This
weekend I took the trip up to bay area for the bridge school benefit
show. The show is sponsored by the legendary guitarist Neil Young. The second day had a
powerhouse lineup with Wilco, Death Cab For Cutie, The Smashing Pumpkins
followed by Nora Jones, Josh Groban and Jack Johnson and of course Neil
Young made multiple appearances.
I would have had a better time if you could buy a cup of beer for less
than $11, but it was still an amazing show. Watching Wilco and The
Smashing Pumpkins rock out on accoustic instruments only was an
experience to say the least.
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My roommate has
been noting the increased number of large and scary black widows that
have been hanging around my house lately. There was a noticeable spider
problem when I moved in, but I never really cared too much. I’ve just
been wiping the cobwebs down every few weeks. Maybe they’re enjoying the
cooler weather as much as I am. For whatever reason, they’re out in
force and once or twice have cause me to actually feel a little fear.
That’s not something I need to stand for in my own house, so I decided
I’m going to fight back.
One thing is for sure, this wasn’t going to be a job for some half-assed
can of raid, or whatever puny aresol can I could get at the grocery
store. I always wondered what those professional pest control guys
actually have in their secret tubes of death, so I went out looking.
After exactly one google
search. I found
the good stuff. One pound of Cynoff
WP makes about 48 gallons
of sweet spidery slumber for only $48 shipped. You can’t beat that with
a stick. It should arrive sometime next week.
Update: July 8, 2009 It’s been almost a year and I must say this
stuff is the ticket. I’ve since discovered that you can actually get the
same chemical (cypermethrin) in the same wettable powder packaging for
about $30 per pound if you look for off brand labels. I’ve seen just a
handful of spiders since I sprayed and no black widows.
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I’ve been working on a project
using django, and I’ve got some great things to say about it. I also
have some nasty things to say. I’m currently prototyping, which means
the databases I work with get destroyed and recreated regularly. I
normally have a set of test data that should always be present in the
system. Database fixtures to the rescue!
The django
documentation
has a nice section on database fixtures and how to deal with them
properly. You can even give your fixtures a special name (initial_data),
and the syncdb command will automatically load your initial fixtures for
you. The first thing that really struck me about these fixtures is the
fact that you have to reference your model for every database row. Why
not divide the fixtures into sections so you only have to type it out
once? The fixtures could really benefit from that type of context.
The second thing I noticed, after typing out all my fixtures in YAML
format, is that django claims to support YAML format, but doesn’t
actually check for an initial_data.yml (or initial_data.yaml) file.
That’s a big disappointment. Now am I supposed to translate that file
back into xml or json? It picks up files with those names perfectly
fine.
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So I decided to head out to lunch with a buddy from work today, and while I was out the world went insane. Both parties in the house of representatives worked together to defeat the $700B bailout plan, the Dow Jones had its largest single-day point drop in history, and our publisher (a 41 year bee veteran), Ray Steele resigned. A new guy, Will Fleet, will be taking the reigns in two weeks. Needless to say, I was a little shocked when I came back.
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Once you
understand all the basic concepts of writing programs, the practice of
software development can sometimes devolve into a simple exercise in
pattern recognition. If you catch yourself writing the same code more
than once or twice, you’re probably doing something wrong. Here’s an
example that will apply particularly to those of us who use the Zend
Framework.
Typically, in a web application following MVC design principles, there
are patterns that emerge from your actions. Patterns like access
control, detecting special requests and responding appropriately,
preparing pagination controls, etc. The Zend Framework and other
frameworks provide abstract classes to handle the basics, but they’re
meant to be extended to suit your own application.
Make sure you have your own ./library folder within your application
that’s on your php include path and create a directory structure for
your extended action class beginning with a namespace of your choice.
I’m using Crozz. Here’s a skeleton that I’ve paced in
./library/Crozz/Controller/Action.php:
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