From #ruby-lang

<dl>

<dt>headhunter </dt>

<dd>“it looks hackish. thy code shall have no constants other than 0 or 1\. ”</dd>

<dt>Aria</dt>

<dd>“0, 1, e, the population of earth, c, or h.”</dd>

<dt>david_koontz</dt>

<dd>“headhunter, I think that's a silly rule, why is the biggest possible integer value better than the actual number you need?”</dd>

<dt>teferi</dt>

<dd>“Aria: what about epsilon_0 and mu_0? and G!”</dd>

<dt>Aria</dt>

<dd>“h pwns G any day.”</dd>

<dt>teferi</dt>

<dd> “Aria: surely you can't derive G from h”</dd>

<dt>Aria</dt>

<dd>“I wish I could. But then, I'd be hanging out in #nobel, rather than in #ruby-lang if that were the case.”</dd>

</dl>

For polyergic, libpoet, an implementation of “Active Objects”, where each object gets its own thread.

cdcarter explains well some tricks for marshalling Ruby objects.

Pay people to reduce your junk mail. Good idea.

Ketchup Art (My favorite is Mao Tse Tchup)

PhotoRec, a photo recovery tool. A friend of mine needed it this week.

SPARQL Update, from the semweb labs at HP. About time, guys. Now if Virtuoso’s SPARQL support would add it, I would have a new favorite database.

How much space does it take to be happy?. Tumblweed Houses Small (actually small) houses. I’d live that way.

Use the ‘user’ table from the default connection or pool

class User < DB('user')
end`</pre>

#### Use a specific database connection or pool

<pre>`Connection = DBConnection.new(...)

class Post &lt; DB(Connection, 'post')
end`</pre>

That is, identify the database by a (reconnectable) connection to it.

#### Associations

<pre>`class Post &lt; DB('posts'); end

class User &lt; DB('users')
	collection :posts, Post, :author # Optionally specifying remote key
end

class Post &lt; DB('posts')
	reference :author, User
end

Collection associations return a collection object, not an array — it’s enumerable, but will perform the fetch either lazily or eagerly, and has methods to force those. It could also take advantage of cursors for huge datasets.

All in all, it’s like a low-magic, easy-to-debug ActiveRecord that I have in mind. I’d layer it on top of DBI, and go about cleaning that up and speeding it up where possible. I’d also love to see the low-level database APIs speak something that’s directly usable as a DBI driver, and do type conversions in the database-specific and fastest way possible, preferably in C.

Queries by single field name and primary key should be easy. Maybe something like User.find(:name, 'John') or User.fetch(1)

Queries by join to an associated table should be possible. I’d love suggestions for an API. Dropping to SQL should only be needed for really complex cases, and be well-defined how the objects are derived from the result set. Replacing what’s under the hood with something entirely unlike SQL should be possible and only break apps using SQL queries.

All of this makes me wish Ruby had a way to swap in a custom parser inline and then yield back to normal parsing at some place. Something that would allow User.find(name = 'John' and joindate < Date.today) — mixing in some Ruby syntax into a custom parser. I’ve some thoughts on how that could be done, but nothing coherent enough to stick in code.

Skype has made some rather interesting open PostgreSQL tools.

Rack really is the shit. Nice work, Chris. The error reporting is sane, the middleware is simple, and it seems to Just Work so far.

Tofu taco filling

Crumble 8 ounces of tofu, mix with 2 tablespoons of paprika, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon of cut oregano, a half teaspoon of salt, a big dash of pepper, a few drops of liquid smoke and a small splash of soy sauce.

Sautee over high heat for a few minutes until it starts to brown.

Serve with soft tortillas and chopped vegetables and sour cream.

I just released Camping at the Mailbox version 0.5.2, more robust in the face of IMAP disconnects.

Sequel. A new and interesting Ruby query language on top of SQL.

There are Eden-based multi-motherboard servers out there. Neat stuff. I thought of that a while ago.

Basic Sauce (great for Channa Masala or Saag Paneer, as well as being generally useful)

Toast 1 tablespoon of cuminseed in a pan

Combine one tablespoon each, grinding as needed, toasted cuminseed, fenugreek, mustardseed, paprika, tumeric. Add at least a dash of cayenne. Add as much as a tablespoon of anise, fennel, black pepper, coriander, and any other non-green spice.

Sautee a large onion in oil, with the spices. When the onions go translucent, add a small can of tomato paste. Blend in a blender with enough water to make things blend easily.

Channa Masala

Cook chickpeas until tender (or use canned). Simmer in sauce, optionally adding onions.

Saag Paneer (Or faked, Saag Mozzarella)

Simmer spinach in the sauce, adding chunks of cheese (preferably paneer, but mozzarella does in an American pinch) about 3 minutes from the end of cooking.

Aria’s Generic Curry

Lightly steam onions, cauliflower, yams, carrots, possibly squash, red peppers and other vegetables. Finish cooking by simmering in the sauce above.

#ruby-lang

<dl><dt>slyphon</dt><dd>my crystal ball unfortunately has snot all over it right now</dd></dl>

PGCluster isn’t dead, just quiet (I suspect that when you’re Japanese, and your audience is often not, code speaks better than your English). 1.7.0rc is out for PostgreSQL 8.2.x.

