You all know or ought to know about the classic 'Worse Is Better', go look up if need be. Now, imagine the 'Worse Is Better' thinking applied to blogging, and think of this blog post as a sort of apology for the lowered standards for coming blog posts; and the fact that they will be much shorter. Which might be a good thing.
Now that I look it up, it seems 'Worse Is Better' is more about 'software acceptance', and not so much about the internal process of an author being over-particular about what sort of content is acceptable to release. So you see, holding back and reviewing may at least find errors. But the point holds: if you fuss too much about your publications, they don't happen.
The above applies to software too. But it is probably the case that bad software is much more damaging to the state of the world than a witless blog post. I don't know. Anyway, hereby declare the intention to never meekly 'Save' instead of 'Publish'. Better trimming your message than holding it back.
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Motivation
Will this be the day that I manage to keep motivated all the way through a blog post about motivation? Well, instead of relying on luck, which all of us rationalists know is not a good idea, how about I use a little trick: post now, see you later. And maybe this might be an illustration of why incremental algorithms are generally a win. And why humility-based strategies usually win over ones based in pride. Whatever. So, see you later, don't know where, don't know when, possibly in the continuation of this post, or in another article on this humble blog.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Eclipse+Maven Wimper
Yep, Eclipse + Maven again. The horror, the suckage, the demoralization. "Importing Maven projects (Cancel Requested)" again. What. Is. It. Doing? Why. Doesn't. It. Cancel? Although. There. Is. No. Network. Activity? Make It Stop. Or. Please. Kill. Me.
(Update: solution found, see below.)
---
Oh, this is a new one: since the import didn't succeed, it seems the project wasn't added to the project list; as was apparent after restarting the Eclipse. But the pom.xml was still open. Though not quite; get this: it seems unable to show me the source code without the project. Well, possibly because that's the last 'tab', and maybe if one of the earlier (more to the left) tabs fails to load, it doesn't try the rest of the tabs.
And how about this error: "Can't load model L/backend-core-jar/pom.xml". What's an 'L'?
---
Ok, so another repugnant E&M episode has been overcome. Solution: commented out a repository that one might suspect does not work so well any more.
Now, it would be nice to be able to run a check to see if the project can now be imported with this repository removed, but without re-running the whole maven download process.
(Update: solution found, see below.)
---
Oh, this is a new one: since the import didn't succeed, it seems the project wasn't added to the project list; as was apparent after restarting the Eclipse. But the pom.xml was still open. Though not quite; get this: it seems unable to show me the source code without the project. Well, possibly because that's the last 'tab', and maybe if one of the earlier (more to the left) tabs fails to load, it doesn't try the rest of the tabs.
And how about this error: "Can't load model L/backend-core-jar/pom.xml". What's an 'L'?
---
Ok, so another repugnant E&M episode has been overcome. Solution: commented out a repository that one might suspect does not work so well any more.
Now, it would be nice to be able to run a check to see if the project can now be imported with this repository removed, but without re-running the whole maven download process.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Saved By Recent Item
Wow, one month since last post. Thought I'd use some of the extra time I've got on my hands to post stuff. Wrong.
Anyway, here's a simple story to blog about a small recent computing incident... I had managed to fill up the startup disk. I had mostly ignored the OSX warnings, though I did some half-hearted attempt to free up some space by deleting the low-hanging crud.
But the other day the warnings turned out to having been warranted. Login failed to start the Dock; and also didn't start finder. Which makes you pretty restricted.
Mysteriously, logging in managed to slowly launch a Chrome process. Weird, I don't have it set to open on login, and it doesn't normally do that, but this weirdness saved my bacon. Although surfing was not possible since the network wouldn't work at all, which is weird. Which, by the way, made the system updater report the lie that there were 'no changes', after a couple minutes.
Now, how did Chrome manage to save me? Well, it was not Chrome per se, but the system menu accompanying an open app. Chrome was the only open app. No finder, no cmd-tab app switcher. In the system menu, there is the "Recent Items" submenu, with an Applications section in it. And there it was, the bacon-saver: Teminal.
So, using a Terminal session to clean the start disk leaving upwards of 1GB, after a logout and login everything was back to normal.
Learnings: launch terminal now and then, to keep it available in the Recent Items. Or heed the OSX warnings and free up enough space to be able to log in. Or perhaps one can make Terminal start during startup.
Or perhaps this idea might work: always keep a file of some size, perhaps 100MB will be enough, in the tmp/ folder. It should be deleted during system boot, which should free that amount of disk space. But creating it in a login script might offset the purpose.
Of course, the real fix is to have Dock not require disk space to start up. Or make the OSX low-on-disk-space warning explain what might happen if you don't act -- that'd scared me into action, for one.
Anyway, here's a simple story to blog about a small recent computing incident... I had managed to fill up the startup disk. I had mostly ignored the OSX warnings, though I did some half-hearted attempt to free up some space by deleting the low-hanging crud.
But the other day the warnings turned out to having been warranted. Login failed to start the Dock; and also didn't start finder. Which makes you pretty restricted.
Mysteriously, logging in managed to slowly launch a Chrome process. Weird, I don't have it set to open on login, and it doesn't normally do that, but this weirdness saved my bacon. Although surfing was not possible since the network wouldn't work at all, which is weird. Which, by the way, made the system updater report the lie that there were 'no changes', after a couple minutes.
Now, how did Chrome manage to save me? Well, it was not Chrome per se, but the system menu accompanying an open app. Chrome was the only open app. No finder, no cmd-tab app switcher. In the system menu, there is the "Recent Items" submenu, with an Applications section in it. And there it was, the bacon-saver: Teminal.
So, using a Terminal session to clean the start disk leaving upwards of 1GB, after a logout and login everything was back to normal.
Learnings: launch terminal now and then, to keep it available in the Recent Items. Or heed the OSX warnings and free up enough space to be able to log in. Or perhaps one can make Terminal start during startup.
Or perhaps this idea might work: always keep a file of some size, perhaps 100MB will be enough, in the tmp/ folder. It should be deleted during system boot, which should free that amount of disk space. But creating it in a login script might offset the purpose.
Of course, the real fix is to have Dock not require disk space to start up. Or make the OSX low-on-disk-space warning explain what might happen if you don't act -- that'd scared me into action, for one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)