CNN: Cuba: U.S. using new weapon against us: spam
I admit it: I read the article to see if it was digital spam or analog SPAM(TM).
All posts by Randy
What is a PM?
About nine years ago, and after being at Microsoft for a year, I posted “What is an SDET?” in response to various questions that I got about my career choice to move from developer to tester. Like the original post calls out, there was a lot of “why” and “what do you do” and I tried my best to describe my thoughts and reality at the time, especially for people that saw the world divided into Dev or Test, without room for a developer that tests for a living.
As my ten year anniversary at Microsoft approaches, I’ve made a change: I’m now a Program Manager.
Continue reading What is a PM?
Wait, What?
MSN: Student fell to death after eating pot cookie
An autopsy report lists marijuana intoxication as a “significant contributing factor” in the death of 19-year-old Levy Thamba Pongi, a native of the Republic of Congo who fell from a motel balcony on March 11. […] The friends told investigators that Pongi ate the cookie and “exhibited hostile behavior” that included pulling things off walls and speaking erratically, the autopsy report said.
I call bullshit. I’ve seen tons of hostile behavior from various substances but never, ever pot. Have I seen someone try to break into a vending machine with a coat hanger? Yes, but it wasn’t hostile; it was methodical. Have I seen someone head butt a Mustang three times because he was jealous for something with his girlfriend? Yes, but that was because of alcohol. Have I seen someone pass out with a cigarette still in their mouth? Yep.
And also, why is this national newsworthy? Unless we’re saying we found the first known pot-induced angry young man… or because he’s underage for pot use? How many kids – last night alone – had violent issues caused by alcohol in Colorado? I bet the number is more than 1.
I think there was something else was going on with this kid that was left on the editing waste bin, in spite of the clean toxicology report.
-1 Hippies: Nice Job
Gizmodo: Measles Are Back in New York City Thanks to Anti-Vax Absurdity
Nice fuckin’ job you wide-minded “I know better than science” idiots. You’ve helped bring back measles – which shouldn’t be around in today’s day and age – and once it gets a foothold, it will mutate and negate the protection that those of us opted to have by getting vaccinated in the first place. Next time, when you make bad decisions, keep them for yourself. Don’t impact the rest of us. I mean, if someone offered me a parachute while jumping out of a plane, I’d take it… you anti-vaccine lot would probably worry that you’d hurt a bird with your ripchord on the way down so not take it. That’s fine because unless you land on someone or their home, that decision doesn’t impact anyone but you. Not vaccinating your children hurts the community. Again, nice job.
Mind you, these are the same people that jump on the Bill Nye bandwagon of “oh, evolution has to be right! Look how silly creationism is! Who would put blind faith in a larger power?” and yet… they put blind faith that Living Well(TM) is good enough for them – and their children – meaning that they don’t need vaccines.
The irony is steep today, folks.
Big Steak Thursday – Tenth Anniversary
Can it really have been ten years since the first official observation for Big Steak Thursday? Looks like it: the first post was from 2004.
Given the Roman Catholic’s recent history, I’m expecting a Papal Bull in the mail some time this week, officially recognizing Big Steak Thursday as a holy day of obligation. I think Pope Francis would be all for it.
Truth: there’s a New York strip in the fridge already.
iMediaMan version 2.2: Now Available!
iMediaMan v2.2 is now available in the App Store!
Seems that I haven’t posted some of the improvements that got iMediaMan from 1.1.1 to 2.2, but the majority of the newness came from 2.0, when I updated the UI for the longer screen of the iPhone 5, and now with 2.2 when I’ve recompiled for iOS 7. The good news is that Apple is still offering 2.1.1 for customers that have opted to stay on iOS 6, and there’s really no missing features. I made some little UI tweaks for iOS 7 but nothing major. I also took a look at the beta version of MediaMan for the PC (v4) and brought an MMC file to the iPhone: whatever changes have been made to the database are already supported by the current versions of iMediaMan which is good news.
