fbQuick Build 3
No CommentsWe just put up Build 3 of fbQuick– the best Facebook Notifier application– on our website.
It has a new feature that gives you the ability to startup in offline-mode; and to go into offline-mode when we detect two consecutive failures in connecting to Facebook’s web interface. fbQuick will stay in offline-mode until you decide to connect (double-click the tray icon, or right-click menu option) back to Facebook, all very straight forward and simple.
This release also fixes:
- Bug in comparing old wall counts with new wall counts.
- Better error messages.
- Misc internal code cleanup.
New release at fbQuick.com.
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Collaborative Tagging
No Commentsdelicious, flkr and just about everyone is into collaborative tagging. I personally think it is a great way for a site to stay current with new trends. I found this paper on collabarative tagging that is worth a read.
There is a problem. Users will often “tag” incorrectly. I’ll write up a better post on this later, but thought I would throw up the link for anyone that wants to read it.
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/tags/tags.pdf
Posted in Technology
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Heroes Tonight!…nah not the bar…
1 CommentIt’s a new show on NBC…In my opinion, the only show on NBC.
I am running short on time…
Watch it! I will make myself available for your Disdain If I have steered you wrong on this…but my m oney is on this being good. The JApanese character’s name is Hiro! HIRO! It’s genius!
BTW Ben told me over the weekend that the first episode was downloadable before it was aired on the itunes…it was a dirty hoax and part of an apple plot to get me to sully my lucious PC with their software. The episode will apparently be available for download after it airs.
Posted in Entertainment, Life Stuff, Television
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Badly Mirrored fbQuick, Fixed!
No CommentsArg! You would think Google would do uploads correctly, but it turns out that we would sometimes get a bad download from the Google Page Creator hosted file. And that’s what happened with the exe downloads from this weekend!
So people that downloaded fbQuick from sometime last weekend until this morning had an installer that would fail. I fixed all that now, so please redownload if it was you. Sorry about that. 
Correct MD5 for the current version i 233fa9acd3aa3c6adbe51e0ea30b2e5d.
(If you want to verify the md5 sum, then try one of these windows utilities:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/md5/ (Command line)
http://www.pc-tools.net/win32/md5sums/ (Command line)
http://www.md5summer.org/ (Windows GUI)
Thank you to the person that reported this issue. 
I think the logs say that there were 100 downloads this weekend, and I completely appologize to every one that was affected.
-Ben
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LifeHacker Writes About fbQuick
No CommentsWoo hoo, our fbQuick Facebook Notifier application got linked to by Lifehacker.
So funny story… I read a Lifehacker article about Facebook extensions earlier this week, but these extensions were only Greasemonkey scripts… Not really usable unless you run Firefox and Greasemonkey.
So I shot the Lifehacker editors an email about fbQuick (seeing as we just made it available to the public). And wow, I got a response today; and that they would be writing about fbQuick. Cool, I jumped over to LifeHacker.com and I saw the post!
Then I went straight to the fbQuick website, and it was down! Oh crap!
I started with the assumption that the linking brought in way more traffic than the host could handle. And I spent good deal of time trying to get get stuff into place to distribute the load to other mirrors. All with no luck. Both excitement and panic coursed through my veins.
But about two hours after I encountered all this, the site seems to be back up and running… I’m still trying to track down why it’s suddenly back up. So was the site really getting that much traffic, or was there something else in play? I know Dreamhost has been having issues of late, and they supposedly just resolved them recently… I have to do a bit more digging– in the server logs– to figure this out. But either way, the linking is very cool.
Posted in Technology
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Atom Categories, Its Potential
1 CommentCategories were added to introspection documents in the Atom Publishing Protocol (Draft 10). And I think this is way cool! But wait, the Atom Syntax already has categories, and bloggers already can tag (categorize) their posts with words such as joke or serious. This addition only looks like it’s a way for bloggers to better organize their feeds… so what?
Well, think about problem domains outside of blogging; let me just describe this new addition’s potential with an example.
Let’s say I have an APP service for a genealogical database, called PeopleSeeds. And PeopleSeeds outputs Atom Feeds with machine readable genealogical data in the entries’ atom:content. PeopleSeeds will also accept Atom entries containing the same genealogical markup for new or existing resources (Member URIs). Side note: what PeopleSeeds does afterwards with the data is up to the service– it could do data mining, or related searching in Google for additional information.
But the point is that PeopleSeeds can now advertise itself in introspection documents as a Genealogical Service conforming to XYZ rules; and, now, PeopleSeeds MAY formally reject entries that are not categorized as Genealogical Data– it is implied that certain semantic rules (pieces of XML data in atom:content) are required for entries to be categorized as such. PeopleSeeds wants genealogical data, not a blog entry.
