Author: pete

GWhine

Post author By pete
Post date 2006-06-19
3 Comments on GWhine

I’m having doubts about the competence of the programmers at Google.

As you are probably aware, GMail is a free service, so this isn’t going to be an angry rant about how they’ve let me down blah blah blah. Rather, it’s an observation based upon how they’ve handled a particular query of mine.

A lot of the time, when I’m not feeling in the mood for AJAX, I use the “Basic HTML” view. A few months ago, I noticed that if you configured a different default “from” address, the Basic HTML mode would not pick up on this, and it would continue to use the default username@gmail.com address.

So I sent a little message to the GMail team, not so much a bug report as a suggestion for an improvement.

A few weeks later I remembered this incident, so I set up a little test to see if they had implemented my suggestion. However, I was getting inconsistent results. I probed a little deeper and found that if you clicked on the “reply” link then it appeared that the change had been made, but if you dared to use the “Quick Reply” feature, it still used the defaults. To illustrate, the standard Reply field sent emails as:

> Pete <username@yourdomain.com>

…and the Quick Reply sent emails as:

> Pete <username@gmail.com>

This was my first alarm bell. The initial state of affairs could easily have been an oversight during development, but this new observation suggested to me that there was insufficient abstraction in the replying mechanism. Rather than having one supreme “reply” function, with the two possible reply methods hooking into it at different places, it looked like the “Quick Reply” and the standard “Reply” were both using totally different functions, which is why it was possible to fix a bug in one of them but not the other. Generally, and specifically in this scenario, a bad thing.

So I sent another message to the GMail team detailing the new situation, and in the meantime I accustomed myself to avoiding the “Quick Reply” box.

Another few weeks have passed since then, so I ran my little test again. They’ve partly fixed it. The “Quick Reply” box now uses the specified default email address, which is good, but it doesn’t use the specified default “from” name. To illustrate, the standard Reply field still sends emails as:

> Pete <username@yourdomain.com>

…and the Quick Reply now sends emails as:

> <username@yourdomain.com>

Two observations. Firstly, there’s still no abstraction of the replying mechanism, which doesn’t really surprise me. But secondly, this kind of oversight is characteristic of someone who is (a) drunk, (b) habitually slapdash or (c) inexperienced as a programmer.

I’ve been led to believe that Google only hire talented, experienced programmers. What gives?

*UPDATE: It’s now fixed.*

Meander Photos

Bulbs. Not the garden sort.

Post author By pete
Post date 2006-06-17
7 Comments on Bulbs. Not the garden sort.

Headlight bulb On Wednesday night I noticed that one of my headlights wasn’t working. Curiously, it was the bulb that I had changed only about six months ago that had given up the ghost.

So I went to Halfords yesterday and bought myself a replacement bulb (and a spare, but that is by the by). But my dreams of a swift and easy changeover were hampered somewhat by the fact that the bonnet wouldn’t open. As you can imagine, at this point I became a little stressed out. I had visions of myself having to submit the car to be crushed into a tiny cube, simply because the engine compartment was now an impenetrable fortress and there was no engine oil or windscreen washer fluid left.

Google is your friend – I found [this][]:

[this]: http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.rec.cars.maintenance/browse_thread/thread/20c1f70f4831c4b8/

> Pull the lever and have your mate press down on the bonnet where the catch is. Worked on my Cav ((Vauxhall Cavalier)). I think the cable has stretched a bit. I made a temporary repair by putting a Scotchlock connector on the end of the release cable. (Temporary = 3 years ago and it still works well!)

Sure enough, it worked. Valuable tip there.

Which leaves me only with the question – why did the bulb only last for a few months?

Tags bonnet, bulb, Halfords, headlight

Meander

Not Giving Up The Day Job

It’s very childish of me, but I’ve been gleaning an unhealthy amount of pleasure from [Karen][]’s situation in one particular way.

[karen]: http://uborka.nu/rise/

Being, as she is, nine minus epsilon months pregnant, if provoked to anything more than a slight giggle, the floodgates open and she tumbles down a painful and scrunch-faced slope to the valley of uncontrollable laughter. I don’t know whether it is because of hormones or some other factor, but that’s just the way it is.

I’ve been seeking to gain as much mileage as possible from this, by telling jokes that aren’t even particularly funny, just funny enough to cause the desired effect. After a certain amount of experience, you figure out where the relevant boundaries are.

And then, when she goes all red in the face and loses the ability to speak due to paralytic mirth, I do not find it hard to convince myself that I must be the funniest comedian in the world.

Which is nice, for a while.

Peril

The Beast Returns

[It has followed me][].

[it has followed me]: http://pete.nu/blog/2003/07/the-beast-of-the-bridge/

The terror that haunted me, through my waking hours and in my darkest nightmares.

I thought that I had escaped it. I thought that 16.6 miles would be enough to throw it off my scent forever. But I was wrong.

