Tyler On Everything

I can’t express how mad I am. So I post some of my electronics on Kijiji they having a fucking stupid policy of randomly selecting ads and putting them on hold for 24 hours before posting them (meaing that if you want to sell something quickly that Kijiji is fucking useless!)

Anyway, I wait the 24 hours an ad fucking finally gets posted, I don’t see much action on it. So I update the price.

GETS FUCKING PULLED DOWN FOR ANOTHER 24 FUCKING HOURS! WHAT THE FUCK! KIJIJI IS FUCKING USELESS.

*sorry for the cursing, but I am really angry*

I am changing up the way things look in my entertainment unit. I have decided to move away from my multi-unit setup.

Things I want to remove from the entertainment unit include:

• Old CD player (which I don’t really need now)
• XBox 360
• Wii
• Blu-ray player

I am planning to replace all these items with a Playstation 3. This means that I have a lot of shuffling to do.

What I am planning to sell is:

1. XBox 360 /w 20GB HD: Comes with Rock Band 2 (with 2 guitars), and NHL 07. Asking price is $300
2. Wii with 2 controllers and Guitar Hero 3 (with 2 guitars). Asking price $300
3. Samsung BD-P1400 Blu-ray player, all manuals and remote. Asking price $150

If you know anyone who would be interested let me know.

I was browsing through some posters on GigPosters.com and I came across this:
Moneen Poster

If you look right at the bottom, you can see that it was a revolution rock and Junkedcamera.com presentation. Very cool to find this.

The largest market share of browser’s hitting this website is Internet Explorer! 38% of all visits to this website are with Internet Explorer, Firefox is next with 35%, then Safari at 12%. I hate the fact that Internet Explorer is still winning! I crave the day when I check these stats and see something, ANYTHING other than IE. Having said that I should point out that I am actually doing pretty well. In the wild and not using this website as a reference, IE holds about a 66% market share. This number needs to change, especially in regards to IE 6.

Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001. That is roughly 8 years ago. It was not a particularly great browser when it was released but due to Microsoft Bundling it with Windows it eventually won out against Netscape. In its peak in 2002-03 it had market share in the high 80s. Now it dwindles for good reason in the less than 20% range. Yet in the corporate world, it is still used extensively. In fact I still have IE6 (along with 3 other browsers) installed on my computer at work.

At this point I cannot fathom how people still use IE6. It is a hideous browser, to compare it to an Automobile that was released in the same year. It is a Pontiac Aztec:

Pontiac Aztec

Now an alternative would be Firefox 3.0. It is a good deal faster, with much richer features. It is a safer browser and better yet it is free! Would you rather drive a 2001 Pontiac Aztec or would you rather drive this (keeping in mind that it is free!):

BMW M3

Well 66% of all people are still driving the Aztec. Now since I have slammed IE enough I should go into greater detail as to why it sucks, and give some alternatives.

Firefox 3.0

This looks to be the current favourite to unseat Internet Explorer as the browser champion. In its current state, it is hard to question Firefox’s supremacy in the browser race.  Firefox is based off the old open source code base of the now defunct Netscape project.

Firefox has a lot going for it. It is a very fast browser, especially in comparison to IE. It should be getting even faster after the upcoming release of FireFox 3.5, which should come with the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine enabled. Yet if you are looking for pure speed, Firefox is not the king. Where FireFox wins hands down, is its extensibility.

Firefox has a vast theme and plugin catalog (created by everyday users) to be able to make the browser do whatever you want it to do. The Firefox themes allow you to change the appearance of the browser to suit your personal tastes.

Beyond the appearance, the plugins capability of Firefox, allows you to add functionality to suit your needs. Email notifier? Yep Gmail notifier handles that. Ad Block Plus blocks ads. GMarks integrates with you Google Bookmarks. The list is never ending, there is a Better Gmail plugin, that ads features to Gmail. Plugins for improving google reader, links to del-i-cious, digg, you name it. You  can make firefox do pretty much anything you want, and that is its strength.

Most importantlyFirefox is standards based. This means that it renders web pages to look the way a published set of standards dictate they should look. Differences from the published standards are treated as bugs by the Firefox developers.

Also important to note is that Firefox is available on all computing platforms.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is in it’s infancy. It was only released in beta form in September of 2008. It has a singular goal in optimizing browser performance to bring web-apps to the desktop. Google has a great deal invested in web applications (Google Docs, GMail, etc…) and to make them truly compete with desktop applications they felt they needed a faster browser; which is exactly what Google Chrome is.

