Blog: 2008-12

Ravioli Does Not Need Sauce

I occasionally buy Rising Moon Organics ravioli. The other night, I was working and didn't want to bother to try to improvise a sauce, so I just boiled the ravioli and sprinkled it with dried basil leaf.

The ravioli is flavorful enough that it tasted good sauce-less, and arguably better than with my lousy improvised sauces.

Incidentally, that particular brand is on sale right now at Harvest (Central Square, Cambridge, MA, USA).

AUCTeX Tweaks for PDF

I had to do a little technical documentation that needed to be in LaTeX, so I dusted off the ol' AUCTeX.

AUCTeX (looking at Debian version 11.83-7.3) has improved substantially since I last used it, but there was a bit of bit-rot in my configuration for targeting PDF.

First, the PDF commands are no longer available in the default mode, so I made them the default, in my ~/.emacs:

(setq-default TeX-PDF-mode t)

Second, I don't use xpdf, so to change AUCTeX to use Evince instead, I did M-x customize-variable RET TeX-output-view-style RET and changed the value for xpdf to be:

evince %o

By the way, I think pretty much all documentation should be targeting HTML-based Web browser interfaces right now. But sometimes you still need something typeset for print, and LaTeX is much better for that purpose than Microsoft Word.

Finally Got a Concept2 Ergometer

After years of wanting one, and months of monitoring for-sale listings for an old one that was affordable and nearby, I got Concept2 Model B ergometer. It's just like the two I'd used previously, going back about 16 years.

This one was located just on the next block over, and the owner was trying to give it away for free. I offered $100, and she bid me down to $50.

This machine has already given me a workout, getting it home and up the stairs, so using the actual rowing function can wait til tomorrow.

Printing Envelopes for Fun and Profit

Christmas is time to remember the simpler pleasures. Like indulging your perfectionist tendencies by realizing that your printer can print envelopes.

Won't the electric company's processing center be delighted when your check arrives in a fabulous full-bleed psychedelic Technicolor packaging of your own design.

To make OpenOffice.org Writer print #10 envelopes, the most likely ones you'll buy in the US, go to Format → Page.... Set Format to Env. #10, set Orientation to Landscape. and set the Margins values to 0.50".

Incidentally, I'm using the HP LaserJet 5N that I found on the curb a few years ago, still going strong. It is currently installed in the Data Centre of my Global Headquarters. It's from an era before HP made crap.

Always Cast the Return Value of printf to void

Many, many years ago, when I was too young to be doing so, I did lots of industrial-strength C programming. Our users were mainly mil/aero types, and I was determined to write perfect code. The Unix compilers those days weren't great at static analysis for sanity-checking, so I used lint as one more way to catch some potential lapses of discipline before run time. I kept my programs "lint-free," and later tried to convey this practice to my mentorees with the mantra, "Always cast the return value of printf to void."

Fast forward to summer of a few years ago. I bumped into a colleague from the old days, who I think by that time was a Principal Engineer, eating lunch in a courtyard of Tech Square. She exclaimed something like, "Oh my god, it's Neil! ... Always cast the return value of printf to void!" and introduced me to her coworkers who were there as, "This is Neil Van Dyke. He was my guru." Then, later, something like, "He's the reason you guys think I code C like an asshole."

Every time you see a security exploit reported against a server written in C, probably the programmer did not cast the return value of printf to void.

John Maeda in Christmas's Globe A&E

[...] when he asked 600 high school students attending a summer art program to applaud for the vision of the university that resonated most with them. [...] Then he suggested: "Building a justifiable case for creativity in our world." "The response to that - it was like being Bono in U2," says Maeda. "I began to understand why this calling came."

—Joan Anderman, "A captivating force at RISD helm," Boston Globe, 2008-12-25

John Maeda seemed to be one of the more principled people from the Media Lab -- not compromised by the daily faculty courting of sponsors and the dearth of traditional academic rules. I was glad to see him find a great role at RISD.

Laptop RAM is Approx. $10 per Gigabyte

I almost never buy new computers -- I usally buy something used that's a couple years old, or simply repair something from the curbside trash. Most of my compute power comes from software, and I usually need only modest hardware. But, for Christmas, I decided to splurge and add a 2GB SODIMM to my laptop. Who needs swap.

Icy Sidewalk Safety

In Cambridge (MA, USA), property owners are required to clear snow and ice from the sidewalks abutting their property. Today in Kendall Square, a certain hotel (sorta rhymes with "James Herriot") managed to make the red brick sidewalk appear clear, when in fact they introduced invisible slick ice patches. As I approached a guy coming the other way, I made eye contact, pointed at the sidewalk, and said something like "Be careful, it's slippery." He laughed, and said, "I was going to tell you the same thing."

If you, like me, aren't the type to want to sue the Marriott corporation for a broken hip, thrown back, wrecked knee, or concussed cranium, then you should take this as yet another reminder to be careful on the sidewalks this time of year.

I would also like to re-recommend Sure Foot Get-A-Grip Ultra elastic slip-on things that I recommended a couple winters ago. They have been renamed the DueNorth Everyday Traction Aid.

The main drawback to these is that the tungsten carbide tips aren't that great for walking on floors of stores. I haven't yet tried this, but I'm thinking that a good way to carry the Sure Foots in stores might be to stuff them into the water bottle pocket of a backpack. Perhaps inside a plastic bag, to keep your backpack cleaner and protect it from the tips. The Sure Foots slip on and off of shoes quickly.

(Photo copyright Sure Foot Corp.)

Desired Invention of the Day

Right now, I would love to have a heated footstool.

Hacking a crude version of this is trivial. The IKEA KLIPPAN footstool has a removable cover, so perhaps all that's required is to put an electric heat pad of the appropriate size beneath the top of the cover.

(Disclaimer: Don't sue if me you burn down your house in pursuit the heated footstool.)

Snow

The snow started just as I was leaving the store with the last item on my Christmas shopping list.

The weatherman is promising us 8-12 inches by midnight.

Like some bad pickup line.

Harvest Pumpkin Betrayal

When I was a little kid, my uncle's barn had a salt lick for the cows -- a big, heavy block of salt that sat in the straw on the floor of the barn. On a couple occasions that we were visiting, we took our pocketknives and sliced off little slivers of salt lick for personal consumption.

At lunchtime today, I stopped in to Au Bon Pain to pick up my favorite of the last few years: a large Harvest Pumkpin Soup. I love this so much, with bits of warm bread dipped in it, that as soon as I got home I went to blog an ode to ABP Harvest Pumpkin Soup, complete with a link to a Web page on the product.

It was when I looked for the link that I was confronted with the horrible truth that the soup contains 1290mg of sodium. (And, oh, hey, 2500 calories.)

I might as well have been sucking on a salt lick.

Have they no sense of decency. Must everything I love be taken from me.

Update 2008-12-20: A smarter person informs me that it's actually 320 calories. That's what I get for being cavalier with my parenthetical asides.