| Firefox 3, a little rant |
[Mar. 17th, 2008|09:34 am] |
Dear Firefox,
We've been together now, what, 9 years? Remember back in the M18-ish days in 2000 when you used to shit your image cache? Aww, so cute. Yes, those were fun times.
You were new then, so I could forgive your kinda sucking.
But 8 years later I'd expect you to get your act together. In particular, a slow network operation should not beach-ball the whole goddamn application. Please go back to school and learn some basic networking, perhaps some threading, maybe some state machines. For Chist's sake.
When I visited the Mozilla campus a few months ago and did my little lunchtime presentation on why I'm breaking up with Firefox, this was my number one complaint, but I was happy with your guys' answer:Oh, there are two APIs in OS X to do async networking, and we were using the wrong one in Firefox 1 and 2... the old, wrong one blocks the whole app. In Firefox 3 we're using the correct one! So I temporarily displaced my frustration with Firefox and redirected it at Apple, for whom I'll always have extra capacity for frustration.
I waited patiently.
Then the Firefox 3 betas started to come out. "Holy shit!" I thought, "This stuff's getting pretty impressive. A browser on Linux that doesn't piss me off! Oh cute, they even fixed most the memory leaks!"
So yeah, I'm liking Firefox 3 (currently beta 4).
But you still fucking beach-ball all the time on OS X when the network is slow. That is to say, just about whenever I use my laptop, which is always over WiFi or EVDO.
Please fix.
Lovingly yours,
Brad
P.S. I'd open a bug, but my last bug has been open for 4 years or so now, so I'm not going to waste my time with that anymore. (I even funded a developer to fix the bug I'd opened a ticket for.... twice.)
Update, 2008-02-24: Turns out the problem is PAC files. |
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| Threads as a service!? |
[Mar. 6th, 2008|10:26 am] |
In Apple's SDK announcement slides, they list the following stack:
Core OS, Core Services, Media, Cocoa Touch
Fine. Kinda silly and arbitrary past the kernel/user boundary, but what I found most hilarious is that "Threading" is listed in Core Services (along with "Address Book" and "SQLite"), instead of in Core OS (which has things like "Sockets" and "Power Management".
Is that why threading sucks so much on Macs and iTunes can't do more than 1 thing at a time well? Because it's all in userspace? :-) |
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| Event Mess |
[Mar. 4th, 2008|10:30 am] |
I use Google Calendar a lot. Both for personal stuff originally, and then now also for work.
I wish all my frickin' invites automatically went to Google Calendar in the default unacknowledged question mark state. Email doesn't work... if I'm too busy when the invite email arrives and I forget to add it to my calendar, I miss the event. But I do poll my calendar regularly.
Summary of where I get invites from:
- Google Calendar -- works, obviously
- Evite -- dear God, I wish they had an API so I could cron a job to sync my evite to my calendar. Has anybody wrote a screen-scraping module?
- Upcoming.org -- well, they can export to Google Calendar, so that's good, and I don't really get invitations from this, so no real beefs here.
- Crush3r -- great site. wish its invites would show on my calendar somehow. (attach .ics file to emails? will gcal pick up on that?)
- Facebook -- it can export to Gcal, but I have to log in to Facebook. I want the email to add an event.
- Pownce
Plus, I want gcal to be my central RSVP point, and then have some server-to-server protocol for sending RSVPs.
One can dream. |
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| Stuck in garage |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|08:20 pm] |
Omg...
I'm stuck in my garage.
My ADT security system had some fault (radio error contacting tower?) and the house started beeping. Phone call from ADT.... they told me to go into my garage (where the box is) and unhook some phone thing.
Then things are still beeping and they ask me to enter my code on the garage panel and hit # and "Off". Or something. But I forgot my code. He said, "Just try what you think it is." I hit some stuff and then it goes into armed mode.
The guy on the phone freaks out: "OMG What'd you press?".
Me: "I dunno. Some numbers. Maybe a pound or so."
Him: "OMG you armed it. We are now in threat level orange." (or some bullshit)
I give him shit for awhile, bitching that I only have ADT because my home insurance requires it (required over some threshold home value... yay me) and I haven't used it in years and I don't even know my code.
He asks for my secret password. I said I have no f'ing clue. I say it's probably in a file cabinet somewhere. He says to go look. I remind him I'm stuck in my garage and if I enter my house, hurricane sirens of death go off. He says, "Sorry." I ask if I should cut the blue wire or the red wire. He doesn't like my joke. I'm like, "Seriously, though... fuck this system. I don't even use it. Can I just disable it?" He says, "Normally I could help you sir, but not at Threat Level Orange now that you've activated it. That's against protocol." (or some bullshit)
So here I am, still stuck in my garage. Fortunately I have a computer here and can blog about it.
I called ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dina and she thinks she remembers the password, and it jibes with the password hint (/^\w{6}\d{4}$/) that the phone dude gave me.... so that's promising.
