The Blog that Noone Reads

Apologies to those who have attempted to leave me a voicemail this week. I didn’t realize my voicemail needed to be setup again after activating my new phone. They should tell you this while they’re doing it. It’s fixed now.

Just as my custom blog engine is nearing completion, WordPress 2.6 has hit the streets. There are some really cool new features in there. It seems the good folks over at wordpress have really been putting out a lot of new features of late. It makes me question the value of actually migrating over to my new engine. Writing the thing has been a great experience and has given me some exposure to areas of rails where I hadn’t previously ventured. But do I really want to move from something with so much community support to something I have to manage completely on my own? Hard to say.

Here’s a little screencast demoing some of the new features in WordPress 2.6:

Yesterday, at Microsoft’s E3 media briefing, they announced a completely new interface for the XBox 360. It’s a bit disappointing to me, actually. It seems a whole lot like the kind of unoriginal, “me too” crap I’d come to expect from Microsoft, but not Microsoft Games division. First of all, they’ve dropped the “blades” interface which I rather liked. They’ve also dropped the gamer image in favor of an “avatar.” The first thing that comes to mind is “what happens to the skins and gamer pictures that users have payed real money for?”

The new “avatars” feature sure seems a whole lot like Nintendo’s Mii functionality. The major difference is that Microsoft’s version seems to be much less flexible. It looks like you’ll be buying new outfits to customize your characters. So, the gamer pictures you just purchased are now unusable, but Microsoft is generously providing new worthless content for you to buy. I never actually spent money on this content, but it’s very upsetting to see Microsoft just nuke paid content without providing the user with any options.

The one feature I’m happy to see as part of the new update is integration with Netflix. It will be nice to have an easy way to use the Netflix streaming functionality on my TV.

I recently found some cube shaped ice cube trays at the supermarket. They’re made of silicone so as to be flexible enough to get the cubes out. Even though I have an automated ice machine in my freezer, I was rather excited to snatch these trays up and take them for a spin. Being a non-straw user, I think the shape of the ice has a huge impact on the enjoyment of the beverage. There are a multitude of reasons for this.

Melt speed. These 1 inch cubes have a very low surface to mass ratio. That means they cool the drink more slowly, but also take much less time to melt, thus diluting the drink less and keeping the drink pleasant for longer. Since I am a modern american, I have a refrigerator, which pre-cools my beverages for me. With rare exception, I want the ice to keep my drink cool rather than actually cool it. This lowers the impact of the afore mentioned downside.

Drinkability. Since I don’t use a straw, this is a big one for me. Small ice cube or, worse, crushed ice make it harder to consume the drink. When sipping a beverage containing small fragments of ice, you have to be careful not to let any of the small pieces in your mouth. If you do, and you will, let some through, you have to either spit the damn thing back into the glass, or chew it up. That’s not really the purpose of the ice. I don’t want to chew on it. I want it to keep my drink cool and stay the heck out of my way.

Aesthetics. I think the large, symmetrical cubes are far nicer to look at in the glass. As is true for any food product, people consume it first with their eyes. When I serve a beverage on the rocks, I want it to be as visually appealing as possible. There’s not a whole lot you can do to spruce up the appearance of, say, bourbon and ginger, without tainting the flavor. There are only three ingredients: bourbon, ginger ale (or ginger beer), and ice. You could serve it in a fancy glass, but I think simpler is better for a drink like that.

The two trays I bought can produce 30 one inch cubes in about two hours. When they’re done, I move them into freezer bags so they don’t take on freezer funk. These cubes are reserved specifically for presentation. The machine made stuff is still more than suitable for the blender or shaker.

I’m just starting to work with FireFox 3. The new text rendering system looks quite nice, but the browser chrome is so ugly. It’s just… really bad. What happened? Did they do it in house or is another group responsible for this? I know SilverOrange did the last skin, which was much nicer.

Since Safari 3 came out, I’ve been using it as my go-to browser. I still boot up the fox when I need to use FireBug, but I don’t live in it anymore. It seems like have been going downhill for them ever since version 0.9. Word on the street is, 3 is much better than the previous couple versions. I’ll have to see if I can stomach the new chrome long enough to decide for myself.

Last night, I threw together a little script for backing up content from my web server to Amazon S3. It’s not really feature complete, but it is good enough for what I need for now. It provides a very simple DSL for specifying what content should be backed up.

Download it here.

To specify content:

backup :foo do
  folder '/path/to/stuff'
  folders ['/path/to/things', '/path/to/blah']
  file '/path/to/allyourbase.rb'
end

Will produce this in S3:

-{date stamp}
  -foo
    -stuff
      -..content of stuff
    -things
      -..content of things
    -blah
      -..content of blah
    -allyourbase.rb

The idea is that you could have one backup block for each site (notice how the symbol passed to the block becomes the root folder). You could backup all the different parts of the application under one umbrella without having to worry about any collisions with other apps.

You’ll need the ‘aws-s3′ gem. To deploy this on your server, just put the files somewhere on your server, modify the configuration in the run_backup.rb script and point a cron task at it.

After the disgraceful performance by the LA Times, here is funny or die to show us the proper way to provide embed tags. A simple button to push the tag right up into your clipboard. Very nice. Also, enjoy this hilarious interview with a classic American Gladiator.