It has also developed a hideous new ability: the ability to teleport at will. When you think that you have managed to outrun it and leave it far behind, and your chest is pounding and your legs are aching, somehow it reappears in front of you to terrorise you some more. You cross the road to escape its deadly attack, and this outfoxes it… for now.

Your journey home takes forever. When you finally arrive to the safety of your abode, you barricade the doors and windows, and curl up a darkened corner: quivering, sobbing, shaking. You can not hide forever. You know this.

In the opposite corner of the room, the sodium light defines the edges of your flamethrower. You must destroy the beast.

Parenting

On The Brink

Post author By pete
Post date 2006-06-12
2 Comments on On The Brink

It is now 8 days until the baby’s projected due date. In reality, this means that the baby could arrive any time in the next two weeks or so.

Maybe I’ll hear a funny buzzing noise while sat at my desk. I’ll quickly figure out that it’s my phone vibrating (I’m clever like that, you see) and so I’ll check the screen to see who it is. *Karen mob*, apparently. I will answer the phone with something like “Hi, are you alright?” and [she][] will say *”My waters have just broken!”* or *”I’m having real, proper contractions!”*

[she]: http://uborka.nu/rise/

At this point I’ll find out where she is, and arrange a rendezvous, and then I’ll stuff my possessions into my bag and hurtle out of the office while hollering a suitable explanatory message back at my co-workers.

Or maybe we’ll be sat on the sofa watching a film, and from beside me I’ll hear an *”Uh-oh.”* or *”Nnnnngg.”* or *”Yaaargh!”* and this will serve as my cue. We’ve probably got enough time to wait until the next advert break. It’s not like she’s going anywhere under her own steam in a hurry.

Sadly, it’s also highly likely that I’ll be prodded awake in the middle of the night. If necessary, I will politely, by use of appropriate hand gestures, tell Karen to STFU while I lurch downstairs to find a vein and shoot up with espresso. I’m sure she understands that it is in her own interests to allow me to do this, in order that I may become a more effective labour partner.

Pregnancy has been a long and annoying wait. It’s only in the last few days that the end has realistically been in sight, and it has kicked in: yes, we really are going to deliver a fucking baby, how about that. Followed, of course, by a future that it would be daft to attempt to predict. That excites me.

Gardening

England vs Somebody: Liveblogged!

Post author By pete
Post date 2006-06-10
No Comments on England vs Somebody: Liveblogged!

*Updates will appear at the top.*

**1:48:** Update completed! A few small checks, and then I’m off to the pub for a celebratory pint.

Thanks for joining me for my liveblogging of… something dreadfully exciting. Whatever it was.

**1:29:** The update continues to trundle along at a leisurely pace. The new Ubuntu theme has been installed, so I’m now seeing the new-style window borders and icons, and they are quite pretty.

The battery on this laptop is starting to run low, and I’m reluctant to distract my Ubuntu machine while it is busy, so I may disappear for a while. Perhaps I’ll hunt down the AC adapter for this little fella, or perhaps I’ll go out into the garden and enjoy the sun.

**1:21:** I’ve been positively bukkaked in semaphore for the last 34 minutes. People have been asking when I’m going to post some photos of the neighbour’s cat unfolding paper aeroplanes. Well, I’m sorry to say this, but the paper cut that the cat received was a lot more serious than we initially thought, and the poor pussycat has bled completely dry.

There will be a funeral service on Monday.

Does anyone know of a good cat blood removal service?

Tags Beckham, football, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Linux

Meander Parenting

Castlehunting

Post author By pete
Post date 2006-06-09
4 Comments on Castlehunting

Karen and I have chosen possibly the most inconvenient time imaginable to consider buying a house. But some things you can’t control, and you have to go with the flow.

A couple of major factors have precipitated this new project. The first is the size of our current house, which is a rented property and consumes more than a third of our joint net income. Though it is adequate at present, I think that when the baby gets old enough to need his own bedroom, it just isn’t going to work for us anymore. It’s also on a relatively busy road by a railway station, with lots of boy racers, shouters, drunkards, urinaters and vandals all through the night. I think I’ve lived here for long enough.

The second factor is a financial one. Whereas I was previously under the impression that making that first step onto the so-called “housing ladder” was out of my reach, I have recently reassessed and been pleasantly surprised by my findings. In the light of the deposit that Karen and I think we have at our disposal, research indicates that we stand a good chance of getting a mortgage that allows us to buy our dream house, with repayments that amount to less than our currently monthly expenditure on rent. We will be speaking to a financial adviser on Tuesday.

Last night we looked at a property in town which had good qualities, but not enough of them. Our initial gut response was a big “no” – we told the estate agent our specific reasons, for future reference. We then stopped off at a pub on our way home, where the introduction to my system of two pints of London Pride (and a lime & soda for her) caused us to attempt to talk ourselves into liking the property in question. Naturally, our self-awareness left us in no doubt that this was a natural response, and nothing to act upon. Sleep on it? Damn right. This morning, we were back to “no”.

So the task remains to find the dream home. A lofty target, but nothing less will do.

Photos