Oh! The Huge Manatee!

Adding Content to This Site

Dave Mankoff — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 10:21:00 -0500

I don't add content to this site very often. I should. Part of the reason for that is I don't actually rememember how to get content to appear here.

When I first setup this system up, I had it so that any content I checked into github would automatically regenerate the site and upload here. At some point that system stopped working, and my knowledge of how it was all setup atrophied.

I am going to attempt to document my progress of getting it working again here. I'll hopefully be able to use this docunent as a reference in the future.

2023-12-05 10:26

First to specify what I know:

The content is hosted in github at https://github.com/mankyd/othm/
This site, I believe, is hosted on Google Cloud. I can access this by visiting https://console.cloud.google.com/.
The "project" is called "Oh the Huge Manatee", has a "Project number" of "448264688868", and a "Project ID" of "gce-othm".

Initial clicking around appears to suggest usage of the "Compute Engine API".

2023-12-05 10:41

I clicked around a bunch and came up empty. Then I remembered that it might actually be based on Firebase instead of Google Cloud directly. Clicking through to the console seems to confirm this.

I am going to pause here for awhile. I think I need a personal computer with command line access to continue.

2025-02-12 20:17

Whew, it's been awhile!

The next thing to try was downloading a copy of the site locally. I have a new (to me) OSX laptop. I ran "git" but it was not installed. OSX prompted me to install it automatically, and I did.

I had to setup an SSH key to actually work on the code. I could have cloned the repository with out it, but I won't be able to push. I started with GitHub's instructions for adding an ssh key to an account. This, of course, meant generating an ssh key first. Thankfully, github has an article for that as well.


    ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@example.com"

Followed by


    eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

Then adding the following to ~/.ssh/config


    Host github.com
      AddKeysToAgent yes
      UseKeychain yes  # omit line if not using a passphrase
      IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

Then


    ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

And lastly


    pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

This last command copied the public key to my clipboard. I could then paste it into the new ssh key page and save it.

WHEW!

I cloned the repository locally, where I am editing it now.

The next step was getting python up and working. This blog is generated by Pelican. I am actually a little terrified that new versions of Pelican may actually not be backwards compatible, but one thing at a time!

Python does not come installed on OSX by default. Some quick googling suggested that Homebrew was the best way to install and manage Python these days. I copied and pasted the install command at the top of the page:


    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Always a little terrifying to curl random bash scripts, but I suppose it's no worse than downloading and running any other random, uninspected binary.

Next was "brew install python". This installed Python 3.13.2. It did not, however, add "python" to the path, only "python3". Documentation I found suggested adding


    export PATH="/usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin:$PATH"

to my "~/.profile" file, but this didn't work. OSX runs zsh by default, so I needed to add it to "~/.zprofile".

Next to setup a virtual environment to run pelican in.


    pip install --user pipenv

Homebrew intercepted me here and told me it was an error to do so. Instead, it suggested


    python3 -m venv path/to/venv

2025-02-12 20:51

I ran "python3 -m venv ." in my repository but this seems to have been a mistake. It edited my ".gitignore" file to ignore everything. I restored ".gitignore" and saw that it had had added several files and directories to the repository. Time to try something different.

I made a new directory, which will server as my vitual environent, and moved my repository in as a subdirectory. I then reran the venv command, and everything seems happier now. I ran


    . bin/activate

to enter my vitual environment.

Pelican suggests installing it with


    python -m pip install "pelican[markdown]"

pip then informed me that I should upgrade it, so I did.

Pelican says to run


    pelican -r -l

So I changed to my repositories subdirectory, ran it, and was met with a bunch of errors.

