The other part is that I saw how quickly the Apple laptops wake up (and sleep). That also made me envious. I've happily trusted Apple to make a device that I want to use to accomplish the task they built the device for. This is an important distinguishing factor, because trying to use an Apple device for a use not intended is very frustrating. This is why I still use Linux servers, and can't imagine ever switching.
With this all in mind, when I looked at the iPad there was a moment of confusion. What is this device? What are the competitors? The UMPC segment isn't there, and the iPad is different than tablets. I honestly don't think there are competitors on the market now (JooJoo doesn't count), but there certainly will be (the HP tablet, etc).
The iPad is the natural evolution of the iPod. The very first generation iPod hit the market with an MSRP of $399. Not very far off of the $499 for the iPad, released 9 years later.
The iPad is pushing the limits of current technology, much like the iPod did back then (for those people questioning this statement, I dare you to look at iPod competitors back then.)
With technology at the point it is now, the current crop of personal media devices is going to be the future. Apple did not do this abruptly, they have been slowly removing and testing the waters. The AppleTV was the first device for media consumption, and it largely failed. The iMac and Mini were full computer that was largely non-servicable by the end-user. The MacBook Air was the closest shot, a closed device without a lot of ports. This was the perfect litmus test to see if people in general were willing to start giving up on things they didn't use.
This is where we are at. We have purpose-built devices that excel at what they're built at doing. In the case of the iPad, it's exactly that: a pad. Much like a pad of paper, this is the new generation. It isn't a computing device, nor should it ever attempt to be one. It will fail at that, just as much as the current "Tablets" fail at being competitors to the iPad.
You don't want background tasks on this. It's a single-task type of device. Push notifications and perhaps event loops are important, but on the iPad (or any other Pad device) you should be focusing on a single task. This is the expectation the device has of its user.
The technology is to be able to quickly flip between tasks. This is where Apple has a leg up on competitors and I am not sure if the competitors are going to truly understand that the quick-task switching is the killer feature. One which Apple does well with, but I still think they could do better.
So after sitting with my iPad for a couple days, both using it as a productivity enhancer and just a media consumption device, I still think they have a hit. it's exactly what it should be. It isn't perfect, but none of the first generation of devices are. I'll be buying the next generation when it comes out, and be very happy.
Now, each and every one of those cons is temporary and I'm certain will be resolved within the next couple of years. I'll be on my 3rd iPad and probably my 5th iPhone by then, and enjoying every one.
]]>MogileFS has always been my default choice whenever I needed to store a lot of data somewhere, without any relational context to that data. It handles replication, and for the most part just works. For things like pastes, with the support for images and other media types, it was a reasonable choice.
Except it is just a bit fragile and lacks certain features that we really wanted to have available to us. I don't want this to be interpreted as being critical of MogileFS because I think it's good software. However, I do think that it is software that requires more attention than what we wanted to give it and also is not an exact fit for our purposes.
This discussion was happening while we are also exploring various document-based storage engines (commonly referred to as "NoSQL"). This movement has produced CouchDB and, of course, MongoDB (as well as many others). For us, MongoDB looked like the obvious solution because it supports replication, has an incredibly easy API and was very fast in our tests.
After about an hour of hacking and debugging last night, I had everything working. I spent 20 minutes this morning writing a migration script and everything has just simply worked.
With a total investment of about 2 hours — including setup, "apt-get install mongodb" wasn't much trouble — we have replicated MongoDB storage (across 2 Linodes), and new storage code. I'm pretty impressed with the agility in which we can move to replace a storage backend, and believe it is a testament to the quality inherently available when using superior tools, like Moose, Catalyst and DBIx::Class.
]]>The logo came together very fast. Hoefler & Frere-Jone's Tungsten is CHC's corporate font so it's use was predetermined. I had it in my head to create something playful, classy and more pop than my usual work.
From jump I knew that I wanted to set the text on an arc. After a few attempts I finally found what I wanted with a negative leading. This gave it a presence that reminded me of an announcer crowing to the crowd: Codepeek has arrived!
The two-tone effect is intentional, providing some clarification for the words. The name is inspired by the concept of "peeking at code". My original idea was "peekcode" but the k and c felt like a linguistic train wreck that refused to roll off the tongue. Codepeek worked much better but was backward from my original concept. Placing "peek" front and center in bright white balanced the message I was trying to send. Careful not to forget the "code" I added a strong gradient and some subtle dots that are intended to look like bubbles rising in the code. Those embellishments can be easily removed and the logo reduced to two colors very easily, fulfilling one of the rules of logo design.
