Well all my friends are doing it, I might as well jump in. I have to admit the results surprised me. I was experimenting with snmpwalk recently and this has skewed my results terribly.
On my daily use laptop:
polycarb:~ alan$ uname -a ; history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s \n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head
Darwin polycarb.local 9.2.2 Darwin Kernel Version 9.2.2: Tue Mar 4 21:17:34 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.4.31~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
99 cd
86 ls
30 make
19 snmpwalk
17 ssh
16 svn
14 less
13 open
12 telnet
12 ifconfig
No surprises there, I use open a fair bit to open a Finder window in a particular directory. As others have noted, this does not account for the amount of work that goes on in the Aquamacs session.
On a dated work machine that is used for project management, integration and firmware builds:
Linux energia 2.6.7-gentoo-r14 #5 SMP Thu Sep 9 10:16:29 MDT 2004 i686 Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.06GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
117 cd
76 svn
68 ls
36 ./buildrel
25 svnmerge
22 pwd
14 grep
13 echo
12 less
8 bint
I make no apologies for running Gentoo here, but I wouldn’t do it again, that’s for sure. –funroll-loops –gaak!
buildrel is a script that (predictably) builds the firmware release image files and bint is a “bug integration tool” that lets me see diffs, branch-points and manage merges for integrating tasks into the stable codelines. It isn’t much more than a convenience wrapper around svn.
Thanks to a tickling from a co-worker, I noticed that Philip Greenspun has posted a quick note about the Teledyne Continental (TCM/TDY) judgement and award.
As a General Aviation flyer, this is really disturbing. People really need to start taking responsibility for their actions and the courts need to back that stance.
This is just the sort of litigious atmosphere we encountered in the 80s that put many of the piston airplane manufacturers out of business or at least killed off their innovation and model updates.
Links to Phil’s blog post, the NTSB report, the post at Aero News and a quick search at news.google.com.
Swiss Interface Syndrome:
John Gruber over at Daring Fireball pointed me at Sebastian de With’s outstanding gripe on interface design and rendering type on monitors in small pixel-sizes. This is not an easy problem to solve and you can really, truly, do a miserable job of it. I think that not enough people understand fonts in general and that UI design has suffered as a consequence. Yes, there are many other reasons why UI design has suffered, but type-abuse is a really easy low-hanging fruit to pick. *
Sebastiaan de With on the garish practice of mixing Helvetica with Lucida Grande in Mac UI design.
Let’s not get started on the ages-old Arial vs Helvetica fight.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
* In no way do I imply or intend to imply that I have not committed terrible sins against UI design sensibilities or font rendering guidelines myself, but I try to be aware of it. An excellent book on fonts and working with them is the somewhat timeless “Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works” by none other than Erik Spiekermann and, E.M. Ginger.
I’ve been looking at a mountain bike for a few weeks, mostly just kicking tires in the shop, but today I took one out on a ride, almost the same ride we did last week (which is good for comparison). Last week I rode a friend’s Specialized S-Works Elite (from 2005) and this week I took out the Specialized Stumpjumper FSR Comp. They are similiar, but not identical. Least of all there are several thousand dollars separating the bikes. I like how Specialized paints their test bikes a very ugly aquamarine colour — hard to miss them on the trail, surely that’s what they want.
I have to admit that at my fitness level and experience level (both moderate to low right now) I had a hard time telling these bikes apart in a practical way. The S-Works was decidedly better in many detectable ways, but the bigger question is – are these ways material to how I want to ride?
I really started out thinking I was going to purchase a Santa Cruz Mountain Bike, specifically the Heckler or even the Superlight; but the Specialized bikes seem to offer a lot more at a given price. Too bad, since I really would rather by a bike from the local factory. (Not that Specialized is far away – they are just up in Morgan Hill – so I’ve been told.)
Stay tuned for more tales of me getting re-aquatinted with Mountain Biking.
If money was no object, I’m sure I’d buy something built to that level, but I think I can manage with the mid-level kit on the Stumpjumper Comp FSR.
Some photos and a map follow.
Ride Overview KML[width=550;height=500;minlon=-122.102881;maxlon=-122.036832;minlat=36.958390;maxlat=37.018669;overviewmapcontrol=hide;maptype=G_SATELLITE_TYPE]
On my commute into the office this morning, I passed an vehicle that was being used by a business that, according to the sign on the vehicle, offered “False Finishes, Faux Granite & Veneers”. Ostensibly for your kitchen countertops. The irony was that the vehicle was an H3. Something of a veneer or faux-finish itself. I think I chuckled about that for nearly 5 miles.
I wonder if the proprietor intended the ironic depth that they achieved?
Unlike my initial service order request, AT&T seems to have had no trouble ‘upgrading’ my service. I just ran a test today and things appear to be faster already. They told me I would likely have to wait 2 weeks.
vs the old results which were:
This appears to be a 2x increase (approximately) for 5$ / month. Nice.
I managed to finally get out around town and do some mountain bike riding. Cullen was kind enough to loan me a bike, and his good one at that. We didn’t set any speed records and stopping for a snack on the way home wasn’t exactly hard-core, but it was great to get our and see the local riding areas. Turns out they are really pretty. Too bad we forgot a camera.
Captures and geeky GPS tracks after the break. (Click through for more.)
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A selection of stats on some friends that viewed a thingy I sent around. Certainly not representative of the web at large. I for one, am shocked at the lack of Linux.
When I first arrived, AT&T insisted that they could get me their “Elite” package, which claimed some certain download speed (6Mbps IIRC). When I ordered it I was downgraded to the “Pro” package at a mere 3Mbps maximum download rate. The reasoning AT&T gave me for this (orginally) was my distance from the CO.
I have to admit that I get nearly that and my recent DSL reports testing support this with raw test results around 2.46Mbps (fairly close to 3.0 as far as these things are concerned):
Cut forward one month. AT&T phones me at home this evening to offer me an upgrade on DSL. I kindly informed the calling solicitor that I couldn’t be upgraded (according to them) because of my distance to the CO. He informs me that we are “… a mere 7.08 kft from the switch…” and “..should have no problem with the Elite package.”
Sold. We’ll see:
- how long it takes to process the order, and;
- what the resulting speed is.
PS: Don’t get me started on “kilofeet”. That really isn’t an SI unit.
Update : Apparently the provisioning is complete. See this post for the comparison.