[21:03:45] WARNING Feeds generated without SITEURL set properly may not be valid settings.py:679 WARNING No timezone information specified in the settings. Assuming your timezone is UTC for feed generation. Check settings.py:684 https://docs.getpelican.com/en/latest/settings.html#TIMEZONE for more information --- AutoReload Mode: Monitoring `content`, `theme` and `settings` for changes. --- Feeds generated without SITEURL set properly may not be valid No timezone information specified in the settings. Assuming your timezone is UTC for feed generation. Check https://docs.getpelican.com/en/latest/settings.html#TIMEZONE for more information Process Process-1: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.2/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/multiprocessing/process.py", line 313, in _bootstrap self.run() ~~~~~~~~^^ File "/usr/local/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.2/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/multiprocessing/process.py", line 108, in run self._target(*self._args, **self._kwargs) ~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ File "/Users/dave/devel/othm/lib/python3.13/site-packages/pelican/__init__.py", line 572, in autoreload settings_file = os.path.abspath(args.settings) File "", line 378, in abspath TypeError: expected str, bytes or os.PathLike object, not NoneType Serving site at: http://127.0.0.1:8000 - Tap CTRL-C to stop

The SITEURL and timezone matters I can fix. I am currently unsure about the stacktrace however. Visiting the site as it suggests also fails.

2025-02-15 09:22

Back to it, the reason for the above errors is the version of Pelican this site was originally compiled with (2? 3?) ran on Python 2, while Pelican 4 only supports Python 3. I have a choice: install Python 2, and then install an old version of Pelican, or just upgrade this site.

Time to upgrade this site!

First, I created a new Pelican site alongside the existing one, just to see what's changed. After creating a new emptry directory, I run "pelican-quickstart" per the instructions, but the command doesn't work. I see the the command exists in my virtual environment's "bin" directory, but that bin is not in my path. I run "../bin/pelican-quickstart" instead.

I followed the on screen prompts with mostly default or obvious values. When I got to the timezone option, it defaulted to "Europe/Rome", which is not correct, so I started googling around for the appropriate string (something related to us eastern timezone). The first Wikipedia article on the Eastern Time Zone does not appear to contain a magic string that looks correctly formatted. I am pretty sure I am looking for something like "New York/US" or similar. Next I found Time.is which contains a bunch of "IANA time zone identifiers" which look correct. I selected "America/New_York". After a few more questions where I selected the defaults, my new site was setup.


    pelican content
    pelican --listen

With those two commands, I had a working, if bare, Pelican site. I stopped the pelican process.

I copied over the "content" directory of this existing site into the content directory of this temporary site and ran "pelican -l -r". I was greeted by many errors, including an apparent infinite loop:

Skipping /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/word-o-matic/index.html: could not find information about 'date' There are 2 items "with slug "2016-in-review"" with lang en: /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/articles/2016/2016_in_review.html /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/articles/2022/butterfly.html There are 2 original (not translated) items with slug "2016-in-review": /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/articles/2016/2016_in_review.html /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/articles/2022/butterfly.html {filename} used for linking to static content /images/2016/parachute-skydiving-parachuting-jumping-38447.jpeg in articles/2016/double_blind_parachute_trial.html. Use {static} instead Caught exception: "File /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/output/2016-in-review.html is to be overwritten". Skipping /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/word-o-matic/index.html: could not find information about 'date' Skipping /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/word-o-matic/index.html: could not find information about 'date' Skipping /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/word-o-matic/index.html: could not find information about 'date' Skipping /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/word-o-matic/index.html: could not find information about 'date' Skipping /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/word-o-matic/index.html: could not find information about 'date' ...

First, I fixed the metadata in butterfly.html, changing the title, keywords, and date. Then I added the time to the the_magical_wordomatic.html, hoping that would resolve the loop. I reran "pelican content" and it appears to have worked, outside of a few deprecation warnings. I then ran "pelican -l -r" again and it appeared to be working site.

Then I looked over some of the earlier output and realized that I still have an error in the_magical_wordomatic.html page:

ERROR Skipping /Users/dave/devel/othm/tmp/content/word-o-matic/index.html: could not find information about 'date'

ThenI looked closer and realized that all my articles are actually in "content/articles" and that it is trying to parse what it supposed to be a static page.

The documentation says that setting "STATIC_PATHS" in "pelicanconf.py" should be enough to fix it. I copied over the values from the old version of the site, but the error persisted. After a bit of playing around and making no progress, I decided to move on. Maybe this was happening because my output structure was flat, instead of nested directories as it is currently?

