the inner curmudgeon

The Cue, Fitzroy

For a number of years now I’ve been playing in the Tramway Hotel’s MMPL 3rd division pool team. For almost as long I’ve been meaning to get around to volunteering to update their website - www.mmpl.org.au. Well, I’ve finally done that and now, with a couple of other members, have been officially charged with improving the site.

While I haven’t sat down and spoken to the other developers about this, I’d like to rebuild the site from scratch (rather than build upon the existing code), and I’d like to do it in Ruby on Rails. My motivation for this is mostly to expand my repertoire as a developer. If the other developers aren’t keen on the idea, I’ll develop a version of the site in Rails anyway - even if it never gets used.

Firstly though, I need to specify what it is that I’ll be building. It’s not terribly complicated - the MMPL Website should provide:

• General information about the organization
• Information resources for players
• News updates
• Events calendar
• Online team registration
• Online score sheet submission
• Results and ladder

The first couple of items can be done with static pages and/or PDF downloads, much as the current site already does. News updates can be done using a blog-like system, again, much as the current site does.

The current site also has a calendar, but it seems pretty clunky and doesn’t get used much. When it does, it is only for events like presentation nights - a good calendar would include the actual matches. I’m thinking it would be nice to somehow use google’s calendar.

The current site does not have online registration and score sheet submission. Results and the ladder are compiled manually and emailed to team captains. All of this should be managed through the site.

It would be really nice if it could also provide:

• News feed
• Calendar feed
• Accounting of registration fees

That’s all for now. Next time I’ll map out the data model for the site.

john web development mmpl, rails, ruby, web

still waiting for official recognition

According to a front page article in today’s The Age, the Victorian state government is set to approve a Humanist curriculum for state primary schools to be taught in class time designated for “religious instruction.”

Now, I think this is fantastic news and it seems that plenty of people agree. However there were a couple of dissenting voices.

Jenny Stokes, a representative from a lunatic fundamentalist cult Christian ethics action group calling themselves the “salt shakers,” worried that if you give air time to Humanists, why not Wiccans and Satanists? Her concern comes a little late given that Wicca and Satanism have a lot more in common with Christianity than they do with Humanism, so that door has been open for a long time.

Evonne Paddison from Access Ministries, the group that runs the current Christian curriculum in about two-thirds of our schools questioned the validity of the Humanist curriculum saying that it could not really qualify as “faith-based.” However, from what I could tell it appears to have an atheist rather than agnostic agenda, and thus has a firm foundation in irrational belief and qualifies as religious instruction.

john philosophy education, humanism

Apparently you don’t have to be terribly bright to be student of psychology. One Vlad Dolezal recently blogged that he’d worked out why Linux isn’t taking the desktop world by storm: it’s because it’s free. His theory goes that people choose Windows over Linux because Windows costs money, and is therefore perceived as being more valuable than the free-as-in-beer Linux.

The fact that there are versions of Linux that aren’t free tends to blow his theory out of the water, but there is a much simpler explanation for the lack of Linux’s success in the desktop market: it’s because it’s crap, and I say that as a Linux user. Linux handles most of my computing needs very well, but there are still a number of Windows apps I use from time to time for which there is no Linux equivalent. For those apps I use a Windows virtual machine, but this not a sensible arrangement for most people - in fact it’s downright insane.

john general

6.5 months on and I’m still using Ubuntu as my operating system of choice. I haven’t completely left Windows behind, but my Windows needs can be served inside a VMWare session.

I’ve upgraded to 7.10 and while I’ve lost a little of the Beryl eye candy, that’s more than made up for by the improved stability of compiz-fusion.

Would I recommend it to others? I guess that depends on your needs. Do you use Outlook? If so, stick with Windows because Evolution sucks, this is most especially true if you’re in an office that uses Exchange server. Do you rely on Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro? Again, stick with Windows because the Gimp will melt your brain. The most recent release is a vast improvement, but it is still a program designed by, and for people who would rather do their image editing on a command line.

Do you use Word or Excel? Then maybe you could switch to Linux. OpenOffice is much better these days, but MS Office is still a far superior suite. For un-demanding work, OpenOffice will satisfy your needs, but if you’re a Word or Excel power user, then forget Linux.

However, if your main use of your computer is for browsing, email and IM, then Linux will do the job.

john general

linux: cancel, retry or ignore?

I’ve dipped my toe in the linux waters several times over the years. The closest I came to actually switching was a couple of years ago when Ubuntu 5.04 (aka Hoary Hedgehog) hit the streets. This was the first Linux distribution I had tried where everything “just worked” and I managed to run it as my primary operating system at home for several months. However, in the end it didn’t give me anything I couldn’t get in Windows, and I was still heavily reliant on a couple of Windows-only apps.

Two years later I am willing to give it another go. Ubuntu still seems to be the best choice and the latest version (7.04 - aka Feisty Fawn) seems to be a huge improvement on what was already a very good Linux distro. This time I have decided not to go the dual-boot path and am running Linux as the only OS on my desktop system at home (though I still have XP on the laptop).

One of the hurdles I will have to clear is getting Noise Ninja running under Linux. My first attempt will be to try it under wine. If that doesn’t work I’ll see how I go running it in VMWare, but my feeling is that if you have to go to those lengths then it’s getting to be more trouble that it’s worth. Other photo-related challenges are RAW conversion and geo-tagging.