Chrome has far and away the fastest Javascript engine on the market (name V8). The javascript processing time of a browser is crucial to the performance of the newer web applications. Beyond that there are many other advancements. The name chrome comes from the fact that that is exactly what it is lacking, the chrome. It tries to give as much content as possible content of websites as opposed to the browser itself. As well each tab in the browser operates in a seperate process. This means that if a bit of bad javascript crashes the browser, in Chrome it will only crash the single tab, rather than all existing tabs.

Chrome’s biggest short comings are the strengths of Firefox. It lacks customizability, although a plugin in frastructure is coming. As well for the time being it is only available on Windoze although OS X and linux versions are in the pipeline.

Regardless of the current small market share of Chrome, I think that it actually has the best shot of unseeding IE. Google is pushing this browser very hard, they have taken it out of the beta state remarkably quickly for a Google product. They are marketing it a huge amount; they are even rumoured to be taking out television ads. Beyond the advertising they are said to be negotiating with computer manufacturers to OEM Chrome, which would be a major coup against IE.

Chrome is my browser of choice on Windoze.

Safari

Safari is Apple’s answer to the browser. It started out as being OS X only, but has now been extended to the windows platform. Like Firefox and Chrome it is standards based, as well it is a very fast browser, yet it does not compete with Chrome. Yet it is faster than Firefox on OS X, and very comparable on Windoze.

Where Safari lacks, is it does not seem to be a polished application on the Windoze platform, and it lacks the extensibility of Firefox. Safari is very close to being my browser of choice on OS X, but with the upcoming version of Firefox, I think  I will continue with it.

Internet Explorer

Saving the worst piece of shit for last. This browser is everything that is wrong with the internet, and it is leading the downfall of Microsoft. The only thing that is has going for it is the update infrastructure being tied in with Windows Update so that it can be pushed to the client in a corporate setting. Other than that! It’s a nightmare.

Is it standards based? Nope. Internet Explorer says FUCK YOU to standards. You create a website according to the web standards and it will work in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, … pretty much every browser EXCEPT IE. You need to put in all kinds of conditional work to make the website look good in Internet Explorer.

Is it fast? Nope, one of the slowest browsers on the market.

Is it extensible? There is a growing amount of plugins, but it is extremely limited in comparison to Firefox.

Available on all platforms? Nope it is windoze only. A few years back there was an attempt to create a Mac version, but that one was even more fucked up then the windows version.

So with all the shittyness spewing out of IE why does it have the most market share? The easy answer: People are too stupid/lazy to download a far superior browser. I have high hopes that when Chrome starts being bundled on OEM machines (hopefully Dell and HP) then we may see IE die the death it so richly deserves.

In short, when picking a browser pick ANYTHING except Internet Explorer!

My post in regards to Google Bookmarks has inspired me to start a whole new sub-section on the site! I am creating a new series called: A Beginner’s Guide To The Internet. I am going to try to outline some of the things that people should know in regards to the current state of the internet, as well as little tips and tricks that I have found. To start off, I will get into what the Web 2.0 culture really is.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has become a real buzz word. There still seems to be some real confusion as to what it is. Some people equate it to using newer technologies that make web-pages seem more desktop application like. That is not at all how I interpret it. Web 2.0 is the personalization of the web.

An example. This blog page is not Web 2.0. When you visit the page, it looks the same for you as it would for the next person (with a few exceptions). This is the old standard of the web, and really it is not bad, but it did not fully embrace the full capabilities. Web 2.0 is specifically content that is tailored to you. When you visit Facebook or Hotmail, you see content that is your content. The next person will see an entirely new set of content. This contextual setup is the real definition of web 2.0, and it is spelling the end of the desktop application age.

With web 2.0 we work on data that is stored and secured on the internet, that is never downloaded. I am huge proponent of this new cloud computing revolution. When I check my email, I access the Google Mail servers and get my messages, I frequently do it from a web browser, but my smart phone can download email so that I have an offline copy as well. Downloading the message does not remove it from the cloud. It simply makes a synchronized copy, the main repository of the data is still the Google database. This is the change in the web culture; the data simply being out there… Out there in the cloud!

Cloud computing is all the rage, and we are not fully there yet. We still maintain a large amount of data on our personal computers, but a good deal of it, is stored out in the cloud where it can be universally accessed. I would hazard that the majority internet users have a free web based email account. Popular systems included Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. These services do not require you to have any data downloaded onto your computer. You can access them through a webpage, on your phone, from a desktop client, but the data is always housed on the web. Changing the data through any client application, also must modify the data on the web. And because of this, it will also mean that if you check the data from another device it will always be synchronized. This is a perfect example of Web 2.0 and the cloud.

