git diff --name-only origin/release-candidate origin/master

Before I deploy my newest code to production I want to double check that the files that I think I’m pushing out are the ones I’m actually pushing out. This gives me a list of files that have changed, and if I see some that I’m not expecting in that list, I know something went wrong with a merge somewhere.

al - indian mulberry
alan - a large hunting dog
alec - a herring
alma - an egyptian girl who sings
almah - an egyptian girl who sings and dances professionally
amber - fossilized resin
amy - vial of amyl nitrate
angel - a divine spirit
angus - breed of cattle
ana - an item of data
anna - a former coin of india
art - creative works
ash - a type of tree
august - venerable
ava - of all; at all
barb - a sharp outcropping
bailey - a castle courtyard
bart - a rank of honor
basil - an aromatic herb
beau - boyfriend
belle - an attractive woman
ben - parlor
benjamin - benzoine
benny - an amphetamine tablet
bertha - a wide collarbeth; a hebrew letter
beth - hebrew letter
betty - pear-shaped bottle
biff - to hit
bill - a duck's beak
billy - male goat
bing - a heap or pile
bo - variant of beau
bob - to move up and down
bobby - a policeman
bonnie - beautiful
bonny - beautiful
brad - a tack
brant - small variety of goose
brent - small variety of goose
bret - type of fish
brook - small stream
bubba - brother, close friend
bud - partly opened flower
buddy - close friend
bunny - rabbit
burl - knotty outgrowth on tree
buster - informal term for another person
cam - mechanical device
candy - sweets
carl - a peasant
carol - to sing joyously
carter - one that carts
cat - feline creature
celeste - a keyboard instrument
chad - a scrap of paper
chance - risk
chandler - candle maker
charity - generosity
charley - a fool
charlie - a fool
chase - pursue; printing frame
christian - follower of christ
christie - a skiing turn
christy - a skiing turn
chuck - to throw
clarence - a closed carriage
clay - to treat with clay
cliff - a high ledge
colleen - an Irish girl
cooper - barrel maker
coral - marine growth
corky - corklike
crystal - a form of pure solid mineral
dahlia - type of plant
daisy - a flower
dale - a valley
dalton - a unit of atomic mass
dan - martial arts level
daphne - a flowering shrub
davy - a safety lamp
dawn - sunrise
dean - a head of faculty
deb - a debutante
dee - a metal fastener
delilah - seductive woman
dell - a small valley
derrick - crane type
devon - one of a breed of cattle
dexter - situated on the right
dick - a detective
dirk - a small knife
dolly - a wheeled platform
dom - a title given to certain monks
don - to put on
donna - lady
dot - a tiny round mark
dotty - crazy
drew - had drawn
dusty - covered in dust
earl - a british nobleman
ed - education
eddy - to move against the current
ember - a glowing, hot, coal
erica - a shrub of the heath family
eve - the night before
fagin - a criminal mentor
faith - belief or trust
fanny - the buttocks
fawn - a young deer
fay - to join closely
felicity - happiness
fern - a flowerless vascular plant
flo - an arrow
flora - plant life
florence - a gold coin
florida - an american state
flossie - a floozy
ford - to cross by wading
forest - large group of trees
frank - direct, honest
franklin - a medeival english landowner
fritz - a non-functioning state
gabby - talkative
gene - a part of the dna
gilbert - a unit of magnetomotive force
ginger - a flavorful spice
glen - a small valley
gloria - a halo
gore - to pierce with a horn or tusk
grace - to give beauty to
graham - whole wheat flour
grant - to bestow upon
gray - the mixture of black and white
guy - to ridicule
hale - healthy
hank - to fasten a sail
harry - to pillage
hazel - a type of nut tree
heath - uncultivated land
hector - to bully
henry - a unit of inductance
herb - a flowering plant with a non-woody stem
herby - abounding in herbs
holly - a tree or shrub
hope - desire or expectation
hunter - predator
iris - part of the eye
ivy - an ornate, climbing plant
jack - to raise with a type of lever
jacky - a sailor
jade - to weary
jake - alright; okay
jane - type of cloth
jasmine - fragrant flower
jasper - a semi-precious stone
jay - a corvine bird
jean - a durable cotton fabric
jen - philosophical love for humanity
jenny - a female donkey
jeroboam - a wine bottle
jerry - a german soldier
jersey - a close-fitting knitted shirt
jess - leg-leash for a hawk
jesse - to fasten straps around the legs of
jill - a unit of liquid measure
jimmy - to pry open
jo - a girlfriend
joannes - a portuguese coin
joe - a fellow
joey - a young kangaroo
john - toilet
johnny - a sleeveless hospital gown
jones - a drug addiction
jordan - a type of container
joseph - a woman's long cloak
josh - to tease
joy - to rejoice
judas - a peephole
kat - an evergreen shrub
kate- a type of finch
kay - the letter k
kelly - a bright green color
ken - to know
kent - knew
kerry - an irish breed of cattle
king - male leader of a monarchy