The small leaves set behind the name are decorative fleurons that provide some distinction for an otherwise wordy logo. It's a purely subjective decoration that I have an odd affinity for.
Codepeek was a great project that Jay and I took from concept to production in just over a week. It gave me an opportunity to create a light, playful identity that I'm very proud of.
]]>nolock_cpan[1]> o conf halt_on_failure yes
halt_on_failure [yes]
Catching error: "/etc/perl/CPAN/Config.pm is not writable at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CPAN/HandleConfig.pm line 286\cJ\cICPAN::HandleConfig::commit('CPAN::HandleConfig') called at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CPAN/HandleConfig.pm line 213\cJ\cICPAN::HandleConfig::edit('CPAN::HandleConfig', 'halt_on_failure', 'yes') called at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CPAN/Shell.pm line 393\cJ\cICPAN::Shell::o('CPAN::Shell', 'conf', 'halt_on_failure', 'yes') called at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CPAN.pm line 375\cJ\cIeval {...} called at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CPAN.pm line 372\cJ\cICPAN::shell() called at /usr/local/bin/cpan line 198\cJ" at /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0/CPAN.pm line 391
CPAN::shell() called at /usr/local/bin/cpan line 198
t/07-debugger.t ..........
Loading DB routines from perl5db.pl version 1.32
Editor support available.
Enter h or `h h' for help, or `man perldebug' for more help.
main::(t/07-debugger.t:26): package Foo;
Unknown error
Compilation failed in require at /home/ems/perl5/lib/perl5/Term/ReadLine/Perl.pm line 63.
at /home/ems/perl5/lib/perl5/Term/ReadLine/Perl.pm line 63
Term::ReadLine::Perl::new('Term::ReadLine', 'perldb', 'GLOB(0x8465e28)', 'GLOB(0x83ba9e8)') called at /usr/share/perl/5.10/perl5db.pl line 6073
DB::setterm called at /usr/share/perl/5.10/perl5db.pl line 2237
DB::DB called at t/07-debugger.t line 26
Test::Builder::CODE(0x8429fc8)(/home/ems/perl5/lib/perl5/Test/Builder.pm:2426):
2426: $Test->_ending if defined $Test;
Attempt to reload Term/ReadLine/readline.pm aborted.
Compilation failed in require at /home/ems/perl5/lib/perl5/Term/ReadLine/Perl.pm line 63.
END failed--call queue aborted at t/07-debugger.t line 63.
at t/07-debugger.t line 63
Attempt to reload Term/ReadLine/readline.pm aborted.
Compilation failed in require at /home/ems/perl5/lib/perl5/Term/ReadLine/Perl.pm line 63.
END failed--call queue aborted at t/07-debugger.t line 63.
at t/07-debugger.t line 63
Test::Builder::DESTROY(/home/ems/perl5/lib/perl5/Test/Builder.pm:317):
317: my $self = shift;
t/07-debugger.t .......... Dubious, test returned 9 (wstat 2304, 0x900)
No subtests run
t/08-const-sub.t ......... ok
Test Summary Report
-------------------
t/07-debugger.t (Wstat: 2304 Tests: 0 Failed: 0)
Non-zero exit status: 9
Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output
Files=9, Tests=73, 0 wallclock secs ( 0.02 usr 0.03 sys + 0.42 cusr 0.07 csys = 0.54 CPU)
Result: FAIL
Failed 1/9 test programs. 0/73 subtests failed.
make: *** [test_dynamic] Error 255
FLORA/namespace-clean-0.13.tar.gz
/usr/bin/make test -- NOT OK
//hint// to see the cpan-testers results for installing this module, try:
reports FLORA/namespace-clean-0.13.tar.gz
Running make install
make test had returned bad status, won't install without force
Stopping: 'install' failed for 'F/FL/FLORA/namespace-clean-0.13.tar.gz'.
Failed during this command:
FLORA/namespace-clean-0.13.tar.gz : make_test NO
* Fetching {module name}... ok
* Unpacking {module name}... ok
* Following dependencies... ok
* Testing {module name}... ok
sudo apt-get install perl mysql-server libdbd-mysql-perl lib-dbd-sqlite3-perl build-essential unzipsudo su -
cpan local::libperl -Mlocal::lib >> .profile
. .profile
cpan Task::KenshoWarning: Prerequisite 'Parse::Method::Signatures => 1.003012' for 'A/AS/ASH/TryCatch-1.002000.tar.gz' failed when processing 'F/FL/FLORA/Parse-Method-Signatures-1.003013.tar.gz' with 'make_test => NO'. Continuing, but chances to succeed are limited. * Fetching {module name}... ok
* Unpacking {module name}... ok
* Following dependencies...There are many more blogs I read, but lately these have been the most interesting. As my interests or the content shifts, I'll post updates to my favorites (and try to limit to just 3 people in each post).
