Posted by Joel
Sun, 16 Jul 2006 09:30:44 GMT
Today I got up around noon, hung out in until around five and then went for a walk downtown. I walked around down there for a couple hours. I picked up some clothes, and bought myself a new iPod. I know I said I'd never buy a new one, but I have a commute now and KALX doesn't reach far enough :( So hopefully I can now join the podcasting revolution or whatever.
I was kind of on the fence about it, because NPR is cool and every day at 9 am, usually about halfway through the commute, is the Writer's Alamanac which I really enjoy. But I found out there is a Writer's Alamanac podcast. Although, honestly, one of my favorite things about it being on the radio is that it's live and other people are hearing it. Some have said that's weird, but I like to know I'm not alone in the experience.
I'm sure I'll still listen to the radio from time to time but I like to have the option so anyway...
I came home and talked to Justin for a half hour or so. I wanted to see a random show but nobody wanted to go with me. Eric was watching a movie with a girl he's been dating so I left them alone. David was unresponsive which is no surprise at this point. Hopefully I can convince Justin to come down tomorrow because there is another show I'd like to go to, but who knows. And I talked politics with my dad for a while.
Anyway then I watched Dave Chapelle's Block Party, it was pretty good.
On to IM, I don't get why so many people have moved away from instant messaging. Now that everyone is out of college, everyone is at computers all day for their work, and yet nobody is ever online. That seems totally backwards to me.
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Posted by Joel
Sat, 15 Jul 2006 06:02:00 GMT
Thursday was a pretty good day. After work we had a meet up with some of LuckyOliver's nearby photographers at a bocce ball place in Los Gatos. We had a really great time, it was some of the most fun I've had in a while!
I really can't say enough how great my job is turning out. I feel like it brings good things out of me, too.
Today I saw Marc after work and looked at his new place in Sunnyvale. However I'm pretty sure I'm not going to move in with him because I really don't like Sunnyvale and there seems to be no convincing him to come to the city. We got a burger and a beer and talked about Google a bit; one of these days I'm going to go visit him at their campus.
It's Friday night and I'm by myself. But I don't really care. I think I'm just going to go to sleep and see if I can't do something fun during the day tomorrow.
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Posted by Joel
Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:38:00 GMT
Today was a long day at work. I rolled out a new feature which everyone liked so that felt good. It was a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day in Campbell (as always) and Jeremy, Robert, Ryan and I ate lunch outside at a French cafe nearby. I got my oil changed and read some of the Anthony Bourdain book. I signed up (over the phone; they didn't have anyone available in the office last night) at the fitness center.
I spent a lot of the day struggling on a problem which I thought would be easy but turned out more complicated than I thought. However I think it's nearly complete.
I didn't leave work until 8pm. I got home around 9, after a beautiful drive through the sunset and into the nighttime city. Found parking fairly easily. However, I'm starting to wonder why I go so far since once I get home I only stay up for a few hours before going to bed, and don't have anyone to go do anything with.
Maybe I should just go to Sunnyvale.
Working these long hours won't be a permanent thing. After a few months I'm sure most of the hectic issues will have died down and things can work at a more regular pace. Maybe then I'll be back in the city in time to get dinner and a beer with someone. Whoever that is.
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Posted by Joel
Wed, 12 Jul 2006 06:27:43 GMT
If all goes well my daily updates will be more boring and consistent for a while now. I got some more good work done today and deposited some checks.
I didn't go back in RH today, and won't. So when I got home I was kind of bored. Anyway I went to sign up at the Fairmont, actually Club One which is in the same building on a lower level than the Fairmont, but evidently it was too late for them to sign me up so they took my info and are going to call me tomorrow some time.
I've gotten really used to parking around here and I know exactly where to go now so that's not really an issue anymore. I listen to NPR a lot during my commute and today this guy was a bassist in the symphony and he had them play a lot of his favorite classical recordings and it was pretty incredible. Of course, once I get back into town I put on KALX which is still probably the best listening experience in the world.
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Posted by Joel
Tue, 11 Jul 2006 06:31:00 GMT
This is a bit of a deviation from my normal blog practice, which is about my boring life, so bear with me. I'm going to talk about some of the technology I deal with in my trade.
