Tête de Moine and… Challah?
This weekend I was surprised by an invite from a friend to have dinner at his house. I was even more surprised when he gifted me a Girolle and a Tête de Moine. Wow! What a present!
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any Zopf to eat my cheese with. If anyone knows of a Swiss bakery in the bay area, I'd like to know. At any rate, the bread you see in the picture is actually a Challah, which doesn't have milk and has honey, so it's not quite the same flavor. However, it was ok for having the Tête de Moine.
I've also found Tête de Moine at iGourmet, so I'll be able to get some more once I finish this one. Is there a place in the bay area where they sell Tête de Moine?
Beautiful Emacs (Windows Edition)
After fixing the font on my Carbon Emacs on Mac OS X, I'm spoiled with good fonts. Today I had to work on Windows and naturally, the only way to make Windows liveable is to work inside Emacs.
This is what a default installation of EmacsW32 looks like.
Oh horror! You guys are kidding, right? Courier? Seriously?
Naturally, my first inclination was to use Inconsolata again. Just like in Mac OS X. However, this is what Inconsolata looks like.
WTF? What's with all the blurred text? Well, it turns out that anti-aliasing and text rasterization differ significantly between Mac OS X and Windows. Oh well. Scratch that plan.
Then I remembered that Incosolata is actually based on Consolas, which is a font Microsoft created specifically for programming.
I downloaded and installed Consolas, and voilà! Beautiful Emacs once again.
Now it was just a matter of figuring out what the font was called. I had changed the font by clicking on the Emacs frame and pressing the shift key. In order to see what that does, I ran the describe-key function by typing C-h k, then clicking on the frame while holding the shift key. That told me the function that is called is mouse-set-font and it's defined in c:/Program Files/Emacs/emacs/lisp/term/w32-win.elc. You can click on the file link and Emacs will take you to the function definition.
(defun mouse-set-font (&rest fonts) "Select an Emacs font from a list of known good fonts and fontsets. If `w32-use-w32-font-dialog' is non-nil (the default), use the Windows font dialog to display the list of possible fonts. Otherwise use a pop-up menu (like Emacs does on other platforms) initialized with the fonts in `w32-fixed-font-alist'. If `w32-list-proportional-fonts' is non-nil, add proportional fonts to the list in the font selection dialog (the fonts listed by the pop-up menu are unaffected by `w32-list-proportional-fonts')." (interactive (if w32-use-w32-font-dialog (let ((chosen-font (w32-select-font (selected-frame) w32-list-proportional-fonts))) (and chosen-font (list chosen-font))) (x-popup-menu last-nonmenu-event ;; Append list of fontsets currently defined. ;; Conditional on new-fontset so bootstrapping works on non-GUI compiles (if (fboundp 'new-fontset) (append w32-fixed-font-alist (list (generate-fontset-menu))))))) (if fonts (let (font) (while fonts (condition-case nil (progn (setq font (car fonts)) (set-default-font font) (setq fonts nil)) (error (setq fonts (cdr fonts))))) (if (null font) (error "Font not found")))))
Now, I don't know what all of that does, but it seems like (set-default-font font) is the one function that actually sets the font. In order to figure out what the font is called, I copied all of the function to the good old *scratch* buffer, and added a call to (message font) right after the call to (set-default-font font). Then I redefined the function by typing C-x C-e at the end of it. After shift clicking on the frame again and selecting the Consolas font I had all the information I needed.
Now it was just a matter of putting the following snippet in my .emacs file:
(set-default-font "-outline-Consolas-normal-r-normal-normal-14-97-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")
Ahh... I feel so much better now... now what was I doing in Windows again?
Lazy-loading emacs functionality
Quick, how big is your .emacs file? How long does it take emacs to load? A few days ago I found that my .emacs file had slowly grown to the point where it was taking emacs a significant amount of time to load. Something needed to be done.
A quick glance at the file told me I was loading a lot of modules that I seldom use. For instance, I occasionally write some code in Common Lisp or Haskell, so naturally I was loading slime and the haskell environment. I commented those out.
However, after commenting them out, I quickly realized that not loading them was problematic. When I wanted to use them, I had to open my .emacs file, uncomment the relevant portion, and M-x eval-region the code.
Then it occurred to me that I had a clear entry point for some of these modules. When I write Common Lisp, I usually start by loading SLIME's REPL by running M-x slime. I came up with the following code:
(defun slime () (interactive) (add-to-list 'load-path "~/emacs/slime") (setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/local/bin/sbcl") (require 'slime) (slime-setup) (slime))
Which basically sets up my slime environment and then loads slime. Note that the slime function itself is redefined as part of the evaluation of (require 'slime), so although this looks like a recursive call, it's not.
