sixohthree.com

You Can Take It With You

Adam Backstrom — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:01:59 +0000

I look forward to the day when my various bits of gear learn to talk to each other. Today, I dock my MacBook Pro under my desk, plugging in power, Ethernet, and a 23″ display. The keyboard and mouse are wireless, Ethernet could be replaced by Wifi, and I could feasibly add Bluetooth headphones to the mix. Imagine if the phone were at the center of this constellation, rather than a laptop: walk up to your workstation, and your phone connects to your keyboard and mouse and starts sending wireless video to your display. Walk away and everything goes dark, available on your phone for small-screen viewing and ready to resume at another workstation.

Trillium

Adam Backstrom — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:35:12 +0000

Spotted salamander

Adam Backstrom — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:56:00 +0000

Spring Toad

Adam Backstrom — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:54:13 +0000

Google on the iPhone

Adam Backstrom — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:46:07 +0000

I’ve finally replaced my aging Palm Pre (released June 2009) with an iPhone 4S. I wasn’t looking forward to the move, but only by using the iPhone full-time do I finally realize what I’m missing. Most frustrating is the poor support for Google services, which have been my central repository thus far.

No built-in GTalk, so far no compelling third-party options
Contacts not supported by built-in “Gmail” account option
Contacts supported using Exchange (Google Sync) account type for Google Apps, but email labels are not supported (Home, Work, etc.)

As a guy who doesn’t use any of the built-in Mac OS X applications, I’m not feeling a lot of the standard integration points. My stuff’s in the cloud, which is seemingly incompatible with the iCloud.

Test Post

Adam Backstrom — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 02:28:06 +0000

Welcome, indeed.

Experiment: Digital Permanence and Ownership

Adam Backstrom — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 01:32:55 +0000

When it comes to digital goods, I’m hesitant where I throw my money. Value is subjective and situational. I’m not a huge movie buff and I rarely rewatch, so $8.99/monthly for Netflix isn’t bad. On the other hand, I loathe the idea of subscription-based music: if I wanted to listen to it once, I will want to listen again in the future, and I don’t want to be at the mercy of someone else’s uptime and pricing scheme.

I’ve bought a handful of technical books from O’Reilly, but never any fiction. So, an experiment: I’ve purchased Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games from the Amazon Kindle store for $5.00. This book is DRM-locked, and can only be read using a compatible application. I’ll use this post to track the lifespan of this purchase. At least if I remember to.

Hm, I should also buy the paperback for a true comparison of digital vs. analog.

Predictions

Amazon appears to be a stable company with a long future, though the eBook market as a whole lacks cohesion and predictability. If the Kindle (or at least the Kindle book market) survives, I expect modern platforms to always have a working Kindle reader. Older platforms may fall into disrepair, and fringe platforms may lack compatibility. I will always be able to download the book from the Kindle store.

I expect to be able to read this eBook indefinitely, though other “richer” forms of media may try to entice me to buy a more modern version with more featuers.

March 2012

I purchased the eBook the last day of March, 2012. I was able to read it on my HP TouchPad (a discontinued device) using the Amazon Kindle Beta application for webOS. I also have the ability to read this book through a web browser or the Kindle for Mac application.

Amongst the Tall Trees

Adam Backstrom — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:53:18 +0000

I get to

Adam Backstrom — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:23:44 +0000

Thank you, Paul.

I go down to the little gym in my building in the mornings and watch Coney Island Avenue from the exercise bike.

— Paul Ford (@ftrain) March 15, 2012

I like to switch out the words have to with get to. I get to ride the bike. I get to go to the gym.

— Paul Ford (@ftrain) March 15, 2012

I get to watch tiny kids in hijab wait for the B68. I get to watch someone exercise their pigeons. I get to listen tomusic and type.

— Paul Ford (@ftrain) March 15, 2012

I get to see the price of gas across the street $4.01, I get to watch 70 people walk by and maybe 2000 in cars. I get to go upstairs home.

— Paul Ford (@ftrain) March 15, 2012

I get to help libraries, and get to write checks to help women own their bodies. I get to answer long emails about corporate priorities.

— Paul Ford (@ftrain) March 15, 2012

I get to drink water and take the train across the bridge and go to the shrink and eat low-calorie breakfasts. Done.

— Paul Ford (@ftrain) March 15, 2012

Git Subtree Merges, Orphaned Branches, and GitHub

Adam Backstrom — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:27:54 +0000

Git supports a merge strategy called the subtree merge which brings a branch into a subdirectory of another branch. This can be used as an alternative to submodules: add a remote, create a remote tracking branch, and use git read-tree to import that branch into a subdirectory of your main project. The remote tracking branch mirrors the external project in your own repository, and shares no ancestors with your main branch.

If it’s not possible to track the dependency as a git repository, you can manually create an orphaned branch that shares no ancestors with your main project:

git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/newbranch
rm .git/index
git clean -fdx

git add your files
git commit -m 'Initial commit'

Orphan Branches in GitHub

So, what does GitHub think of these orphaned branches? Here’s a project that has two unrelated branches:

If we fork the project and make commits to these branches, we can see the game of hopscotch that ensues. Adding to master:

Adding to the orphan branch:

This is a bit cluttered, so let’s look at that last one again without the labels:

Additional commits in the original repository work as expected, but I imagine the network graph gets pretty confusing after a while: