaign against Obama has turned out to be false, misleading, or groundless. But Obama’s connection to ACORN in the past and today (see this McCain Web Ad) could be problematic, since ACORN is a left-wing organization that has tolerated, supported or lead criminal activities, namely voter registration fraud.

Maybe it’s that simple – Gallup finds that John McCain is too old.

Actually, 23/6 were the first to understand this.

(Barack Obama is 47, while John McCain is 72 years old. Michelle Obama is 44, while Cindy McCain is 54. Joe Biden is 65, while Sarah Palin is 44, and younger than Michelle. Together, they are 326 years old.)

My father took that photo in 2004 in Miami:

Well, I’m not sure if this is possible, but then, everything’s possible. Can’t be worse than Palin.

(Thanks to my brother for sending me the picture.)

Question: Right now a recent study says and the polls reflect that Barack Obama is gaining ever since this crisis has landed in everyone’s kitchen table, why is that?

McCain: Because life isn’t fair.

(Fox & Friends)

They say they love being underdogs. Well, let them be.

Angry, elderly men are missed by election polls

Is Murphy’s Law the way the universe protects itself from destruction?

In addition to delivering such wonderful thoughts, Megan McArdle’s blog reports about things happening in the US and is really worth a read.

(German translation on Ruby-Mine.)

Now, I’m about to write the Java Scanner for CodeRay (ticket #42 btw), and I thought it would be nice to have a list of built-in types highlighted – like String or IllegalStateException. I knew that TextMate had quite good highlighting for Java, so I checked the bundle for something to use.

Indeed, some smart guy included a very long regular expression into the token definitions, it looks like this:

support-type-built-ins-java = {
  name = 'support.type.built-ins.java';
  match = '\b(R(GBImageFilter|MI(S(ocketFactory|e(curity(Manager|Exception)|
    rver(SocketFactory|Impl(_Stub)?)?))|C(onnect(ion(Impl(_Stub)?)?|
    or(Server)?)|l(ientSocketFactory|assLoader(Spi)?))|IIOPServerImpl|
    JRMPServerImpl|FailureHandler)|SA(MultiPrimePrivateCrtKey(Spec)?|
    ...this goes on for several screens...

Apparently, they converted a long list of types into a minimal regexp, surely using a script for this. But that wasn’t exactly what I had searched for. How could I convert this back into the original plain list?¹

Seen the new iPod 4G color lineup?

Well, let me tell you what those colors stand for:

I love Barack Obama’s speeches, and I wish we had such a charismatic politician with such bold ideas of change here in Germany. He’s an attourney, and I assume a great one. But he seems to have some problems with math.

Endlich eine brauchbare Visualisierung für den Mac! Lässt sich sogar im laufenden Betrieb explodieren und fotografieren.

Kommt nicht wirklich an MilkDrop heran, aber visualisiert ganz ordentlich und läuft auf 1920×1200 flüssig. Auf meinem MacBook startet es allerdings den Lüfter, war zu erwarten.

Bild gefällig?

Muss doch mal gesagt werden :) Juchu!

So sehen deutsche Informatiker aus, wenn sie Anzüge und Perücken tragen:

Richtige Hacker tragen nur Rastalocken und Vliespullies:

Camping sessions not working lately? Well, it’s a problem with Rails 2.1, to be more precise: ActiveRecord 2.1.0.

This took me at least 5 hours, but I finally got it: the latest version of AR does Dirty tracking and partial SQL updates. This means it only saves a new value when it thinks the attribute has changed. Nice, but it bugs Camping. So, here’s the patch:

I was waiting eagerly for 3rd party apps on my iPhone since I bought it…but I didn’t expect the apps to be this good. Turns out the best game is actually free: “Aurora Feint: The Beginning”. The developers are very active and nice. Give it a try, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch :)

Screw that. Apple has taken it down (Thank you! No sarcasm!) because it actually sends your contact list over to the developers’ server.

Please read my other post on the topic.

I love MacBooks, here’s another reason: LiquidMac!

It works using the internal Sudden Motion Sensor that protects the hard drive from “disk failures if the computer is dropped or undergoes severe vibration” (official info). Nice toy!

Dümmer geht’s nimmer.

Die Wikipedia-Seite über Schatten enthält einige faszinierende Bilder…Schatten in der Erdatmosphäre, auf Wolken oder im Nebel. Das Brückenbild gibt einen tollen Desktop-Hintergrund ab.

Looks like a very old or very futuristic city, don’t you think?

Sorry, I have to do my tax declaration today and it suuuuuucks :/

Really one of the funniest websites I’ve seen:

I got naked!

http://naked.dustindiaz.com/ is celebrating the 3rd CSS Naked Day. Enjoy my blog without CSS :)

This is a short history of the computers I worked with, and how I named them. It is mostly to myself, so I don’t tag it.

The old days: PCs

The first PC we had was a 33 MHz (Turbo Boost!) 486 Intel with a 15" Monitor – an awesome machine at the time with Windows 3.1 on it. It even had a CD drive! I mostly used Paintbrush and played games like Commander Keen, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Sam & Max, and Secret Agent. I even programmed with QBasic under DOS. This is where I learned to program.