kip - to sleep
kirk - church (scottish)
kit - to equip
kitty - a pool of money
kris - a short sword
lacey - lacy
lance - to pierce with a lance
lars - white-handed gibbons
laura - a type of monastery
laurel - a type of tree
lea - a meadow
lee - to shelter from the wind
lew - lukewarm
liana - a climbing vine
lily - a flower
louie - a lieutenant
louis - a former gold coin of france
mac - a raincoat
mae - more
mamie - a tropical tree
marc - the residue after a fruit has been pressed
marcel - to make a deep soft wave in the hair
marge - a margin
maria - dark area on the moon or planet
marigold - a flowering plant
marina - docking for small boats
mark - to make an impression upon
marshall - to put in proper order
martin - a bird of the swallow family
marvy - marvelous
maryjane - a style of shoe
mason - to build with stone or brick
matilda - a hobo's bundle
matt - to produce a dull finish on
max - the greatest extent or amount
maxwell - a unit of magnetic flux
may - a term of permission
mel - honey
melody - an agreeable succession of musical sounds
melody - a tune
mercy - compassion
merl - a blackbird
merle - a blackbird
merlin - a european falcon
mick - an irishman
mickey - a drugged drink
mike - microphone
miles - units of linear measurement
miller - one that mills
milt - fish sperm
milty - full of milt
mim - primly demure
minnie - mother, mom
minny - a minnow
mo - a moment
molly - a tropical fish
morgan - a unit of distance between genes
morris - an english folk dance
mort - a note sounded on a hunting horn
nan - a round flat bread
nat - not at
nellie - an effeminate male
nelly - an effeminate male
nelson - a wrestling hold
nestor - a wise old man
newt - a small salamander
newton - a unit of force
nick - a shallow cut
noel - a christmas card
norm - a standard
olive - fruit or tree type
otto - fragrant oil
page - sheet of paper
paige - assistant
pam - (cards) the jack of clubs
parker - one who parks cars
parry - to ward off or evade
pat - to touch lightly
patsy - rube, stooge
pattie - a thin, flat cake of food
patty - chopped food pressed flat
pearl - a jewel found in mollusks
penny - a small unit of currency
perry - pear cider
peter - to diminish
phil - greek prefix for "love"
pia - a membrane of the brain
pierce - to cut or pass into or through
pike - a long spear
pinky - the little finger
piper - one who plays a pipe
ralph - to vomit
randy - lustful
ray - winged sea creature
red - a primary color
reed - to fasten with reeds
reg - a regulation
regina - a queen
rex - a king
rich - having wealth
rick - to pile hay in stacks
rip - cause to tear
rob - to steal
robin - a songbird
rocky - stony
rod - a stick or staff
roger - a pirate flag
romeo - a male lover
rose - a red flower
rosemary - an herb
rosy - pink or pinkish red
roy - king, royal (obs.)
rube - a rustic
ruby - a precious red gem
russel - ribbed wool and cotton
rusty - covered with rust
ruth - compassion
sabin - a unit of sound absorption
saffron - flower used for coloring and flavoring food; yellow-orange color
sage - a profoundly wise person
sal - salt
sally - to trail blaze
sam - a type of guided missile
sandy - covered with sand
saul - a soul
savannah - grassy plain
sawyer - one that saws wood
scarlet - a deep red hue
scot - person from scotland
shaw - to show
shawn - an early woodwind instrument
shea - an african tree
sheila - a young woman
shelly - abounding in seashells
sherry - a kind of wine
sibyl - female prophet or witch
simony - the buying or selling of a church office
sissy - a weak or timid person
skip - repeatedly deflect; omit
smith - a worker in metals
sol - the fifth note of diatonic scale
sonny - a small boy
sophy - a persian ruler
spencer - a trysail
spike - a long thick nail
spud - to remove with a spade
stein - a beer mug
stella - a $4 US coin from 1880
stew - a thick soup
sue - to litigate against
sunny - well lit by the sun, bright
tab - to name or designate
tad - a small boy
tammie - a fabric of mixed fibers
tammy - a fabric of mixed fibers
ted - to spread for drying
teddy - a feminine undergarment
terry - absorbent fabric
thatcher - one that thatches
tiff - a minor emotional dispute
tiffany - a thin, mesh fabric
timothy - type of grass
tip - to tilt
toby - a type of drinking mug
tod - a unit of weight for wool
tom - a male animal
tommy - a loaf of bread
tony - stylish
tori - donut-shaped solids
troy - a system of weights
tuck - fold a material under itself to tighten
tucker - tire, exhaust
turner - one that turns
van - a type of motor vehicle
vera - very
veronica - a plant of the figwort family
victor - winner
victoria - a light carriage
viola - a stringed instrument
violet - a flower
wally - something visually pleasing
ward - to turn aside
warren - a group of rabbits; their dwelling
wade - to walk in water
webster - a weaver
will - intent
willy - to willow
wilt - to become limp
woody - resembling wood
wynn - letter in Old English alphabet
yarrow - a wildflower

