I’ve bought at least four laptops from you guys over the years, and I’ve had hardware trouble with every single one, but it always worked out OK in the past – every time, you won me back with killer customer service on getting the problem fixed. This time though, not so much. Yes, this situation is more complicated – I bought the system through a third party (Catch of the Day) in Australia, and have since relocated to Canada. But you know what? That shouldn’t mean jack. Catch is (to my knowledge) an Australian outfit, and despite the distance and the time difference, their customer service has been awesome (thanks Raymond!).

But you guys, on the other hand, are a giant corporation with global reach, and you can’t get it together enough to honour a warranty in one place that you sold me in another? I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough. You won’t be seeing another cent of my money, and I’ll be encouraging others to vote with their wallets too.

For just how long should I not press the back button or close my browser?

(Click for animated version)

Regards,
Dayne

On the free plan, you can get 2GB of space. If it sounds like something you could be interested in, and you use this referral link, we’ll both get an extra 500MB.

In the interests of you making an informed decision: about a year ago, there was a security-related kerfuffle with them. As I recall, it was a misunderstanding more than anything, but you can read about it yourself if you want to know more.

(Aside: seriously, as your lounge room gets “smarter”, the traditional remote control becomes more and more frustrating to use. I wanted to rent The Dark Knight when we were house-sitting a few weeks ago, and getting to it was brutal: hit the search button, right-right-right-enter(“D”)-left-left-left-enter(“A”)-down-down-right-enter(“R”)-up-right-enter(“K”), etc etc. Fuck that. No, it’s not exactly walking 5 miles to Blockbuster and back through the snow, uphill both ways, but still… I’m not entering the Konami code here)

Anyway, thinking about how an HTPC could work got me thinking about a sweet tool that I’ve been using on every Windows box I’ve worked on for a long time now: Launchy. Launchy is awesome (other people can tell you why), but I wasn’t sure how the various skins that I’ve seen would look on a big screen.
So I put together one of my own, and called it “HTPC”. It looks like this:

And if you use Launchy (as you should), you can download it here. Install it by unzipping this file and shoving the resulting HTPC folder into your Launchy skins folder (on my XP work machine, this is C:\Program Files\Launchy\skins\; on my Windows 7 laptop, it’s C:\Program Files (x86)\Launchy\skins\ )

So yeah, HTPC for Launchy: it’s not the home theatre interface that Gotham deserves, but it’s the one it needs right now. Let me know if you get any use out of it.

for $file in `something`
do
some_command $file
done

This post is a reminder to myself that if some_command can operate on multiple arguments, then you can do it all in one line, like:
some_command `something`

For a concrete example, rather than:
for i in `svn stat | grep ^\? | cut -c9-`
do
rm -rf $i
done

I can just do:
rm -rf `svn stat | grep ^\? | cut -c9-`

(both of which delete any files in a Subversion working copy that aren’t under version control)

Not a huge saving, but every time I wrote a little for loop like that, I felt there had to be a better way.

In other sweet news, our recent rental application has been approved, too. In two weeks time, we’ll be moving into a sweet pad on Barrington St (downtown, about a 10-15 minute walk from my work and the place Marcia is currently applying). The last place I lived within reasonable walking distance of work was in Brisbane^[1], and during weather extremes in December and January, I’d walk shirtless to save sweating all over everything. I doubt that will be a danger in this case.

Finally, Marsh is in the late stages of a rigorous interview process, for a job that seems like it will be pretty good. I don’t want to say too much on this front, as nothing’s confirmed, and it’s her tale to tell anyway, but things are looking pretty good so far.

So that’s the state of things for us here in Halifax.

(Easy) movie trivia question: the title of this post is a line from what movie? Strictly speaking, the apostrophe wasn’t in the movie, but the spelling of “fax” was the same (i.e. it was “fax”, not “facts”).

_{[1] Actually, this is false. After I typed this, I remembered that our place in Bangkok was about the same distance from work. But I enjoyed the “hey you guys, the seasons are opposite!” gag too much to take it out.}

Mad swordsmanship that kept me rapt for the whole 9+ minutes.

Facebook event here: 10507: The push-up competition.

Thanks for the bandying-about, Reubs.

Thanks, Joey.

_{[1] Yes, it’s a real thing. I think I saw it in the DSM-IV}

Aside: I just looked up my times over the last couple of years. They are (net) 1:14:41 (2009) and 1:06:54 (2010). I don’t remember being that fast (for me) last year. Ordinarily I’d put it down to a dodgy memory, but I know there’s another Dayne May out there, who also runs a bit. He did the Gold Coast half in 2009 and full in 2010, and caused a bit of confusion among my friends. I wonder if I’m claiming his time here. If so, sorry Dayne!

I’ve tried to get all the usual foolishness going – there’s a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a t-shirt shop Ambitious? Definitely – but I’ve sold 7 so far, and only 5 were to myself. Admittedly the other two were to the little woman and to my sister…

So anyway: go check it out, be appropriately confused, or entertained, or whatever. Follow, Like, tweet, subscribe, promote, abuse or react to it as you will. All suggestions welcome.