Headline wrangler arrested for violating the direct object restriction. A slightly tongue-in-cheek commentary on a slightly unusual chunk of English gramatical analysis. And no negative mentions of Strunk and White, either!

To make a blank git tree, with no initial files committed (Possibly a bad idea since the original changeset ID will be the same no matter what project you’re working on), git init-db; git commit-tree git write-tree < /dev/null. Nuts.

Oracle Cluster Filesystem 2 is really excellent. Good, solid code, and not terribly hard to set up. Very impressive.

Build your own ~microprocesor for CS class.

Adam

Oooh, so you're the company that makes the internet!!

Aria

No, I just fill the barrels.

The “experienced with electrical shock” badge (Level III) from the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique.

The OpenMoko site went live today. A totally open GSM phone platform is a Very Good Thing. I’ll probably by buying one. Up yours, Apple iPhone.

StGIT, a patch-stack addon for git. I’m managing source with these at the moment, and it’s remarkably fast and seems complete.

Girls don’t exist on the interweb. I run into this. Double whammy when you’re trans.

[14:45:18] evn says “an article saying coffee is bad”

[14:45:18] evn says “dammit”

[14:48:42] Aria says “Does an article make it bad?”

[14:49:38] evn says “yes”

[14:49:39] evn says “yes it does”

[14:49:48] evn says “ontologically it must be so”

[14:49:52] chris2 says “we should propose the pragprog to publish a *book* how coffee is good”

[14:50:32] evn says “reality is determined by the physical mass of bound matter suggesting a hypothesis?”

[14:51:15] chris2 says “yes!”

[14:51:24] chris2 says “thats why law books are so thick”

A stained glass PC case.

The Willhelm Scream.

Making Thai Curry Paste.

Mental Help. Psychological Self-Tools. Neat book.

Steam 2 cups chopped mustard greens. Turn off the heat when the greens go limp. Toss with a little malt vinegar.

Halve and remove the yolks from four hard-boiled eggs. Mash the yolks with 1 tablespoon of mayonaise, 1 tablespoon of minced fresh ginger, a dash of salt and 1 teaspoon paprika. Add a dash of vinegar.

Spoon the yolk filling into the halved eggs, and place on top of the greens in a bowl.

Serve warm, with soup and a splash of vinaigrette.

I just stood in a rainstorm, wearing my bathrobe and clogs, staring up at the night sky and down at the four inches of snow on the ground, getting dripped on and grinning like a madwoman. I’m remembering rainstorms past, dancing in the rain. I’m remembering water drops hitting my skin after a sweat lodge.

It’s crazy to have weather like this right now. And I don’t care, because I love it.

I was just realizing that I have two people to thank for my joyful disposition. My mother for giving me the desire, the craving for it, and ananadabrat, for teaching me how.

2 Tablespoons oil 2 cloves of minced garlic 1 cup of finely chopped onions 2 cups of zucchini, sliced into 1/4” slices 2 cups of yellow summer squash, sliced into 1/4” slices 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese 3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese 1/4 teaspoon black pepper salt to taste 3 cups cooked rice (white or brown) 3 tablespoons wheat germ

Oil an 8x8 baking pan.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Sautee the onion and garlic in the oil in a skillet, until tender. Add the squash, cook until tender. (10 minutes?)

Stir in the remaining ingredients, save the wheat germ.

Press mixture down in the baking pan.

Sprinkle the wheat germ on top.

Cover and bake 25 minutes.

A friend of mine asked

does anybody actually feel confident?

I replied

I’ve been thinking about confidence lately. I’ve been talking to a friend a lot, trying to just help through a rough time, and working on confidence. -Being sure to the point where it feels reasonable to not expect everyone to hate em, expect that people will be decent and kind. It’s hard work, and it got me thinking.

Confidence in what, exactly? I’m starting to think there’s no magical “I have confidence”. I think it’s situational. In my last couple years, I realize that I feel confident that when I meet someone new, they’re going to at least like my personality. Confident that I don’t come across as arrogant like I used to. Sometimes those are small things, sometimes bigger. I’m slowly getting confident that my body moves how I think it does, and that I’m not unpleasant to look at. It’s a process, and it started being easier to see when I started breaking it apart.

Working with this friend, we work on confidence that people like em. Confidence that people won’t just up and leave em abruptly. Small things, but important. There’s others to be tackled.

I have a Tiger for x86 VMWare Image that I’ve been playing with for a while. Turns out that the latest QEMU can run it. All it took was using the Darwin boot loader, setting platform=X86PC, and then qemu -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net user -hda myimagefile. I’m pretty impressed. Go QEMU!

Nishiki Market, Kyoto looks like a place I could be quite happily with a couple thousand yen and a spare day.

Joshua explains how to munge with xorg’s keymapping files.

Nuclear war? Tea, damnit!

Useless Account. I’m #5629!

A Capella Mario Theme (And a Rock Band too.) via pseudomammal, from Fantent.