James Williams.me - Latest Comments

Re: Review: Kanban in Action

John Yeager — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 10:59:10 -0000

I have a copy of "The Toyota Way" I keep meaning to read but never get around to it. I think getting this from the horses mouth might help.

Re: Review: Kanban in Action

Ella Mapple — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 01:56:23 -0000

The aim of implementing a Kanban system is to limit the team’s Work In Progress based on the agreed capacity and to increase overall throughput. Identifying issues that impair performance helps maintain a steady flow of work, thereby having an overall impact on quality. This shortens lead times, which, in turn, improves the system’s predictability.

Re: iOS 7 – It’s Here!

Wayne — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 16:29:45 -0000

Mic Drop is hawt!

Re: iOS 7 – It’s Here!

Ashley R. — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:35:21 -0000

The mike drop at the end though. I'm here for this. Love it. (@TheDazzlingOne)

Re: To Remember: Sublime Text 2, Pandoc, and SmartMarkdown

Chris Garrard — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 14:05:14 -0000

On Windows you can fix the problem by adding your Pandoc directory to your System PATH environment variable and then there is no need to edit pandoc_render.py. When Pandoc installs, it adds the path to the User PATH, but apparently Sublime Text uses the System one.

Re: To Remember: Sublime Text 2, Pandoc, and SmartMarkdown

Petery — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:50:23 -0000

Makes sense, thank you. I was able to run the unix command using git bash. I also discovered Windows has a 'where' command as well:

http://superuser.com/questi...

I made the change you suggest to my pandoc_render.py and it works perfectly.

Re: To Remember: Sublime Text 2, Pandoc, and SmartMarkdown

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:42:56 -0000

where

is a Unix command. I've never found an equivalent on Windows.

The where command is just a Unix command that shows you the exact path of the pandoc executable so you can use that path in the Python code in ST. You can use any method you can think of to get that path.

Re: To Remember: Sublime Text 2, Pandoc, and SmartMarkdown

Petery — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:34:24 -0000

James - thanks for the helpful post. I am running into the same issue with Sublime Text and pandoc, but on a Windows machine. I'm trying to run your python 'where pandoc' command, but am getting a syntax error:
NameError: name 'where' is not defined

Is the 'where' command part of a library I need to import? A little more explanation on this point would be appreciated.

Re: Must-See Doctor Who

Tommy Vernieri — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:35:38 -0000

Thanks for the list James! When I first watched Doctor Who, I went straight through and I thought that was the best way to watch them.

For those who are less gung ho about it (especially given some of the slow episodes in the beginning of the first season), I have a different list I recommend. I think these are in a good order to give a first time viewer a sense of the Doctor without giving away too much of the story arc and without getting bogged down in some of the less exciting episodes.

The Girl in the Fireplace
Vincent and the Doctor
Blink
Human Nature
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe
Dalek
Silence in the Library
The Unicorn and the Wasp
Planet of the Dead
Father's Day

Re: It’s Almost Like They’re Speaking English

James "willia4" Williams — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 16:17:40 -0000

There are also Japanese variants which can be found (with subtitles) on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: Review: Solitaire

Kelley Eskridge — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 01:13:42 -0000

Thank you very much indeed for this. I've read a lot of responses to Solitaire over the years: yours is the first to directly call out the essential tension of joy and sorrow that was certainly part of the story for me as I was writing. I'm glad that worked for you. But I'm sorry about the upset (kind of, she said with a smile). Glad you picked it back up again!

Kelley

Re: Review: Towers of Midnight

James "willia4" Williams — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:03:13 -0000

Not yet. But I've bought them (and his The Way of Kings). I'm looking forward to reading them! Maybe this year if I don't turn back towards Sci-Fi. I'm catching up on N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy at the moment.

Re: Review: Towers of Midnight

pguyton — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:57:34 -0000

Have you read the mistborne books? Sanderson's own novels? I rather liked them and you can get a feel for him not working in someone elses house.

Re: Mass Effect 3: A Review

dowwy — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:10:17 -0000

I hAve YoUR ShePHERD. PLaCe A nEW XboX 360 oN MY dEsK, AnD YOU WilL hAVe HeR.

Re: Spoiler Test

James "willia4" Williams — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:04:57 -0000

I'm not a miracle worker.