2025-02-15 11:38

I copied and pasted over the ARTICLE_SAVE_AS and ARTICLE_URL values from the previous site. This seems to have organize things, but still no luck on the word-o-matic.

Finally, I changed "ARTICLE_PATHS" from its default value to "['articles']" and this seems to have resolved the issue.

I copied over the "theme" directory next, and blindly set the "THEME" property to "theme/othm" as I had in the prioer version and was met with a new error: "Encountered unknown tag 'assets'.". Some plugin I am missing perhaps? I copied over the "plugins" and "pelicanplugins" directories, added them to the pelicanconf.py file and...

[11:53:21] ERROR Cannot load plugin `assets` Cannot import plugin `assets` ERROR Cannot load plugin `gzip_cache` Cannot import plugin `gzip_cache` ERROR Cannot load plugin `htmlminify` No module named 'htmlmin' ERROR Cannot load plugin `optimize_images` Cannot import plugin `optimize_images` ERROR Cannot load plugin `summary` Cannot import plugin `summary` ERROR Cannot load plugin `tag_cloud` Cannot import plugin `tag_cloud` --- AutoReload Mode: Monitoring `content`, `theme` and `settings` for changes. --- Cannot load plugin `assets` Cannot import plugin `assets` Cannot load plugin `gzip_cache` Cannot import plugin `gzip_cache` Cannot load plugin `htmlminify` No module named 'htmlmin' Cannot load plugin `optimize_images` Cannot import plugin `optimize_images` Cannot load plugin `summary` Cannot import plugin `summary` Cannot load plugin `tag_cloud` Cannot import plugin `tag_cloud` Serving site at: http://127.0.0.1:8000 - Tap CTRL-C to stop Caught exception: "Encountered unknown tag 'assets'.".

I cloned the old pelican-plugins which is evidently deprecated in favor of the newer pelican-plugins github org. I'll sort that all out later.

Still, a few plugins were broken: htmlmin, summary, and assets. I disabled the htmlmin plugin. Summary asked for the "bs4" package to be installed, which I did. Assets needed the "webassets" package.

Now running "pelican content" almost works, save for a new error about "cssmin" not being installed. After installing that, things maybe worked, except now I get an error agout "jpegtran" and "optipng" not being installed, although the content says it generated succesfully. Loading the site in a browser now sort of works, though css appears incorrect. Viewing the network traffic does not show any 404 errors. Maybe I inlined the css?

2023-12-05 17:29:00

Looking at the source for the output site, I indeed saw an empty style tag at the top. The theme is expecting some sort of "ASSET_CONTENTS" variable to be populated, but I can't see this documented anywhere in the asset's plugin documentation.

Instead of inlining the content, I uncommented a link tag I had at the top and that seems have to restored things. I think I am getting close!

Clicking on tag on the side brings me to a different (though functional) url than is live on the site today. I scanned through the difference in the settings file and found that TAG_URL and PAGE_URL were set on the prior version of the site, so I copied those over. Things seems very similar now!

There are only two obvious differences: First, the dates are displaying differently on the articles, but I am ok with that. I will probalby change it to something different in the future. Second, the new site has the front page paginated. I have wanted to do this for awhile, but not as it is currently implemented. Setting "DEFAULT_PAGINATION" to false fixes this up.

Ok, so I had a newly generated site. I copied it over the old content, ran git diff, saw nominal differences, and commited.

But now I still need to push to the server.

2025-02-16 13:55

I found documentation "Get started with Firebase Hosting". Step 1 is to install the Firebase CLI tools. Then I logged in an tested the tooling, ala "firebase login" command.

Inside my git repository, where pelican is actively running, I ran "firebase init hosting". I chose an existing project, pointed at pelican's output directory, and left everything else at the defaults.

At this point, if I run "firebase deploy --only hosting", I might have a working site? However, I don's want to deploy over the existing site until I have verified that this will all work. There should be a way to deploy to a staging/testing location.

