Disqus - Latest Comments for philcrissman

Re: Sun VirtualBox

philcrissman — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:58:36 -0000

Hmm. Didn't think of that.

My main use for this is testing web sites -- css and javascript on Windows-only browsers. So just having a sandboxed VM works just fine.

I can see how USB/device access would be great for more advanced uses, but fortunately I don't need it (at least, not at this point).

Re: Sun VirtualBox

philcrissman — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:48:16 -0000

Well, no; I don't think it is capable of some of the Parallels features; drag & drop, etc. But still; very good. I'll have to scan the manual and see if there is more I could do with it.

Re: A Veritable Smorgasbord of Twitter Alternatives

Duwanis — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:34:15 -0000

I loved Jaiku. I just can't consider it a viable alternative since Google's decided to completely ignore Jaiku.com for the foreseeable future.

Identi.ca is Twitter, without all the feature regression and API limits. It has groups, and they've planned some other functionality, but honestly it's just a straight up Twitter replacement. Can't go wrong with that.

I think my statements on FriendFeed may have been inaccurate. After checking the sight again last night, I noticed that my one major gripe against their usability may now be gone... so I'm experimenting a little bit. We'll see.

Re: A Veritable Smorgasbord of Twitter Alternatives

philcrissman — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:37:49 -0000

IIRC, I thought you _could_ change Plurk's color scheme. However, they made the choice of coupling features with Karma (yes, really), so that might be a feature that is only unlocked at a certain Karma threshold. I also found that the "let's sidescroll into infinity!" design seemed to make fairly large memory demands after awhile. We could blame firefox for that, but either way, it got sluggish after being open for a bit. Regardless, for multiple reasons, I completely agree; do not want.

Most of the others, I haven't used much. Jaiku, very little. Identi.ca, _extremely little_.

FriendFeed, a little more, and I do like it. I used to think it could be a Twitter replacement, but I dunno. Maybe? You're right though, FriendFeed seems to have their sights set higher than being a Twitter clone; replacement or no, it seems worth watching.

Re: The Term “Hacker” as Shibboleth

philcrissman — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:57:11 -0000

That's a great point. The traditional "Shibboleth" would render group membership obvious simply by it's pronunciation, even in the more modern sense by it's mere use.

That said, in using of the term "hacker", it's seldom takes very long to see in which sense the speaker/writer is using it, so if not a shibboleth, it seems quite close. A litmus test, perhaps, but shibboleth just sounds far cooler. ;-)

Re: Redcar

philcrissman — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:46:34 -0000

True the site doesn't say much about supported languages; but it states it's compatible with (or at least, designed to be compatible with) textmate bundles, of which there are quite a few.

Heavily in development, yes. Still, looks very promising.

Re: Can We Stop Versioning the Web, Already?

Rob Chant — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:09:04 -0000

Hehe... no, I didn't think you were.

It's just funny that my post was sparked off by being annoyed at the whole "web x.x" thing in the first place, and then a lot of people thought I was advocating it!

Re: Can We Stop Versioning the Web, Already?

philcrissman — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:40:28 -0000

Hey Rob. Yeah, wasn't knocking your post, per se, though I guess seeing 'web 4.0' written down is part of what sparked it.

I can be a bit of a cynic at times, but I still enjoy watching the web grow & evolve. I'd just rather wait till it evolves to pin a name on the next evolution.

Re: Penn Jillette on proselytizing

philcrissman — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:47:51 -0000

Er, thanks?

Re: Apple ❤’s Me

philcrissman — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:57:44 -0000

"Known faults" -- yes, I expect it's something like that.

It's already back, fixed! I'm totally impressed. Hoping that it lasts for awhile now. :-)

Re: Displaying a Gmail ATOM Feed In Google Reader

philcrissman — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:47:34 -0000

Nice. Simper the better.

Re: In which I am no longer a very good bachelor

philcrissman — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:01:52 -0000

And I eventually did open the potato chips. I had a small bowl of them. Then wrapped them up and put them away.

:sigh.

I guess I'm getting old!

Re: In which I am no longer a very good bachelor

philcrissman — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:00:13 -0000

I'm not even sure that it's "self control", per se. I'm not actually doing that much. But thanks!

No need to feel guilty. Now I feel guilty, for unwittingly spreading guilt around. :-(

Re: In which I am no longer a very good bachelor

philcrissman — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:19:27 -0000

Hmm. I don't know! Sounds like a great idea, but I am insanely busy. :-(

Maybe next week.

Re: I hold strong opinions about the placement of curly braces

philcrissman — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:17:50 -0000

And they do!

Re: I hold strong opinions about the placement of curly braces

philcrissman — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:29:18 -0000

Thanks guys. It was fun to write.

Re: Using K2 Hooks

philcrissman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:34:45 -0000

A plugin is a great idea for this. Thanks for stopping by!

Re: 14 Rocks Songs With Stuttering In Them at philcrissman.com

philcrissman — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:41:25 -0000

Good additions.

I almost added "I am the walrus" when I first made the list, but I'm not really sure if John is stuttering or if "coo coo ca joob" (or whatever that line is) is simply what he's trying to tell us. Who can say?

Re: Displaying a Gmail ATOM Feed In Google Reader

philcrissman — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:33:09 -0000

Well, even after creating the RSS feed mentioned above, I eventually found it just as easy (almost equivalent, really) to simply look in the label in gmail.

It still seems that it would be nice if you could pipe gmail feeds, or any feed requiring authentication, into your google reader, just out of principle.

Re: More Disciplined Reading

philcrissman — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:07:32 -0000

Finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which was great.

I'm also currently reading through The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez, et al., Barron's Finance, and Hull's Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives. Er. Yeah. So, clearly, some sort of plan is needed.

Re: merb? merb! (and activerecord). at philcrissman.com

philcrissman — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:31:02 -0000

Something like that. :) It's very similar to rails, is supposed to be faster, however.

Re: When JavaScript and Flash aren’t playing well together

philcrissman — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:14:04 -0000

I believe it can happen in IE as well, though I don't have a convenient way to test that theory.

Re: Stupid Ruby Tricks at philcrissman.com

philcrissman — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:37:29 -0000

Good alternative; although, 'puts' and 'eval' are the same length. I think those are as short as it gets for something like that.

Technically, using $0 is sort of "cheating" -- if I remember right, part of the challenge of writing a program whose output is its own source code was doing so without resorting to simply reading and outputting the source file... Using something like $0 is much easier, of course. :-)

Something like _="_=%p;puts _%%_";puts _%_ (which I didn't write; found that at http://thisbindle.com/personal/ruby/)

Re: Ruby Tidbits: Sentencizing A List of Things

philcrissman — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:53:11 -0000

D'oh! I _nearly_ asked the other day if Rails had a builtin method for this, decided not to, searched google and didn't see this.

My option is a lot shorter than to_sentence's code, but on the other hand, to_sentence *does* allow you to decide whether or not to skip the last comma, and to choose a connector other than "and" if you want. So much for DRY.

Re: What Microsoft Could Do To Improve Their Image at philcrissman.com

philcrissman — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:16:49 -0000

Yes, an admission of failure isn't what most companies would want to put out there. I almost think, though, that the admission of failure in the case of IE would be _better_ press than simply allowing it to continue existing.

I may be biased because IE7 is creating a lot of extra work for me yesterday and today. :-)