Sysadmin Field Notes

November 10, 2008

So the new front row that was part of Leopard that mirrors the Apple TV interface doesn't support sending to AirTunes like the last one. Straight from the horse's mouth: Front Row: Cannot stream audio to AirPort Express Base Stations in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (although I find it funny that they say "may" be unable when it's clear the new front row totally lacks the functionality).

So that sucks right? It was great during parties to use front row, but send the music to the whole house.

I found at least a partial solution for my needs, which is full screen mode. Once you have your playlist, just hit CMD-F to go to full screen mode and you'll get your album covers, etc. and the Apple remote still drives everything. Not as nice if you need to change playlists, from across the room, so this only works for one use case, but it's better than nothing (helps that it was my most common use-case for front row).

November 9, 2008

Something just whizzed by my Google reader that was a link to a longer article saying that Agile was more about the principles than the methodology.

I think that's exactly true. It's about setting up a team that's always looking for things that could derail the project, bringing those issues up in a collaborative environment, and (this is the most important thing), explaining them to the customer in a way they understand.

It's not enough to find a problem, you have to make that problem front and center, whether that problem is that you're building the wrong thing, or that what you're building isn't going to be ready. Whereas traditional software development is caveat emptor, agile turns that around.

If your team can keep that in mind, you're going to be trusted by your customer regardless of methodologies. But by funneling the majority of contact with your customer through large documents, you're making it more difficult for both sides to find and communicate the misunderstandings.

August 5, 2008

There's not a great google entry already for this, so I thought I'd capture it. If you're a dumbass like me and keep forgetting that when you are creating accessors, they are symbols at that point and not variables, this is the mysterious error you get:




filename.rb:1: nil is not a symbol (TypeError)

     from filename.rb:1




This happens when you do this in an object:

attr_accessor @attribute_name

Instead of the correct:

attr_accessor :attribute_name

I'm putting here more as a note to myself more than anything (maybe I'll just stop forgetting...naaahhh).

July 6, 2008

There's definite confusion our there around the no-contract prices for the iPhone.

In short, there are three prices (I'm just listing 8gb prices here)

1. Fully subsidized $199, for iPhone owners (since you never got a subsidy paid for you) and new customers.
   
2. $399 for ATT customers who haven't passed two years yet after getting their last subsidy, and
   
3. $599 for people who want to walk out with one without a contract.
   

It's the 3rd one that's confusing; if #2 has no subsidy, what is the #3 price for? Is that extra money just to pay for not having to sign a contract. In my opinion, yeah, that's the "anti-unlocker" price.

The way they tried to patch the "unlock" hole before was by limiting cash purchases and restricting # of phones. Pretty bad patch really. I'm assuming unlockers don't (or often can't) provide all the info needed to open a contract, and wouldn't want the hassle of providing that info over and over again for each new phone, then remembering to cancel the contracts. Sounds like a pain.

So you have the third, higher price point. ATT gets just as much money as they would have if you walked into the store, bought the phone, and cancelled the contract.

Between the much higher price and near-worldwide availability, I think the unlock market dwindles. Regardless, ATT or Apple now doesn't really have to care if you unlock your phone now, because they've both made their money already, without a lot of overhead.

May 17, 2008

If only things were actually this funny. It's actually not at all funny. Luckily, the only version of linux I have hanging around is ancient and not one of the ones affected.