Reading the docs, it suggested running "firebase hosting:channel:deploy preview". This returned a url with the website hosted. Hooray! However, it also fails to render any css. Good thing I didn't push to prod. Opening up the dev console, it appears to be as simple as the fact that the css was loaded over http instead of https.

I popped open "pelicanconf.py" and changed the SITE_URL to https. Then I noticed the the local development copy of my site was loading the css off of the web instead of a local copy of the css. This is wrong.

Uncommenting "RELATIVE_URLS" in pelicanconf.py fixed this up. I will also need to be careful to publish with the publishconfi.py file when actually pushing to firebase.

One more call to "pelican content -s publishconf.py" followed by another call to "firebase hosting:channel:deploy preview" and my site looks ok! However...

When I click over to the word-o-matic, the page loads and is functional, but if I click any of the "presets", I get a 404. This could just be a quirk of the preview domain.

But I did some more digging and discovered url rewrites. I don't know why I do not have this firebase.json file already checked into my git repository, but I am going to now! I added the following to my firebase.json:


    "rewrites":[ {
      "source": "/word-o-matic/*/",
      "destination": "/word-o-matic/index.html"
    } ]

Partial success. The page now loads, but the json containing the preset content returns a 404. Terrifyingly, I can' find those json files anywhere in my repo. Where are they?

I downloaded all the json files and added them to the repostiory. Another push to firebase and... partial success? For some reason, two of the json files are not working. "jabberwork.json" is returning the html for the word-o-matic page, and "prescription-drugs.json" is returning a 404.

Even stranger, I fired up firebase's local emulator and everything works fine locally. I deployed a second time to firebase without changing anything and... success!

The last, and most suspicious thing is that the current site says it contains almost 20 thousand files, while the site I just previewed contains only 370 files. I suspect this is because I used to allow folks to upload and save custom content in the word-o-matic, and I maintained that old content even after I disabled that functionality. I have no straightforward way of recovering that content at the moment, but it may simply be time to say goodbye to it. It is possible that that content continues to reside on the hard disk of another computer that is not currently hooked up, but that is a problem for another day.

Butterfly

Dave Mankoff — Mon, 09 May 2022 17:58:00 -0400

Yesterday, I watched my two young children and their friend stalk a yellow butterfly across a field of grass. They perfectly sneaked, revealed themselves, and gave chase again to the insect as it was carried haphazardly by the wind.

I watched the triplicate from some distance off, wishing I could bottle this moment to not just replay, but relive. This perfect moment that the children were experiencing without thought or introspection; without the need to assign value to it or compare with memory. They saw a butterfly and they gave pursuit.

And I watched, wishing I could give them more.

How to Scare People for 10,000 Years

Dave Mankoff — Sat, 07 Apr 2018 10:47:00 -0400

In 1993, Sandia National Labs published a document that contained the following words:

The danger is still present, in your time, as
it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation
of energy.

The Second Amendment

Dave Mankoff — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 10:41:00 -0400

Agency will always lie with the prime actors in any violent event. I continue support providing the mental and societal support systems needed to help would-be criminals find the help they need.

However, in the absence of any political, practical, moral, or ethical system for eradicating violent tendencies, we also must look to mitigate the ease and impact of such acts. Stephen Paddock killed or maimed over 450 people at last count. To suggest that we ignore the implements with which this act took place is willful denial.

Guns are instruments of deprivation. They act to deprive life, liberty, and freedom from those they are turned against. They are the antithesis of American ideals and of fundamental human rights. This can not stand.

Guns make irrevocable, unchallenged decisions for their wielder. As an aggressor, a shooter kills the innocent. As a defender, a shooter's hasty, error-prone decisions are made permanent.

They are a threat to myself, my children, my family, and everyone that I love and care about. There is no defense against a fired bullet. No amount of hope and prayer will bring them back to me as I hold their body in my arms.

And, NO, I will not count their lives as the cost of liberty. Death is not freedom.

End the Second Amendment. End gun ownership.

(Adapted from a public social media post that I made.)

