trainedmonkey
our dog is so vain
he was feeling a little self-conscious after his grooming today, and gave the combover look a try.
can’t someone else do it?
a joe job directed at my wife’s domain was the final little push i needed to start migrating all of our mail handling over to google apps. i am not super-excited to put it all in the hands of google, but free is a tough price to beat.
i am also working on shifting the primary dns for all of our various domains to everydns, which i was already using for secondary service (with an unlisted primary). the interface is clunkier than just editing the tinydns data file, but it is one less service i have to worry about.
mobile not-quite-me
i like the idea of apple’s mobileme, but i wonder if it will be possible to use external addresses with it. they say: “With MobileMe Mail, you can create an email address that’s personal and easy to remember. Maybe it’s yourname@me.com or maybe it’s something clever. Whatever you think up, it will be your best email address yet.”
my best email address yet is the one that is portable to other services. my mac.com address is totally useless, since i never saw enough value to .mac and it no longer works.
know your municipal code
SEC. 41.29. HAND ORGANS ON STREETS. No person shall operate or play any hand organ or hurdy-gurdy in, upon or along any street or sidewalk.
i have a really good idea for a performance art piece for the next art walk. it involves a measure of civil disobedience....
and now for something completely different
my beautiful wife celia, our website-less brother-in-law james, and i are going to open raw materials, an arts and architectural supply store in historic downtown los angeles. (where else?)
we are also opening a gallery, called winstead adams projects, that is currently without a permanent home. but that is not getting in the way of opening three shows in june — one at 436 s. main, which is where raw materials will be located, and two at either end of the pacific electric lofts on 6th street.
this has been brewing for quite some time, but really started to come together in the last couple of weeks. the biggest step forward was signing a lease for the store, which we did last friday. we came really close on another spot a little over a month ago, but someone beat us out for that space.
i'm not quitting my day job — this is a second job for all of us. who needs sleep?
need a grandcentral invite
any users of grandcentral out there that want to hook me up with an invite?
it is a service (that was acquired by google) that allows you to have a single forwarding/voicemail number that rings multiple phones.
bug tracking and code review
i was going to write some reactions to an observation that postgresql has no bug tracker and its discussion last week, but lost the spark and abandoned the post after a few days. but today i ran across a quote from linus torvalds that neatly sums up my thoughts:
We’ve always had some pending/unresolved issues, and I think that as our tracking gets better, there’s likely to be more of them. A number of bug-reports are either hard to reproduce (often including from the reporter) or end up without updates etc.
before there was a bug tracking system for mysql, there was a claim that all bugs were fixed in each release (or documented), and there has been a lot of pain in seeing how well that sort of claim stacks up against a actual growing repository of bug reports. if the postgresql project were to adopt a bug-tracking system, i am certain that they would find the same issue. before long, they would be planning bug triage days just like every other project with a bug-tracking system seems destined to do.
another good email from linus about these issues was pointed out by a coworker, but this part in particular caught my eye:
Same goes for “we should all just spend time looking at each others patches and trying to find bugs in them.” That’s not a solution, that’s a drug-induced dream you’re living in. And again, if I want to discuss dreams, I’d rather talk about my purple guy, and the bad things he does to the hedgehog that lives next door.
the procedure at mysql for code reviews is that either two other developers must review the patch, or one of an elite group of developers who are trusted to make single reviews. then the developer can push their changes into their team trees, taking care to have merged the changes correctly in anywhere from one to four versions (4.1 and up).
this is a huge amount of friction, and is one of the most significant problems causing pain for mysql development. two reviewers is just too high of a bar for most patches, and having the rule makes the reviews rote and less useful. there is also an unreasonable amount of distrust being displayed by this procedure, that says that developers can’t be trusted to ask for help when they are unsure, but should feel free to make the occasional mistake by pushing something that isn’t quite right.
i wonder if we could be taking better lessons from linux’s hierarchical development model, with the pulling of code up through lieutenants to a single main repository, rather than the existing model that involves every developer moving their own stones up the pyramid. it would require some developers (more senior ones, presumably) to spend more of their time doing code management as opposed to actual coding.
monty is not particularly happy with the state of development of his brainchild now. would he be happier if he were in a linus-like role of rolling up patches and managing releases?
i wish had the patience to write at less length and greater coherence about this.
wonton had a birthday
the photo set shows the cake, the eating, and the aftermath. a good time was had by all.
bill gross no longer has my money
i don’t know if it is at all related to my blogging about how bill gross has my money last october, but not only does bill gross have less of my money, now he doesn’t have any of it. idealab made a tender offer to its stockholders, mostly to clear out the small ones like me, and i opted to sell my shares. it wasn’t a lot of money, but it is nice to have it liquid again.
vote!
a picture that i took of wonton is one of the top photos on purina pet charts for today. you can vote for him. i don’t know what happens if he wins.
