Category: arts and letters

I found a use for Ruby

…a place to send all the people who washed out coding PHP.

Commentary on Rails for PHP Developers

I haven’t read this book so I can’t comment, however, I have yet to read a good “Pragmatic Programmer Series” book. The one all the Rails developers jizz over, is so poorly written and full of errors, I am beside myself.

Please buy this book.

Not to emphasize the obvious, but if you can’t build a website in PHP, you must really, really suck. Be sure to shave your head and buy a MacBook on your way down the your path of enlightenment.

More Ruby history

Hmm, Ruby was making a comeback, too.

Don’t miss my book: Delphi for Rails Developers, you’ll be needing it next year. 😉

Posted on by tychay 15

Requiem for the Republican Party

Last week, the politics of fear ended:

“Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration’s warrantless surveillance program.

“If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don’t have enough domestic spying powers. It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations — including al Qaeda — that have gained strength since 9/11.

“I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

“We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.”
—U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, “Letter to President Bush regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” February 14, 2008

[A requiem after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 5

Why Red States vote red

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”
—Mark Penn, Chief Strategist for the Clinton campaign

By my count, if you are from Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, or the District of Columbia, the Democratic Party establishment thinks you’re insignificant.

Clearly the party is powered by idiots. These guys have won majority of the popular vote only once in the last 27 years! Triangulation my ass.

I’m so glad idiots like these will have been the first ones against the wall when the revolution came.

Parting Shot.

Posted on by tychay 11

Triumphs of the Human Spirit

Blurb is hosting Lunch 2.0 today on Valentine’s Day!

Reading people’s twitter’s I think

Am I the only single person who loves Valentine’s day?

Oh the gifts, flowers, chocolates, singing telegram, and the the restaurant dinner reservation! I love watching the public trauma this day brings to two people in love. Sometimes it is like a romance sped up. Other times it is a romantic comedy in miniature, but mostly it is a complete disaster—still memorable in a “visit the inlaws” sort of way.

To that last one, I remember how my friend Jay broke up with his girlfriend by taking her to McDonald’s for Valentine’s—given how I love fast food, this would probably be my ideal date. 😀

I thank that I never have had to privately experience that public trauma. Historo-mathematically, it should have happened—I know that I’ve been in a relationship during some February 14th of the past, but somehow I’ve been spared any compulsion to participate.

Instead, I normally celebrate it by spamming friends and family with an e-card.

Not this year.

[Triumphs of the Human Spirit]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

PENIS certificate

Received an e-mail today advertising a great example of three rights making a wrong:

Recipe for disaster

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  1. Combine all ingredients.
  2. Spinkle terminology liberally.
  3. Charge $1600.
O'Reilly PHP/SQL Programming Certificate Series

…

Not sure what to think about this, but I’m starting to wish I got rejected from graduate school. When people start charging for what experts in the field do for free, the experts need to sell out.

Time to sell out. 🙂

Posted on by tychay 3

Geek. Set. Match…

Just now, Mager messaged me:

“I am excited for Lunch two dot oh—I don’t say “point-oh” anymore.

Flashback.

…

In the summer of 1992, a friend was reading me a geek purity test he got from USENET.

One of the questions was:

Do you pronounce “*.*” as “star-dot-star?”

Of course, since he was reading it aloud, I heard:

Do you pronounce star-dot-star as star-dot-star?

Needless to say, I was quite confused. 😀

[More geek after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 5

Twat

At dinner with Morgan the other day, someone pointed out the past participle of “to twitter” should be “twat,” or perhaps “twatted.” As in, “That’s what she twatted.” Or, “I twat that.”

twat

In twitter-speak, OH means “overheard” which is a polite way of saying, “I don’t want to embarrass the person we all can guess must have said this. *wink* *wink*”

In an early draft an article, I tried the word out. But I ended up editing it—it felt uncomfortable writing about someone’s “twat.”

Posted on by tychay 11

Analog blog 2

I blame Merlin Mann of 43 folders. He’s the one who popularized Moleskines years ago.

How else can I explain that right after I wrote about my analog blog that Brian Moon pointed me to the very next xkcd about that. Which caused my friends to point out the sequel article:

journal 2

Journal 2 by xkcd

Which gave me this weird flashback to the Kubrick and Cupcakes Get Satisfaction/Songbird party, where I caught both Ramon and Dave McClure as being one of the few without hats.

Ramon

Ramon
Terra
South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/20sec @ f/2.8, iso640, 21mm (31mm)

Ramon is almost always styling with a hat. Since everyone else is with hat, I suppose he is doing without.

Dave McClure

Dave McClure
Terra
South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Tokina 16-50mm AT-X PRO f/2.8 DX, SB-800, ultimate light box
1/10sec @ f/2.8, iso640, 18mm (27mm)

Dave wears 500 hats, but the only one he has on this day is his party hat.

[Why Merlin Mann is the anti-christ after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

OOps! I (recycled my talk) again!

PHP is a hacky piece of shit that gets the job done that somehow that suits me just fine.

I honestly don’t know why I support SF PHP Meetup.

Quite frankly, I find the whole “Meetup” website strangely-segmented, overly-restrictive, and a closed-off and archaic anachronism. I am counting the days until Facebook or Ning finally gets their s—t together and wipes it off the face of the earth. But there it is, and I still show up these meetups despite opening my mouth and subsequently drinking a whole Cup ’O Instant Regret.

The only valid conclusion is I have a huge ego and just like hearing myself talk. So when Touge invited me to turn the next SF PHP meetup into a “Terry Show,” I felt strangely compelled to say yes.

And just so that you don’t have to navigate that horrible website, I, in a weird spate of generosity, decided to copy down the deets…

What: OOps! The PHP Fear and Loathing Guide to Object-Oriented Design
When: Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 7PM
Where: CNET networks, 235 2nd street, San Francisco, CA
Why: Because someone has to provide the “asshole engineer” benchmark, it might as well be me.
RSVP: The great thing is you show up. Just don’t give security the queer eye…download iCalendar, spam Upcoming, and whore this on Facebook.

A small dilemma was, as an asshole engineer, I’m fundamentally lazy—that’s why I became a software architect in the first place: so I wouldn’t have to actually write anything and could just rip into other people’s code and claim credit for their hard work.

What to do?

How about recycle an old talk FTW? After all, George seemed to like it.

OOps at SF PHP Meetup

Think of this just like Britney’s comeback performance only a whole lot worse a trainwreck.

So you better go to this talk, because my ego isn’t big enough for the both of us and I’ll need you around to pop it. If you can’t make it, maybe I’ll install Profcast or someone will stream it so you can count my cuss words on #phpc again. Then again, maybe not. Because you obviously missed the memo wherein I revealed I’m a lazy sloth.

Perhaps I’ll actually delete the slides that are truly embarrassing, but probably not. Wouldn’t want to mess with my perfect record of regret at PHP meetups.

Posted on by tychay 6