Silas Snider, Blogger

(Moments later, the White Witch rolls up and, confused, tries to...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:57:05 -0500

(Moments later, the White Witch rolls up and, confused, tries to tempt the probe with a firmware upgrade.)

Defective Yeti: Haircut

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:32:01 -0500

This pretty much exactly sums up the feelings I have when I enter a barbershop. I’m male, you’re the expert, you decide!

"Canadian history can be best summed up as ‘Quebec said no.’"

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:05:20 -0500

“Canadian history can be best summed up as ‘Quebec said no.’”

- SuperNintendoChalmer

My New Favorite Song

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:18:44 -0500

We’ve recently begun singing a new song at church that I absolutely adore:

Micah 7

What misery is mine?
The fruit that I desire
Does not remain.
The upright man is gone
And those that love your name
Cannot be found.
But I will wait for God
And His forgiveness will
Hear my cry.

Chorus:
Who is like God,
Who pardons sin?
Who is like God
Who won’t forget
The oath of grace
He made long ago?

I’ve sinned and I should bear
The indignation of
The Lord my God.
But Christ has plead my cause,
And He will satisfy
The debt I owe.
He’ll bring me to the light
And then I shall be free
To bless His name.

Chorus.

Possibly my favorite Death Cab for Cutie song ever....

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:08:30 -0500

Possibly my favorite Death Cab for Cutie song ever. (‘Death of an Interior Decorator’ from ‘Transatlanticism’)

hexodus: aaronwhite: Good lord, what has science...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:03:57 -0500

hexodus:

aaronwhite:

Good lord, what has science done?!

(via hiten: iomegadrive agentmlovestacos)

"Common sense would tell me it would be easier to grind up rocks into sand with my bare hands in..."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:41:16 -0500

“Common sense would tell me it would be easier to grind up rocks into sand with my bare hands in order to make kitty litter than it would be for me to brave the slew Christmas shoppers at Walmart.”

- Violent Acres

Things I Need (Part 1)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:55:43 -0500

I’m going to start a mini-series on this blog of the things that I think I, as a programmer/system administrator need. I have not been able to find anything similar in a quick google search, so I’m crowdsourcing. Who knows, I may even add it to my list of projects.

Anyway, the thing I really need is a http server that is fast enough/secure enough/robust enough to compete with apache, but with a configuration file syntax that is a) simple enough for a novice server admin to create virtual hosts and rewrite rules, and b) translatable into an equivalent apache configuration. In other words, the webserver shouldn’t depend on a deep understanding on my part of how virtual hosts work — it should just handle the common cases, and shouldn’t worry about supporting wierd edge cases. In particular, it probably shouldn’t worry about IP-based virtual hosts as much — those can be handled by having multiple instances of the server running, bound to different addresses.

My Rails Journey, Part 1

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:19:06 -0500

Just installed Rails, using the always excellent resource at Hivelogic. One thing I noticed right off the bat — gems take forever to install, especially at the point where it’s installing the documentation. Such a change from the days of easy_install in the python world :(

One Project to Rule Them All

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:06:50 -0500

I need to move from Facebook Events to something custom, for several reasons: I turn out to have friends that won’t use facebook, I have repeating events, I want to be able to integrate my data more easily than writing a facebook app, and I want to learn something new.

Towards that vein, I’m going to try coding this site in Rails, to see what happens. I already know that I’ll definitely be using Haml/Sassy for the templating language unless something better comes up, and I’ll probably deploy using Phusion’s Passenger (though feel free to chime in below).

Boy, this brings back memories! Hat tip: Peter Boothe

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:48:12 -0500

Boy, this brings back memories! Hat tip: Peter Boothe

Fascinating

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:40:23 -0500

Fascinating:

Check out the comments as well!

I’m sure that Britt would say this was a very...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:37:00 -0500

I’m sure that Britt would say this was a very ‘reformed’ song. (‘Hear Our Prayer (The Litany Song)” — Wake Thy Slumbering Children, Indelible Grace V)

Huh

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:27:11 -0500

Just took a look at my Google Analytics dashboard for the first time in a long time, and when I look at the data from the traffic generated by my recent flurry of posts, the most interesting thing to me is that my top referrer by far is facebook. At first I thought this was probably due to the Networked Blogs app I use inserting my posts into my facebook news feed, but then I realized that, no, I have tumblr tweet my blogs for me, which end up as facebook status changes.

So basically, my friends still pay a lot more attention to logging into and checking facebook compulsively than they do to checking twitter.

Huh.

stonewall: rubenfm: Autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire draws...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:21:39 -0500

stonewall:

rubenfm:

Autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire draws spellbinding 18ft picture of New York from memory… after a 20-minute helicopter ride over city

This artist is amazing!

See more of his work here.

Cold War Kids ‘We Used to Vacation’, from the...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:16:06 -0500

Cold War Kids ‘We Used to Vacation’, from the Robbers & Cowards Album.

Life Update

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:14:05 -0500

As a lot of you already know, I’ve been working for ShowClix, a startup operating out of Oakmont, PA which does online ticketing (main competitor: ticketmaster). It’s been hilariously fun, and I’m getting to do those things I actually enjoy. In fact, I look forward to going to work every day in the same way I used to look forward to attending college. I’ve updated my header to acknowledge that I’m now working for them as opposed to Sonya Labs.

Current Projects

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:59:51 -0500

(In no particular order)

A website where you can enter lead sheets in some format (it’s becoming a abc+ hybrid), storing them in a database accessible to the general public, who can browse the music and mark particular pieces as ones they know. They can also define groups (i.e. their band, etc.), and see those pieces that everyone knows, create setlists, etc. Current Roadblock: I’m going to have to learn music typesetting theory, it looks like — no language seems to exist that is as easy as ABC, yet with the ability to easily export to some sort of image/doc format
(more of a thought-project) Network-infrastructure-in-a-box. Create some sort of kit for myself or anyone else that allows the quick and easy setup of enough network infrastructure to create a functioning LAN in any environment (especially ones that lack things like electrical outlets, etc).
A Google AppEngine web framework to abstract out all the functionality that I tend to copy from other projects when I start writing an AppEngine app.
A templating language for the web that mixes the amazing syntax of Haml with the amazing language design of StringTemplate
Grant administration software
My long-term project to replace SCT Banner with free software
A hoodwink’d replacement
A webapp so that my family can keep better in touch over distance — sort of like a social network, but without a lot of the uneccesary-since-we-all-know-each-other features.
A smooth identity management webapp for OpenLDAP.

MySQL dumb error of the day!

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:37:09 -0400

If, when connecting to a MySQL server, you get the error “Lost connection to MySQL server at ‘reading initial communication packet’, system error: 61”, check your port number — it’s possible that your MySQL port is non-standard, especially if you’re running MAMP.

Has There Been Progress on the P vs. NP Question? [ppt]

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:46:30 -0400

Has There Been Progress on the P vs. NP Question? [ppt]:

Excellent slide deck on the current state-of-the-art in the P vs. NP question — pretty clear, at least to a CS undergrad, which is refreshing for a change :)