Highlights in the 2.x releases:
(2.2.0)
– INFO: compiled for iOS 7.0 with updated controls
(2.x)
– FIX: Items without titles will no longer crash
– ADD: MMC files can now be opened from other applications (including Dropbox and SkyDrive); if the new database doesn’t show up in the list automatically, hit the refresh button and it will become available
– ADD: lists will shift The, An, and A from the beginning of titles to the end, allowing for better sorting; detail pages show the full title
– FIX: portrait vs landscape support has been improved in details pages
– ADD: every MediaMan MMC file now includes an [all items] entry; view and search across all items in one list
– FIX: retina display icon is now being used
– FIX: some better handling on landscape for details
– FIX: tweaked the layout on “Description”
– FIX: landscape mode on “Add a Library” handles rotate better
– FIX: better handling when the phone runs low on memory
iMediaMan for iOS FAQ | MediaMan for Windows information | iMediaMan in the iTunes store
12.
Apple: Workaround to get video titles on iOS7 devices
Have videos that you want on iOS7? If you don’t have boxart for every video you own – and I for one always make box art of the videos I take of my son – then you are going to be pissed at iOS7: they stopped putting text labels on videos in the video player. It’s funny too because I noticed this happen back in 2010 with iOS4, when TV Shows stopped showing titles, but it’s only with iOS7 that it started causing problems for a lot more people. At least there’s a workaround.
In iTunes, if you want a video to show up with it’s text title on your device, select the video file in question, then right click and select Get Info. Select the Options tab and change the Media Type to Home Movie. Now sync your device. In the on-device Video app, you’ll see that there’s a new group called Home Video: in there you’ll have a list of your videos with *gasp* names under them!
Sad that there needs to be a workaround for this bug. And I’m calling it a bug. There’s no reason at all why the code can’t check for box art and make a decision based on whether or not it’s there. iTunes downloaded content wouldn’t suffer from this issue if they didn’t shove a piece of box art into the file: they don’t show you a thumbnail from a film and make you guess what video it is… Amazon does something similar with Kindle, but at least they show you a default bit of cover art with the name of the file when you copy over personal documents. This is like “if you didn’t get it from iTunes, that’s your problem.” The code should be checking for box art and if it doesn’t have a file, it should be displaying the name from the metadata, plain and simple.
Praised be the workaround.
GTA V: A New Parent’s Reaction
I have an 11 month old son sleeping upstairs and disc 1 of Grand Theft Auto V sitting in the tray of my 360.
Why am I writing a blog post instead of playing the game? Or the better question: now that I have a son, what do I think of my past opinions about GTA being a valued franchise for gaming consoles… I mean, before I was a parent, I always defended this series as being fun and important to each generation. This is covered ground. I almost feel like I should repost any of the GTA or violence in video games or Jack Thompson posts from the past…
Now that I’m a father, I still wouldn’t change a fsckin’ thing.
Continue reading GTA V: A New Parent’s Reaction
:X
Sorry folks – that is if there’s anyone still out there :) – but I’ve turned off comments for now.
After many, many days of my not posting, feature requests for products that have been turned loose on CodePlex, and getting at least 5-10 pieces of comment spam [getting through the filters] a day… well, if you have something to say, shoot me an email.
I’ll likely turn them back on someday… just not this day.
And Now For The News
Must be a slow day for news, given MSN’s home page today…
Continue reading And Now For The News
Mon Dieu
MSN.com: James Lipton opens up about being a pimp in Paris: ‘It was a great year’ […] Lipton says he ran a very successful bordello and made enough money to live off of for a year. “I did a roaring business,” he boasts. “That’s how I lived. I was going through my rites of passage, no question about it. It was a great year of my life.”
That said, he doesn’t endorse paying for sex. As he tells Parade, “I think if you can’t earn it on your own, then you don’t deserve it.”
Wait so… but he charged… and then… but the last line…
…what the fuck did I just read?
Uh, What?
Joystiq: Earlier in May, Biden met behind closed doors with 20 representatives from faith-based organizations to discuss gun control and immigration, and he briefly addressed video games, Politico reports. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, proposed to Biden that “media and entertainment that portray violence should be subject to a special tax, with the proceeds going to help victims and their families,” according to Rabbi Julie Schonfeld. Biden replied that there was “no restriction on the ability to do that; there’s no legal reason why they couldn’t” place a tax on violent media, Sister Marjorie Clark told Politico. Biden again emphasized the need for more research into the subject, Clark added: “He said they really need a good scientific study, which they’ve done on things like smoking.”
