Hacker and Writer

I love the internet

Tue, 12 May 2009 19:12:00 -0400

Just got my new DVD player. Tried an Aussie disk to see if it’d play it. Wrong region. Panic. Frantic googling. 1 minute later, the hack, as below.
This makes it possible to play my Australian DVDs in the states.
I love the internet. Kisses.

Philips DVP 5990 Region Free:

press Setup

Select the Preference Tab

Press 1,3,8,9,3,1

Press up/down key to select “0” and hit Setup to exit.

Git with it

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:07:00 -0500

If you love git or want to try git, you now can on Mac OS/X.

Get the git installer on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/.

Git is a (relatively) new source control system that uses crypto hashes to guarantee the consistency of the repository and do some magically-fast branch comparisons. It also facilitates local commits, cheap branches and fast distributed workflow for teams.

Find out more on http://git-scm.com. There’s a windows (cygwin, msysgit) version available and of course linux, where git was originally borned :)

Right now I can only see support on the Mac for a subset of git commands {git, git-cvsserver, git-shell, git-upload-pack, gitk} so git-svn and git-daemon are missing but it’s a great start and works very well - much quicker than the windows cygwin-based version. Props for getting gitk to work - that’s a great branch visualisation tool.

Thanks to the team that put the installer together - git is great for tracking changes to local projects even if you don’t have an upstream workflow to push or pull from.

The Shape of Code

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:57:00 -0500

Some code’s like an office building on a skateboard. Or a car launched from a catapult. And sometimes like you’ve wandered into a dark basement with too many cats, some strapped to land-mines.

When you’ve read a lot of code and designed and team-written a bunch of systems you get good at reading code and transferring it into a picture. Bits of code have strong characteristics. A system and the code behind it becomes like a landscape.

You get to know a certain coder’s style, even if they’re following the coding standard. Some people are lazy and test for nothing, some irritate you with unnecessary casts and amateur faux-pas like if (foo == true).

I like old-timer code. It’s terse, leaves the program to be the program without over-managing the problem and properly delegates errors upwards and onwards. It’s got the right amount of error handling and logging. It attacks problems in logical bite-size bits and explains arbitrary crap you forget the moment knock-off time swings round.

So after a while the code is like a picture or a shape or something. If it’s good it’s sleek and fast tipping the hat towards some hacky shit that might be flourish. But it doesn’t crash and it does what it needs to. It’s not the ferrari of code - it’s more a mini minor red-lining to good music and sliding through the corners.

Oh yeah, and it better be able to turn into a plane.

Twitter Silence

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:58:00 -0500

I’m in twitter silence and it’s weird. Coffee shops are a good place to work for just one reason - they isolate me from the net. That will probably stop when I tether my iPhone to 3G or dump 60 a month on a 3G USB modem but for now, I’m in net silence. It’s an unfamiliar blackout that feels foreign to me nowadays. There’s WiFi here but I’ll never pay for WiFi access.

The silence of net chatter is weird, but it means I get work done. For me that means writing articles, coding and developing photos. There’s always the odd cached video podcast, video or youtube page to watch but when the new-juice is gone it’s time to create.

I get most of my best work done on aeroplanes. Something about the isolation and the inky black forces creativity out like toothpaste from a tube.

The net is wriggling into our everyday lives. We get notifications of shipping orders or a new job or cancelled dinner or relationship breakup - things that actually make a difference - so we’re tied to net devices like glue now. It’s a comfy bondage mostly, but you gotta get away sometimes.

When I’m out on the water with no phone and no computer, the breeze and sun in my face and about to dive amongst the fishies, this stuff doesn’t seem to matter.

Of course, my dive watch is tracking it all :)

Ah but I forgot I’ve got text updates on Twitter - the net has found me again. CCSteff, you’re a funny bitch.