Life RPG

Dave Mankoff — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 21:00:00 -0400

I've been playing with a new app on my phone recently, Life RPG, It let's you create tasks (what they call missions) that you need or want to accomplish in your real life, such as doing the dishes, reading a book, practicing the sousaphone, etc. and assign to them virtual points based on their "difficulty", "urgency", and "fear". As you complete the tasks, you earn the points which are counted towards a virtual leveling system,

In addition, "skills" can be assigned to the tasks, so that you can see yourself progressing in various skills in your real life, a la The Sims. You can practice cooking, learn to draw, or study Sanskrit and see your progress in each of the areas recorded down with some concrete, if artificial value,

Tasks can also be assigned a duration (e.g. go to the gym for one hour), a frequency (e.g. do your laundry once a week), and a due date (e.g. file your taxes by April).

Perhaps the most interesting feature, however, are the separate reward points that you can tack onto each mission. They appear as little gems in the app. Make going to the gym worth 1 gem, Make finishing a long book 10 gems,

You can then take these virtual gems and redeem them for rewards that you create in the app. 5 gems might mean you get some ice cream. (5 trips the gym equals ice cream, yay!) Rewards can also be limited in supply. Got some new gadget or toy you want to buy? Give it a high reward point cost and save up for it!

I just started using this app and am slowly filling in missions and rewards and finding the right balance in everything. I am generally ignoring the leveling and skill portions of the app. It is the reward points that I find intriguing. I like that it introduces an artificial restraint and economy on my splurges. I no longer go and simply indulge my impulses but instead mete them out more gradually. And if I want to save up for an something expensive, (I've been eyeing a table saw), I give it a high reward point cost and must excercise restraint over a longer period of time before I can justify it.'

In the end, it doesn't appear to be a perfect solution for what I'm looking for, it has many superfluous features, but I am hoping it puts me on a good habit building path. Perhaps something better out there already exists, If so, let me know!'

Parachute Use Lacks Proper Double Blind Study

Dave Mankoff — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 12:50:00 -0500

It turns out that, as of 2003, no proper double blind study of parachute use has been conducted. That is to say that science doesn't technically have the most firm evidence that parachutes work.

This observation is, of course, made in jest.

Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

One of the people in the photo above is going to have a bad day. I think I shall cite this study more often.

2016 In Review

Dave Mankoff — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 10:47:00 -0500

I said "Fuck 2016" for the first time last night and immediately regretted it. All the springs had popped out of a lock I was re-keying, and minuscule drive pins were lost to the floor. Earlier I'd been down in my basement making my hands coarse and dry working with fiberglass insulation. I was tired, uncomfortable, and frustrated; and there I was blaming a calendar.

2016 doesn't suck. 2016 is what we made of it, and 2017 isn't going to be magically better simply because the tick of a clock rolls over to the next year.

In 2017, celebrities are going to die. Politicians are going to make short sighted, selfish decisions. Humans will do _vile_ things to one another in the name of their god, their patriotism, and their culture.

So you know what I did? I got down on my hands and knees and found the damned pins. I researched how to reassemble a mechanism that was not designed to be disassembled. I got out tape, toothpicks, and tweezers, and I fixed the fucking lock.

If you want 2017 to be awesome, then make it awesome. If there's a problem, fix it. Mourn the bad but don't let it get ahead of you.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast, 20 Years On

Dave Mankoff — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 10:12:00 -0500

Twenty years ago [...] Space Ghost Coast to Coast [...] would completely reshape Cartoon Network in its image, spawning the entirety of Adult Swim and inspiring a new generation of surreal humorists.

Transmissions From the Ghost Planet: A definitive history of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Picture of a Dead Man

Dave Mankoff — Sun, 29 May 2016 21:15:00 -0400

There is a picture of a dead man on my wall. He was not dead when the picture was taken. He was sitting near me as we both smiled happily, awkwardly, in ways that only teenagers can.

I am not a teenager anymore. Age has grown through and over my body, though I am not old. Not yet.

As the living become the dead, I feel the weight of their memory as a scar upon my past where once there was levity. Two of my classmates have passed in as many days; three in as many months; more when I count the years.

