Entries written in December 2008

Written December 24, 2008 in meta, python

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a geek break and go learn Python over my christmas break.

Hmn, wonder what this does?

import skynet

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Written December 22, 2008 in apple, punditry, webdev

Paul Graham (Y Combinator, the first spam filter, and the first web-based app: Viaweb) is one of the smartest guys on the internet when it comes to startups. He makes some great points in his article about placing controls on processes in big companies and small startups. His thesis …

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Written December 19, 2008 in mysql

Good article by Sheeri Cabral: Why you Want to Switch to MySQL 5.1. The 5.1 branch has gotten a bad rap, but there’s a few things in there like the table change locking that will help us with our replication environment.

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Written December 19, 2008 in punditry, webdev

Now Drizzle. I do not get cloud computing (maybe someone can explain it to me). Its fancy, its hype and I am sure there are plenty of people that need it, next to the other 99% that do not.

There’s the old saying about missing the forest for the tree, but …

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Written December 19, 2008 in punditry

Malcom Gladwell wrote a post that discusses the similarities between the way teachers and quarterbacks are hired and evaluated. Gladwell’s a blowhard. Frankly, except for careers in which you’re evaluating people based on a set of physical characteristics for which there is no adjustment (i.e. ballerina, horse jockey), you’re …

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Written December 14, 2008 in php

I’d forgotten about the PHP Advent until Matthew tweeted earlier with a link to “Yet” by Marco Tabini. This is the magnum opus of PHP descriptions — so far, it’s detailed everything I love, hate, and love to hate about the language.

A few choice quotes:

If there were

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Written December 10, 2008 in sysadmin

It’s been quiet around here for the past few months. I’ve been busy working on central syslogging of all kinds of different things, and the project’s been killing my free time because it’s downright interesting to put together this many things all focused on one task.

The end goal …

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Written December 5, 2008 in punditry

Talk about unintended consequences.

Facing a state budget crisis in July, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger fired about 10,000 temporary and part-time workers and ordered the 200,000 permanent employees to be paid only the minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until the legislature passed a crisis-solving budget. However, a week later

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Written December 4, 2008 in meta, punditry

I rarely make political or personal posts on this blog; it’s mostly a scratchpad for what I’m doing at work. Occasionally I run across an article I can’t resist commenting on — like this one linked from Get Rich Slowly, called The End of Wall Street’s Boom. In …

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