July 1, 2008
around and around

ok, this is lame, but it's still a thing. i like resetting the chronometer on my watch before i go out for a run. if i had a bad run yesterday, resetting it means that it doesn't matter, i can go have a good run today. if i had a good run yesterday, that doesn't matter anymore either: today's run is what counts now. whatever.

today was my first day at the track since i moved into my new place, and i did enjoy the fact that it's 10-15 minutes closer, not to mention being all downhill (on the way there). today's workout was great (10x800m):

1. 3:04
2. 3:03
3. 2:58*
4. 3:00
5. 3:03
6. 3:07
7. 3:09
8. 3:09
9. 3:10
10. 2:58*

(* = new PR)

(previously)

unrelatedly:

Freeing up space on our highways increases the flow of traffic and saves commuters' time, money, and gasoline.

-- Wendell Cox

ok, i call bs on that. freeing up space on highways increases the number of other people who can now drive on highways, slowing down traffic, and wasting commuters' time, money, and gasoline.

despite these lies, it is difficult for me not to be excited about being able to vote on some sort of train initiative this fall. i mean, what's the worst that could happen?

i recommend checking out the rendered stills. but the ones of anaheim suffer my typical complaint about these things: why are those people in the park? i mean, i could understand it if there were awesome shipping containers there, but if it's like a certain other park i never saw any people in there's just some smelly river and nobody lives nearby.

also i wish we could build things out of something other than glass.

July 2, 2008
having it both ways

while signing up for the ing checking account, i discovered that they don't allow deposits to ATMs:

Deposit paper checks - You can also deposit paper checks one of two ways:

1. Deposit the check into your linked checking account then move it to your Electric Orange...
2. Mail in checks

that seems lame. the credit union checking account doesn't seem to have a direct-deposit activity requirement like one of BoA's checking accounts (although i suppose i could have it deposit only $1). BoA's other checking account doesn't have a direct deposit requirement, and has a lower minimum balance than the credit union, but at least the latter pays interest and doesn't give BoA any more of my money.

so, at least for a little while, i'll keep the credit union account. anyway, i suppose it can't hurt to have a little emergency fund tucked away.

in a little under 12 hours, the movers should be here filling my new apartment with way too much stuff i don't want anymore, and a few things i do want. i am looking forward to playing my keyboard. i am also looking forward to having a blanket, because i am tired of being woken up at 4am by my own shivering.

speaking of beddings, i may also have my new mattress in 14 hours or so. i am excited for that. i am less excited by the logistics; if the movers aren't done by the time the mattress delivery people arrive, i don't know what's going to happen. if they double park, the electric buses (lka trackless trolleys) may have difficulty getting around, and the last thing i need is for more bus drivers to be mad at me.

when i got to work this morning, there was a paycheck sitting on my desk. it has been a long and expensive month.

tomorrow is back to the track for a brutal 6 x mile workout. after that, there's only one more track workout before the race. i should go to bed.

July 3, 2008
for reals i moved

this would be the part of my journey where i feel at home - i get to sleep in my own bed, even though it's in a different apartment, in a different city, on a different coast. but this isn't my bed, it's a new one. so, nothing's the same.

as a bonus for taking the day off for moving stuffs, peach came to the city and we got to hang out for a little. neither of us could remember seeing each other since i was here before i started at novell, but it couldn't have been three years. could it?

i barely got 4 hours of sleep last night, in two shifts, but i managed to have a funny dream. i was trying to get away from having damaged a teacher's car with a tree (long story), and i remembered i could just go to my room upstairs (as in, i was in my mom's house). the bed up there had blankets, and was covered in clean laundry that needed to be folded. i will leave as an excercise for the reader to find all 8 levels of wish-fulfillment in that one.

