The λ♥[love] Blog

Another day in paradise

Daniel Silva — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:00:41 +0000

We were snuggled tight on the back seat of my parents’ white 1986 Caprice Classic. The big, bulky model, with the boat-like suspension so smooth you thought your were floating on the concrete. We were driving back from Key West after a day trip to the funky cosmopolitan island.

I sat on one end of the back seat. My friend Zachary sat on the other end, and in the middle sat Maria, Zachary’s older sister. Zachary was my age, 13 or 14. Maria was year and a half, maybe two years older. I had a tremendous crush on Maria. I’m pretty sure it was obvious to everybody in the car. I was never a good person to hide emotion. Wear it on my sleeve, as they say. To this day.

We were riding all together back home. Everything was quiet except for the soft music playing in the background. I was staring out the window, thinking about Maria, admiring the warmth of her leg touching mine, her arm touching mine. The marshes were just passing by, a dark moving mass before a dark orange and purple sky, the sun announcing its retreat for the day. In was lost in the moment. In some ways, I never wanted it to end.

The light eventually left, leaving the night sky behind. There is a singular road between Miami and Key West, and very few lights on the road. The lights of the passing cars were on the other side, so I had pure, calm darkness on mine. I could make out the stars. I began a fondness for stars that day. And not just because of their sparkle in an unusually dark night for an urban teen.

Because at that moment Another Day In Paradise came on the radio. In a moment, there was Phil Collins singing one of his most powerful ballads about the sadness of the reality of our world most of us privileged people choose to ignore. (And by privileged I don’t mean wealth. I mean those that can talk and walk and reason, and do all the other little things we all take for granted every day.) I didn’t realize then what the lyrics were about. But I loved the song. The melancholy melody made me think of Maria more. And so I find it interesting today, looking back, that in this very moment Maria adjusted herself a bit, and then lay her head on my shoulder.

Just another day in paradise, as it turned out.

No related posts.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: caprice classic, childhood love, key west, love, stars

How to burn an ISO to a USB drive on Mac OS X

Daniel Silva — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:45:44 +0000

Sometimes it is handy to burn an ISO to a USB stick. And there are plenty of tools on the market that let you do this. But on Mac OS X, you have all the tools you need already. Just follow these steps.

If your USB drive is plugged in, eject and remove it now.
Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal).
Convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option of hdiutil:
hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso
If present, remove the .dmg extension:
mv ~/path/to/target.img.dmg ~/path/to/target.img
Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices:
diskutil list
Insert your USB flash drive.
Run diskutil list again to determine the device node assigned to your flash drive by comparing how the output changed now that your USB flash drive is installed (e.g. /dev/disk2):
diskutil list
Run diskutil unmountDisk to unmount the node assigned to your flash drive. Make sure to replace N with the disk number from the last command. In the previous step example, N would be 2:
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
Now we’re ready to “burn” the image to the USB drive. Run dd as follows, replacing /path/to/downloaded.img with the path where the image file is located:
sudo dd if=/path/to/target.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m
Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes.

That’s it. When you plug it in, you should see it mount as if it were an ISO disk.

To boot from it, shutdown your Mac, plug in the USB drive, restart your Mac and press Alt while the Mac is restarting to choose the USB stick from the boot options.

A few notes about the “burning” process:

Using rdisk instead of dd in step #9 may be faster.
If you see the error dd: Invalid number ’1m’ in step #9, run the same command but replace bs=1m with bs=1M.
If you see the error dd: /dev/diskN: Resource busy in step #9, make sure the disk is not in use. Start the ‘Disk Utility.app’ and unmount (don’t eject) the drive. (This does the same thing that step #7 should have done.)

Have a Mac related question? Send it to me via Twitter. I love to answer Mac questions.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: apple, dd, diskutil, How to burn an ISO to a USB drive on Mac OS X, iso, mac, mac os x, os x, rdisk, usb

How to open a Mac OS X application with command line arguments

Daniel Silva — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:25:18 +0000

Mac OS X doesn’t use short cuts like Windows does. So it may not be immediately evident how to best run an application with command line arguments in a “short cut” style, as you might in Windows. What I mean by this is, if you have a short cut to an application and want to add command line arguments, you could just edit the short cut and modify the ‘run’ field to add the arguments after the exe file declaration. In Mac OS X, there are no short cuts like these. (Mac OS X has aliases, but they cannot be edited in the same way.)

It’s still possible though, of course.

There are many ways to do it, actually. Like, through Terminal. After all, they are command-line arguments. But that’s not the only way. Using Automator, I can create a new “application wrapper” that will call the application in question (using a shell script) and pass the parameters for me, without leaving behind hanging Terminal windows or using ugly icons.

