Keyboard Kommandos vs WWII Vet

Too awesome.

To whom it may concern (and you know who you are)

Please do not have business meetings at the pub.

“Windows 7″ to debut tonight

“Windows 7” to debut tonight; literally dozens of people are expected to seriously give a shit*. Mostly the ones that love Vista.

Seriously, other than technology pundits and the occasional Windows fanboi, who honestly thinks that somehow a new version of Windows will improve their computing life?

Who, other than technology pundits thinks that yet another moving platform target is the best thing for their lives and their career?

We’ve got the Open Web, Firefox (and friends), and the Next Big Language. Does the operating system really matter when you’re at Sand Hill Road? Do any of those guys even want to seriously fund a big Windows thingee when they could be funding iPhone, Android, or some goofy SMS thing?

Whatever. I guess it matters because they have enough money to buy God. That makes them ‘relevant’.

* not counting the intense masses of punditry who will pretend that what they see tonight will in any way resemble what ships

‘Select Word’ in Komodo

The default Mac OS X keybinding doesn’t seem to include ‘Select Word’ from the keyboard. So here’s one.

komodo.assertMacroVersion(2);
if (komodo.view) { komodo.view.setFocus() };
var theEditor = ko.views.manager.currentView.scimoz;
if(theEditor.getColumn(theEditor.currentPos) == 0){
komodo.doCommand(’cmd_selectHome’);
komodo.doCommand(’cmd_endOfWordExtend’);
}
komodo.doCommand(’cmd_beginningOfWord’);
komodo.doCommand(’cmd_endOfWordExtend’);


There’s probably a better way but there you go.

Biff Naked

Here’s a challenge:

On Mac OS X, find a “biff” that doesn’t suck. C’mon. I dare you.

I tried:

• Native apps
• Dashboard Widgets
• Konfabulator widgets

I ruled out X Window, that’s too much overhead for a mail checker. Likewise scripting Growl is right out (although it’s probably what I’ll end up doing).

Here’s my use case, to illustrate what I’m thinking, here:

So it became apparent to me that I needed to get really good at JavaScript, so I basically abandoned Mail.app, NetNewsWire, Safari, and the rest of my Happy Mac-Ness for the Open Web (ie, I switched to Firefox and the Mozilla platform). This may sound strange, but I must now write JavaScript every day to make my environment even remotely comfortable (all praise Greasemonkey), so it’s sorta working.

One of the things I’m doing is using webmail. The webmail we use pretty much sucks; it has a timer-based biff but it’s insanely unreliable (it might as well not exist) and for reasons I don’t understand, I can’t get Prism to work; so I have to use a pure Firefox instance to read mail.

So obviously, I’d rather have a nice desktop biff so I only need to log in when I actually have mail, instead of futzing about with leaving it open (since their biff sucks and my attempts to override it merely make their biff suck at an interval I have defined).

The above items are of course the canonical widget platforms for the Mac. A survey of the biff widget universe reveals the following truths:

1. Oh look, 404
2. Oh look, requires Mail.app. (it’s not a real biff, it’s a biff for Mail.app)
3. Oh look, last updated for 10.3.9, not universal binary, no source.

In short the biff world sucks. Like I said, I’m going to have to write my own, which is just sad. I remember on Linux having a zillion different really great biffs. Is this just one of those weird cultural differences? No one but weirdos like me care about this sort of thing?

Every cloud has a silver lining

Results 1 - 10 of about 76 for “brain tumor” “oxygen storage”.

If it sucks so bad, why do you do it?

I feel somewhat compelled to follow up. “If it’s such a shitty job”, you ask, “why do you do it at all?”

I’ve worked construction jobs and retail jobs. I would be perfectly happy to work as a surveyor for the rest of my life; it’s just that there’s no money in it.

But, that also underscores the commonality between the 2 jobs: I love building things. I love solving problems. There is a huge overlap, so to speak, between construction (by definition, the building of things) and software. Silicon Valley is full of useless assholes but that’s what drives them, too; it’s just that their sense of the world needs …. recalibration.

So I’d be totally happy working construction forever; but this job lets me be indoors in winter, and I get a little bit better salary. That’s really it. I see them as the same job.

How about “It’s a shitty job” as a reason, huh?

I get so sick of the “why women leave IT” arguments:

This conspicuous gender imbalance is caused by a long list of problems, according to advocates of women in IT, including a lack of female role models, a pervasive stereotype of IT professionals as unfashionable “nerdy men,” and workplace sexism.

(http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/career/article.php/3746501)

No one ever seems to make the “it’s a shitty job” argument. Why is that? Let’s break it down:

• Long hours sitting still in a room with poor environment controls (lighting, temperature, etc)
• You get to choose: you can get treated like dogshit by customers or coworkers, or maybe if you’re lucky, both
• Unless you’re in Silicon Valley, where failure is celebrated as innovation and the highest tier one can attain in life, you’re going to work really, really hard and probably only make a decent living.
• Hope you didn’t start late: anyone my age is a dinosaur and will have an increasingly hard time finding the “sexy” jobs.

If I sound bitter, it’s … well it’s because I am. But I also like to think that no one really will speak the uncomfortable truths about our industry. Women don’t enter into IT because it sucks. The “lack of female role models” thing is just another bullet-point of suckdom after you’ve already hit “why the fuck would I want to do that anyway”.

(The article gets better on page 2, best summarized as “stop lying to people that this job is ‘cool’ to obtain gender balance”, which I agree 100% with.)

Lifting weights is important

Great piece at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/health/13muscles.html about weight lifting. 2 very interesting points:

Others go to gyms, where they may be intimidated when they venture into weight rooms filled with people grunting and straining and machines that can seem daunting. Those who do try to lift at the gym can end up using weights that are not heavy enough to fully stimulate their muscles.

I (finally!) realized that I don’t lift enough actual weight; I was incorrectly connecting grunting and straining on X pounds, not realizing I needed to be lifting X+Y. It’s intimidating but I’ve had a lot better results.

While women often say they are afraid they will bulk up, this fear is unfounded, Dr. Kraemer and others say. Acquiring muscle mass requires testosterone levels that women don’t have. Instead, the toning that many women say they want comes from lifting heavy weights.

Josh Hillis is fond of pointing out “hot == strong” and that women won’t generally get bulky from good training. It seems to be entering the mainstream now …

I hope your customers share your sense of elitism

Do web sites need to look exactly the same in every browser? I’m sure you’re asking yourself that right now.

Now you can find out! (Also, you can find out if Mike Arrington is a dick. Sadly the need to post if Caps are in the playoffs is gone; someone prod Gary to do this next season.)

Anyway, well allow me to retort.

I so want to live in the magic world where this simple web site will convince the braying masses that are our customers to suddenly decide it’s OK, yes, you’re right mister smart web guy, it’s totally cool that you hacked up our new internet thing at a Starbucks on your MBP with the WebKit nightly.

“We certainly don’t mind that it looks funny”, they’ll say. “We’re so glad you’re hip and you are helping us break free of the shackles that are the Microsoft-IE hegemony.”

Yeah. That’s totally how it’ll go. Or, in the real world:

“Listen, make it work in IE6 or I’ll find another vendor who can. Say another word to me about web standards and CSS, and I’ll go somewhere else.”

Maybe it’s that our customers are insane - no argument there, I post about it all the time - but it seems to be that for we poor run-of-the-mill web developers, life is pretty cut-and-dried: do what you’re fucking told, and that is “make it work on my aunt’s eMachines shitfest”.

Or maybe it’s these guys doing the talking again.