Running is therapy

Just kidding…sadly I commute long distances alone.

I couldn’t seem to find in the admin section how to mass close posts for commenting. When spam gets past Akismet it’s usually for a really old post. So I looked in the database and made the change by hand

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'closed' WHERE ID < 283;


**UPDATE** Heh, right after I posted this, I got some ping spam...

UPDATE wp_posts SET ping_status = 'closed' WHERE ID < 283;


Heh, I am not as young as I used to be. Ran my 5K this morning (36:06 – I would have done a bit better than this, but there were about 1000 people and it took me 1.5 minutes to even cross the starting line). Then I went to help my buddy move his GF to her new house. I am going to get a shower and lay down…I feel pretty tired :)

This is something I have long thought about. The idea that “Family” matters. The prevailing notion is that because you share DNA with others on the planet you are somehow bound to them and must be friends.

I have never really subscribed to this idea. I think it’s absurd. DNA no more ensures that we are compatible with one another than does liking the same band. I would guess that DNA helps. If you are genetically similar to another person, you may have the same tastes, ideas, and values as that person, however you may not. It’s often looked down upon if you do not “get along” with your family. This too is absurd. If you were raised in the same environment and share similar genetic make up as others in your family you very well could find these people to your liking, however if you arrive at very different conclusions about fundamental questions…you are probably not going to find the relationship with family very fulfilling, or at all worthwhile. I say cut the ties. There is no need to beat your head against the wall. If you didn’t share genetic material with them, no one would fault you for not wanting to spend time with people you found objectionable.

I have a pretty irrational fear of flying. It kind of sucks because it curses me to never go very far. I had been thinking over the last few weeks how nice it would be if I could overcome that. To that end I have been searching for information on the phobia.

Interestingly, there is a LOT of stuff out there about it. There are like a brazillion web sites, and after a brief Amazon search it would also appear there are a brazillian books too. I think I may try to pick up a few books on the subject. Why not approach it the way I do everything else…and study?

Today for some unknown reason, while beginning my run I decided to go for some speed. Shorter run, faster pace. Heh, well that was interesting. Beside sucking most of the fun out of it I am now quite tired :)

I ran 2 miles for a total of 21:51 (just under 22 minutes). 1 mile split of: 11:18 / 2 mile split of 10:33 for about a 10:50 average.

Now, this is slow by most peoples standards, but keep in mind that I have training at a 12 m/m pace.

I just read this via reddit. I can only think that large businesses do not understand that they shoot themselves in the foot with such bs. Now, I know what you are saying, pedantic constant reader, “Well it’s diluting the trademark, and will make it hard for them to defend infringement in court”. To which I say, shut up.

Davenport and Frigidaire had no such issues. Nor does Kleenex, or q-tip. In fact I would say the opposite. When your trademark is a synonym for the industry, I have to think it’s a net win. Yes, it might mean that someone can use the word “photoshop” to describe some bit of functionality, but believe me, if you need photoshop, you will get Photoshop(tm).

Getting your product into the hearts and minds of the public is why you pay those otherwise worthless marketing people (just kidding Marcus, who loves you baby). They did their job, you won, enjoy it.

One of the cooler things that was presented today at GoRuCo2007 was a talk by Nick Sieger on JRuby. JRuby is a somewhat complete implementation of Ruby in Java.

Like most talks I have seen given, it wasn’t so much the talk itself that was informative, it’s was the piquing of interest in the topic that made the difference. After listening to what Nick had to say, I was interested in checking out what JRuby had to offer.

Installation in Ubuntu was easy peasy.

mkdir /usr/local/bin/jruby
svn co svn://svn.codehaus.org/jruby/trunk/jruby /usr/local/bin/jruby
export JRUBY_HOME="/usr/local/bin/jruby"
cd /usr/local/bin/jruby
ant test


That does assume that ant is installed, configured and in your path, but that is another topic…on my system it already was (Though I haven’t messed with Ant or Java in a long time, so I don’t remember why it was set up already).

After that it’s a simple matter of trying it out (I found this example on the web site for JRuby).

require 'java'
include_class 'java.util.TreeSet'
set = TreeSet.new
set.add "foo"
set.add "Bar"
set.add "baz"
set.each do |v|
puts "value: #{v}"
end


Then from the command line:

jruby test.rb


Badabing, it runs

value: Bar
value: baz
value: foo


Give it a whirl…it’s neato.

http://savingtheinternetwithhate.com/

This is the talk we heard.