By way of example, imagine I wanted to create a short cut for Google Chrome that would let me run it without loading any images and just the content (because you’re on a super slow WiFi connection). Here’s how I would do it:

Launch Automator (in the Applications folder).
Choose “Application” as the type of document.
Type “shell script” in the filter and double click on “Run Shell Script” to add a shell script to the application.
On the right you will see a text box with the word “cat” in it. Delete this, then type the following command in the text box:

1
open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --disable-images &
Press Apple-s to save it. Name it “Chrome Lite” and put in the Applications folder.
Now find Google Chrome in the Applications folder and single-click it to highlight it (don’t launch the application).
Press Apple-i to get the info window on this application.
Click on the icon inside the info window.
Press Apple-c to copy the icon.
Find the Automator Script you saved in step 6 and singleclick it to highlight it (don’t launch the application).
Press Apple-i to get the info window on this application.
Click on the icon inside the info window.
Press Apple-v to paste the icon.

The result will be a shiny new application named “Chrome Lite” that when launched will execute Google Chrome with the parameters I set.

And if you didn’t know about Automator before, I highly recommend to check it out. You can do high order functions with it, without knowing a lick of math or programming, using typical Apple design. To start, check out these articles:

Have a Mac related question? Send it to me via Twitter. I love to answer Mac questions.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: apple, args, automator, command line arguments, mac, mac os x

Problem solving and the False dilemma

Daniel Silva — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:38:35 +0000

I was standing there, as I usually do at 10:30am on a weekday. The developers on the team were taking turns sharing their status, their concerns. Monotone, typically. I was standing because we’re suppose to stand: it’s a stand up meeting so that you don’t get comfortable. Discomfort is the motivation to share your status, hear from others and get on with it. Quickly.

I don’t like this meeting. For the obvious reasons. But also because what we really end up doing is giving status reports to a manager. Spoke and hub, the hub being the manager, rather than a web of communication where we’re all speaking to each other. This is a quirk of how we do “agile” at my current project (read: “not agile.”) But it is what it is.

If you're Scrum "stand up" meetings look like this, you're doing it wrong.

And so I was standing there, when the following discourse happens:

Manager: “The drop down for the unit size is not showing all the values.”
Developer: “Oh, then that’s a problem with the [some other system]. Those values come from there.”

This response annoyed me. Because the premise was oozing with one of problem solving‘s biggest foes: the false dilemma.

The Wikipedia entry on the false dilemma is great. In summary, a false dilemma is a dilemma that apparently has only one (or two) possible solutions, when there are in fact many more. It’s very unlikely that a narrow view of a problem’s causes/solutions provides all the possibilities. And thus it is a false dilemma.

In the case of my team member, he’s already painted himself in a corner. “Oh, then that’s a problem with the AS400. Those values come from there.” Yes, that could be true. But without a good analysis, how can you be so certain?

Pencil balancing is one of our favorite ways to get through a boring "stand up" meeting.

A better attitude might look like this: “Hmm. The problem could be in the [other system]. But it could also be in the controller code that is interpreting the service response and translating it into the drop down element on the page. I’ll have a look.” I’ve introduced one other possibility. And there an infinitely many more out possibilities out there.

My point: When you are solving a problem, guard yourself against falling into the false dilemma: a narrow view of the possible causes/solutions. Always think bigger. Don’t limit yourself. Admit to yourself what you know and don’t know for certain. And don’t be defensive. The work we do is fallible. It can (and will) fail on occasion. Don’t shy away from it. Own it. You’ll earn more respect that way. And you’ll stand up less hurdles between the problem and the solution.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: false dilemma, feedback, improvement, problem solving, progress

Grails plugin failed to resolve dependencies

Daniel Silva — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:11:22 +0000

In small window of time (not any more at the time of this writing), trying to install Spring Webflow into a Grails 2.0.3 application caused some errors “out of the box.” When I say small window, I mean… for like a week or two.

I’m not sure what the problem was precisely, but I think it had to do with how the dependencies were initially defined for Grails 2.0.3. While Grails 2.0.0 was setup properly (didn’t cause the error), Grails 2.0.3 caused the error. Grails 2.0.0 depended on Webflow Plugin 2.0.0, which is correct. But with Grails 2.0.3, the dependency was mixed between Webflow plugin 1.3.8 and the Spring Webflow library 2.0.8. The latter was precisely what was not being mapped properly.

I had a long blog post about this prepared, but I’m changing it because, well, it’s working now. But just in case, I will share some of the information I learned because it might be valuable across any plugin that has dependency issues.

The first thing to do is to uninstall the offending plugin. The reason for this is because it’s the offending plugin that is configured incorrectly and causing the errors. Rather than try and sort out the downloaded plugin, it would be wiser to remove it and reinstall it after pointing Grails in a different direction for downloading plugins.

