So I wrote a little perl script that renames all RAZR pictures to YYMMDDhhmm.jpg so that they can be easily sorted in chronological order by any file browser.  You’d think a big international company like Motorola would be able to respect the ISO 8601 standard by now.

Lets say you want to forward mail from your Lotus Notes account but want to strip attachments, you’ll definitely want to try the following script. It’s perfect for sending your mail to your sexy new iPhone without racking up ridiculous bandwidth charges.

This works in Notes 8, but has not been tested in earlier versions. Also be sure to replace YOUREMAIL@MAIL.COM with an external email address. Credit should go to Simon Lacasse who did the nitty gritty work, I’m just making sure others can benefit from it.

Sub Initialize

Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim collection As NotesDocumentCollection
Dim memo As NotesDocument
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim j As Integer
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase

Set collection = db.UnprocessedDocuments

For j = 1 To collection.Count
Set memo = collection.GetNthDocument( j )
''If Not( memo.SentByAgent ) Then

Set doc = New NotesDocument( db )
Call doc.CopyAllItems( memo, True )
Dim rtitem As NotesRichTextItem

Set rtitem = memo.GetFirstItem("Body")

doc.Form = "Memo"
doc.Subject = "From :" + memo.From(0) + ":" + memo.Subject( 0 )
doc.Body = memo.Body
doc.Principal = memo.from(0)
''doc.InetFrom = memo.SMTPOriginator
doc.ReplyTo = memo.from(0)

Call doc.Send( True, "YOUREMAIL@MAIL.COM" )
'Call doc.Send( False, "Put another EMail address here" )
''        End If
Call session.UpdateProcessedDoc( memo )
Next

End Sub

Leopard (OS X 10.5) has its fair share of goodies, including a new and improved terminal client with *gasp* tabbed windows. I thought this feature would be great news, since as I wouldn’t need to install the venerable iTerm in much of the same way that Spaces has supplanted VirtueDesktops. After a week though I’ve gone back to iTerm, as it became painfully obvious that the Window Groups features of the Leopard terminal couldn’t hold a candle to the bookmarking features in iTerm. The Window Groups in terminal fail to retain any useful information such as which host you are connected to, and you’re manually forced to ssh back to where you were before, this is something that the bookmarks in iTerm solve easily. So close Apple, yet so far…

I learned this lesson on my own and it bears repeating, because even after all these years I still catch myself doing it sometimes. It’s Friday, you’re tired, and when your guard is down that’s when you start doing stupid things to your code.

So go write some documentation or as Marc-André Cournoyer suggested, fix the little things that you told yourself you’d do later but never did or add some tests. Just stay away from major changes on a Friday afternoon!

That’s a terrible design issue, one that has annoyed me a bit in OSX but annoys me even more in Windows. I guess this is a strong sign that Window resizing won’t be changing in Leopard.

The RSS icon doesn’t respect what everyone else is using.

Sure the little orange RSS icon isn’t very clear on what it does, but at least once you know what it does you can easily recognize it. The RSS icon used in Safari strays from that, and yet fails to be any more useful to someone who doesn’t already know what RSS is.

Yet another browser for web developers to debug.

This is a lazy complaint to be sure, but proper testing does take time, and some clients are going to demand it. Plus there’s no guarantee that how things render in Windows will match how things render in OSX, so you can’t be sure until you’ve tested on both platforms. Finally, this could lead people who might have purchased an Apple computer to not bother since they can test Safari from a Windows PC.

We quickly came up with a list of batch cooking recipe candidates:

• Chili
• Bread
• Pate
• Picklings
• Jams
• Pies
• Cookie doughs
• Duck (If you want to make confit you’ll need at least 3 ducks)
• Lasagna
• Pierogies
• Pate Chinois
• Soups

With luck, we’ll get a few more people together (4 to 6 people, 8 tops).

I hope to avoid the “too many cooks” issue by delegating a meal to each household and having the household coordinate the shopping and preparation, while splitting the grocery bill between each participant. Once a month should be a good starting pace, and if it picks up we could add homework assignments such as cookie dough exchanges.

I think there is a lot of potential here, and with the practice there are a few recipes that I would like to use as Christmas gifts (the pate, picklings, jams and cookie dough all come to mind).

The next step will be to find a few more people to join us, and find out who’s cooking first.

Suddenly your life becomes that Warholian thing where every moment of your life should be something you can sell, you’re always taking pictures, taping everything, and then I think it’s just psychologically strange.”

Fortunately the schism between living a good entry and writing a good entry is wide enough that I’m spared Mr. Copland’s predicament. I am a big fan of Douglas Copland’s earlier books, but I can’t say I’ve ever assessed how much of an impact Microserfs has had on my life.

So although I’ve tried bear-claw snowshoes before and didn’t enjoy them (albeit in deep snow), I think I’m going to have to break down and get a pair if I want to keep up with my friends.  Of course, once that 40cm of powder comes down, we’ll see who’s laughing last.

The project at work I’ve been busy with for the past year and a half goes live this weekend and I am looking forward to switching gears. That and the change freeze slated for December should free up my personal time for something more interesting. It’s time to write me a plan and a schedule so that I can take my own projects to the next step.

The rest of my academic life my math marks varied from a record high 100% three semesters in a row to a record low 16% precalculus class in college, but even then I never hated math itself (let us blame the teacher and the newfound freedoms of college life). If you would like to test the waters to see if you share my interest for math I present to you the following articles, all of which I promise will contain hardly any equations at all. We’ll start with a popular teaser known as The Birthday Paradox. If you liked that one, then check out Benford’s Law (or looking out for Number One), which shows how popular the number one really is, and how easy it can be to find fake data. The longest, and also the most interesting article is Who Can Name the Biggest Number which is a fascinating look at the origin, use and limitations of really big numbers. Finally, for a bit of eye candy, check out The Secret Lives of Numbers and more importantly the visualisation on the left of that page, which in my opinion is one of the nicest Java Applets to have been implemented.