Uh, what? There’s no porn surcharge… and what would constitute violent media? Shooter video game? The national news? Has anyone noticed that media sites are promoting what used to be local news lately, just because there’s a gun involved? Those disc packages that are impossible to open from a plastic shell without scissors… those are really violent media. What about Food Fight? That’s a grey area, right because you’re fighting violently but with food, so it’s fun. In Defender, you shot aliens that because they were trying to steal people from the ground and it was on you to save them… that’s a moral quandry. Or Berserk? That was self defense and Otto couldn’t even be shot. Pac-man because he terrorizes ghosts when powered up? Obviously violent. Look at how their expression goes all tense and they run away from him. Violent.
I don’t know what to make of the news when we shot Bin Laden… where in the hell does that come into play? Do I owe a family that lost a love one due to gun violence a quarter because I clicked on a news link?!
Some how I think that if Franklin Graham asked Biden to support a bill that taxes “wrong” religions and give the money to the “right” religion – because obviously Franklin’s is the only right one – it would be less subjective… wait until Clark realizes that most of the existing scientific studies show that violent media doesn’t cause violent behavior and he has to go fund one specifically to back the out come he wants…
That Biden sorta says “OK” blows my entire frontal lobe.
#jackass
Growing Up Whoville
CNN.com Small town, big arches: Why one Australian town is fighting McDonald’s
I thought Monroe, CT had the lock on stupidity against fast food places… back in the day, Burger King wanted to open up shop. They were met with a lawsuit that called out that “the smells from the restaurant would distract kids in the nearby schools”. No joke. It really happened. On the other side of town the CT-homegrown Duchess was required to pay cash to two of the other quasi-fast food places in the form of a payoff, just to open their doors because “Duchess will have so many customers that other business will suffer.” Also not a joke; it really happened. Mind you that when they did allow a real fast food place, not only did they put it across the street from the original BK site but it was McDonald’s; it would seem their smells didn’t cross the street to bother children at school. Or as I like to think of it, it’s not how much you pay out, it’s who you pay off. …and this is the same McDonald’s that made national news in the mid-90’s for selling pot out the drive thru window. Certainly not a joke; it made the AP wire after it circulated the local news.
After all of that in one town, why would I pick on this small Australian town?
“The presence of a 24-hour restaurant will mean (an) increase of littering, vandalism and worse and the leaving of items such as used condoms or broken bottles, meaning children are more likely to be injured or harmed in some way,” she said.
Sadly, it’s not a joke – that’s a direct quote. Because I for one know that people only litter after midnight. And I would never vandalize a place unless it was open for business throughout the night. Further, I always get my sodas from McDonald’s in glass bottles and certainly I would never loiter in a parking look unless it was to use a condom. Logically, I will only use a condom for vandalizing broken glass bottles that were littered in a fast food parking lot to directly injure and harm all of the children that would only be there from midnight to dawn.
What the hell did I just read?
Dave Winer: Never The Same Ass Twice
Gizmodo on the closure of Google Reader: I won’t miss it. Never used the damn thing. Didn’t trust the idea of a big company like Google’s interests being so aligned with mine that I could trust them to get all my news. And besides, I didn’t think the mailbox approach to news was right. Who cares how many unread items there are. I like the river of news approach and I have a very fine set of rivers that keep me well supplied with news and podcasts. …Next time, please pay a fair price for the services you depend on. Those have a better chance of surviving the bubbles.
Nice quote, you jack ass. You completely miss the fact that Google Reader was more than a reader: it was the RSS backbone for a number of products and projects… maybe if you co-built RSS a little better – and remember, you didn’t do it alone so you can shove that “creator” title out the window – then we wouldn’t need a sync engine and clients could inherently know how many things are unread. Unlike you and your “endless river of news” some of us work for a living and don’t have the time to twittle OPML files or jump between rivers.
As to “please pay a fair price” how exactly should we do that for Google Reader when Google didn’t offer a paid for option? I paid for FeedDemon years ago and now – with Google Reader closing – I will lose some of the key functionality that made the app great. I paid for the app because of the feature and now you’re going to tell me that I should pay for services? Or are you still saying that we should have paid you for defining an XML schema?
You, sir, continue to be a waste of bandwidth and close to a waste of oxygen.