To uninstall a plugin, follow these steps:

Go to your .grails directory on your user home folder. For Windows this might be your C:\Users\${username}\.grails directory. On a Mac, Linux or Cygwin environment, this will be ~/.grails.
From here, navigate into the following directory: 2.0.3/projects/${app-name}/plugins.
You will see a directory for every plugin installed. Delete the directory corresponding to the plugin in you want to delete. In my case, it was webflow-1.3.8.
Lastly, open the application.properties file at the root of your Grails app folder and delete the entry for the plugin you want to delete. In my case, the line said plugins.webflow=1.3.8.

OK, that brings you back to pre-plugin-install time. Before re-installing the plugin, let’s define some new Maven repositories that Grails can look to for installing plugins.

Open the following file in your Grails app folder: grails-app/conf/BuildConfig.groovy.

Right after mavenCentral() (~line 27), add the following entries:

1
2
3
4

mavenRepo "http://repository.springsource.com/maven/bundles/release"
mavenRepo "http://repository.springsource.com/maven/bundles/external"
mavenRepo "http://repository.springsource.com/maven/libraries/release"
mavenRepo "http://repository.springsource.com/maven/libraries/external"

Save the file.
Now run the plugin install command: grails install-plugin ${plugin-name}

This will re-download your plugin from the Maven repositories instead of the Grails repositories. In the case of the above (Grails 2.0.3 with 1.3.8 Webflow plugin), it will download the proper plugin with the right dependencies defined downstream.

But as I said, this is necessary anymore. Installing the webflow plugin with the default settings in BuildConfig.groovy, at least at the time of this writing, downloads the proper plugin (2.0.0 Webflow plugin). Take the above as an additional tool for re-installing plugins from a different repo in the case the default repositories produces artifacts that are inherently broken.

Post script:

I later found via Google that someone reported a bug with the exact same workaround I list above. (http://jira.grails.org/browse/GRAILS-9071.) As a side note, and just my opinion, but I found Graeme’s response rather lame. The promise of Grails as a “rapid application development” tool breaks down as soon as dependency problems kick in. Yes, the problem did get sorted, but in the mean time, a few folks out there ran into a wall here.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: build config, dependencies, grails, grails 2.0.3, groovy, maven, spring webflow, webflow, webflow 1.3.8, webflow 2.0.0

The transient nature of life

Daniel Silva — Fri, 04 May 2012 21:47:43 +0000

When I was young, I loved my family. My brother and sister were much older than me, were married and had children that were near my age. Between my parents, my brother and sisters and their respective spouses and children, we had a big family. I used to love when we all got together to celebrate something, like a birthday or a holiday. Or go on family road trips.

We would go to Disney World from time to time, a short four hour drive north from Miami. Roaming the park as a family, riding the rides and eating the food together, giving the rides nicknames, making jokes. And the nights of playing with our Legos or G.I. Joes in the hotel room, usually a suite that fit us all. I had a strong sense of belonging, of community. It was always very cozy. I loved my family.

The Disney World Turkey Leg is a staple in any budget oriented Disney family vacation.

I always thought to myself that I wanted to grow up and be a part of this scene as an adult. How fun it would be to drive the car, pay for the park tickets, light the birthday candles or cook the turkey. In some way, I would always imagine, even though I was just a child myself, my own family in the same way, seeing it mix and match with this family I loved so much.

Of course, when I grew up, that family I loved was gone. Times change. People change. Circumstances change. I don’t know when I first realized this. It was probably the first time I returned to Miami for a visit after leaving the city back in 2001. But it hit me hard. Nobody told me about the transient nature of life.

For this reason, it is important to enjoy every moment. To seize the day, to try not to get distracted (typically by disappointment) and to live in the moments you’re given. To make the most of your unique and special place in the world at any given time. These things come and go. You get chances in life to make an impact. To make a difference in the world we live in. Make the most of it.

Because by the time you realize how good it was, it will likely be over.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: economics, freedom, life, live in the moment, love, sieze the day

Results always inform reality

Daniel Silva — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:55:23 +0000

One of my biggest pet peeves of IT projects in general is the lack of a proper feedback loop. Not shying away from pointing out what’s to blame or who’s to blame, not for punishing but to enable learning, progression, improvement.

Someone should have told this kid cardboard does not handle heat well.

Thankfully, I always try to be self-critical. It’s not easy, no. It hurts. My pride hurts. But it makes me better. It helps the team. I’m happy to be this way naturally. I’ve benefited from it. If someone asks me how I’ve developed my career and got to the level I am today, I always point out that you do yourself a disservice when you don’t admit where you’re weak.

“But doesn’t it hurt your reputation?” “Doesn’t it inspire weakness when your team is looking for leadership?” “How can your team trust you?” Covering it up may seem good short term, but you’re not doing yourself any favors short or long term. You are doomed to repeat your mistakes if you don’t own them. How will you cover it up every time?