Going forward you can expect to see more applications move to this model. Already we are starting to see online storage solutions; Amazon’s S3 being a big one. It allows you to access your data from any computer. As connection speeds begin to increase we will see that an ever larger part of our data will be stored in these online services. We aren’t there yet, but we will be soon.

Coming Soon:

Picking the right browser (and by that I mean stabbing yourself in the face if you use Internet Explorer).

I am going to be writing a little bit about things that I have found that make my life easier. This is one google product that I have been using and loving , yet it doesn’t seem to get any publicity;  it’s Google Bookmarks.

I had been looking for a while for a way to handle my bookmarks. There are options out there. Apple’s MobileMe will sync your bookmarks to the cloud, but it didn’t seem to have a solution with Windows (and thus my work machines),  there are tons of linking services; Digg, Delicious, etc… But those were all social bookmarking. I wanted something that was in the cloud, that was private, easily organizable. I thought to myself: Why the hell does Google not do bookmarks?!?!? Which led me to wonder if they did.

I did a quick search for ‘Google Bookmarks‘ and sure enough there it is! It lacks the spit and polish of most of their products, but it is quickly working its way up my favorite products list. You see I was sick and tired of emailing myself links that I found at work, or at other’s computers. It would be something like, see an interesting link off a blog, follow a few more pages, bam! This is a great tutorial! Now I need to get that tutorial to somewhere I will remember it, and that I could easily find it again. That was done through tags in Google Reader or through emailing it to myself, both of whice were crappy solutions.

Now I just use Google’s booksmarks service. The key is placing a link (this one: Bookmark This Page – you can just drag it to your bar), in your bookmark bar in your browser. When you click it, it will open a dialog box with the information of the current page in it. You can add coma seperated tags, and add a description. Clicking OK adds it to your bookmarks, which is accessible at: http://www.google.com/bookmarks/. This gives you a similar searching and browsing structure as GMail.

I absolutely love that I have all my bookmarks with me at all times. It is also very very easy to add a new link to the system. It really is a simple yet elegant solution to my problem. Are there are any other solutions that you like? This may not be typical Google clean, but it certainly the best solution that I have found.

I’m building me a fence, and issues with my neighbours and the property line have been difficult to say the least. 

A few weeks ago I started planning out my new fence. I grabbed a copy of my property survey and a metric tape measure and went out to measure. I had a pretty good idea of where the property line was; some neighbours a few lots down had built some fences, there was  natural ditch between the properties, and the landscapers had laid grass to the middle (They laid my neighbour’s grass first, then a year later they laid my grass).

My survey was very clear and easy to read, from the foundation to the edge of my property line on the west side of my house was 11.64m and on the east side it was 12.96m. So I started measuring. I carefully went out 11.64m. To my amazement I was in the middle of my neighbours yard! I measured from the opposite side of my house, and it was to the same line! I was quite worried, this was a solid 1-2 meters past the ditch, and past the grass line, which was also the line where the neighbours had built their fence!

I quickly started worrying that the survey was wrong. I spoke to a few people who all said that they had never heard about a survey being wrong. It was suggested that to back up my measurements I should find the iron bars that exist at the corners of the property that are put in the by the surveyer. 

I spent a few days trying to locate a metal detector; turns out that my friend Jim has one. He came out and we spent about 1.5 hours trying to locate the bars. Not much luck. We tried a new tact, and went out to where I measured the property line to be. Then tried the metal detector right there. Sure enough it hit. So we dug down about 8-10″ and sure enough found the property bar. I measured from the house again, and it was acurate to the centimeter. 

I replaced the grass, and finished my measurements to mark the property line. It was at this point that I figured that some of my neighbours would be angry. My immediate neighbour to the rear had already planted a garden in my yard, and his neighbours a few doors down had built their fences a solid 4-5 feet over the property line. 

Over the next few days I saw a few neighbours staring questioningly at the stakes I had put in. I ignored them as I realized that I was right. 

This past Sunday, I went outside to finish planning my fence according to the property lines I had marked. As I was outside the lady who lives directly behind me came out to question my measurements. I explained that I had found the property bar, and that it matched exactly with my survey. She suggested that we should have someone professional do the work. I explained that my embossed copy of the property survey which has been registered with the city is about as professional as you can get. She asked to see the survey, I fetched a copy and explained exactly what I had found. She seemed content with my explanation. I proceeded outside to continue my planning.