I've used this trick in several other cases and I think it's kind of neat. It helps me keep Emacs loading fast, but I still have all the bells and whistles available.
Leave a door open (for Peace)
Today is John Lennon's death anniversary. He was shot to death on December 8th, 1980. I always commemorate this day by listening to John Lennon's music, smoking unfiltered Gitanes, playing guitar, and letting my hair grow long... for a day... ok, not really, but I do try to listen to Imagine, at least once.
At any rate, there is a website now to commemorate John. It has a letter from Yoko Ono and a video from John Lennon.
The goal of an artist is to elicit some kind of emotion from the audience through his art. You cannot see the video and feel nothing. I left it running in the background while doing other things as I've seen Lennon interviews thousands of times and can usually remember how they go, but the imagery at the end, after John stops talking, pulled my eyes and engaged me like nothing has for a long while. I literally couldn't stop watching.
At any rate, here's to you John Lennon. You were the Walrus.
Vive la différence
One of the more useful programs in the developer's toolkit is diff. This little utility compares two files and gives you just the differences (what changed) between them. Evey version control system in the world is ultimately based on diffs.
One way I commonly use it, is to see what I've changed in a file or a set of files. Let me clarify. I put everything in version control. Even tiny little programs that I'm tempted to throw away are in version control. Being able to use diff between my modified file and the previous version is a major reason for doing so.
Now, if I told you to quit your editor and run diff in a terminal, I wouldn't be surprised if you decided to beat me with a clue stick. You should NEVER leave your editor. If you do, you don't know how to use your editor, or your editor is not powerful enough. If your problem is the latter, you should switch to Emacs right now. Otherwise, keep reading, I can help you.
Depending on what version control system you use, you should modify the commands given below. I use BitKeeper (well, duh!), so all my examples will use that one.
To start with, stick this in your .emacs:
(defun bk-diffs () "Get diffs between current edited buffer and checked in revision" (interactive) (let* ((filename (buffer-file-name (current-buffer))) (newbuf (get-buffer-create (format "%s diffs" (if filename (buffer-name) default-directory))))) (set-buffer newbuf) (if buffer-read-only (toggle-read-only)) (erase-buffer) (insert (shell-command-to-string (if filename (format "bk diffs -uph %s" filename) "bk -r diffs -uph"))) (switch-to-buffer-other-window newbuf) (diff-mode) (beginning-of-buffer) (diff-hunk-next) (toggle-read-only) newbuf))
Now, whenever you are in a file and want to modify it, all you need to do is run the command bk-diffs and you'll get something like this:
Cool, eh?
The command is also context sensitive, so if you run it from a buffer where you're not editing a file, e.g. a dired buffer or a shell buffer, it will run a recursive diff and give you diffs for all the files. I use this all the time when I go back to repositories I haven't touched in a while. It's my "what the hell was I doing?" command. The output looks something like this:
That's not all. I have more tricks for you. First of all, navigation:
| n or M-n | Move to the next hunk |
| p or M-p | Move to the previous hunk |
| M-N | Move to the next file |
| M-P | Move to the previous file |
If you are an old school hacker and would rather see context diffs than unified diffs, you can hit C-c C-d while in the diffs buffer. To go back to unified diffs, hit C-c C-u.
There are also key strokes for going back to the source file from the diff buffer. Pressing Enter or M-o or
Ok, that is useful, but I see you're not blown away. The truth is, I saved the best part for last. Once you're walking the diffs one by one, you can also press C-c C-a to either apply, or revert a hunk! How cool is that eh?
This last feature is something I use all the time to clean up a file before checking it in. E.g. I sometimes have a bunch of debug code or comments to myself that need to be removed before checking the file in. Rather than review the file by hand, I can go through the diffs and use the quick navigation that emacs provides for doing the clean up.
Finally, if you are a CVS user (I'm sorry, really. You should switch to something else), you can probably still use it inside vc-mode, hit C-x v = to get the diffs and try the keystrokes I mentioned.
Beautiful Emacs
When you spend all day looking at code, it's important to select a good editor font. Obviously, the font needs to be monospaced or the alignment will be all wrong. Well, there are only a handful of monospaced fonts worth looking at (and Courier is not one of them).
Take a look at the following image. Click on it, and pick your favorite of the four fonts.
These are the fonts in the image, clockwise from the top left corner: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Andale Mono, Monaco, and Inconsolata.
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono is my second favorite. It's the font I use on my web browser. However, for editing code, I find it a bit too heavy. This probably has more to do with my color scheme than the font per se, so your millage might vary.
Andale Mono is very readable, but I find the spacing all wrong and somewhat distracting. Look at the word "String", the letters seem too far apart.
