Dietrich Ayala's Yahoo! 360 Blog

Ouch

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:35:26 GMT

A comment (via Engadget ) from someone after Terry Semel's keynote at CES:

"Well Steve Jobs is a fucking Jedi Master of this shit compared to these other clowns."

nfqf - The Netflix Queue Filter

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 05:02:04 GMT

I was searching for a movie in my Netflix queue, and went up and down the queue a bunch of times before I finally found it. Yes, I know: a trivial annoyance. However, to quote Joel Spolsky, from his book User Interface Design for Programmers:

Even something that seems like a tiny, inconsequential frustration affects your mood. Your emotions don't seem to care about the magnitude of the event, only the quality. ... I started to learn that the days when I was happiest were the days with a lot of small successes and few small frustrations.

So, here's a solution to a small frustration: nfqf - a filtering search for your Netflix queue. It's a Greasemonkey script that adds a little search box at the top of your queue. Type characters in, and your queue will only show movies w/ titles that contain that string of characters.

Install

Caveat emptor: I'm not responsible for any malfunctions that may occur due to Netflix changing their site, or your decision to trust my ineptitude.

Ta,

-d

Katrina Caused by Skilled Yakuza Interferometer Operators

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 14:54:06 GMT

"Japanese Yakuza crews who leased large strategic Russian scalar interferometers from the KGB in latter 1989 ... have been engineering the weather over North America initially (and in some other places) since then, and have since become the most skilled interferometer operators on the planet. They are also being used as direct protégées by the KGB/FSB, which has moved them into the final Operations Phase of the long asymmetric war against the United States. "

The 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Redistribute Wealth to the Poor

Tue, 23 Aug 2005 15:58:05 GMT

Or God will smite you with his heavenly... bullets.

Lightning: Integrated Calendaring with Mozilla Thunderbird... on a Mac

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 20:24:33 GMT

Today I set up a Mozilla build-environment on my Powerbook, and builded-ed Mozilla Lightning, which aims to add tightly integrated calendaring functionality to Mozilla Thunderbird, the mail/news client.

From hanging out in #calendar on irc.mozilla.org, it appeared that most Lightning dev was happening on Windows, which meant that there weren't any nightly builds for us Mac users.

Building was surprisingly easy... and unsurprisingly long. The attached shot shows what it looks like so far.

I'll flex it's functionality when I get time, and will post about that as well. If you're brave/stupid, and want a copy of the xpi, let me know.

Slow Ride in the Fast Lane...Finally

Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:30:44 GMT

On January 1st, 2005, California Assembly Bill 2628 was signed into law. It allows some hybrid cars to drive in the carpool lane, even if the vehicle has a single occupant. However, carpool lanes are funded by federal grants, and the federal government threatened to take away their funding if California allowed this law to take effect. The implementation of the law was postponed indefinitely.

The opposition to California's law was spearheaded by domestic auto manufacturers, who consider AB2628 a "buy japanese" bill. This is because domestically manufactured hybrid vehicles get far less miles-per-gallon than the Japanese hybrids, and don't satisfy the requirements of the bill.

In a positive development, the federal transportation bill which was just signed into law by El Presidento Nepotsis (nsfw), allows hybrids in federally-funded carpool lanes. The California ARB (Air Resources Board) have already updated their website, adding a number of hybrid models to the list of single-occupant vehicles that qualify as able to drive in the carpool lane.

What's the effect on hybrid-driving commuters like myself? Well, here in southern California it means that the commute might be 5-10 minutes shorter. Yay. Now it should only take 55 minutes to drive 32 miles, instead of the usual hour.

The importance of this law taking effect is not about the commute however. It sends a message to domestic auto manufacturers, who have been working overtime for years to prevent mass-adoption of fuel-efficient and environmentally-friendly cars in America: Fuck you.

Making the Monkey Frown

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 14:56:51 GMT

Looks like there is a serious exploit in Greasemonkey. This thread provides the details. A "neutered" version has been provided, for use until the security hole is patched. Good luck Aaron!

Trust, Identity and the GUIDMail

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 05:52:01 GMT

One of the changes in Firefox 1.1 (aka Deer Park) is that an email address is a treated as a valid GUID value.

So in any place in your Firefox extension where you previously used a GUID to uniquely represent your extension, you can now use your email address.

I really don't know more than that, as it was just mentioned in irc://mozilla.org#umo (is that how you represent an irc channel in a URL?) but I haven't looked into it further.

I wonder how they handle authors with multiple extensions? Or how about when you change your email address? Also, guids are kinda anonymous. Emails have owners... I wonder if they do any kind of send/reply validation...

Listening to: Tabla Beat Science - Live in SF
Drinking: cheap champagne (heheh, ran out of Chopin, and this was sitting in the fridge looking lonely)

The Power and Wonder of Extensibility

Sun, 12 Jun 2005 16:39:27 GMT

Um yeah, right.

I have 30+ Firefox extensions installed. One or more (or maybe just the combined weight of them all put together) are now causing a 20 second delay every time a new window opens.

Yay extensibility!

Overheard in New York...

Sat, 07 May 2005 05:28:09 GMT

The subway doors open. A hobo enters, holding a bottle of windex in one hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other. He says: Which is the better time to read Dostyevsky? Winter?

He sprays the windex.

Hobo: Or Spring?

He squeezes toothpaste out of the tube.

Japanese girl: Spring!
Hobo: You are correct.

Truly brilliant (and funny as ****) snatches of real life in NYC on this excellent blog.