The picture on the wall contains many friends. The rest of us are quite alive and my buoyancy remains, but the weight does not get lighter. Rather, I must find new strength to carry the weight, to lift it off the earth so that it does not drag.

This may be what metaphorically makes you stronger, but, for today, the new burdens leave me tired.

Rest in peace, Matthew and Jake.

Golly What a Day

Dave Mankoff — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:56:00 -0500

I Stopped a Fight Today

Dave Mankoff — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 19:46:00 -0500

I stopped a fight today. I was on my way from work, at the Downtown Crossing T stop, getting on the orange line.

It was crowded and the train in the station was too full for the entirety of the would-be passengers to get on. I was following behind a woman who had a suitcase in tow. She appeared to be in a frustrated hurry, as she was making her way haphazardly through the crowd.

Comprise

Dave Mankoff — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 12:01:00 -0500

I learned a new fact today. In place of the phrase "is comprised of", one should generally use the phrase "is composed of". Thus, the following is grammatically incorrect:

The United States of America is comprised of 50 states.

When people use "is comprised of", they usually mean more plainly "comprises". This would be more grammatical and in line with the meaning of "comprise" — "includes":

The United States of America comprises 50 states.

There is actually a relatively simple rule to distinguish this: "The whole comprises the parts; the parts compose the whole."

However, the word "comprise" actually goes a step further. To use the word "comprise" emphasizes that the statement is all inclusive thus the following would be the most correct:

The United States of America comprises 50 states, a federal district, and multiple territories.

Hat tip to Andrew McMillen for the article which put me on to this rule.

Hookback

Dave Mankoff — Sat, 24 Jan 2015 20:01:00 -0500

I released a new piece of software the other day, Hookback. It's purpose it to receive and handle webhook callback's from GitHub. I've seen several other projets that aim to do this, but they often seem inflexible or difficult to set up. Hookback aims to be dead simple.

You tell it what events to listen for on what repositories, and then you give it a command to run for those events. That's it. It can run those commands synchronousely and respond back to GitHub with the output, or it can run them in the background, so that long running commands to block the request.

As an example, I am now using Hookback to power this site. This site is published on GitHub, and when I commit and push new content to the repository, GitHub notifies this server. The server then runs the commands necessary to recompile and publish the new content on the site. It makes it very easy to get new content posted.

It's my first real project written in Go and I am really enjoying it. It took awhile to find a groove with the syntax, but it's a real pleasure to use now. I am already scheming for what's next.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or features requests for Hookback. I aim to keep it simple, but that's not to say there isn't room for improvement.

The Internship & Google

Dave Mankoff — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:48:00 -0400

I just returned from a company outing to see "The Internship". I had set my expectations kind of low, but was pleasantly surprised. It's not great per se but is cute. Working for the company portrayed in the movie, they give a pretty good recreation of the campus and the company backdrop. But I take issue with the one thing that they get very, very wrong about Google: the people.

In the movie, work hours are long, the people are straight-up mean, and the corporate culture is cut throat. The interns are told that their Summer program is a little more than a competition, a "mental Hunger Games" as they call it. 95% of them will not be given jobs. Unfortunately, (in the movie) this turns out to be exactly the case - the protagonists and their team end up employed but at the expense of the hundred or so other bright and capable interns.

The full-time employees are don't fair much better in the script writer's hands. The two shown most frequently are rude, over-worked, and generally mean-spirited people. The term "googley" is bandied about, but those that use it are laughed at and derided.

This runs exactly contrary to everything that I've experienced in my time at Google. Google is full of incredible people, kind people, and thoughtful people. I had never worked at a place before this where each person that I meet is universally generous and outgoing. While there are some jokes about the word "googley", no one would deny that it is a positive attribute and something that they would like ascribed to themselves.

Are my coworkers at Google smart? Yes, but they aren't braggarts. Do they work hard? Yes, but not a the expense of their own well being. Are expectations here high? Yes, but they're not unreasonable. Google accomplishes great things not by virtue of fostering a hostile environment. Google accomplishes great things by employing great people and encouraging them to succeed.

Teach Girls To Be More Like Boys? You're Making It Worse.