]]>I don't think she understands why, and I'm not sure if I did either. To be very clear, I'm not a contributor in the truly giving sense of a word. To be fully honest, I contribute in a way that benefits myself. I have learned more from the core hackers than in any job, course or conference. This is my ultimate motivator to stay involved in the community.
The main take away from participating in the Perl community is my own personal and professional development. I learn. I learn quickly and discover many great things I wouldn't discover on my own. There is an additional benefit of finding a way to work on some very fun things.
It saves me time and troubles doing what pays me, so my job gets easier and better as time goes on.
I try to make a difference, but I know that my contributions are nothing remarkable. Anything that I've done that was remarkable was simply because I happened to arrive at a point first.
Even though my contributions are functionally marginal, I feel incredibly gifted and thankful to be accepted in a community as great as the modern Perl hackers.
These inventors of great things spontaneously evolve an idea into a functional product in amazingly short time. To witness these moments is something you cannot get in any office, Internship or academic setting.
I'm involved in Open Source because I've never found a more efficient and thorough vessel of learning. The skills I've developed while simply being around these giants are, at least for me, unattainable anywhere else.
Out of the various Open Source projects I've participated in, none have been as influential as the Perl community. In particular, the Moose and Catalyst sub-communities.
Thank you all who have made this community what it is.
]]>Ruby has a reference implementation called Rack, which takes and shares many ideas of WSGI, but makes it Ruby-ish.
Perl now has Plack, an astounding effort by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa. Plack has been awarded the "Module of the Year" award at London Perl Workshop, and in my opinion is very well deserved.
Within Plack, you can write very lightweight applications just using what Plack offers. You can also use Plack to handle deployment of several other frameworks, including Catalyst (via Catalyst::Engine::PSGI).
As an example of what can be done, I first saw Tatsumaki. Tatsumaki is an event-driven HTTP server that handles streaming (as well as long-poll comet services).
I built an application using Tatsumaki to handle streaming live race results to people who couldn't make it to the track.
It worked out very well, except for a small memory leak (that has been fixed). I had, at peak, 615 concurrent clients with an average of about 380 concurrent clients.
I was using the Plack server directly (Tatsumaki::Server), and having clients connect directly to it. I had a peak throughput of 10Mbps, with an average of 1.6Mbps of data going through Tatsumaki.
I call that a fantastic success, and thank Miyagawa-san for his hard work in getting this software to where it is. Without Tatsumaki, and Plack, I would have been doing a hacky long-poll solution that would have been much slower and less featured.
I also built a YUI3 based Multipart XmlHttpRequest library so that I can stream using YUI3 (I prefer this over jQuery) but IE failed to work, so I had to fall back to long-poll clients which worked more similarly across all browsers.
]]>That's it for now, I'll post more of my favorite advent articles as we get closer to Christmas.
]]>It was really quite easy, and I'm very happy with how easy MooseX::Types makes this.
First, you have to have your types defined, something like this:
Very simple, it just validates the date is after today. Nothing magic. Now, to write a unit test, you have to be able to check this assertion. This is made very easy because MooseX::Types provides an exportable "is_$type" method. However, that doesn't make for easy unit test construction.
Behold, my recipe:
A few things to note that are important:
$code_ref->() — Don't be scared of that.__PACKAGE__->>can("foo") returns an executable code reference, and this recipe shows why that's so useful.Enjoy.
]]>The first step was to fire up a grid. One of the fundamentals of using any template or one-size-fits-all methodology is realizing that it's a guide, not a law. I began by using a 60px column width to frame up the page. The first layer of the orange (which I call the wrapper) is 60 pixels wide. The second layer (the liner) is also 60px. This two-tone look breaks up the large, boring field of orange that would be there otherwise and frames the text. My original had an outer size of 60 and inner of 120. This looked great at high resolution but cramped the text unnecessarily when shrunk down to 1024x760.
The header gives me a place to show one of my signature design memes: organic patterns. I love to add swirls, paisleys and other curves into squares. Subtly peeking from our header is a complex pattern. It doesn't overpower the header but adds an underpinning of style. The inset type is set in Hoefler & Frere-Jones new Tungsten family. Recently released, I knew at first glance it was a great fit for the CHC brand. The inset effect — which is very trendy at the moment — gives it that stamped feel that anchors most CHC designs. A bit of a spotlight is added to the left to draw some attention to our logo.