Guess I need to call them back and find my password and put it into Revelation, for next time I'm stuck in the garage.
Fuck ADT. |
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| Defending my integrity |
[Oct. 27th, 2007|04:59 pm] |
I was a little offended by my ex's accusation that I used my database access at LiveJournal to find her "emo rants", implying I found her "secret" journal or read her "private" posts.
On the contrary:
1) I searched for usernames matching "culver". And I found her not-so-secret blog: leahculver. It's her name. I could've found the same with any search engine: [Leah Culver site:livejournal.com]. I used the database because I had it open.
2) She has no emo rants. She has two public posts. I used my web browser to see them. Neither interesting.
3) The text in the LJ database isn't even plaintext, so even if she did have private posts, a query couldn't get to them... you'd need to use a web tool with an admin tool which does ACLs and logging. (Logging! Any administrative view-private-stuff on LJ is logged forever, and any admin can review who's doing what privileged actions and why....)
So yeah... not like Facebook at all. |
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| RT is so slow |
[Sep. 29th, 2007|12:16 pm] |
Dear Jesse Vincent,
rt.cpan.org is still unusably slow. I don't care the specs of the box, how it's configured, or who runs it. It reflects poorly on your company and your software and I'd be embarrassed if I were you to have rt.cpan.org still running.
Please host this yourself, or buy perl.org a new box for this, and maintain it for them. Or take your name off the front page of rt.cpan.org to distance yourself from it. Either way.
(just grumpy because people are still filing tickets in it, most of which I want to close with WONTFIX or REJECTED, but the system's too slow to even let me do that....)
So note to everybody else: I will ignore your rt.cpan.org tickets and patches. Use the mailing lists. My inbox is my ticketing system.
Lovingly always,
Brad |
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| Not feeling so hot |
[Oct. 25th, 2006|12:41 pm] |
Jetlagged, maybe sick, behind with so much stuff, bored-yet-overwhelmed....
Rant, rant, rant, I know. |
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| jury duty |
[Feb. 27th, 2006|10:49 pm] |
In my previous post, I asked:Anything else feel like shitting on me? I got my answer:Instructions for Jurors Serving During the Week of February 27, 2006
Group 101 you are instructed to report on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 at 8:30a.m. to the Jury Office, located at 400 McAllister Street, Room 007. Please bring your jury summons and completed questionnaires.
....
You should plan to be available for the entire day, until 5:00p.m. *sigh* |
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| Worst day (well, evening) ever |
[Feb. 27th, 2006|09:39 pm] |
Any day's going to suck given that:
-- it's a Monday
-- I just spend a week+ in Belize
But factors arose to make this evening especially terrible:
-- had no plan to get home,
-- ended up walking up to Market in thickest rain I've ever seen
-- no umbrella, though it wouldn't have even worked... they were being turned inside out left and right
-- got drenched from head to toe (shoes were full of water from puddles)
-- couldn't find a cab
-- MUNI quarter nonsense and stupid BART vending machines
-- got off MUNI, didn't want to walk up steep blocks home in more rain
-- went to coffee shop, but then it closed before I could call a cab
-- walked home
-- realized I had no key. I'd given it to krissy for house/dog-sitting
-- couldn't get ahold of dina (her phone's broken?)
-- krissy brought it over (yay! the one good thing this evening... thanks krissy!)
-- went to meet David and Mischa for some hacking
-- got a few blocks there and realized car was full of pressed boards from old desk that I haven't found a dump site for yet... had to turn around and unload....
-- ... in the rain
-- headed back to Mischa's.
(still haven't eaten since lunch)
-- waiting for pizza,
-- waiting for pizza,
-- waiting for pizza,
-- David calls. They never got the order. And they take ~60 minutes on a good day anyway. (Zante's)
-- I leave.
-- I get McDonald's, out of desperation.
-- hit wheels going around drive-through. twice.
-- back home, Major's crying.
-- garage is a mess again, after two cleanings.
-- suitcases are still all packed up
-- went to install a debug build of a super-sekkrit app on my Treo 650 and now it's in a reboot loop forever. can't restore it. had to take out the battery to keep it from rebooting.
-- Dina got her car fucked up for the 3rd time: but this time not her fault: somebody stole her side-view mirror
So that's it.
Oh, and Krissy locked her keys in the car today in the parking lot. (we were carpooling). This is more crap for her, but it's crap I witnessed.
Anything else feel like shitting on me? |
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| Random annoyance |
[Feb. 6th, 2006|11:05 pm] |
I hate websites that are basically one big graphic / one big rectangle.
Say, this one:
http://www.firefoxflicks.com/adcontest/
I'm not sure why I hate it so much....
-- can't be indexed
-- can't be updated quickly (have to redo graphics, since they contain all the text)
-- doesn't resize up/down with browser size
-- feels like a print designer is trying out this cool new web thing
End hate. Back to hacking. |
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cranky