Dave Mankoff — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:32:00 -0400

An article on CNN today gets gender bias issues rather ironically wrong. My wife and I were talking about this topic the other day. She would take issue with the title of this editorial, I believe. Not because the goal is wrong, but rather because the framing presented at the very outset is inherently gender biased. I would tend to agree with her.

My own suggestion, in our earlier conversation, was that, rather than teaching "girls to be more like boys" our efforts might be better focused on making masculine traits less male. That is to say, as long as we characterize positive external traits (confidence, assertiveness, etc) as being masculine traits, they will continue to be dominated by males.

If we're going to encourage young women to take on these traits, we need to make them gender-neutral, universally acceptable traits. I am not suggesting that we rename them or some other superficial, token gesture. I am simply pointing out that, when we want a woman to succeed, we can't simply say to her "be more like a man". We need to say "be strong; be confident", without the pretenses of taking on masculine qualities.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I am a graduate of the high school mentioned in the article.

Tomato's Final Form

Dave Mankoff — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 12:11:00 -0500

In my article the other day about the states of matter of canned tomatoes, I forgot to mention one disgustingly horrible form of canned tomatoes that one used to be able to find: Tomato Aspic. Thankfully, in canned form, tomato aspic is largely unavailable these days I hope that it remains that way. (Full disclosure: my great grandmother forced me to eat tomato aspic with just about every meal when I visited her. I had never though jello could make me gag so quickly.)

For those not in the know, aspic is a form of savory gelatin. Think of it as salty jello with a hint of sour. It is vile stuff. The Wikipedia page on aspic prominently features a gelatin with both chicken and hardboiled eggs suspended within it. It was commonly used as a method to preserve food.

Tomato aspic takes the worst part of savory jello and combines it with raw tomato purée. It was a bad idea when someone thought it up and it remains a bad idea to this day. Just take a look at this loaf of congeled tomato sauce:

Thankfully, the days of ambiguous matter-state tomato were largely left behind at the end of the 1950's. For those looking for some vintage tomato recipes, however, here's a delightful layered tomato aspic conconction courtesy of Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum. Ingredients include onion, celery, cucumber, cottage cheese, green pepper, and of course, tomato sauce and gelatin. I am not sure why a chewing gum company used this as an advertisement but perhaps it was because of the awful breath that you'd be left with after biting into this abomination:

Canned Tomatoes

Dave Mankoff — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:58:00 -0500

There are a lot of canned tomato products. I mean, seriously, it's a little silly. Last night, while grocery shopping with my wife, I was asked to retrieve a cans of diced tomatoes, tomato purée, and tomato sauce. While searching through the mulitudes of sizes and flavors, I absent mindedly swapped purée for paste and grabbed the wrong can.

What took me back as I was searching was just how little I understood about canned tomato products and why they exist in such variety. So I decided to do some investigation: what types of canned tomatoes can one find in a typical American grocery store and what are they used for.

Whole Tomatoes

Starting from the largest and working our way down, we have whole tomatoes, both peeled and unpeeled. Peeled tomatoes are the most common variant and are made by first briefly boiling them to make the skin looser, removing the skin, and then placing them into a jar or can. While not particularly appetizing by themselves, they're easily turned into other "states" of tomato. Some sources that I have found suggest that canned, whole tomatoes are of a higher quality than other, more processed varieties, with the manufacturers sending dud tomatoes off to be chopped up.

Stewed Tomatoes

A variant of whole tomatoes, stewed tomatoes have been cooked — boiled longer than a typical whole tomato. This releases the flavor and makes them more suitable for adding to many recipes. Of course, it's easy enough to cook whole tomatoes, especially if the dish you'll be adding them to will be cooking further anyways. It is common to find stewed tomatoes with added ingredients and seasoning.

Diced Tomatoes

Diced (or chopped) tomatoes save some of the labor involved with working with whole tomatoes. Fairly self explanatory, they work well in salsas and sauces where you want full pieces of tomato. On the grocery store shelf, I found plain old diced and petite diced, as well as a myriad of flavor additives such as garlic, pepper, and oregano. Hunt's website lists no less than 14 different varieties. Yes, you read than correctly, one-four - fourteen.