July 4, 2008
one happy camper

someone at work mentioned vala this week, or at least asked what i thought about it, so i had to mention how awesome gom is, with the caveat that it is broken right now and crashes when the GC runs. i basically haven't touched it since april, when i first hit this bug, and have had no luck tracking it down.

and that's pretty embarrassing. so i tried to fix it, now that i have unpacking to put off.

patch one wasn't too difficult to track down once i started reading some of the code where i was getting the failed assertion. it was the classic passing an int instead of a jsval (even though my getter func doesn't look at that field; it just returns the "tiny" id):

Index: src/libgom/gomjsobject.c =================================================================== --- src/libgom/gomjsobject.c (revision 57) +++ src/libgom/gomjsobject.c (working copy) @@ -602,7 +613,7 @@ JS_DefinePropertyWithTinyId (cx, ctor, &enums->values[i].value_name[4], enums->values[i].value, - enums->values[i].value, + INT_TO_JSVAL(enums->values[i].value), gom_js_object_get_enum, NULL, JSPROP_READONLY | JSPROP_PERMANENT); }

for the other, i pulled out all the stops, from hardware watchpoints to malloc debuggers, to that awesome gdb trick, to not installing a linux vm to use valgrind and refdbg on. i went back to the tried-and-true method of littering code with printfs, and narrowed it down to someting with the Event.target field. eventually i realized that while i had written a great finalizer for my base class, none of the subclasses chained up the finalize call, which led me to return dirty, used, and freed objects later. my classes have a lot of this now:

Index: src/libgom/gomjsevent.c =================================================================== --- src/libgom/gomjsevent.c (revision 57) +++ src/libgom/gomjsevent.c (working copy) @@ -34,6 +34,12 @@ #include <glib.h> +static void +gom_js_event_finalize (JSContext *cx, JSObject *obj) +{ + GomJSObjectClass.finalize (cx, obj); +} + JSClass GomJSEventClass = { "Event", JSCLASS_NEW_ENUMERATE, @@ -44,7 +50,7 @@ (JSEnumerateOp)gom_js_object_enumerate, JS_ResolveStub, JS_ConvertStub, - JS_FinalizeStub + gom_js_event_finalize }; static JSPropertySpec gom_js_event_props[] = { { NULL } };

tomorrow, instead of unpacking my dishes and glasses so that i could make dinner, i will remove all the cruft from my tree, and finally make that third release i've been wanting to do for three months.

also, if i didn't fix this bug i don't think my mind would let me sleep tonight, so i am doubly excited. wooooo WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

July 5, 2008
all i need

after a long day of unpacking and setting up furniture and equipment, i settled down to my first meal cooked in my new apartment. pasta, of course, and two tall glasses of milk while i watched the first episode of the news hour i've watched in five weeks.

as an update to the comcast debacle, they've already sent me a bill. it has a credit for $20, but not the full $100 that i was under the impression i was getting. i guess i get to call back monday.

it's also night one of living without a dishwasher. i am super tired, and really want to go to bed, but i better wash things from dinner...

July 6, 2008
i should just write a script which twits these whenever i post, one sentence per minute

i forgot how much fun riding my road bike is.

five miles of my run this morning was spent along the beach. there were hundreds of washed-up jellies. it was gross.

there was also one huge seal (or sealion?). it was even more gross.

July 8, 2008

i slept so terribly last wednesday night and was doing moving stuff etc. so i didn't go to the track last thursday. i told myself i'd do the workout friday, but apparently there is some sort of massachusetts zone in the park, and the track was actually closed for independence day.

so whatever, i skipped it. today was the last day at the track before the race, and i'd say it went well (12x800m):

1. 3:05
2. 3:03
3. 2:58
4. 2:55*
5. 3:02
6. 3:02
7. 3:03
8. 3:08
9. 3:05
10. 3:08
11. 3:02
12. 2:58

(* = new PR)

and then after work i almost missed the late shuttle back to the city and had to run to catch it and that wasn't fun.

i'm finally feeling like i'm turning a corner in the unpacking. i think there may have to be a craigslist firesale after all, if phik doesn't claim my shuttle first.

i am so tired and want to sleep so badly but i am going to be an adult and go wash that one dirty knife i used to butter my toast.

July 9, 2008
an agreement in principle

i just had my first glass of raw milk. a whole gallon of this stuff costs sixteen american earth dollars. they do take care of the little things, though; they include a whole teat in the bottle as a garnish.

if the tie doesn't fit, you must acquit?

i read a bunch of books on my kindle while i was in europe. here is a brief list:

1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
2. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
3. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny - Robert Wright
4. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
5. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
6. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
7. Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
8. The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. - William Makepeace Thackeray

i haven't quite finished the last one there, because i have been reading the sf chronicle (i'll give you a minute to groan. go ahead, i'll wait. the thing is, the times just doesn't have enough articles on public transit or earthquakes). anyway, for one reason or another, i've managed to highlight the following articles:

"We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gases through the development of alternative energy sources."

