by Thomas Beutel

Useless use of private variable in void context (Perl)

August 1st, 2008 Posted in Perl, Programming |

Can you see what is wrong with this Perl code snippet?

foreach my $cat (@$categories) {
if ($cat->{col} == $column and $cat=>{pos} == $position) {
return $cat;
}
}

It gets the “Useless use of private variable in void context” at the last brace. Well, it took me a while, but it was the equal sign in $cat=>{pos} which should be $cat->{pos}. Worse, I copied and pasted this code somewhere else, which doubled the problem. (Yes I know, all copying and pasting is evil–I get it!)

In any case, this comment on Perlmonks was helpful, suggesting to look for typos backward from the point of the error. Yup, that’s exactly what it was.

Lava lamps for programming

July 30th, 2008 Posted in Programming |

I just love this idea: integrating lava lamps to Cruise Control so that you can see when a software build has gone bad. The idea is to turn on a red lava lamp when the build failed, otherwise turn on a green one. Cool!

Symfony project menus for Emacs

July 27th, 2008 Posted in Programming, Symfony |

After reading the Productive Programmer, I was inspired to write a custom script to add Symfony menus to my Emacs editor. After some frustration (I find emacs LISP tough to grok), I finally figured it out. (script is below)

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures showing custom menus for a small project. This allows me to find and load module templates, action files, and models quickly and easily.

 

symfonu modules in an emacs menu

 

lib/models in an emacs menu

OK, I didn’t write the script in elisp. Instead, I use perl to generate the elisp code. To create the elisp code, I run this script at the root of the Symfony project.

#!/usr/bin/perl
$dir = `pwd`;
chomp $dir;   

print qq{
;; menu.el - quick access menus for emacs editor
;; *** auto generated by bin/symenu ***
;; To use this menu, load into buffer and then ESC-X eval-buffer
;; T. Beutel

(defvar my-menu nil "my menu")
};

my $menus = qq{
 (easy-menu-define my-menu global-map "My own menu"
 '("Modules"
};

my $count = 0;

while(){
  ($module) = (m/ \/ ([^\/]+) \z /xms);
  $count++;
  print qq{
(defun $module-actions ()
 (interactive)
  (let (mybuffer)
  (setq mybuffer (find-file "$dir/apps/frontend/modules/$module/actions/actions.class.php"))
 )
)
};

$menus .= qq{
 ("$module"
 ["actions" $module-actions t]
};

while(){
  ($template,$success,$tmpl2) = (m/ \/ (?: ([^\/]+) (Success) | ([^\/]+) ) \.php \z /xms);
  $template ||= $tmpl2;

$count++;
  print qq{
(defun $module-$template ()
 (interactive)
  (let (mybuffer)
  (setq mybuffer (find-file "$dir/apps/frontend/modules/$module/templates/$template$success.php"))
 )
)
};

$menus .= qq{
 ["$template" $module-$template t]
};

}

$menus .= ")\n";

}

print $menus . "))\n";

# Models

my $menus = qq{
 (easy-menu-define my-menu global-map "My own menu"
 '("Models"
};

my $count = 0;

while(
){
  ($model) = (m/ \/ ([^\/]+) \.php \z /xms);

$count++;
  print qq{
(defun model-$model ()
 (interactive)
  (let (mybuffer)
  (setq mybuffer (find-file "$dir/lib/model/$model.php"))
 )
)
};

$menus .= qq{
 ["$model" model-$model t]
};

}

print $menus . "))\n";

Update: After I wrote my implementation, I found this pure elisp implementation that creates an even better symfony navigation: http://svn.tracfort.jp/svn/dino-symfony/emacs-symfony/emacs-symfony/symfony-navigation.el

British Motors installs 287 KW solar roof in San Francisco

July 26th, 2008 Posted in Solar |

It’s enough to power 80 homes in SF and it offsets 14 million pounds of carbon over its lifetime, according to this Marketwatch article.

Crowds Overwhelm GoSolarSF Fair, Everyone Wants Solar

July 26th, 2008 Posted in PHEV, Solar |

I spent some time this afternoon speaking with various solar installers at the GoSolarSF fair at the Eureka Valley rec center. To say the fair was crowded would be an understatement. I wasn’t able to speak to most of the installers–the crowds were too deep. It’s fantastic to see this amount of interest in solar.

Of course, San Francisco is doing its part by providing incentives, which along with state and soon to expire federal incentives makes it a no brainer. A typical $25,000 system will cost about half that after incentives, and with ever increasing electricity prices the typical return-on-investment is 5 to 7 years.

According to one of the companies I spoke with, the ROI is even better if you are using solar to power a plugin hybrid electric car. At current gas prices, a 1.5KW solar array along with a PHEV like the Chevy Volt would pay for itself in 2 years. 

The only question in my mind is whether to buy a larger array now, or wait until PHEVs are actually available.

A SproutCore example by Johannes Fahrenkrug

July 25th, 2008 Posted in Programming, SproutCore |

Johannes Fahrenkrug wrote a nice tutorial on building an OpenSocial app with SproutCore.

The Productive Programmer Book

July 25th, 2008 Posted in Programming |

I just finished reading the Productive Programmer and I really like the suggestions, such as SLAP (single level of abstraction). The book isn’t language specific, but it is Java-heavy in the examples. Still, everything is adaptable to other languages.

There is now also a wiki for the book.

Fix Margins in IE6 with jQuery

July 25th, 2008 Posted in jQuery |

IE6’s well known margin problems can be solved many ways, such as using CSS that only IE6 will read.

I like to use CSS and jQuery as follows:

CSS:

#wrapper
 {
  margin: 0 auto;
  width: 800px;
  ...
 }
 .wrapperie6
 {
  width: 810px !important; /* compensate for IE6 */
 }

and the jQuery code:

$(document).ready(function() {
  if($.browser.version == '6.0'){
  // alert('you are using ie6');
  $('#wrapper').addClass('wrapperie6');
  }

It’s rude and crude, but it does the job.

I’m back

July 25th, 2008 Posted in Random Comment |

Well it’s been a long time since I’ve posted something. A part of that was the decision to move away from my custom blog code (mostly XSLT based, believe it or not!) to something much easier, Wordpress. In the process I moved all of my old posts over, but I lost all the links. Oh well!

Anyway, on with the show…

Foot-Long-Kosaurus?

October 15th, 2007 Posted in Uncategorized |

Is it just me, or do others hear the words “Foot Long” kosaurus in their imagination when they read the word Futalognkosaurus?

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