Last 40 Comments
- Middle clicking a link opens the link in a tab in the background. Just to let you know
- "I poked around Application Support WriteRoom and discovered the autosaved text file isn't in plain text" WriteRoom 2.0 (beta is now availible on website) stores documents and standard txt and rtf document formats. It also uses standard appkit support for autosaving in separate backup files.
- How i simple with care
AFAIK, it takes 9 digits for US postal to get the resolution that a Brit postal code has. The world is a big place. Lots of places in it, too.
Simon, you may have heard by now, but the latest version of Firebug that Joe Hewitt is working on offers similar functionality in an easy to use, out of the box format. You can interact with each request, see it's headers and posted parameters, open in new Firefox tabs, etc. And that's just the network side of things.
I was lucky to be offered the chance to beta test the new version. I've blogged about it, and it's been shedding some light on some newer performance data coming out.
I'd definitely check it out when the new version drops!
- Hi,
It's CRAZY to pay for a license of a public thing, that must belong to the citizens.
More questions, why that "very_strange_ever_confussing" British Postcodes ? if other countries could manage their letters with 5 or 6 "only_numbers" postcode.
...These are some of the funny (not so funny) legacy of the British Post system
Any effort to change that for an "open" and "simple" system are welcomed
- The US ZIP code database is also reasonably priced. The charge is $50 for the CDROM and search software. So there is relatively little motivation to try to establish an alternative. The general public gets free Internet lookup. The bulk mailers buy specialized addressing software from somebody else, plus $50/yr for the latest ZIP code database.
- Thanks! bad credit personal loans http://alfred.vassar.edu/portal_memberdata/portraits/didiyob/
I used to love WriteRoom. Today it flaked out on me, losing an hour's worth of writing. I poked around Application Support/WriteRoom and discovered the autosaved text file isn't in plain text -- and didn't have my words in it. Now it won't even create a new document.
Goodbye, WriteRoom. I'll miss you.
On the flip side, the quoting around object keys bugs me somewhat. For simple identifiers as keys, the quotes add unneeded bulk.
True, but they remove a big chunk of mental bulk from every parser: from the complexity and legibility of its regexes, the brainspace required by its programmer, and the strain on the client's regex engine. If we're hoping for valid JSON, then this measure should hopefully simplify parsers and clarify what's expected from writers. I agree it's a pain in the arse, though, until you get used to it.
Still, the flipside is no better. When recently migrating an email validator from what almost everybody's emails look like to the full RFC, including such whitespace crazy-bonkerers as '"foo bar"@example.com', I was going cross-eyed constructing the required regex. It's never quite the same as you remember it, and you always remember it in a different regex/quote-escaping convention from the one you're programming in...!
Having recently had to create a system to map postcodes to locations on a map, I think efforts like this to create a free postcode database should be applauded.
The idea of using 50-year old maps to avoid copyright is a very good one, though I think residents of Milton Keynes might find it a bit hard to locate their house with any accuracy!
Epsen:
The USPS provides a ZIP code lookup service for free but one must pay for a copy of the complete database. Note that while publications of the US government are ineligible for copyright protection under US law, the USPS is not a government agency but a government-owned corporation, so it can hold copyrights. (Prior to 1971 we had a Post Office Department, which was part of the executive branch like the defense department or state department ... the postmaster general was even in the line of succession for the presidency! But in 1972 the post office department was replaced by the United States Postal Service, which)The US Census Bureau uses ZIP codes internally for compiling statistics. They make their ZIP code databases available, but be warned that they are not necessarily up-to-date.
There are a number of third party databases available commercially. Code322 has some handy free lookup services, in addition to selling databases.
The Wikipedia articles on the USPS and ZIP codes are surprisingly interesting.
- I guess that with phones like the Nokia N95, it might be possible for people to have an application that could collect postcodes very quickly (eg visit a friend's house, type in their postcode, and it's recorded).
- Postcodes in Norway are available as a free download form the Norwegian Post :) Anyone know where I can get a list of zipcodes in the US?
It'd be great to see Australia Post's databases open up too. While Australian postcodes are only four digits, each and every Australian postal address has a ten-digit delivery point id (dpid) in Australia Post's database. The dpids can then be matched back (via lands department data) to physical locations.
- For full screen mode in any cocoa application, megazoomer: http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html
This sort of thing ought to rankle any public servant. It's absurd that only some of the bits and bytes of public works are free enough to be actually used by the citizens.
- As I understand it, it's a problem with EU database law. If you select a point on a Google Map you're creating a derived work of that underlying mapping data - which depending on your zoom level could belong to TeleAtlas or Navteq or some other company. That might not stand up in court, but Free the Postcode / npemap.org.uk don't want to be the test case for it.
- I don't understand why Free the postcode can't use a Google Maps mashup to enter these details - it would be far more accurate. I presume they think it would somehow encumber the data with copyright but I don't get why.
- You might also like to take a look at Ulysses It's a grower.
David, wow - I did not know that!
Jeremy... Godwin, therefore Emacs wins. QED. Heh.
- haha.. mark got issues
- The Mac is a typewriter!
- There is something for Windows users - see - http://lifehacker.com/software/top/download-of-the-day--darkroom-185042.php
Definitely a cool app. Maybe someday it'll be cool to have it on a Windows machine. :)
- Douglas:
Will the editor wars ever end?
Nazi!
- Will the editor wars ever end?
- FWIW, MacJournal does that too, both the full screen mode and the auto-save.
Halfnote is neat-o, too: https://aaronboodman.com/halfnote/
- Oh, and no vi flames please. I get plenty of that at work. ;-)
Noah,
You do realize emacs has auto-save don't you? It is enabled by default.
M-x apropos RET auto-save RET- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
- Thanks for the hint, sir!
ln -sf /usr/bin/emacs21 /usr/bin/viNothing! ;)
But what's wrong with logging in as
>consoleand running vi?:-)I use Emacs (editor) and Ion3 (window manager) to do all of my coding.
Hitting ALT-RET will drop any application into full-screen mode, which looks especially nice if your using an xterm. I have always thought full-screen terminal sessions looked, well, um neat. You can run Ion3 for OS X using X11.
Also, about the auto-save, that sounds cool... although, I must say, I reflexively save my work after almost every word anyway. The key-stroke is so built in that even when I am using other applications, as soon as I start typing I find my self hitting CTRL-X-S almost as if it was a nervous twitch.
- Probably you already know but TextMate has the option to save files when focus is lost. Which isn't as good as auto-save but comes a long way.
- Funnily enough, the whole autosave/don't think about where to save the file is one of the reasons I wrote Akra's Diary (http://www.akrabat.com/akras-diary)
Regards,
Rob...
whoops-- I'm pretty sure Kirit was referring to the typical development pattern done on top of IIS, which was ASP on the server (in the form of VBScript, a truly awful language) and JS on the client.
Pitting Perl (or any language with reasonable design and libraries) is a total strawman. Kirit's question is reasonable. If choosing between JS on both server and client or JS on client and VBScript on the server, it seems a straight-forward answer, yet most IT shops have gotten it wrong for years.
- Kirit - because fifty man-years of debugged libraries is more important than syntax?