---

Fisher acknowledges that he is not well known, has never built a skyscraper before and hasn't practiced architecture regularly in decades.

---

A study released earlier this year by a group found that increased driving as a result of sprawling development in the next few decades will overwhelm any gains from increased vehicle fuel economy and use of low-carbon fuels like biodiesel.

---

For McCain and Obama, the economic message should be that "we can't make (Americans') house value go up and gas prices go down, but we can improve education, work on alternative energy and invest in infrastructure. And probably if they weren't in the middle of the campaign, they would be a lot closer on doing that."

---

A security researcher revealed a flaw Tuesday that makes it possible for a hacker to take control of the Internet.

anyway, time to do dishes.

July 10, 2008
living on the edge

i've taken a bold stance in my new apartment, one i don't ever remember taking before: i'm just running dhcp on the airport router, and not running a nameserver.

this is part of my new initiative, to have at most one computer running. this is a new direction for me; who knows where it will lead.

(of course, there will still be a tivo, slingbox, and two (down from five? (!!)) airport expresses always running...)

unpacking is going well. the boxes that will never be unpacked are starting to trickle into the living room closet, their final destination. i am starting to accumulate a huge mound of "wrapping" paper in the breakfast nook office. i don't know what to do with it.

i cycled to the office today, and it wasn't nearly as scary as i feared. however, the hills coming home are moderately fierce. it has occurred to me that perhaps i should wait until after the marathon is over before i make this a regular occurrence.

July 12, 2008
pbs here is weird

i mean, would 'gbh ever show big? and was it really 20 years ago?

anyway today i had all the foods i love the most, in preparation for my insane run tomorrow. breakfast was two of the following: eggs, toast, bananas, and glasses of milk. dinner was a ton of pasta, a banana, and two more glasses of milk. i don't know what it is about these foods, but they make me feel happy from the inside out.

of the boxes that i will actually be unpacking, five seven remain unopened, and there's another 4 or 5 full of wires and stuff that haven't been unpacked. just about all the furniture is put together (somehow i managed to get my desk together by myself today), and it's starting to feel a little like home. i need to get some sort of bike rack, because storing my bike in the bathroom isn't going to cut it if i ever have guests.

i got a crazy messenger bag today. it is wicked orange.

July 13, 2008
getting there

it is quite vexing that the first three hours of a run can be so splendid, and then the final hour so wretched (yes, pbs is showing pride & prej again).

the next three weeks of training are fairly inconsequential and will hopefully be without incident. there isn't much more i can do but wait it out, and we'll see if i trained hard enough. yesterday, i would have said "yes" but today i'm not so sure. of one thing, however, i am certain: i will not be riding my bike home from work the week before the marathon. i could feel the effects of the hills thursday and friday; in fact these hills are for the birds.

for the first time in almost seven weeks, i am typing this at my desk. the bookshelf is now stocked with books as well; i have an office! four boxes remain unopened (roomba, scooba, rock band, guitar hero II), while four more boxes of wires and doodads remain. it could be said that i am done unpacking; the rest is "merely" putting things away and cleaning up.

tomorrow i will put up my art and there will be no mistaking: this is my apartment.

now it's time to go wallow in bed for a few hours, rueing the day i ate five packets of caffeinated gu.

July 14, 2008
another day, another pregnant friend

i don't know what's wrong with all my friends. i mean, i'm pretty sure i could count to 28 in like, first grade. it's not that hard, people!

July 16, 2008
gtk 3: a case for gom!

one of the original goals in starting the gom project was to be able to write gtk apps without succumbing to the inherent problems of using gtk's apis. with gom, you already only interact with objects using their properties, and instead of silly, implementation-specific api calls you get to comfortably surround yourself with the beautiful w3c dom standards you already know and love from the web.

and if those aren't enough layers of abstraction from X or Quartz, you can always throw your favorite javascript library on top of it.

all this, and you don't need to deal with building on different platforms and distributions!

at least that's the idea.

last night i finally checked in those changes i mentioned. i then went late into the night trying to track down numerous refcounting and garbage collection. getting close.