No less than 5 minutes later, the husband of the same lady came storming out. He was yelling that I was ruining his lawn, and that I should ‘Get off his property!. At this point, he began taking the stakes I had put in and throwing them towards my house. I explained to him that according to my survey, it was not his property, and that it was actually the property line. He continued to be upset telling me that it was his lawn, and that he could tell based on where his builder had installed the grass. I tried to explain that where the grass was installed meant nothing. I showed him my survey, at which point he asked where I got it; I explained that he should have received one from his builder.

He asked for a few days to get a survey and double check my measurements. I told him that I had no problem with it, but I wanted him to leave my stakes alone so that I could plan my fence.

The next day (yesterday), I went out to do some more work in the back planning the fence. The same neighbour came out and told me that he had his survey and that my measurement was closer then he expected. He said I was over by about a foot. I knew this wasn’t the case, but was pleased that he was caving. I started to explain that with the property bar I had found, that I had the exact line. Just as he was about to argue again my nextdoor neighbour Mitch appeared like a white knight; a wrinkled survey in one hand, a can of beer in the other, and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He told my neighbour not to argue because he had measured and I was bang on. 

This was the perfect ice breaker, I offered to show the opposing neighbour what I meant, we looked at Mitch’s survey which showed that it was 11.64m from the corner of the house to the property bar, I measured with my metric tape measure, and showed him that it was exact to the centimeter.  Mitch then started explaining to me that the other neighbour to the rear had come out to tell him, that my measurements were ‘way off’. Mitch explained to him, that according to his survey, my measurements were correct. Mitch had asked to see the other neighbours survey, at which point he apparently told Mitch he didn’t have one. Mitch told him to not argue without any evidence to back him up.

As I was discussing with Mitch, we saw the other neighbour measuring from his house again. I was shocked! He was pacing it out! He had the nerve to argue with my measurements and the placement of the property stakes, and he was PACING IT OUT! I offered him my metric tape, but he declined. I asked what his survey measurement was, and he told me it was 8.23m according to his survey. That made perfect sense according to the measurements I had made. 

A few hours later he came back out to me and told me that he had measured a few more times, and he conceded that I was correct, and that he would make plans to move his garden. 

It is a great relief to me that my greatest opposition has conceded the fight, but the more interesting element will be the other neighbours further down the row who have already built their fences, and their fences go well past the end of their property. I will post updates for future battles here.

I am still shocked that so many people are willing to argue, complain, and build fences without ever looking at their property survey! Anyway, this has been an entertaining few weeks.

So it isn’t very often that I blog about programming. In fact I don’t know that I have ever done it before, which is kind of strange since I spend a huge amount of my life doing it, but this is a moment that I feel the need.

I just lost a ton of time due to some dead, unused, and generally crappy code. I was working with a class that had a private reset method (and it was called), that should set off alarm bells, why would a class need to reset itself. As well this manager class owned a single instance of a ‘handler’ class. If it has a single instance of a handler, why does it need a manager. What made this worse was that handlers were handed out and returned from a pool of handlers. Ughhh. It was terrible.

Ok so I spend a few days untangling things so I can make some changes. I was able to get rid of the reset functions, the class was never reset, new instances were created. I was able to take out the handler pooling, a new handler was created not taken from a pool.

So it was painful to fix, but the part that really set me off while working on fixing this stuff was when I removed the pooling I got to a comment that was something along the lines of:

//TODO: implement pooling

I wasted tons of time just to find out that there was no pooling, and that there was a new instance created everytime, and that the idea of reseting a handler wasn’t needed (even though it was done). This brings me to my next point: NEVER LEAVE TODOs IN YOUR CODE! I know you have done it, I have done it, but it shouldn’t be done. In the code is not a place for a TODO, the code should appear to do exactly what it does, nothing more and nothing less. Leaving a TODO like: //finish the implementation of this class because I am a lazy and useless programmer does nothing to help anyone, it is just a time waster for a future programmer.

If a bit of code will someday be used to cure cancer, don’t put in a function called cureCancer() that does nothing and has a //TODO: cure cancer comment. That just makes it look like it does something it doesn’t. If it needs to cure cure cancer in the future, document that in the backlog, provide notes, provide sample code. But! Whatever you do, do not make the code look like it will cure cancer.

Why the hell does Internet Explorer never fucking work?

Ever!

Gah. Honestly, I am thinking of blocking IE from viewing this site! Opinions?

Cause the penalty for failure is high!

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.