AMD and Vaio

The I got my own PC: a 266 MHz AMD K III, with 64MB RAM if I remember correctly. It had Windows 95 I suppose. Having become an AMD fan, my next one was a 500 MHz Athlon, maybe with 256 MB. It’s HD was still in use later, in Hikari.

Then I bought an Athlon 2200+ machine with 512 MB which I gave to my aunt (for free) later. It was called Seras.

My first notebook was a very nice Sony Vaio which I called Chihiro. You can see I was an Anime fan already. It had a 2 GHz Pentium 4. I used it throughout my first 4 semesters and took it everywhere. But I grew out of it, the CD drive broke, and I was happy to give it to somebody else (for free, again). After reinstalling I called it Motoko and gave it away.

Around 2006: Switch to Macs

Of course, I already had a replacement: my first MacBook, 1,83 GHz Core Duo, 1GB RAM (the default configuration was only 512 KB!) – Henrietta. The hard drive died :( but they managed to restore my data and I revived her as Rico. What a machine! My first software project for Transformal wouldn’t have been possible without her. MacBooks rock for software – and I even played Diablo II with it. She’s still with me, but I figured I need more speed, more space, and a real 64 bit CPU.

So I bought a second MacBook, about the best one you can get, 2,4 GHz model with 4GB RAM, and called her Triella. She is currently my working machine, and I’m typing this article with her. Her Windows XP alter ego is called Igor. I really loved my Triella!

In addition, I bought Simon’s old 24" Mac since he bough a new one, and I called it Batou (since he insisted that I give it a male name!) He also gave me his Airport Extreme, which I called OC Pupsen (German for “farting”), and it is serving my WLAN networt called Muffincore.

iPhones, iPads, MacBook Pros

And I bought one of the first iPhones, a week after it came out in Germany – the cheaper 8GB model, of course. It’s called Isako. 2G, no GPS, but still – it was my iPod, my cell phone, my toy, my city and world map, my calendar, my time table, my portable drive (with viewer), my fancy equipment, world clock, my stop watch, my calculator, my flashlight, my camery, my newspaper, my contacts, my mirror, even my spirit level. My little computer. Isako lived in my back pocket. Since I used her as my alarm clock, she was the first and last thing I’m using on a typical day.

After being super happy with my second MacBook, I upgraded to a MacBook Pro 13" after the Sandy Bridge update, i7 for fastest Ruby programming performance, even paid for the SSD upgrade (which was super expensive at the time – 600€ for 256GB!). I named her Fio. My new 27" iMac is Alpha. My 2GB Time Capsule is called Fenton; I relaced it with a newer version later, and named it Dreidel.

My iPhone 4 later was just called Isako 4. My mum used Isako until upgrading to a 4S much later; it still worked in 2014. The other iPhone 4 I bought in New Zealand (couldn’t get around the stupid SIM lock on Isako 4) was given to my friend Nico, and is still called Black Cat. My first generation iPad was called Moro; I sold it to my best friend Sonja later (she dubbed it “Kosmos”). I bought an iPad mini for me an Julia, which we called Toph, and later gave to my mum because we weren’t really using it.

After dropping my iPhone 4 into a toilet in Scotland (*snif*), I bought a new black iPhone 5 called Maytag. This was replaced by a “spacegray” 6s that I called Revy.

Julia’s first MacBook Air is called Ponyo. Still thinking about a name for my upcoming MacBook Pro Retina 13"…it should have something to do with Fio, so I called her Nahoko.

Im Moment schreibe ich einfach lieber alles in Englisch. Wenn jemand einen Artikel übersetzt haben möchte, mailt mir einfach.

MacBooks are closed with two magnets in the top corners of the screen. I wondered how I could put them to further use. This is what I came up with:

I had a short trip to London (business, you know).

A beautiful butterfly took a rest outside of my window for a while and waited for me to make photos of it ^^.

Some pictures of my home city I took a while ago.

Beim Recherchieren für unseren Vortrag über CUDA bin ich auf ein schönes mathematisches Bild des Mathematikers Claudio Rocchini aus Florenz gestoßen.

Der zugehörige C++-Code wollte bei mir nicht funktionieren; offenbar habe ich eine andere complex-Bibliothek. Nach ein bisschen Herumprobieren ging es dann (make colorful); allerdings bekomme ich ein anderes Bild! Woran das wohl liegt?

Die BVG streikte am 1. Februar in Berlin. Knut und ich sind deshalb das letzte Stück bis zu ihm mit dem Fahrrad gefahren – eine schöne Tour, an der Wuhle entlang.

Als wir einen Freund von Knut trafen, hatte ich Zeit, zwei Bilder von der Wolkenlandschaft zu machen.

Ich bin am Überlegen, ob ich das Blog englisch, deutsch oder zweisprachig machen soll. Was sind die Vor- und Nachteile?

This new MacBook looks nice. But it has strange specifications:

• just 4 plugs: power, USB, headphones, µ-DVI.
• no optical drive
• no user-replaceable everything
• backlit keyboard <3 – sweet nonsense
• optional SSD drive…finally!
• 1,36 kg (10 iPhones, or a kilogramm lighter than a MacBook)

Still, I’m thinking about getting one later this year. And I want an SSD (that’s a non-mechanical hard drive – die, HDD!), which is currently just too expensive (900 $ extra!) Am I crazy? Let me explain.

I have a new blog :-)

Not much to say currently, but stay tuned…or linked.