July 17, 2008
i know you don't care but...

i've fixed it up as best i can for now, and have made a release of Gom 0.2.

since it's been a while, i'll refresh your memory:

What is Gom?

Gom allows you to write GTK applications using JavaScript, an HTML-like widget layout syntax, the standard W3C DOM interfaces, and jQuery.

Gom is on the Web! http://ilovegom.googlecode.com/

next up has to be XMLHttpRequest.

i've been working at vmware for about a month now, and i don't think i've gone to the same place in the city for lunch twice yet. that is certainly something.

July 20, 2008
may as well

i think i found the source of the leak named root. either way, i don't use named roots there any more, so they are not leaked. kudos to the tips on spidermonkey garbage collection from jeff watkins. in my previous efforts to track down these leaks, i had written something based on his idea in C, but hadn't used it until now.

anyway, i put up a new release before i go and implement XHR.

the other day i applied for health insurance. there were pages of online forms to fill out, and they ask you to verify that the information is correct, but i wasn't paying attention and didn't notice that i accidentally misypted my weight - reporting myself as 100 lbs heavier than i actually am.

i tried to think of a better way of making people verify their forms, and i came up with the following: go through the list of fields randomly, and present the user with their answer for that field. below this, offer them a choice of 4 possible options as to what that field is. it's pretty easy - they can recognize that their street address is their street address - and i think it would be easier for them to spot typos this way.

July 20, 2008
after years of waiting

it took many, many more hours than it should have, but i just checked in some stubs for XHR. while the interface may be beautiful enough for some, for those who prefer a more visual representation, i present you with this:

i'm beginning to wonder whether GObject/C was the best choice here...

July 21, 2008
the mccain campaign stays mainly in maine

i am cordially invited.

July 21, 2008
non-linear dynamics and capital externalities

a former colleague of mine pointed out some articles on gas tax policy from the ephemeral gary becker and richard posner. they are talking about some study that they don't link to, so i can't read it, but that won't stop me from writing about it, too.

here is how these articles were originally presented to me:

Becker argues today that current US gasoline taxes already cover, or at any rate the gap is small, the externalities associated with driving

part of me wants to argue that the low taxes have not covered losses in alternative transportation modes, but i'm not sure exactly how to do that, yet.

clearly, it has never been the gas taxes that have kept people from driving; for the vast majority of the population, we're only seeing interest in alternatives now that gas is around $5 per gallon, and the economy is tanking, and saving the environment is en vogue, and we are stuck in yet another war for oil.

urban trolley systems have been almost completely dismantled, and vast areas completely impractical for public mass-transit. there is no way the gas taxes can fund the recovery of these areas into a non-car transportation system.

i'm sure that's not the point of the taxes, but certainly being in the position where almost all of our country (less its three most walkable cities) is basically solely dependent on automobile-based transit is not a good position to be in, and is going to be expensive to get out of. or, if you like bailing out airlines and paying over $50 per fill-up, it will be expensive to stay in.

anyway, it certainly bothers me that people who do drive get a positive externality every time i don't drive a car to go somewhere. phil would say that i'm not paying the gas taxes, but i am pretty sure i could come up with a ridiculous retort to that one.

July 21, 2008
why the government should manage my health insurance

not only did i mistype my weight, but it turns out i mistyped my address as well. this will take another week or two to sort out.

it's a good thing i didn't give them my SSN.

July 26, 2008
i still hate python

so, in order to implment XMLHttpRequest.open() (i still always type XmlHTTPRequest), i need to support relative URI references. this is not a completely trivial exercise, and i hate writing parsing things, especially things that involve charsets and potential security risks, so i was hoping to use some awesome library for this.

i had hoped that libcurl would suffice, but it simply doesn't export this functionality (although it must implement it internally). sad. i couldn't find anything in the new gio apis either, which was disappointing as well.

so, i went looking. the first one i found was uri. unfortunately it seems to have been a victim of the warn on terror, so i moved on.

next up was uriparser. it has a promising name, and does what i want, but the API is sort of dreadful, and it still had crashable bugs as of 2008. the final kicker was that although it supports ACII and Unicode (UCS-4, i think?), it doesn't seem to want to do UTF-8 out-of-the-box, which is a non-starter these days.