The color was chosen to contrast well with the orange background but will also be discussed in the text section. The sides discussed earlier are fixed, so our center is fluid. Since I didn't expect there to be any grid needed for our body, this is a reasonable choice. Were we mixing in a lot of images or other content I would probably reverse my grid and let the sidebars be fluid.
Since the state of web fonts is currently in flux, I chose to use our signature font (the aforementioned Tungsten) only in the header. The titling and body fonts are chosen from the palette of standard fonts that users should have installed. The titling sans-serif progresses as: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif. The body serif progresses as: Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Georgia, Times, Times New Roman, serif. We move from least-to-most in terms of expected availability. Most modern users should have these fonts and if they don't then we gracefully degrade to other fonts with comparable qualities.
The base font size is 14px with an 18px line-height (14/18). Since the content is expected to be somewhat technical, I chose to keep the text open with plenty of room to breath. If it were going to be less tech-heavy I would probably drop down to 13px for the font height.
The sizes of the various header tags are arranged using the golden ratio: 34, 26, 21 and 16. The line-height of each is adjusted to be a multiple of 18 to retain vertical rhythm. All block text elements are padded 18px at the bottom, again, to keep vertical rhythm.
Not happy with boring ol' black for text, I chose a very dark brown that works well with the header. Choosing a background and foreground color for your page is very important. It's vital that there is adequate contrast between the colors so that people with various forms of color-blindedness (or people with shitty monitors) will have a good experience. You can use Jonathan Snook's Color Contrast Check to verify that you are meeting established guidelines for contrast. In our case the foreground (#312A24) and background (#EFEDC9) have a brightness difference of 190 and a color difference of 550. Well beyond recommendations. This gives us excellent contrast and a nice feel, as the brown-on-brown looks high end.
The markup is all HTML 5 with some features from CSS3. Since our market is people that aren't running old IE browsers we can leverage these modern features without alienating potential users or customers. The overall weight of the page is light, with only 5 images making up the base design. The YUI reset stylesheets are used to give us a clean slate to work from. There are some major problems with IE8 at the moment, but we're O.K. with that for now.
I'm quite happy with the overall design. The bold earth tones and the solid underlying principles yield a look and feel that is both modern and stable. A header swap will allow us to some simple updates in the future. The fluid center is causing some problems when scaled up to large widths, but that's par for the course. I'm also very excited about the recent support that WebOTF is getting. I assure you that I'll be closely following it's developments and constantly tuning this site over the coming weeks.
]]><script type="text/javascript" src="http://gist.github.com/1234.js"></script>Outside of the very real risks of allowing XSS and other dangerous things, this is useful to be able to do. However, the RTE doesn't allow it, and if the editor slurps in a textarea with a script tag, the editor silently eats all the script tags. Nom nom nom.
The only way to enable this behavior is extending the editor class, and doing some very hacky changes. Please note that this widget interpolates script tags even when they are escaped (meaning if you type in <script> in the editor, it turns into a live script tag). This is, for the most part, behavior that I want. Leave comments if this is oppositional to your uses, and I'll figure out a better API.
You can see my trusting editor in action, allowing script tags to preserve, and the complete code, displayed here:
The “official” version I will maintain will be at http://gist.github.com/200773. If it gets to be frequent, I'll setup a project for it.
In conclusion, I'd like to talk about my personal view of this solution. I don't want this to go on my permanent record without defending myself and this code. I think this solution is bad. Relying on a non-contractual API, and an internal method of the Editor (_cleanIncomingHTML), is generally asking for trouble. I don't have faith that this behavior won't change, and as such, this change cannot be guaranteed for future versions of YUI.
I would, very much so, like to see this change go into YUI Core, as it provides an option that trusts the programmer. It won't be included because of security concerns. Requiring the above type of extending to get non-destructive behavior really scares me, though. It just reeks of codesmell, and I'm sad that there isn't an option to trust the engineer.
I will maintain the gist to make sure it works with the latest released version of YUI (currently 2.8.0). If you notice a bug, please leave a comment and I will get it fixed up. I will also submit a patch to the Movable Type plugin that allows <script> tag embedding.
]]>$c->path_to("some/file") method that makes everything very convenient.@jshirley Feel free to log a ticket requesting more user friendly errors - http://projects.reductivelabs.com/ #puppetI want to be very clear about what I'm complaining about. I've posted a tweet that could be copy and pasted into a bug tracker. They don't know the context of my use, whether I'm evaluating it or not, but to just assume that I'm a dedicated enough user to submit a ticket is wrong.
@jshirley Thanks for the feedback, I opened a ticket at [url]. You can CC yourself if you want to track it.