OpenOffice is better these days than last time I tried it, but it is still dreadfully sucky. However, I have found a cheap alternative in SoftMaker Office that so far seems pretty good. It handles complex Excel spreadsheets with aplomb where OpenOffice’s Calc will grind away for 10-15 seconds every time you change a cell. It’s Word processor doesn’t seem quite as compatible as I would like, but I think it’s good enough for my purposes.

john general

Recently published research into physical activity and breast cancer risk shows a significant correlation between increased physical activity and reduced risk of breast cancer. “Activity” was classified as occupational, recreational or household and the most significant correlation of reduced risk was found between household activity. Note that:

• what constitutes “household activity” is not spelled out in the abstract;
• the abstract emphasises that the key lesson to be learned here increased physical activity per se is associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer, and
• men can get breast cancer too.

These considerations have not stopped the worldwide media from reporting that teh scientists are telling their bitches to get the hell back in the kitchen and start scrubbing those pots and pans or else their boobies will drop off. Or words to that effect.

I blame those conducting the research myself. If you’re going to categorise physical activities, you need to choose categories that have some physioligical significance. It is small wonder that they saw a lower correlation for recreational activity if they put yoga and hockey in the same column.

john health

Jessica’s Camera

Jessica is with her grandparent’s this weekend and will possibly be visiting her cousins in Horsham. She wanted to take her camera so she could get some photos to send to her Mum (currently in New Zealand). Unfortunately the camera, an old Olympus C300Z (aka D550Z) took a nosedive off the kitchen bench. As you can see from the photo, the outer housing of the lens barrel is cracked and the lens is jammed. I puled it apart to see if I could unstick it, but to no avail.

Jessica was initially distraught, but got over it quickly as the excitement of her trip with Poppy and Grandma took over. While she did like having a camera, I suspect that the lingering heartbreak over it’s loss will be mine. Not about the camera itself, of course. It is after all only a thing and in the end its general clunkiness annoyed me so much that I upgraded to a new camera a few days into our Canada trip last year.

The real loss to me is that I liked that Jessica had a camera. I liked seeing her having fun with it. It reminded my of the fun I had with my father’s old Box Brownie when I was her age, and it made me go all hopelessly mushy inside when Darrell told me how, on a recent outing to Williamstown, Jessica was watching me with my camera and imitating me: framing shots, trying different angles on subjects and so on.

A word of caution: if you ever dismantle a camera, watch out for the flash capacitor. They bite!

john life

Mobil Sucks

I have mixed feelings about rising petrol prices (currently around AUD$1.35). On the one hand, it puts pressure on people to use less petrol by buying more fuel efficient cars, or using public transport .. or both. That’s all good for the environment (or less horrendously bad anyway) and I am all for that.

On the other hand, I drive to work every day. I tried public transport and it just doesn’t work for me. Partly because the pricing structure is insane, partly because it is unreliable, and partly because it takes an unacceptably large chunk out of my day.

I live in Melbourne’s “Zone 2″, which means that not only do I get fewer public transport options and less frequent train services than those in Zone 1, I also have to pay something like twice as much for the privilege. To the extent that driving in by car is not much more expensive than taking a train, even with the ridiculous price of petrol at the moment. Also, because I don’t happen to work in the CBD, the closest train is a 20+ minute walk from work. If I bought a bike, it would cut the travel time down to something reasonable, but we are discouraged from taking bikes on trains during peak hour, and the trains are getting more crowded, so even if I am allowed to take a bike, it may just be impractical.

Anyway, I think public transport should be free. The whole user-pays thing is a crock. Even if you discount the environmental costs, we drivers do not pay the full costs of our road use, and cost recovery for public transport is a mug’s game.

/rant

john politics

Son of Spooky-Eyed Cow

When I first started coming to the Napier they had a mural depicting the ascent of man: from hunter gatherer, through agriculture, bronze age, empires, enlightment, industrial revolution, world wars and the modern era before ending with a speculative flourish concerning mankind’s future. It was bright, colourful and really, really hideous.

The owner at the time refused to paint it over, but would not say why. So for years, the Feral Women, the Rococo Pops and countless other bands played under the watchful gaze of the spooky-eyed cow.

Some years back, after a change of hands, the mural was finally, thankfully, painted over. So I went in yesterday to take a couple of interior shots for my Fitzroy project, I was very surprised to see that the mural had been disinterred. I was even more surprised to find that it looks great in it’s present, muted form. I’ll be going back for some more shots soon.

john general

The inner curmudgeon now has a new home. Up until now it has been hosted at PowWeb, but I have been quietly looking around for an alternative host that offers more in the way of nerdy goodness (eg. SSH/SFTP access, Subversion repository). To date I have resisted moving because PowWeb’s service is pretty good, even if it does lack tech candy. They also have a kick-ass user community forum. However, recently PowWeb has been bought out by “the largest hosting company you never heard of” (Endurance International) and I suspect that the service is likely to become even more vanilla. In my experience, when bean counters take over a business, it ends up just another pile of beans.

On top of that news, they futzed a mail server upgrade, so I’ve decided to test the DreamHost waters. They’re a little more expensive and their user community forums suck, but they have SSH/SFTP access, Subversion and they offer Ruby and Python, which I wasn’t particularly looking for, but might be nice to tinker with.

I’ve still got my dire beetles site and a couple of others at PowWeb and I will see how things go at DreamHost and PowWeb before deciding whether to jump ship entirely.

john general