humandoing software

I couldn’t get a jQuery datepicker to bind to an element that was being displayed in a colorbox (even when trying with jQuery Live). Found a solution on (surprise) StackOverflow.

Just a quick thought on the latest from Gruber regarding doing it first, vs. doing it right.

For a bit of context, he states:

Do you include the half-baked stuff, or hold it until it’s fully-baked? Apple wasn’t going to include a front-facing camera until they had software that made it useful in an iPhone-caliber way. HTC is happy to include a front-facing camera and leave its utility (and user experience) in the hands of third-party developers.

And from here – he carries on to state the following:

Android and iPhone fans will read the preceding paragraph very differently. Android fans will read it and say, “Exactly — give us the hardware and let developers figure out what to do with it.” iPhone fans will read it and say, “I can’t wait to get an iPhone 4.”

My first thought, reading the above paragraph wasn’t “I can’t wait to get an iPhone 4″, but rather “Thank you for saving me from having to deal with mediocre implementations of video calling that will no doubt increase my blood pressure and shorten my life. Thank you that I don’t have to give a flying crap what Qik or Fring are. I can’t wait to get an iPhone 4.”

1. That can’t happen.
2. That doesn’t happen on my machine.
3. That shouldn’t happen.
4. Why does that happen?
5. Oh, I see.
6. How did that ever work?

This needs to be re-posted on the Interwebs every now and again, especially when you just finish having one of “those” moments.

Here is a handy web tool for checking the validity of JSON. I’ve been generating a lot of funny custom JSON lately, and every now and again I get it wrong.

When jQuery gets ahold of invalid JSON data on a $.getJSON call, it fails silently, which can leave you with a head-scratcher, until you fix your broken JSON data.

Debugging problems with logrotate (as in, logs not rotating) – this was plenty helpful:

logrotate -d -f /etc/logrotate.conf

TOAD connected to Oracle Enterprise installed on Windows XP which is a Virtual Machine in Parallels running on my MacBook Pro. Cygwin for OpenSSH in order to access a remote Oracle database behind a firewall through a port-forwarded SSH tunnel.

Sheesh. Oracle. Pain.