monkeys on typewriters

Me: “Why version 4?”
Mason: “4!!!”
Me: “Shouldn’t it be version 3?”
Mason: “Well, make it 4.”
Me: “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
Mason: “Who cares? Make it 4.”
Me: “Ok.”

Happy new year.

So for the past week, I have been on vacation in Belize. Yes, it was very nice, thank you. However getting there was a different story.

Very early on Wednesday the 20th, I got up and drove the 45 minute drive to the airport. It started out alright, but about the time we got on E-470, it started to snow pretty good. Then it started to snow sideways. The “goop” (aka Mag-Chloride) that CDOT (Colorado Department Of Transportation) put down on the roads was still fresh and clogging up the windshield. When we finally got to the airport, we saw that our flight was still on time, even though DIA is in the middle of a field with winds whipping the snow every which way.

Check-in was easy, security was as painless as it could be, and we got to the gate with plenty of time to spare. Then as we were waiting for our flight, we saw all the later ones starting to be marked “Cancelled” on the monitors. They were canceling flights by the dozens now, but ours was still ok. We boarded a little late, but it wasn’t too bad. The plane we got on was a small S80, with the two engines in the rear. After we boarded, we just sat there for a while.

And sat.

And sat.

About half an hour after our scheduled departure time, you couldn’t tell that it was daylight. The snow was so intense that it had piled up on the wings, and the only light outside the plane came from the yellow street lamps that were outside. About this time, the pilot came on and said that just about every other flight were cancelled because of the weather. He also said that because the runway was icy and we were a fairly small plane, they had to re-load the luggage to make sure we were perfectly balanced. They even switched around some people in the passenger cabin!

About an hour and a half after we were supposed to leave, the pilot came on again and said that they were starting to heat up the plane and were trying to de-ice the engines. Another half-hour later we were rolling! But then we went to the deicing pad where both of the airport’s de-icing trucks sprayed us with green and red goo to de-ice the plane. Talk about christmas spirit.

After a two and a half-hour late and very bumpy takeoff, the pilot told us that we were the last flight out of Denver before they closed the airport. Good thing too. They not only closed the runways, but the roads to and from the airport, leaving five thousand people stranded there. All told, over a thousand flights were cancelled because of the storm.

But that was only the half of it. Because we were so late, we missed our connection to Belize City from DFW, so we flew to Miami and spent the night there, without our bags. Then we flew to Belize City and discovered that our bags were still in Dallas, but being sent on the next flight. By about 8:00 that night, us and our bags were finally where we were supposed to be, albeit over 24 hours late.

Side story: Out last flight was from Belize City to a small airport at Milinda. We flew in a twelve-seat, one-engine prop plane. The Milinda airport was made up of two tents with plastic chairs and hammocks next to a 400 meter strip of pavement that was about five feet wide. Ironically our two flights (coming and going) between Milinda and Belize City were the only uneventful ones of the whole trip. (We had some minor mechanical issues coming home.)

We had a very nice stay, but when we finally got within sight of a TV (you’d be surprised how nice it is to not have a TV for miles), the first news report we heard was “Another Blizzard Bearing Down on Denver”. As I write this, the snow is just starting to fall.

Recently, I’ve been toying around with creating a spinner animation in JavaScript. I wanted it to run asynchronously and allow it to start and stop. What I ended up with was a JavaScript class that could string 12 images together in an animation. It also handles the preloading and the starting and stopping.

I only have a couple of complaints about it. One is that if you run it, then leave it for a while, then run it again, it will be slower in loading the images the first time around. (This could just be because my computer doesn’t have a lot or RAM. But I guess that still qualifies as a complaint.)

Also, the images don’t scale down very well. If you were to shrink them to, say 16px by 16px, they would look terrible. I guess you’ll have to change them if you want to shrink it.

Here’s an archive complete with a JavaScript class for the Spinner, an HTML file for the demo, and 12 PNGs for each of the spinner images. spinner.zip

Enjoy.

I’ve been wanting to write about the iPhone for a long time now. I’ve wanted to say that it’s unannounced, and everyone needs to calm down, sit back and enjoy the show keynote. Getting everyone’s hopes up well beyond what is reasonable to expect will only leave people disappointed. Fortunately, I don’t have to say all that (even though I did anyway). Macworld editor Peter Cohen did the job for me.

At this point, I almost hope that Apple doesn’t announce an iPhone at MWSF. That would really make TUAW, the entire Apple rumor network, and a few news sites (ahem CNET) look really stupid. On the other hand it would cause a few (albeit, dumb) analysts to say that Apple is missing a deadline on the iPhone, or something like that. (Of course that would only earn them a well-earned Daring Fireball Jackass of the Week stamp.) My point is this: any self-respecting “news” site that talks about an unannounced product needs to state that it’s a rumor very clearly. That CNET article didn’t even mention the word “rumor”; TUAW’s been reporting it like it’s a given; and the rumor sites… well let’s not even go there.

</rant>

If you’ve ever watched any movies with computer code in them, you’re probably familiar with the idea that all code is green text on black, moving rapidly, and beeping.

Reality: No. Just no. I uploaded a picture of some of the code in MadLibs. It may not be readable to most people, but it isn’t “Hollywood” code.

Here’s a great article about What code DOESN’T do in real life (that it does in the movies).