Feedback. Ask for it. Give it to yourself. Check yourself regularly. Admit where you can do better then strive to do better. Don’t worry about the short term fallout. In the end, results always inform reality.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: feedback, improvement, progress

Notes and lessons from Facebook’s Acquisition of Instagram

Daniel Silva — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 04:15:32 +0000

Facebook acquires Instagram for $1B

Three notes about Facebook’s $1B acquisition of Instagram:

Instagram total revenues since the service started: $0.
Instagram company size at acquisition: 13 employees.
Instagram, before it was Instagram, was actually a check-in company similar to FourSquare and Gowalla.

Three lessons from this:

In all that you do, try to have the majority of those things be the things that you love. If you have a passion or a vision for a product or service, just do it. Don’t necessarily quit your day job to do it, but try to spend any free time you have on it. It will make you happier, and you might earn $1B for your effort.
You don’t need hundreds of employees to serve millions of customers on the web.
Embrace failure. I’m not saying to celebrate it. Just don’t run from it. Instead learn from it, iterate on your ideas, and press on.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: Business, facebook, instagram, money, passion

iPhone/iPad OS 5.0.1 loses internet connection after using MyWi 5.0

Daniel Silva — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:44:36 +0000

TL;DR version: Install Corona 5.0.1 Untether (1.0-3), even if you’ve already done an untethered 5.0.1 jailbreak by restoring using a custom IPSW via PwnageTool or RedSn0w, and MyWi will stop breaking your phone.

I had a problem recently after jailbreaking my iPhone 4 using the latest untethered solution via PwnageTool v. 5.0.1.. I had trouble installing MyWi 5.0. And once installed, I had trouble using it. It would work fine at first. But when used once and then disabled, my whole phone would lose cellular data connectivity. Possibly WiFi, too. No more internet on that phone.

Rebooting the iPhone (soft reset, by holding the power button and sliding the phone off, then turning back on again) would make everything work again. But I use MyWi 5.0 in a number of different ways and this was not a viable workaround. I must find a solution.

Using Google to find a solution, I didn’t get very far.

Then I remembered that, on the MyWi 5.0 install page, it had suggested that users install Corona 1.0-3 if they had trouble downloading their license. I had disregarded this because I eventually got the license downloaded without and I don’t like to install stuff without reason to. But I thought, “Maybe this is how I solve my problem.”

So I installed the Corona 5.0.1 Untether package (search for “Corona” in Cydia’s search) and rebooted my phone.

Problem is solved.

Now, I was wondering: “What exactly is Corona and why did installing this fix my problem?” (I’m a curious sort of chap.)

Turns out that Corona was a package released to help folks who had a tethered 5.0.1 jailbreak (that is, requires a computer to properly boot the iPhone) but wanted to move to an untethered jailbreak. It is the full suite of jailbreak tools in a simple app to allow users to upgrade without having to reset their phones. This didn’t apply to me because I was still on 5.0.0, and this was only for 5.0.1 users. But also, because I didn’t install it, I didn’t have the latest and greatest jailbreak bootstrap available.

So installing Corona gave me the latest jailbreak suite, with an easy path to upgrading to more stable iterations of said jailbreak suite. Awesome.

Most importantly, through, MyWi doesn’t break my phone anymore. Whoo hoo!

Found this post useful? I write tons of stuff, even have an aim to write at least once a week. Follow me on Twitter for my latest updates.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: 5.0.1, apple, corona, custom IPSW, iphone, iPhone 4, jailbreak, MyWi, MyWi breaks iPhone, OS 5.0.1, tethered jailbreak, untethered jailbreak

12 Wishes For 2012

Daniel Silva — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:43:46 +0000

Good-bye 2011, Hello 2012.

Weigh less on December 31st than I do today. If it’s just a gram less, it will count.
Go on 20 “true” dates with my wife. For the date to count, it must include: dressing up, a fancy venue, no kids (of course) and a kiss at the end.
2b4me being a successful, self-sustained business. You don’t know what 2b4me is yet, but you will.
Start three new savings accounts, one for each of my children.
Take off my braces.
Go back to London for a couple days and share a beer with my friends there.
Bring the people that make me happy closer to me, while getting further away from those that don’t give a shit about me.
Give Fred Gomez a job that maximizes his talents and abilities, and rewards him handsomely with a salary that reflects his ambition and capability.
Write in my blog once a week. Not just an average of once a week, but every seven days at least one blog post. Or it doesn’t count.
Get into a groove and do the Daily Practice.
Meet three people I respect for their writing in person: Armando Salguero, Peter King, and James Altucher.
Own a pair of legendary daggers.

© Daniel for The λ♥[love] Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Follow me on Twitter.
Post tags: 2012, goals, new year, planning, success, what is important, what matters, wish list, wishes