If you are familiar with version control but don't know a whole lot about branching or merging (like many developers) you might find this useful. It is commonly accepted to set up your version control repository with the following structure:
trunk
branches
tags
These names are rather poor, but you should think of them like this:
trunk: merged in accepted stuff for the next planned release
branches: developer and version branches
branches/john: john's branch
branches/bob: bob's branch
branches/1.0: 1.0 branch
branches/1.1: 1.1 branch
branches/2.0: 2.0 branch
tags: previous releases; should not be altered, ever
tags/1.0.0: release 1.0.0
tags/1.0.1: release 1.0.1
tags/1.1.0: release 1.1.0
and so on.
The typical process of development is this:
A simple plan is made for new features and bug fixes to put in the next release. These features are then delegated amongst the developers. Each developer goes in his branch and works on it, committing away freely, and when his code is reasonably well self-tested he merges it into the trunk. Whenever new stuff is merged into the trunk that he wants, he can just merge it into his branch.
When trunk has been well tested it is copied as a version branch (e.g., 2.0) and as a release branch (e.g., 2.0.0). Any emergency or trivial fixes to the release need to be done in the version branch (2.0); the version branch must then be immediately merged into trunk and all developer branches (john and bob), and finally must be copied over as a new release branch.
This is branching in a nutshell. Some alternatives exist. Instead of naming developer branches after coders they could be named after particular features being worked on (although this requires excessive branch copying or renaming in my opinion). And an alternative to using developer branches in the central repository is using decentralized version control.
In decentralized version control, everyone has a copy of the entire repository on their machine. They occasionally sync their copy with the central one and can pull changes from it and push changes to it whenever they desire. This effectively makes each person have their own personal branch even though they all get to work directly off the trunk. It has the additional benefits of letting users commit while they do not have access to the internet, which is more frequent than one might think. Lastly, it removes one more layer of tedious merging.
Now, there are two kinds of web developing. There is web developing such that you release your code to people in versions, such as phpBB or Wordpress; and then there is web developing where you have a single site completely under your control, such as Google, Digg, etc. The latter type has a nice benefit, and that is that we don't have to ever make formal releases, nor do we have to support old releases in any way.
Personally, I find the above scenario quite unnecessarily complicated for the latter type of web developing. What I've found is that we only really need two branches if we use decentralized version control and have a singleton product: one branch for adding changes to your next planned internal release (which can be so small as to include just one new feature), and one which represents the currently live version, where emergency and trivial changes can be made and then merged into the former. I personally name these branches "current" and "stable" due to what I see as precedent in FreeBSD, but "development" and "production" would be just as well, or simply "dev" and "live" if you're not into needlessly multi-syllabic words.
current------------------------------------------------------->
| /|\ /|\ /|\ | /|\
| | | | | |
\|/ | | | \|/ |
stable ------------------------------------------------------->
This delightful ASCII-art graph shows the order of how merges are commonly to be done. A new set of features is merged into stable, some trivial or emergency fixes are made in stable and merged immediately into current, and then eventually a new set of features and larger fixes is merged into stable.
Well then, that's done. I hope someone out there found this useful.
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Posted by Joel
Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:47:00 GMT
I watched the World Cup championship with David and Katie and Carl and a couple others at Dolores Park. It was sort of fun. I got sunburned. Afterwards they departed so I was left by myself again. I went to walk around the Mission and got some Korean BBQ.
Came home and not much else. I'm determined to leave RH for good just because it's a waste of time. I now belong to no internet communities for the first time since I was 11.
Today I worked and got some good stuff done. I still love the commute, it is honestly one of the more pleasurable times of the day. We got some Indian food for lunch. And I finally severed a contract which just wouldn't die.
In short, I'm cutting off a number of the unhealthy relationships in my life.
A month or so ago, at the time I got dismissed from the big company and my own apartment on the same day I largely demotivated. Everything I had worked on just fell to a halt. I totally went off my diet and gained all my weight back. But now that things are settled I'm going to get back into the dieting.
Only this time I'm going to exercise. Every weekday. I haven't started yet but Eric goes to the Fairmont and that's where I'm going to go. I'm going to go on the same effective food diet I used in college, 1500 calories a day, but anything I want to eat. I'm going to do it before work and I'm writing it here to help commit myself to it.
So here goes nothing.
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Posted by Joel
Sun, 09 Jul 2006 18:01:00 GMT
Yesterday was lame. Nobody was around. I was stuck by myself again and as promised I went out.
I just walked down to Union Square. They were playing Citizen Kane on a big screen and lots of people were gathered around it. I got there at the very beginning but didn't stay to watch it long.
