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From: Mark Fowler
Date: 23:58 on 22 Mar 2004
Subject: SQL
I've written this email several times, trying to find a way of expressing
exactly what is wrong with SQL. I find I am not up to the task. It sucks
in so many ways I could write an entire article on it.
So, in summary:
SQL SUCKS SO BADLY THAT FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARS NASA HAVE
BEEN MISTAKENLY INVESTIGATING IT AS A BLACK HOLE
I thank you.
Mark.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 10:26 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Copying music with iTunes You can't. STEVE JOBS YOU SUCK DONKEY WANG. I have three macs and an iPod that I want all my music on. iTunes on one of my computers can see all the music on all of them, but it can't copy it to the local drive to keep everything synced. I have to drop to Finder, or in the case of the iPod, the shell. Fucking closed source software. Maybe that loon wearing a computer disk on his head was onto something after all. That is all. Thanks. Mark.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 00:16 on 19 Feb 2004 Subject: iTunes, and remembering it where it was Dear iTunes. Yes, I've heard this bit of this track before. Remember last time when I was half way though this audiobook and it was just getting to the really exciting bit and I had to get off the train and do a load of work and I quit iTunes? No? Oh, you want to go back to where I was when I did this a couple of days ago instead and forget all about this time? I'll guess I'll re-listen to the last ten minutes shall I. Not that that ruins the whole experience. Oh no. Thanks for the excellent seek interface too. I like the only way I can fast forward or rewind in a track is by dragging the slider onscreen. This works really really well when your track is five hours long, and the fact that each pixel maps to a minute and a half when I make the window as large as it can be (as we all know music players should always be run in full screen) isn't a problem whatsoever. Mark.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 14:08 on 14 Feb 2004 Subject: Mac OS X and Force Quit Okay, why doesn't force quit force quit? Camnio stops responding (okay, that's what I get for using beta versions, so sue me.) It sits there showing the Spinning DoohDah Of Paiiiin. Click and hold on icon on dock. "Force Quit". Camino doesn't immediately die. Huh? SIGKILL it! Or is this some kild of wussy Force Quit? The "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine." kind of force quit? Sod that. Give me back xkill any day. Click. ZAP! GONE. HAHAHAHAHA. What I don't expect, and I really mean this, is the Dock then to start the Spinning DoohDah Of Paiiiin. And Lightswitch X to do the same. And when I finally give up and alt-funny-looking-flower-key-esc to bring up, um, task manager, or whatever it's called, to kill Camino it to unceremoniously log me out back to the login window. Oi! I was using that. For gawds sake, IT'S AN APP. IT DIED. DEAL. Isn't this the whole point in having an operating system, to police the apps on the system? DON'T DIE SHEP! Damn operating systems.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 14:46 on 23 Jan 2004 Subject: Website Passwords I can't remember my passwords for websites. I'm sorry, but it's just not worth my while remembering the password for your random site. Hell, I can hardly remember my password for my online banking - there's no way I'm going to memorise the details of my Bob's online bait house emporium account. Most web site designers have realised this. I like the fact that most sites can mail me passwords if I click on the 'ooops I'm a moron' button (or mail me a link that will let me reset my passwords, which is better as it never sends what might be a sensitive password over cleartext.) Other sites haven't. They expect me to email a real person. Real people are slow. And real people get pissed off if you mail them every couple of weeks. Hey, George, I've got an idea how we can save our company a mint! You know how Betty down in accounts spends half her day emailing clients with lost passwords? Maybe we could get that repetitive boring task done by one of these new fangled computer thingywosits! No Ernie, that'll never fly. bah.
From: Mark Fowler
Date: 15:59 on 19 Jan 2004
Subject: Spreadsheet cell notation
Today I am hating (actually, for the last week I have been hating)
spreadsheet cell notation. A2, F7, BA99, etc.
Basic problems:
a) I don't think in letters. 'M' doesn't automatically seem ten over
than 'C' where '13' does compared to '3';
b) They're indexed from one, not zero. I've been a programmer too long
and this is driving me nuts.
c) Using different units for going across rather than down is *nuts*.
It's impossible to reuse code that you've written for addition
in one dimension for going in the other
d) When the spreadsheet goes to three dimensions (i.e. it has multiple
'sheets' in the book) it goes truly insane. Now I have to write
this in Excel:
='Sheet 1'!A1 + 'Sheet2'!A1 + 'Sheet3'!A1
Yep that's right. I have to remember what my sheets are called.
Well *that's* reusable. And can I just use a =SUM(...). Nope, gotta
do each of the sheets individually.
Oh and Excel formulas have a maximum length of 1024 chars. So if you
have too many sheets you're screwed.
Who came up with this notation? What's wrong with a *comma* to delimit
across and down, and between sheets.
Programming spreadsheets is *hard*. Anyone who knows a way around this,
I'd be grateful if they could tell me. However, it's still hateful since
this would be easy with a multidimensional array.
Mark.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 10:09 on 18 Dec 2003 Subject: Textedit Bother. My Mac Crashed. And I hadn't saved the work I was working on. I know everyone tells you to save often. The thing is I don't - because I don't normally *need* to. Both emacs and vi (my normal editors of choice) quite happly cope when you suddenly kill them and have a recent copy of the document to hand. Textedit, it would seem, does not. ARSE. I hope I can remember what that said. Mark.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 15:49 on 11 Dec 2003 Subject: FTP FTP> mv foo bar mv: no such command. I mean. What The Hell? Has no one thought it might be an idea to add this? How difficult can it be? I've yet to find an operating system that runs FTP and can't move files. Or has someone added this while I haven't been paying attention and decided to call it something other than 'mv'? I'm not sure which would be worse. How hard can it be? ffs. Mark.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 09:51 on 21 Nov 2003 Subject: IE and PNG and alpha Look, it's a standard. Get with the programme. Yes, I know you've 'won' the browser wars now and there's no business need to ever do any updates to your browser ever again, but it would be nice if it worked and we didn't have to do hacks like this: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/alpha.html FFS. Mark.
From: Mark Fowler Date: 14:04 on 19 Nov 2003 Subject: Still Hating Subversion Installs on the Mac. I have upgraded to 10.3. I have upgraded to the latest version of fink. The whole way ssl subversion clients seem to be built has changed. And it *still* doesn't work[1]. It's still no-one's fault (it's not the fink people's fault, I understand what unstable means,) it's not the subversion developers fault (I understand what alpha means.) But I really really really want a ssl svn client for my mac. And I really hate that I can't get one working. Mark. [1] If anyone really cares, it now is reliant on ruby-dev, and ruby-dev fails to install. I think (from the cryptic messages) it's been replaced with something else, but I don't know what.
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