Crushed Tomatoes

Take your canned tomatoes and mash them up. Boom, crushed tomatoes! Typically, crushed tomatoes will be run through a strainer to remove seeds and other large chunks. They're great for sauces and chilis where you're looking and some of the texture of tomatoes without the chunks.

Tomato Purée

Crushed tomatoes still too chunky for you? Try purée. Take the same, whole tomatoes but blend them instead of just crushing them. You'll still need to strain them to get the seeds and other large chunks out. This is what foods like pizza sauce and ketchup start as.

Tomato Sauce

So far as I can tell, tomato sauce is to tomato purée as stewed tomatoes are to whole tomatoes. It's been both liquified and then cooked. It will often have seasonings added to it as well. This is different than your typical "pasta" sauces, mind you, which almost certainly have added seasonings and non-tomato ingredients and may include chunks of tomatoes.

Tomato Paste

Tomato paste is the last major variation that canned tomatoes come in (to my knowledge). You take the tomato purée or sauce from the prior categories and then you cook it more. And then you cook it more. And then some more. Tomato paste is effectively highly reduced tomato sauce that has had most of its liquid cooked off. This is used when you want to add tomato flavor to a dish without adding extra liquid to a dish. It can actually help to thicken a dish to a modest degree.

If you've made it this far, you should be pretty amazed at the various phases of matter that tomatoes can exist in. I mean, holy crap, that's a lot of tomato. I don't even like tomato all that much and I am impressed. If you start throwing in all the flavors, extra ingredients, and low-sodium varieties, the multitude of options is staggering.

A Calendar of Tales

Dave Mankoff — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 12:11:00 -0500

I love Neil Gaiman's work. So when I disovered a new collection of his short stories online, I became ecstatic. A Calendar of Tales is a collection of twelver short stories that he has written based on twitter responses to a series of questions that he posted online. I only wish that I had discovered it sooner.

What particularly draws me to his style of writing is that he exemplifies the practice of "show, don't tell" when he writes. He throws you into the first story just as quickly as the character he is introducing has been thrown in, ("disoriented", "unfocused"). Yet by the end of the tale, you understand what's happening and what's unfolding without ever being told. It's absolutely brilliant storytelling.

A direct link to A Calendar of Tales.

Why Ubuntu Has Abandoned You, and Why That's Ok

Dave Mankoff — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:14:00 -0500

Ever since Canonical released Unity in 2011 as the default desktop environment for their operating system Ubuntu , there have been angry rumblings from the Linux community over the degradation of desktop experience. Then, in what many took as further provocation, Canonical introduced Amazon.com "Lens" integration, allowing users of Unity to search Amazon directly from their desktop environment by default. This has been widely reviled by the community that once exalted Ubuntu as a shining example of Linux's growing maturity and adoption. Why has Canonical chosen a product path that seems to be progressively upsetting more and more of their core user base? A newly released video from yesterday should being to make this abundantly clear:

htmlmin

Dave Mankoff — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 09:29:00 -0500

I've written an HTML minification library that's ready for release. pip install htmlmin should get you going.

This site is statically generated via pelican and I noticed that the content generated by it was not as compact as it could be. I started looking into existing HTML minification solutions and was left disappointed. I found one, django-htmlmin that left me disappointed - it relies on Beautiful Soup, Django, and other libraries, which in turn have lots of other, non-HTML dependencies such as MySQL. Furthermore, it isn't really that featureful or well designed, as I looked through the code.

htmlmin has no dependencies other than Python's builtin HTMLParser. It has features that allow you to fine tune how the HTML gets minified and allows you to easily mark up your HTML inline to demarcate non-minifieable areas. It follows the HTML 5 specification closely to account for non-closed tags.

There's still a few more features that I want to add. Specifically, I want to add a feature that allows removal of opening and closing tags where allowed by the HTML5 specification. I also want it to recognize whitespace: pre inside of inline style tags. Those will come in the next version of the software as I design tests for them.