Inconsolata is my personal favorite. You need to crank up the font size because it seems to be a smaller font than the rest. I thought that point sizes were supposed to be standard, but apparently I was wrong.
Monaco is the default in Mac OS X, but it looks kind of silly. I used to use whatever was the default, so I've used this font quite a while. I never did mind it, but once I made the switch to Inconsolata, I can't stand it anymore.
If you want to play with different fonts in Carbon Emacs, you can enable mac keys by running the (mac-key-mode) function, and then pressing ⌘T, which will open a standard font dialog.
However, if you want to use Inconsolata as your default font, put this in your .emacs
(require 'carbon-font) (fixed-width-set-default-fontset "-apple-inconsolata-medium-r-normal--14-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1")
It took me a while to figure out how to change the font on Carbon Emacs, so I hope that even if you don't choose Inconsolata as your preferred font, this information might prove useful.
Norton Fighter
And on a lighter note... I found this clip hilarious.
Part 1:
and part 2:
If I used Windows, I'd buy norton antivirus just because of this ad.
Timeo Facebook et dona ferentes
Which can be loosely translated as "I fear Facebook even if it brings gifts". My friends have noticed that for quite some time I've stopped updating my Facebook status, or even interacting with the site altogether. The reason is simple. I don't trust them.
A short time ago, Facebook introduced a new feature called "Beacon" that lets websites send status to your mini-feed. It immediately drew a lot of criticism because of its invasion to privacy, to the point that many people figured out ways to block it. Facebook's CEO apologized for it today and made beacon opt-out.
Now, I was going to write a detailed article about why this bothers me and how insincere the apology sounded, but our good old friend Fake Steve Jobs did a much better job in this blog post. Money quote:
These guys are like Google, only their slogan isn't "Don't be evil" -- it's "Don't get caught."
And later:
The smarmy fake apology is not at all reassuring and seems to have been written by PR people who were trying to imitate a 23-year-old kid who's speaking from the heart and trying to sound all sheepish and aw-shucks -- except the flacks can't do it because they're as insincere and stage-managed as as the Facebook guys. Plus, let's face it, the flacks are getting paid in Facebook equity, right?
I couldn't have said it better myself. You should go read the whole post.
The Apple Experience
Last week I was once again sucked into the argument of whether Apple is a hardware company or a software company. My take on it: it's neither.
Apple is an "experience" company. They do hardware because it's the only way to have the software under control. They do software because without good software, the hardware is useless. What they ultimately worry about is the user experience.
They partnered with AT&T because they needed to add the cellular network to the experience and they couldn't build their own (they would have loved to). If they look like control freaks from the outside it's because, well, they are.
On that note, in this piece, Saul Hansell argues that AT&T allows applications on other phones, except the iPhone. Saul claims that Mark Bercow, senior vice president of business development for Palm, encourages developers to do pretty much as they please with the Palm Treo:
Indeed, some developers have made video streaming applications, a particularly big bandwidth hog. (Of course, the cellular companies are free to charge whatever they wish for bandwidth use.)
Now go to the AT&T website and try to find their data rates. I could find a $24.99 data rate that was limited to 10MB, and an unlimited plan (with some fine print about per-kilobyte charges) for $69.99. That is in addition to the cost of the plan. The iPhone unlimited data plan is $20 per month. So while developers can create apps for any other AT&T phone, customers get charged per kilobyte. Now consider again what Steve Jobs said about third-party apps:
You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.
My take on that is that AT&T doesn't want to see their network swamped with data transfers without being able to charge for them. However, a per-kilobyte service plan would have totally ruined the iPhone experience for the users. Apple wanted users to experience having a device that is always connected to the Internet. That experience is ruined if you're worrying about how much you're accessing the net because your service provider charges you per-kilobyte.
The reason Apple is so successful is because using their products is a pleasurable experience. That's their trick, they think about the "experience".
Meet the new Blog, same as the old Blog
As you can see, I finally bit the bullet and moved my blog to my own domain. I plan to do the same with the website (it's still being hosted at Galileo University). The website needs a lot of work. It' still so... twentieth century!
The blog is now running on WordPress and I have to admit it was trivial to install. The admin interface is also pretty decent.
My one complaint is that the WYSIWYG editor that they ship seems to mangle my HTML pretty bad, to the point that I have to use Emacs to fix it, so I won't use it.
One big improvement is that the code snippets now have syntax highlighting. Awww, look at those beautiful colors. I'll be posting more code snippets now that looking at them doesn't hurt my eyes.
Well, that's all for today. Don't forget to subscribe to the new RSS Feed and to cancel the old one. I won't be posting to blogger anymore.