Can still hardly believe it. I’m one of those people that might write some code, but never really expect anyone besides himself to use it.
As such I was recently shocked and amazed when I went back to Robby Russell’s article about Interactive Capistrano and when checking the pastie example saw at the very top
require "palmtree/recipes/mongrel_cluster"
mainly because palmtree is a small gem of capistrano recipes I put together when capistrano 2.0 was coming out and the previous sets of mongrel cluster recipes wouldn’t work.
I also included ferret, backgroundrb (old style, might still work though) and memcached recipes as well.
I mentioned this to my boss Chris earlier today and he sent me a link to a google search which shows more people using palmtree.
As of a couple weeks ago I replicated the project on github so others can hack at it if they want, but I think once I’ve reached the deployment stage of the current project I’m working on I’ll put some more work into it and brush up some of the recipes.
I also really need to get the tail recipes working properly as they’ve not worked for quite a while now.
The other day my Xbox 360 finally arrived, despite telling Chitty-link 3 times, once even before the first delivery attempt and twice after, to call me as the intercom system doesn’t work they still didn’t. Fortunately the caretaker of the property must have been outside as he was able to let the delivery guy in through the gate and into the block of flats, so I got it delivered straight to my door.
So rather unsurprisingly I spent most of yesterday evening playing GTA:IV. Its very fun and I’m getting the hang of driving with the 360’s controller.
Anyway this morning after a nice pzizz induced slumber I awoke at half past seven and started messing about with the Xbox again. I recalled that Dave had once mentioned the ability to do the Media Extender type stuff for the Xbox from a Mac. Thankfully his search box worked very well and I found his post about Connect360 which I promptly gave a go and was dead chuffed at my ability to stream not only iTunes music and iPhoto picture to the Xbox but also video files in my Movies folder. This is probably the best feature of all. I’ve recorded and transcoded some TV shows from my TV Mini device and I can now watch them on the TV at my leisure. How sweet is that.
I’ve not tried playing iTunes TV shows through the 360, but if that works then the 360 is certainly a nice alternative to the Apple TV. Never thought I’d have said that.
While reading through a book earlier today a site called geni.com was held up as a good example of Gradual Engagement. I was quite intrigued by this as genealogy is something I find quite interesting and I’ve always wondered about the history of what is now my family. That said I’ve never aggressively perused this. I’ve not been digging through census records or anything like that, but it has still interested me.
At any rate I signed up, rather pleasantly I might add, and added some of my family members though their flash based interface. It is very pleasant to work with and I later found myself on the phone to my mother working my way back up the tree.
Have to say, this is definitely a web application that its worth getting the whole family involved in.
Last Friday I went to go and see Dara O’Briain at the Hammersmith Apollo thanks to a birthday present of two tickets from my sister. Sadly being afflicted with ineptitude and stupidity I was unable to find a guest to take with me to experience this event.
As Dara explained during his show comedy gigs are really one of those things were you actually have to be there to get it all. This is in stark contrast to that thing your friend was explaining pitifully in the pub last night and in order to dismiss your bewildered expression finally states that you just had to be there.
So anyway, the evening began with my fleeing the office despirately needing to get back to my flat so I could grab something to eat and head back out. The Hammersmith & City line was apparently not running in top form that night so I gauged an extra 20 minutes on the journey to compensate. Unfortunately the DLR was not to save my plans of food before I went out. So when I go back to my flat I had enough time to have a quick pee, grab my tickets and set off for the tube station.
The journey to Hammersmith was fairly uneventful, and I arrived at about 18.00, 30 minutes before my ticket said I needed to be there. Turns out 18.30 was only the time at which the doors would open. So I wandered off in search of sustenance and happily found myself a Subway and procured myself a toasted Meatball Marinara sandwich, pure bliss. I’d also brought a bottle of water with me from home as I’d been having some problems with mild nausea, dizziness and general topsy-turvy feelings when moving. Expecting to go straight into the Apollo and sit down at 18.30 when the doors opened I took the last of my painkillers at 18.15 to give them enough time to take effect before my sides would be stretched to splitting. Once I was in the door I made my way up to the second floor as I had a circle ticket. This actually seemed to be a pooling area where the audience could water, feed and relieve themselves, I took advantage of the latter two, not wanting to drink due to the painkillers.
At 19.30 the doors to the seating area were opened and I made my way to my seats. The seats slowly filled and the dull chatter of people talking increased with it. As the clock struck 20.00 Dara emerged from behind the curtains. From that point on, until the intermission, any feelings of social exclusion I had been feeling due the aforementioned lack of buddy disappeared. The audience became linked in laughter, it was brilliant.
Now I could go into the jokes and gags and all the hilarity of the event but unlike your friend in the pub last night I truely can say you just had to be there.
That said I will leave you with some things to ponder on. Given our state in the war on bacteria, 99.9% domination if reports are to be believed, and with a number of good bacteria being won to our side through a parallel propaganda war. I ask you this, what would happen if you poured Dettol into a Yakult? Does a company need to do anything more than chain together the words max, fusion, power and stealth in ever more elaborate ways to sell products to men? Is it ever possible when on the phone and needing to convey a letter phonetically to not completely blank all the words beginning with that letter with the exception of all the dirty ones?
I went to see Delerium last night at the Islington Carling Academy. Was absolutely brilliant.
It took a little while to fill up so I managed to snag a nice spot near the front and grab a quick pint to whet the whistle. The pint at £3.35 was quite fairly priced for London.
Met I couple other people while I was there, rather unsurprisingly there were quite a few who had come from far a field, well further a field than I. Birmingham and Peterborough I have to admit aren’t that far a field but still.
Once the support acts came on things got a bit more interesting, don’t they always. Sadly I can’t remember either of the support acts names but the first was very good. It started off a bit flat but picked up as it went which was good. The second support act was basically just a DJ and while quite good did drag on a bit longer than it probably should have. A short break in his set might well have helped.
Then finally Delerium came on, I’m currently listening through the over 100 tracks I have of them to work out what the first song was. The second though was After All when their vocalist Kristy Thirsk magically pranced out from the back. It was absolutely great especially hearing both Silence and Incantation live. They are two absolutely amazing tracks.
My thanks to Facebook adverts for telling me of the event.
Seems like the Airport drivers provided for Vista x64, either the OS drivers or simply the 2.1 update, are far improved over the ones I was using in Windows XP.
With the XP drivers you had to be extremely careful not to let the machine enter any form of standby and closing the lid was just madness. Disabling the interface through a “Repair Network Connection” was also a big no-no.
Now though with these drivers I was able to safely close up my MacBook Pro and open it again a few hours later and be greeted with the internet at my fingertips.
Short Version: w00t I can use Windows properly on my MBP now.