This is a big helping hand for the world of loosely coupled auto discovered services. Various clients can now differentiate between genealogical services and blogs. One benefit could be in rich client GUIs, who can now provide customized experiences for its end users: writing blog entries, or adding ancestor data. Or it can search and use equivalent services as backup providers, or whatever.
All this because end clients can now perform auto discovery in a uniform manner, vs haphazardly inspecting a service’s feed data (or using different service discovery mechanisms) which may not reliably describe a service’s capabilities.
I say, “Wow”.
Now the Atom Publishing Protocol really is the platform for a world of loosely coupled services, not just blogs. Woot.
White & Nerdy
No CommentsWeird Al Watch: Week 2
This Just In…Weird Al is a genius!
Seriously…almost as good as “All about the Pentiums”.
BTW If I ever meet you I will in fact Ctrl-Alt-Delete you.
Posted in Life Stuff
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Python Conditional Expressions
2 CommentsPython had lacked a C equivalent of the “condition ? true_value : false_value” expression. So we used a work around until now… conditional expressions finally made it in to Python’s 2.5 release.
In Python2.4:
x = ((condition) and true_value) or false_value
In Python2.5:
x = true_value if condition else false_value
Yeah, the statement looks better in Python2.5.
Posted in Python
2 Comments
Male Restroom Etiquette
1 CommentNow some of you ( I speak as if we get hunderds of thousands of hits a day, I assure you I do this lightheartedly ), some of you may not know of my great respect for the concept of restroom etiquette.
Let me tell you a little story…it will be uncomfortable, but in the end, I feel we will come through the fires of ignorance wiser for our suffering.
I loaned “Ong Bak”
to a co-worker, at the time I thought it a harmless gesture, sharing a great movie, building both a rappor with a co-worker, and possibly building the audiance and following for an incredible matrial arts/action pic that really deserves success. I had not a clue what I was opening the door to…
How does this connect to Restroom Etiquette you might ask? Well…the short answer is “Tragically” but the long and more disturbing answer follows…I warn you…If you be weak of heart–or stomach!– do not continue reading, simply go about your life knowing that I have saved you from a terrible and possibly Fatal Knoweledge:
Shortly after loaning out the movie, I was in the restroom, evacuating my bladder, when the aforementioned co-worker walked in and took up residence at the urinal next to me. This was a sign of bad things to come, but I was at full flow at the time and could not simply stop, zip, and leave. This is when Male Restroom Etiquette was absolutely destroyed in a situation the perfectly describes every reason that said etiquette MUST exist.
He spoke…and the conversation–a conversation which could have un-made existence mind you– is included here.
Co-Worker: Hey, Aaron, How’s it going?
Me: *reluctant* Oh. Hey. (If one is forced to speak in the Men’s Room, one must speak in one word sentences whenever possible)
Co-Worker: So do you have any more of those movies with that guy in them?…He is amazing!
Me:… (WhatTheFuck!? Oh shit! he means Ong Bak! Does he have any clue what that sounded like?! This is the Men’s Room for Fuck’s sake!) Oh. Uhhh. Nah.
Co-Worker: Do you have anything else that’s like it ya’know because that was incredible! I had to rewind and rewatch every scene a second time because it was soo unbelievable…
Me:… I got some old Jackie Chan stuff. (Gawd this is uncomfortable. Please just let my head explode now…killing me so that this does not continue)
Co-Worker: Oh like from when he was young?
Me: Uh…Yeah (How in the hell does this keep getting worse!? “Like from when he was young?” How fuckin’ creepy does that shound?!)
I feel the need to point out that we were not alone in the restroom…there was at least one other occupant there at the time!
____
I have no recollectioin of the end of this conversation. My theory is that I went catatonic and he left without knowing his crime…and might not know to this day…why it is that he must burn eternally in the hottest pit of hell.
Yeah…Restroom Etiquette…Please remember…people who talk in teh Men’s Room make baby Jesus cry…
Posted in Life Stuff
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Keep Updated with Facebook using fbQuick
No CommentsMoe came up with the fbQuick idea while I was still in Europe, a Facebook Notifier…
“A what?”, I asked.
“Like the GMail notifier, but for Facebook.”
“I’m still not following.”
“You know Facebook? It’s like MySpace, but for colleges… It’s gonna be a little application that sits in your desktop’s system tray– like AIM, or Skype– and regularly checks Facebook for new messages, wall posts, comments, and stuff! When you get a new message, a little alert is displayed in the bottom corner of your screen.”
“And stuff? You sound excited.”
“Dude, it’s gonna be tight!”
“Ok, let’s do it.”
Sure enough Moe came over the morning after I returned from Europe. A few weeks worth of work with Corey, and we now have its public launch at:
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