I got a Nest thermostat and have been very happy with it. They emailed me recently to take a customer survey so I’m sharing my comments here, too.

I was stumped trying to set the Away state from my iPhone app to the point where I just adjusted the temperature down to my default away temperature. I overlooked the toggle marked ‘Home’ perhaps because I didn’t immediately associate the opposite of ‘Home’ with ‘Away’. I figured it out a few days later, and I won’t likely forget now, but I really felt dumb at the time. Maybe tapping on the little house icon itself would be a more intuitive switch for the home/away setting.

We keep our house pretty cool, so every temperature setting shows the leaf symbol, making it superfluous.

I’d love to see my energy usage stats displayed on the web admin in a more graphical manner. Having only the last week’s info accessible only on the nest thermostat is frustrating. My wife and I are brand new homeowners of a 100-year-old uninsulated house and we’d love to be able to compare the next few year’s worth of heating data side by side to track our house’s overall efficiency as we insulate and seal up the structure.

Installing:

Drag the plugin folder to wp-content/plugins NOT wp-content/[activeTheme]/plugins. Whew. I actually had to read the readme.txt for that one. From your plugins admin page, activate the Custom Sidebars widget.

Configuring:

Once Installed, you should see a Custom sidebars item under your Appearance menu in the admin area.

First step is to select which existing sidebars you want to be able to override. I have 26 on my site, but there are only 3 main ones that I’m working with, so I select those three and click the ‘Save Changes’ button just below. I know that single posts on my site use the Home sidebar by default so I make sure that’s one of the ones I select here.

Next, I create a New Sidebar in the area named just that. Clicking the ‘Create Sidebar’ button below will make it appear on the ‘All the Custom Sidebars’ list just below that. This will create a new sidebar that will show up on the right side of the Apprearance > Widgets admin page.

To configure the new custom sidebar, go to Apprearance > Widgets or click on the ‘Configure Widgets’ link towards the right of the ‘All the Custom Sidebars’ list.

On the Widgets page, click the expanding button on the right of your new sidebar area to expand. Your new custom sidebar should appear at the bottom of available sidebars. Drag and drop one of the available widgets over to the sidebar and it should pop open to allow you to enter values for its custom parameters. I’ve dragged a simple image widget for this example, but you can drag as many different widgets as you need to the sidebar.

