Absolute BS

REI Online

Brian Samson — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:32:50 +0000

I ran into a deal on the REI.com outlet site today that looked pretty sweet. It was already a pretty good deal, but when I saw it was from REI, I thought, “Wow, I wonder if they’ll let me use my dividend online?” It turns out this is one of the few times when a company gets it right on their website. During the checkout process they asked for my REI member number and had a little checkbox that said “Use my dividend.” A couple clicks later and this sweet multitool is shipped to my house for less than $20. Way to go, REI.

Bug lens

Brian Samson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:48:35 +0000

I ordered a macro lens for my camera this week for taking pictures of bugs, and it arrived today, so I went out back to try it out. I ended up finding one of the weirdest looking bugs I’ve ever seen. Looks like some kind of a tick or mite, and there were 2 or 3 of them (including this one which was a baby I think) on a cactus outside.

Up close and personal with a cactus:

I think I’m going to like this lens.

A flag pin for your Mac

Brian Samson — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:16:49 +0000

I was reading this text file on my MacBook the other day that had some strange copy/paste behavior. It turns out this was because of one of the dozens of “space” characters in Unicode, one of which was being interpreted as a linefeed in some editors and as a space in others. So I went to the Edit Menu -> Special Characters (which is in almost every cocoa app) to check it out. In the end I figured out how to replace my special character with a normal one and went about my business, only to later notice activating that menu had the side effect of enabling the “Input Menu” in my title bar. If you are in America like me, the icon for this menu is an awesome American flag logo. So now even your Mac can have its very own flag lapel pin!

(The “Input Menu” is available via System Preferences -> International -> Input menu)

All politics, all the time

Brian Samson — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:10:41 +0000

I have a tendency to argue politics with anyone who will take up the subject. My friend Simmons is one of these people, and we have spirited internet discussions on a regular basis. As a result, we’ve started a political blog you can go read at: 1idiot1genius.blogspot.com. The name comes from the fact that we usually believe the other is an idiot, but I’ll leave it to the readers to decide for yourselves. So if you feel like arguing on the internet, head on over!

MySQL and BLOB sizes

Brian Samson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:54:24 +0000

I’m doing a ruby on rails project with MySQL that needs to store some images, and I thought to use the database. However MySQL’s default blob size is only 64K, so I wanted to use their LONGBLOB column instead. No big deal, and in fact they will automatically detect which of their myriad BLOB types to use based on the length of a BLOB column. Nice!

Now for a quick pop quiz. One of the following statements is a syntax error from MySQL. Can you guess which one?

A) CREATE TABLE test (id int, data blob(2147483647));

B) CREATE TABLE test (id int, data blob(2147483648));

C) Neither, they are almost exactly the same, how could one be a syntax error?

If you guessed ‘C’ congratulations, you are smarter than (at least one) MySQL developer. But you lose the quiz, because he correct answer is ‘B’, which generates the following error:

ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘2147483648))’ at line 1

I deciphered from their cryptic documentation that LONGBLOB columns can have up 2^32 -1 bytes (almost 2 gigabytes), and apparently if you enter a number larger than that it’s invalid syntax. Thanks for wasting that hour of my life, MySQL.

And by the way, if you need to create a LONGBLOB column in a Ruby on Rails ActiveRecord migration, use this line:

add_column :table_name, :column_name, :binary, :limit => (2.gigabytes - 1) #mysql is terrible software



Clouds
Brian Samson — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:14:56 +0000
After stuffing my face with ribs on July 4th I grabbed this shot of some clouds coming as the sun started to set.  





Flying Woodpecker
Brian Samson — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:05:59 +0000

This woodpecker has been living in my palm tree for a month or so, and he’s usually quite camera shy.  I managed to snap this picture over Memorial Weekend.










More bars in more places
Brian Samson — Thu, 22 May 2008 01:41:49 +0000
I recently bought an iPhone and I absolutely love it except for one thing: AT&T service.  I’m not the type of person who makes a lot of phone calls anyway (apparently this is normal), but it would still be nice to be able to make a phone call in my house which is located barely a mile from 2 major freeways (60, I-10) in the heart of Tempe, AZ.  I get dropped calls probably 40% of the time I call from inside my house and 10% while I’m outside.  You don’t know how inconvenient it is to have to run outside and pray as I answer the rare important phone call.  



Today I it was particularly bad, so I went to check their coverage map, which is a great web 1.5 app.  I was only mildly surprised to see AT&T acknowledgement that I reside only in an area of “Good” coverage:


My house is right in the middle of that orange splotch, across the street from the park with the lake.  And the coverage is supposed to be “Good,” right? Sure, if you take the time to read AT&Ts own definition of “Good,” which says that at best, I get possibly some in building-coverage.  And that’s GOOD. Maybe I need to stand in the street, where the signal strength should be sufficient.




Spring has sprung
Brian Samson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:23:20 +0000
I caught this photo of some bees romping in the cacti flowers and couldn’t resist the voyeuristic urge to snap a photo.  Way to go, you two!


(click for big)




TurboTax is Awful Software
Brian Samson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:38:22 +0000


Mary Bridget used TurboTax online again this year, and I’ve always thought it was bad, but this takes the cake.  Usually TurboTax uses a “wizard” style, asking simple questions and then using the answers to fill in the right boxes.  It has some problems though, like asking if MB was “Materially involved in the operation of her business,” which is an easy question for a tax professional, but is met only with “What business?” by a normal person.  
While filling out her Wisconsin tax return (which it turns out she is not even required to file), TurboxTax presented her with this page, which is nothing more than a reformatted word-for-word copy of the actual form. I truly don’t see how this could possible be construed as being worth $30.  Not to mention that this particular schedule was unnecessary as MB did not itemize her federal deductions, and also that TurboTax had her fill out the regular Wisconsin “Form 1″ and not the “Form 1NPR” for non or part-year residents. The entire issue is moot, however, because I looked it up on a friend’s advice and she isn’t even required to file a return at all, a fact that was mysteriously absent from the TurboTax site.