Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
The world's first complete dinosaur skeleton ever discovered was found in Haddonfield, NJ in 1858.
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Pearl Jam @ The Borgata
By some brilliant stroke of luck, I was able to get tickets to see Pearl Jam last night at the Borgata. Yes, the Borgata, whose seating capacity is just shy of 3700, hosted Pearl Jam, who has no problem selling out crowds of 25,000 or more. Such a big band in such a small place.
We got there just before Sleater-Kinney came out to open up the show and were greeted by Eddie Vedder performing a cover of Bruce Springsteen's Atlantic City. How appropriate. As he walked off stage, he said to the crowd 'I hope I didn't mess that up too bad, but if I did, I'll have the entire evening to make it up to you.' As the night went on, the concert was nothing but the typical Pearl Jam style: Drink lots of wine and play for a really long time.
Listening to them play the old stuff like Alive, Porch, and Evenflow really brought me back to the days of baggy pants and skateboards. I think I'm getting old.
Monday, October 03, 2005 12:18 AM EDT0 Comments Filed in: Music -
Third Eye Blind and David Gray
I think I broke a personal record this past week for the most concerts seen in a one week period. Following the Pearl Jam show on Saturday, I went and saw Third Eye Blind for the first time at the Starland Ballroom. Once I got past the fact that the only people in the audience older than me were there with their kids, I had an awesome time. Hearing Motorcycle Drive By live in a little Jersey Bar like the Starland was nothing short of spectacular.
The following night I was fortunate enough to see David Gray from the 15th row at Radio City. Quite a different crowd and performance compared to the night before. He played his new album, Life In Slow Motion, basically in its entirety. I was a little dissapointed that I didn't hear much off of White Ladder, but he did play Babylon, which was pretty much the only song that got that old crowd off its feet. Like I said, a bit different than the Third Eye Blind concert.
I'm gonna rest up the next couple of days so I'll be ready to see Weezer and Foo Fighters this Friday at Continental Arena. I think that the only benefit to being done with school is that I can now afford to see lots of shows.
Sunday, October 09, 2005 10:49 PM EDT3 Comments Filed in: Music -
Ruby On Rails
All this talk about Ruby on Rails - A List Apart is now using it, a multitude of users on The Server Side and other message boards are using it, and they are all saying the same thing - it's the hottest new thing in web development. What's next? Will I read on Slashdot tommorow morning that Amazon.com and ebay have switched over to a Ruby on Rails system? Not likely, but my interest has been stirred enough to install the framework and work through the basic tutorial involving the creation of a thrilling recipe book application. After completing the tutorial, which took about 20 minutes once I got past some installation headaches, I have to say that I am highly impressed. I am so taken aback by the results that I'm thinking of moving this PHP-based site over to Ruby on Rails immediately (cold weather is coming soon anyway, I'll need a winter project.)
The framework is not without flaw though. Documentation is sparse, and as I mentioned before, the installation on my powerbook was a bit of a struggle (Admittedly, I didn't look all that hard for help outside of the documentation, but should I really have to?) The trouble started while working through the recipe tutorial. All was going fine until about page 3, when it came time to start up the web server and test the application, which resulted in the following strange error:
ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid in Recipe#new
No database selected: SHOW FIELDS FROM recipes script/server:49After a bit of frustration, I realized that I had never installed the framework's mysql component. I attempted this with the following command, as per the documentation:
gem install mysqlWhich resulted in the following nasty output:
pbook:/Users/joe/Rails root# gem install mysql -- -with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql
Attempting local installation of 'mysql'
Local gem file not found: mysql*.gem
Attempting remote installation of 'mysql'
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: While executing gem ... (RuntimeError)
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
Gem files will remain installed in /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.6 for inspection.
ruby extconf.rb install mysql -- -with-mysql-dir=/usr/local/mysql\nchecking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lm... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lz... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lsocket... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lnsl... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
I decided to try and install from source, noting from the manual that this must be done with gcc 3.3 as follows:
sudo gcc_select 3.3
ruby extconf.rb install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql-standard-4.1.12-apple- darwin7.9.0-powerpc/bin/mysql_configAll was happy after this. I still can't get over the amount of work I didn't have to do to get this thing to do something interesting. No sql strings leading to concatenation-hell, no connection management, no form processing, and barely any code at all. Pretty cool.
Thursday, October 13, 2005 09:25 PM EDT0 Comments Filed in: Software -
Weezer and Foo Fighters @ Continental
Ok, so I'm starting to feel a bit like a concert junkie here. I went and saw Weezer and Foo Fighters last night at Continental Arena in the beautiful Meadowlands. The best part - VIP floor standing tickets, which I am still in shock for being able to buy. As you can see, we were pretty damn close.
This marks the third time that I've seen Weezer in concert, and I have to say that I was a bit disappointed this time around. I can think of a few reasons for a lackluster performance:
- Rivers needs to have sex. Celibacy is just no good for a rock star.
- The pressures of being a Harvard student must be fairly difficult to deal with. Maybe Rivers has a mid term next week.
- Maybe the band (and me,) is just getting older. It's not 1995 anymore.
Foo Fighters on the other hand, whom I've never seen before last night, were just incredible. Simply put, David Grohl is amazing. He flows flawlessly from guitar to drums to screaming his lungs out. I don't remember ever being this impressed with a band after seeing them for the first time. When referring to illegally downloaded music, Grohl said something to the effect of: "I don't care how you heard it, I don't care if you took the song from your friends ipod, I just care if you know the song and would like to hear me play it." Those are the words of a musician who cares more about music then about money. Unlike some other bands we know of (cough, cough - Metallica.)
Saturday, October 15, 2005 12:26 PM EDT0 Comments Filed in: Music -
Chuck D From Public Enemy
I was just skimming through this month's issue of Spin Magazine, when I stumbled upon an interview with Chuck D from Public Enemy. When the interviewer asked how he can defend the artistic legitimacy of something like Ludacris' "Move Bitch," Chuck D responded with:
"You can't defend it. How do you defend rock groups throwing TVs out hotel-room windows? You can't; they're just assholes."
I couldn't agree more with Chuck D's position here. This comment makes me want to go download some Public Enemy music.
Monday, October 17, 2005 10:59 PM EDT0 Comments Filed in: Music