Now you’re ready to create a filter. Go back to the Custom Sidebars admin page under the Appearance menu item. Once you’re there, click on the Default Sidebars tab. I know that single posts normally use the ‘home-right’ sidebar. So, under the ‘Mountain Festival’ category, using the ‘home-right’ dropdown, I select ‘Mountain Festival Promo’.

This effectively overrides the Home sidebar for every post categorized as ‘Mountain Festival’ and replaces it with the ‘Mountain Festival Promo’ one. Click ‘Save Changes’ at the botttom left and you’re finished. Browse to a post in that category and you should see the new custom sidebar in place. Awesome!

Huge thanks to marquex who wrote this plugin.

Feel free to post any questions or corrections in the comments section.

fixrbconfig error

On page 24 of ‘Agile Web Development with Rails’ they give you a tip to ‘fix’ the Apple default configuration of Ruby which produced the following error:

sudo gem install fixrbconfig
sudo fixrbconfig
====================
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin8.0/ruby.h does not exist. This probably means you haven't yet installed Xcode from the Tiger DVD. You won't be able to compile Ruby extensions without it. Please install it then rerun this program.

I had just previously installed Xcode, so I knew that wasn’t it. I decided to run a search for the ‘ruby.h’ file in case it really was there, just in a different place, and it turned out it was:

cd /
find . -name "ruby.h" -print

./usr/lib/ruby/1.8/universal-darwin8.0/ruby.h

This searched through my entire hard drive, so it took a little while returning the odd ‘Permission denied’ error along the way, but eventually it did turn up, so I copied it to where fixrbconfig was expecting it to be, reran fixrbconfig and it all seemed to work out fine.

sudo cp /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/universal-darwin8.0/ruby.h /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin8.0/ruby.h
sudo fixrbconfig

• sign that my boss is flirting with me
• journal on shopping bags attributes
• darned socks
• freelance profile pop designer pepsi
• styrofoam letters
• sealcoating school
• punk rock desktops
• blender.gif
• muhammad ali stencils
• raising maggot
• fantasy babes
• what is the size of guam
• burritoville burritos calories
• dough stretcher
• big nose day disses
• how do i make myself puke?
• burnt with her cigarette
• metallic smell in bedroom
• buy scarred but smarter
• caught up in the rapture midi

Critics complain about the inconsistencies in recording techniques on this album, but what never falters is the intimacy and patience with which the songs are wrought. I was amazed to find out that as many as six songs on the disc are covers, they are so well chosen and executed. Calmly and courageously inspired, this the rarest kind of listening experience.

Apple O’ - Deerhoof

Deerhoof are so relentlessly creative they remind me of a puppy running around a farmyard. All of their albums are so packed and varied it’s hard to single one out but this one has the greatest range in mood and feel and provides the biggest payoff for your attention. I think driving fast to music is pretty foolhardy, but once I caught myself doing close to 95 m.p.h. on I-90 once just because L’amour Stories came on the car stereo; that song is pure exhiliration.

The Queen Of Mean - DQE

Grace Braun’s voice scares some people which is a shame because her soul is made of white light. Perfect pitch is superfluous when caught up in the rapture of life. This album could have been written by a Shaker eldress instructed to create the perfect rockabilly album. Through toil all things are possible.

Featuring “Birds” - Quasi

Janet Weiss whales the shit out of those drums here, which is great because I’ve never been able to fully embrace the Sleater-Kinney sound. The crunchy organ on this is tight and tasty and the clean piano songs work where so many of Billy Joel’s and Ben Folds’ don’t. Even though the woeful post-ironic tone to the lyrics gets a little played out, they are creative and true, plus I am such a sucker for the boy-girl vocal harmonizing. This is melodic rock songwriting at its finest.

Continued Story / Hi, How Are You? - Daniel Johnston

These inventive songs convey hope through existential pain in a way that makes your own life seem manageable. Horrible sound quality prevails, but the genius melodies shine through. I can never get over the snippet of relationship heard on ‘Running Water Revisited’ where the tape runs through several takes of Daniel coaching a kid on ad-libbing over his guitar playing.

