Everything that comes out of Dossy, from the strange to the banal.
It’s days like today that I feel like Scott Adams has been watching my relationship with my wife from behind the fourth wall:
Girl: You treat every conversation like it’s a contest where you have to be the one who is right!
Dilbert: It only seems that way because everything you say is wrong.
Girl: See? There it is!
Dilbert: I’m pretty sure that was you again.
Thank you, Scott. I sent this to my wife and we both had a laugh–perhaps a nervous one–today.
Tags: Dilbert, comic, relationships
del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since October 1, 2007 at 09:00 AM:
Yesterday, Ron Cripe emailed me asking if I knew of any simple examples of how to use Tcl/Tk with MySQL. I knew about mysqltcl and pointed him in that direction, but he said he needed an actual example on how to use it.
I’ve done a lot of Tcl programming but have mostly avoided doing GUI’s with Tk, so I figured this might be a good opportunity to do some learning, myself. I quickly wrote a simple application that connects to a MySQL database, then lets you execute queries against it and displays the results. You can download it here:
It’s named .txt to make it easier to download–just rename it to only .tcl (removing the .txt) once you’ve saved it.
When you start the app, it presents you with a simple login dialog:
Enter your username and password, change the host, port and database values if necessary, and press Enter or click the Connect button. If all goes well, the login dialog will go away and the query window will appear:
This is an example of what the query dialog looks like after executing a SHOW TABLES query. Very simple, not terribly exciting, but what do you want for a 5KB, 181-line Tcl script?
If you have Tcl, Tk and mysqltcl installed, go ahead and grab a copy of this script and check it out. If you have questions about the code, just ask: I’ll try my best to answer them.
Tags: Tcl, Tk, MySQL, programming, open source
During last night’s Eureka episode, “A Night at Global Dynamics,” a priceless line was spoken by Jo’s character: “Boys, there’s plenty of backdoor access for everyone!” I couldn’t believe the script writers got away with it! I tip my hat to you guys, I’m still laughing and smiling at that scene. To preserve this gem of television magic, I ripped it off the TiVo and uploaded it:
Tags: Eureka, television, funny
I recognize that a large part of my depression stems from my frustration with not having any hardcore, ubergeek friends. How do you go about meeting them, though? In a bout of desperation–yes, I’ll try just about anything at this point–I posted this to the New Jersey “strictly platonic” area on Craigslist: Looking for more geek friends.
I’m just looking for more geek friends, trying to post in all different places to find ’em.
Are you into social software, blogging, web development, brand management, graphic design, publishing, writing, information technology, “Web 2.0” (gag, I can’t believe I just used that buzzword)? Into DIY tech stuff, hardware hacking, modding?
Looking for someone to geek out with, someone who actually “gets” what you’re talking about and finds it as exciting as you do? Tired of trying to explain stuff to your non-geek friends, only to be met with glazed eyes and head-nodding?
Lets be friends–especially if you’re in Northern NJ. There’s just not enough of us in the area.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like Craigslist has much traffic in New Jersey. Maybe someone who’s like me is similarly searching and we’ll somehow find each other. Here’s to hoping, anyway.
Tags: Craigslist, New Jersey, geeks
This morning, I came across Serdar Yegulalp‘s blog entry where he writes about writing. He tells a story about two of his friends and while I think we could be better friends, I doubt he’s writing about me, even though the story he tells could have been about me.
Lately, I’ve been seeing myself more as a writer than as a computer programmer. I’ve had a passing desire to sit down and write books about AOLserver, but I’ve always had a problem starting. For a long time, I’ve told myself, “I’m a programmer, not a writer,” but I began to realize that programmers are writers. But, me? Lately, I’ve had trouble writing anything. To borrow Serdar’s analogy, I’ve been suffering a drought. The rain just wouldn’t come.
Recently, I asked friends for suggestions on books to read for someone who wants to write but is struggling, and Bill Kocik suggested a book by Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. I bought myself a copy and now I flip through and read a few pages of that book daily–I just wish I’d known about that book 15 years ago. As infrequently as I post new blog entries, what little increase in frequency there has been lately, I owe to Natalie’s book.
After all this, is programming really like writing, though? What if, like me, you’re a writer without a story to tell? Sometimes, I wonder if there is a great masterpiece trapped inside of me, struggling to get out–a great program, say–or if I truly am as empty and shallow as I feel. I have a hard time deciding which is worse: to die, never freeing that great work from within me, or never having it inside me in the first place.
Tags: programming, writing
del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since September 24, 2007 at 09:00 AM:
One of the great things about Twitter is how a terse exchange can lead to big thoughts. I just had this exchange with Robert Scoble:
It got me thinking, why is Twitter and IRC an either-or choice? Twitter is already accessible via SMS, IM and web–why not IRC, too? Suppose there was a Twitter IRC bot, which you could register with using your Twitter username and password. It would send you Twitter updates via IRC private messages and you could send it updates in return. Basically, it could work just like the current Twitter IM interface, just over IRC.
Then, I thought, why not take it one step further: an IRC network (think: irc.twitter.com) on which you use your Twitter username as your IRC nickname, and it requires your Twitter password in order to connect. It would have one channel, #public, for public updates. Another channel, #friends, would appear to have all the people you’re following on Twitter in it. Direct messages would be exchanged using IRC’s private messages. You might follow/unfollow people by sending a private message to the “Twitter” nickname.
But, are these really Robert’s objections to IRC? I mean, adding a logging bot to an IRC channel which publishes logs as RSS is easy. Publishing those same logs as HTML with named anchors would provide permalinks for individual messages. IRC lets you kick and ban from channels, as well as being able to ignore them in your IRC client. Is the problem really that IRC isn’t Twitter, or is it really that IRC is IRC, and nobody cares about IRC any more?
Could IRC become relevant again if it just implemented these few simple Twitter features? I don’t think so–I think Twitter’s success owes itself to Twitter’s actual implementation:
That second point, the “self-created community,” is really powerful. Unlike IRC, it’s trivially easy to follow/unfollow someone on Twitter. If you’re not interested in someone’s updates, it’s very easy to make it impossible for them to interact with you on Twitter. Not so easy on IRC, which has always been one of its weaknesses.
So, what might come out of all this thinking and rambling? I don’t know–maybe these thoughts will spark someone else’s thought process and we can build up from there. I just wanted to capture these thoughts before they escaped my brain.
Okay, I’m sorry I indulged myself the last few days with the spurt of political blogging. I’ve gotten it out of my system now. Time to get back to the hardcore geeking!
Here’s a short list of things that are either on my mind or somewhere in my to-do list:
If you’d like to hear more about any of these things–or better yet, do them together with me, let me know!
Dave Winer links to a transcript and video of Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University.
Bollinger’s totally disrespectful introduction of President Ahmadinejad was unbelievable. Ahmadinejad even goes on to say “I know there’s time limits, but I need time. I mean, a lot of time was taken from me.” He should have just taken the time he needed and said “Don’t taze me, bro” if they continued to pressure him.
If you haven’t yet, go and read the transcript. I would love to see the sources people keep quoting where he calls for the violent destruction of Israel, where he denies the Holocaust, or any of those things. From what he said most recently at Columbia University, I’m starting to suspect that those faulty interpretations were more the fault of our crack journalists and media wankers.
My take-aways from his speech:
I hope Americans can listen to his message–I don’t think it was offensive or inciteful or provocative–and learn from it. We are all on this ball of dirt called Earth together. Perhaps we should learn to make the best of our time on it together?
Tags: politics, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran, Columbia University, speech
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