EYEHEARTZOMBIES

I’m sure you’ve gone and read my account of Christmas over at the-loves.com, but even if you haven’t, this’ll make sense.

When we’re driving around, we like a little music to listen to. Since we were driving some 14 hours total, or so, we like a LOT of music to listen to. Elaine has an iPod Mini 6G which holds plenty of music for us. The only problem is listening to it. Sure, earphones work, but only for one person, and they’re kind of a distraction while driving. The tape-deck adapter either doesn’t like our car, or doesn’t work, ’cause that’s a no-go for us. So several months ago, we bought an iTrip Mini. I’m not linking to them ’cause they fucking suck.

When we first got it, it didn’t work well. The iTrip didn’t snap onto the Mini well enough to keep a strong signal; the non-plug end always had a small gap between it and the iPod. So you either have to hold it down or secure it in some other way. It got stashed in a box and forgotten about. But then this big ass trip comes up and I really didn’t want to carry lots of CDs with us. So I dug out the iTrip and decided to give it another go, after verifying that sliding the iPod’s belt clip up onto the iTrip helps hold it down. Not strong enough to make it perfect, but it helps. So we grab the iTrip and head out.

The drive to my parent’s went alright with it. Well, alright compared to the trip back. The iTrip requires a blank radio station to work. No interference or bleed-over from another station. Even in the barren musical wasteland of Oklahoma, that’s a rarity. We’d find one, drive fifteen minutes, and have to search again. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

The software, though, isn’t exactly perfect. You find the station on the radio, then find the corresponding track in the iTrip Stations playlist. Click the middle button. When the iTrip starts flashing like crazy, hit the pause button. Then it should blink slowly three times and you’re set. Or something like that. Elaine was having to set the station two or three times every time. But it did eventually work. Until we got to the next station, of course.

On the drive back to her mom’s house, the iTrip worked about the same. We didn’t use it as much (I was napping off and on in the passenger seat with a migraine), but what little we did use it worked, in between stations.

On Monday night, though, driving from Tulsa to here, the thing was complete shit.

I found beautiful empty stations (Elaine was driving again), but the iTrip would not set. The entire setting track would play through and start the next one before it was start crack-flashing. OK, fine, play it again. It starts flashing in the menu before I even choose the station. Unplug the iTrip to reset it and try one more time. Oh, now it flashes, great. Hit pause. One, two, three flashes. Wow, funny, the static on the radio goes quiet (a sign that that iTrip is working) between flashes, when it’s not working/on. Oh well, three flashes, should work, right?

Wrong.

Play something, anything, and hear static. Well, maybe I need to set it again. Repeat that paragraph up there. Same outcome (makes sense that you get the same outcome from the same process, huh?). Curse at the little plastic pill-shape and try a third time. Wave the iPod through the air (like I just don’t care) ’cause maybe the signal just isn’t reaching the antenna. No change. Curse some more and try a fourth time, complete with a second round of waving.

This went on for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. I’m a persistant bastard when something isn’t working. “I’m tempted to throw the fucker out of the window,” I tell Elaine.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

No, we didn’t throw it out, but it’s now sitting on my desk with a sticky note on it with the letters “POS” on it. Maybe I can get Elaine to smash it with our hammer. Or run over it with the car.

Posted in Geek, Rant | 3 Comments »

It’s less than a month away from NaNoWriMo and I still have a lot to do. And I don’t just mean for my novel, which is going to be about zombies (you’d neve have guessed that, huh?) this year. I’m trying to get an a new online application up and running for it.

It’s not a commercial app and it’s not anything important or special, just a little something to help those of us who have literary pursuits. I built it over the last couple of days (it’s not complete by any means, but it’s a viable alpha/beta) in Ruby on Rails. Oh, by the way, if you’re developing in Rails on OS X, you need Locomotive. It makes launching and managing your Rails application infinitely easier.

Anyway, I’ve built it and it’s running fine here, but here doesn’t do anyone out there any good. Right now it uses as PostreSQL database, but thanks to Rails and Migrations, it can easily go to whatever system I end up putting it on. The only strange requirment is the acts_as_taggable gem. It lets me do nifty folksonomy-type things. Those things, by the way, won’t be in the app until next week, probably.

So, anywho, if you have a bit of spare space on your Rails-enabled host you can lend me, I’d be most appreciative. Or you could donate to the DropCash donation page if you want to fund my goal of putting this up on DreamHost.

Posted in Geek, NaNoWriMo | 1 Comment »

You break my heart into a thousand pieces and you say it’s because I deserve better? Sorry, that’s playing on the stereo right now. Gotta love From Autumn to Ashes.

Anyway, I finally have something awesome to blog about. Many of you will already know this, but it’s so freakin’ handy-dandy if you have to deal with cookies in your development. If you’re not on a Mac, sorry, skip this post.

OK, first, you need to be using Safari. There’s no better browser out there for OS X 10.4 Tiger, anyway, so I know you’re using it already. No, keep reading, don’t run down to the comments to tell me how awesome Firefox/Opera/IE 5.2/Camino/Shiira/OmniWeb/iCab is. I know they’re useful and all, but they all run like cold molasses on my machine, so shush.

Now, you need to have PithHelmet installed. Load up your page that stores the cookie (or the page that’ll send the data into the cookie) and open up Console (it’s in your Utilities folder if you still use the Finder to launch things. By the way, if you do, check this out). Now, in Safari go into the Pithhelmet menu (either the pith helmet in your menubar or in Safari -> Pithhelmet) and go to the Advanced menu and choose “Log cookies to console”.

Go to your cookie-recorder and get your cookies recorded (you know what I mean), then jump over to the Console and filter the result by the domain name of the site (localhost or www.eyeheartzombies.com for example). Hey! Lookie there! You can see your cookies, their names, what they hold, when they expire. All that good stuff you hate to debug!

I’m sure I’ll start using this more and more when I’m dealing with cookies and sessions (you can see session data, too, but that’s usually easier to check). What do you think? Anyone have any similar methods for checking cookies and other state data?

Posted in Geek, Web | No Comments »