Ed’s Redeeming Qualities - Ed’s Redeeming Qualities

Recorded in kitchens and living rooms on a boom box, the Lo-fi-ness sounds like shit, but if you got caught up in that you would totally miss the point. This eight song homemade cassette changed my life.

One Foot In the Grave - Beck

Before the big budgets and brand name producers arrived to secure Beck’s genre-hopping sample-crazed crown, this album shows the true genius songwriter skillfully flatpicking his thrift store guitar. Stephen Malkmus also writes freeverse lyrics and they come off as snobby and affected and fail to make an emotional connection with me. Beck’s heart and vision are firmly intact here despite his brain possibly scrambled by drugs.

Voice Brother And Sister - Summer Hymns

I still am waiting for the lyrics to all sink in, but the depth of arrangements make the required repeated listentings worth it. This is the album I put on when I have the flu so bad that I can’t pick my head up off the pillow, I want to tear my eyes out and replace them with ice cubes, my hair aches and I can’t stand the world. This music is still able to get to me and take me away.

The Willis Files - Unbunny

The occaisionally goofy lyrics help diffuse the spot-on emotional musing here. You might not even notice all the churnings about sexual confusion, inadequacy and shyness if you never looked under the veneer of superheroes and freakshows. This is a great litmus test album. I’ll put this on for new acquaintances and if they can get past the “midget juggling pieces of cheese” line I know it’ll be worth the effort to get to know them better.

Maxi German Rave Blast Hits 3 - Bodenstandig 2000

Listnening to this is like arriving late to a party in your hometown that has been raging on a street you never knew existed. If you’re into German art students hacking 8-bit computing devices to sequence spastic pop songs, then this one’s for you. There’s MIDI, there’s acappella beatboxing, sound collage, sampling, it’s all good. Only a couple of songs are in English, but it doesn’t matter, fun music ist allgemeinhin. Kabelfreaks unite!

Cutting a design up into eight 2K images will help a page load faster than leaving it as one 20K image, (16K < 20K) right? Not really. Each HTTP request generates about 1K of server-client traffic overhead, so eight 2K images with HTTP headers creates about 24K of traffic, where one 20K image creates only 21K. Not the most dramatic example but some site layouts are made from 30 or more image files not counting content or advertising images, slowing down load times significantly.

Content text images

Oh sure, Verdana and Times get a little old, but the beauty of HTML is it’s searchability, search engines parse the text of a page that (hopefully) brings users. Locking column headers, quotes, image descriptions or any text in GIFs or JPEGs makes it invisible to the indexing that search engines do. Time spent designing and updating text images is time spent working against the goal of delivering web content.

Print design hierarchy

Many print design ideas fail miserably on the web, but the fundamental organizational rules still hold: the most important piece of information should have the most visual impact, the second should fall behind that and so on. Giving users too many options on every page inhibits the process of the user finding what they’re looking for.

Text link to every page of content

Create a text link to each of the pages of your blog. Google will not follow links in image maps, and will never find script-delivered content ( i.e. /myblog.cgi?day=23&month=september&year=2006) without being sent there explicitly. Maintaining a site map is a good way to accomplish this. Not moving these links every time you archive old content or re-design your site is likewise imperative to building up repeat traffic.

Visited text link colors make sense

Links turn purple when you click on them, that way you can tell where you’ve been. Spending a ton of time and effort creating a graphic navigation aid is noble, but if you’d just let your text link colors behave like the W3 intended, maybe you’d have more time for other things. Like drinking, sneezing or being patient with children, you know, the good stuff.

All style in the stylesheet

Ideally you should be able to re-design your whole site right from the CSS file and never touch one page of HTML. Sometimes it makes sense to link a secondary stylesheet for a one-off page, but an inline style declaration will never outlive the relevance of the content it’s supporting.

Use all the HTML tags before you start creating your own

Know your tags! A lot of the existing HTML tags were intended for pretty specific contexts, but all it takes is a little creativity and some CSS reformatting to get milage out of these. The <q> tag is much more compact than <span class=”inline-fancy”>.

<big> <blockquote> <code> <cite>

<del> <em> <ins> <kbd> <q> <samp>

<small> <src> <strong> <tt> <var>