A couple of days ago I came across In a Van Down by the River via Boing Boing. I've added this to my blogroll as I think this might be quite an interesting adventure. That is, assuming that they actually follow through with doing it. The premise being they are selling off and/or storing most of their worldly possessions and hitting the road in a van. Go check it out.
So as part of the fixing the Twitter ate my Blog! problem, I rewrote the script that handles this task to reliable deal with a weeks worth of data. The problem being, Twitter only gives you the last 20 posts in the RSS feed. Thus if you twit more that that amount in a week (which is very easy to do), the bulk of them would be missing. This was a concern from the start, but when I was handling them daily I felt it was unlikely that I would post more than that on a daily basis. Anyhow, I rewrote it such that it now stores all of the posts for the week until they are posted to the blog. A simple enough solution. So the first week it ran well except some of the entries were not in chronological order. Thus I had to modify it to keep better track of the date and time so I could maintain the order. Again, a simple fix. But in sorting this list of data I failed to keep track of the original array key. Thus the sorting process made a huge mess by posting multiple, multiple copies of each entry. I believe I've now fixed that and everything should work fine when it runs early on Monday morning. We shall see. :)
I came across Avoiding Walled Gardens on the Internet yesterday and his comments struck a chord with me. Not so much for his reasons —although I do agree somewhat with them, but more so that "I don't get it." I've been getting lots of invites on LinkedIn and I typically accept them if I know you. But that's all I've ever done on on LinkedIn. I really don't see a need for it. Heck, I'm not even sure how I got an account there! I'm guessing somebody sent me an invite, so I signed up. Maybe someday I may need a job and it will prove useful. But for the most part I don't see it really being of any real use to me. If I need to network for a job there's plenty of people who I speak to regularly that would help me out. Plus anyone of the countless headhunters that call or email me regularly surely would be happy to help me in my quest…which I'm certainly not up for at this time because I like my job. Am I missing something here? I'm quite happy being LinkedOut.
I came across this yesterday and have to agree, Does Anyone Actually Read Software EULAs? I know I don't and I'm guessing you don't either. Personally I find them rather pointless as regardless of what you put in there, I'm going to do what I'm going to do. If your EULA says I can criticize your product publically and your product sucks, guess what? I don't care about your EULA and I'm going to tell anyone that listens that your product sucks and why I think so. You'll just have to get over it or sue me, OK?
Companies feel compelled to fill these things with lots of silly bullshit. I know, you're just protecting your interests. So why can't we simplify this? You make your EULA's say we can't give copies of your proprietary product away to others and build the best product you can. We the slugs that use it will agree not to pirate your wares and provide feedback to you on what's right and wrong with it. In turn you'll use this information to make your product better and we'll praise it to other instead of making fun of it. After all, if I paid for it, I think it's with my right to talk about it and do what I want with it -except give it to others. Sound fair?
This is sort of quick two for one entry…
I ran across this very interesting If You Knew Sushi article a couple of days ago. If you have anything more than a casual interest in sushi you'll likely find this to be a very interesting (and very long) article. And from the article, it makes me really want a copy of The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy…you should buy this for me…and/or something else from my Amazon Wish List. ;)
And on a sushi related note, my wife and I went to dinner last weekend at the very good Japanese restaurant Wasabi in Williamsville. Prices are reasonable and the food was fantastic. Check it out if you're in the mood.