I bought the new Anthony Bourdain book at Cody's Books and what I've read so far has been pretty great. Anthony Bourdain is so awesome.
I still couldn't find a place to eat by myself that felt right to me for whatever reason, as I get kind of anxious eating by myself in a public place. I mainly bought the book to prepare myself, so I'd have something to occupy myself, so it would be less embarrassing. But ultimately I just walked home and made some tortellini. I had some beer and did RH radio and talked to my dad for a short while.
Evidently my cousin Katy is going into surgery again and is going to have her thyroid removed. :/ Oh well.
Well the World Cup just started and I guess I'll go down to Dolores Park and hang out with David and them for the first time in a while now.
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Posted by Joel
Sat, 08 Jul 2006 20:00:00 GMT
Yesterday was a bit stressful and afterwards kind of disappointing. One thing of interest is that I did get my new glasses. I'll try to get a picture up soon. In the evening I fried some chicken and put it with cheese on tortillas with some taco sauce. And, of course, I steamed all of the broccoli. The food was alright but I need to keep practicing cooking.
I tried contacting David again but with no luck.
I'm glad it's finally the weekend. I got a lot of sleep last night. I'm going to put my room together today and then see if I can't find somebody who wants to do something this evening. I have lots of things I want to do. If I can't find anybody I'm going to go out by myself.
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Posted by Joel
Fri, 07 Jul 2006 05:20:00 GMT
The 4th of July was cool. I went with Eric to see some friends of his at a very good barbecue in Oakland. It had steak and great dip and all sorts of crazy good stuff. We even had s'mores. I have been trying to be more friendly and sociable and funny. Perhaps this is aided by the fact I am finally living with someone completely disconnected from my life, so I am free to assume any image I want comfortably. I admit I have been using it and I smile a lot more lately. The same has been true at work.
Sadly, I did miss the fireworks. I was on the BART feverishly rushing back to the city as they were going on. Which is definitely sad as I love them, and you only get to see them once a year. Oh well, always next time.
Wednesday I was really stressed out all day. I didn't get enough sleep and my eyes had both become infected. They were red and I was sensitive to light, and they gave me pain. I didn't have any time to go to the eye doctor and figured I could wait it out until the weekend. But come yesterday night I was determined to just do it during my lunch hour today.
Today I took the Caltrain. It took about an hour and 45 minutes in the total commute and involved boarding a bus in Chinatown full of people. In short I'm thinking of not going with the public transportation route, but I admit I need to give it another chance, more properly timed.
I scheduled an appointment and went to the eye doctor. I got a new exam, and got fresh new contacts (at last!) and even bought some new glasses. They are nerdy and cool but not the cliche emo style. I hope I don't regret the choice, as usually I choose clothing to blend in, since I'm too shy to be properly hipster; they reinforced their satisfaction guarantee so if I don't dig it I'm going to make use of it.
I've been too busy to eat dinner lately due to various errands so my cookable food might go to waste. I'm busy tonight as well so I'll have to make myself something tomorrow.
The drive back was during the sunset and it was beautiful. The nighttime city loomed over view as I approached, again reminding me of the odd calling I have to live in an urban environment. I drove through Chinatown and got a parking spot instantaneously. Picked up two six packs of beers I've never had and came back to my place. I'm feeling pretty good tonight.
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Posted by Joel
Tue, 04 Jul 2006 23:49:13 GMT
So yesterday was my first full day from start to finish at this place. Parking is indeed difficult but not impossible, especially after I get a C permit. But I suspect I will do the Caltrain and San Jose route, just because I want to avoid the temptation to buy a car.
I went to work early on Monday (got up at 6) because I had a parking spot that had street cleaning at 7 am. The day was very productive and a good time. We have a new hire, Ryan, a kid from Minnesota.
I decided to try the Caltrain thing when I left, and when I got to the station they said the next train wasn't for over an hour. This contradicted what I saw online so I'm going to have to figure out exactly what goes on there.
When I got home I found a parking spot and then walked down to the nearest grocery store. I walked up a hill and past Grace Cathedral and to the store. I bought health-oriented foods, and stuff I'd have to cook, like meat and broccoli and things. No easy canned foods or frozen foods really, so I'm going to see if this makes me actually prepare foods. I walked up a hill again back to the apartment.
Today David helped me move the remainder of my stuff, like my bed and desk, and now I'm completely moved. I've done the change of address stuff too.
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