(unicode things still confuse me terribly, so maybe i am wrong here)

i next considered trying to use bits from mozilla, but the necko docs yell at me, and then throw me at this. i was hoping for a little more hand holding.

what i really want is GnomeVFSURI. of course, gnome-vfs has been deprecated for years now, but still there is nothing equivalent that i could find. i didn't really want to depend on gnome-vfs, so when ports wanted to install its own version of perl i lost it and started trying to get gnome-vfs-uri.c to build as a library on its own. this was going nowhere, fast.

then i remembered that i asked someone at work, and got the usual "Oh just use Python, it's so great." i wasn't keen on adding a third type and memory management system, but the api was great, and what i saw of embedding python from hula wasn't so bad.

well, of course i was up all night, trying to find out what @parameter meant, and why i could see properties attributes when i ran the thing in python that i couldn't see when i ran it from C. why would they make so much more difficult to access attributes from C than it used to be? why am i such a terrible programmer? will i actually fall asleep if i go to bed now at 9 am?

eventually, i noticed the following:

(gdb) p PyString_AsString(PyObject_Repr(mod)) $24 = 0x171e5b4 "<module 'urlparse' from '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.4/lib/python2.4/urlparse.pyc'>"

this didn't look right. in python:

>>> repr (urlparse) "<module 'urlparse' from '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/urlparse.pyc'>"

of course; this API is different in 2.4 and 2.5; i just rued again. even after completely obliterating the 2.4 version of python (don't even ask why i had some third-party version installed; i certainly have no clue), if i have to do some compat stuff for the 2.4 version, it's just not worth it. i checked it in for now since it works, but i still need to find a permanent solution.

if it wasn't so completely beautiful outside, i would go get an xbox and gta4, but i think i'll do some grocery shopping instead.

July 27, 2008
i.m. impressed

well, it's done. gom uses xpcom.

it was a bit painful at times, yes, but not nearly as frustrating as trying to get the python bits working (despite that being three-year-ago-me's fault). it's even now using the standard gecko sdk which should make it easier for others to build, and me to support.

after i had written gom_uri_get_contents(), and everything was working great locally, i wondered: do i now support remote files?

well, as long as it doesn't require an auth dialog or anything.

i guess next up is xpconnect, which gives me XHR for free?

July 30, 2008
the final countdown

after twenty weeks of training, across five cities, four timezones, three countries, two continents, and one cross-country move, i have ten miles of training left before my race on sunday. it's a little stressful, since pretty much i can only make a cock-up of it at this point. for example, sprinting, in the shoes that hurt my legs, to catch the bus on monday.

they have some sort of real-time text messaging thing, so if anyone wants to follow along in my brazen disappointment, let me know and i'll add you to the thing. for those of you who enjoy sleeping late on sunday, note that it starts around 5:30 am pacific.

other events that have recently transpired have been the 11th anniversary of the last time i drove a car, and the receipt of a letter from my health insurance company with the following amusing excerpts:

Some medical conditions, either alone or in compination with the cost of medication, present uncertain medical underwriting risks. In view of these risks, we have enrolled you in our CORE 5000 PLAN Level 1 Plus 50 Plan. This is our CORE 5000 PLAN Level 1 Plan with an additional 50% premium. The basis for our decision is listed below.

Provider: Health Statement
Medical History: Elevated weight

...

To be considered for a reduction in the additional premium, you must 1. maintain your weight below 215 lbs for a mimimum of 6 months from the effective date of this coverage, and 2. meet the Medical Underwriting Guidelines in effect at the time of application.

i think i'm up to the challenge.

July 30, 2008
lost in translation

the end of the news hour's interview with pakistan's prime minister last night was something my friend phil should read:

MARGARET WARNER: Bottom line, Mr. Prime Minister, what could the U.S. expect to see, let's say in six months, as a benchmark, as evidence that your government's approach to fighting terrorism is more successful than President Musharraf's was?

YOUSUF RAZA GILANI: I really don't know. But at the same time, I think, when there is any actions that has the support and the backing of a political government, it is always successful.

MARGARET WARNER: But have you set any benchmarks for yourself?

YOUSUF RAZA GILANI: Certainly that we are convinced ourselves that it's working.

...when there is any actions that has the support and the backing of a political government, it is always successful.

well, i'm convinced, too.