Re: Spoiler Test

pguyton — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:03:13 -0000

I can read it in my google reader

Re: Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles

James "willia4" Williams — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:03:08 -0000

I seem to have referred to Dr. Watson as "James" instead of his actual name, "John". I will not correct this as my shame in this matter deserves to be public record.

Re: It Takes All Types

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 07:11:28 -0000

A couple of drive-by points:

I'm okay with the difference in "philosophy" between Apple and Microsoft. While I certainly have my preference, I think they're both reasonable ways to make something readable on the screen. I'm not sure that just leaving great bit holes in my letterforms is really part of Microsoft's philosophy, though. If that can't be considered a bug, then what the heck is going on over there?!

I'm surprised that print needs or uses hinting at all, since its "pixel grid" is so small. I'm even more surprised that this font file wouldn't be hinted for the screen because it has the word "Web" in its name. If that's really the case, it should be a hangable offense to market something that's completely unsuitable for the web as if it were designed for it instead.

At any rate, thanks for the input. I suspect that you deal with this stuff far more often in your day job than I ever hope to have to. I'll try to make some time to read your hinting link.

Re: It Takes All Types

Jared Smith — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:20:13 -0000

This Joel Spolsky post from 2007 does a nice job of articulating the reasons behind Apple and MSFT's font rendering. You're running into another issue, too -- some fonts are hinted specifically for the screen, while others are hinted for print (and struggle to match a screen's much lower resolution). Here's a great article all about hinting.

Re: Storage

Mykl.biz — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 14:46:56 -0000

So, it sounds like BIG DRIVE is more or less working for y'all, except it will soon be too small.

Why not just replace it with an equivalent 3 TB BIGGER DRIVE, transfer all existing data to the new drive, and live with that (until you collect over 3 TB of rips & DMGs & photos, by which time they'll probably be selling 4 TB drives)? This way, you needn't change anything else you're doing. (Except upgrading Drobo drives, as needed.) Is there a cheaper or easier solution?

Alternately, if you've got money to burn, you could get a mirrored RAID with two 3 TB drives, thus you'd have on-the-fly protection against drive failure. I suppose such a RAID might write data somewhat more slowly than a single drive; not sure if that would really affect your day-to-day use.

Either way, you can repurpose the old 2 TB drive, perhaps as an occasional physical offsite backup (e.g. using a SuperDuper script to clone a subset of BIGGER DRIVE, maybe just the photos and disk images), or pull the 2 TB drive out of the enclosure and put it in the Drobo.

Those strike me as the simpler options. Of course, if you're looking for an interesting project, you can pursue one of the other ideas.

Just thinking "aloud". I kinda enjoy the puzzle of backup solutions.

Re: Storage

James "willia4" Williams — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 09:59:21 -0000

It's mostly DVD rips and such for easy streaming to the PS3. We like our telly.

I also keep random disk images and such (it's like a much more hardcore version of the old days when I'd have a boot disk for every game I played so I could easily customize the autoexec.bat and config.sys as appropriate). Another backup of my photo library.

Really, mostly big files that we don't want to keep on our personal drives.

I'd store my iTunes library there too, but I like having it available on the rare occasions I take my MBP somewhere. If I ever upgrade to a MacPro, I'll probably consider it.

As for backup considerations: it has to happen automatically and invisibly, or we'll probably forget to bother. That's why the scheduled SuperDuper! backup to the Drobo is nice. It just happens.

Re: Storage

Mykl.biz — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:52:42 -0000

My head spins a little at the variety and complexity of some of these solutions, to say nothing of the expense. They sound like a lot of work to me. Maybe I'm just lazy.

I'm sorry to hear the USB Drobo is too slow to be a primary drive. I covet one of the faster Drobos, but can't really justify the expense. (And they aren't very transportable, an issue for me.)

I'm not sure what you've got stored on "BIG DRIVE". Everything? I keep all my documents and projects on internal drives (and synchronized via Dropbox, see below). My rather more massive music and media collection is stored separately on a fat external FireWire drive. Whenever any of these primary storage drives become more than 80-90% full, I replace them with a bigger one. It sounds like 3 TB could meet your BIGGER DRIVE needs, for now?

Most of my onsite backup peace-of-mind comes from using SuperDuper to clone these primary drives to a rotating little collection of naked SATA drives (connected to FW800 with something like the NewerTech Voyager Q hard drive dock). These are cheap, easy to store, even simple to leave one at a friend's house for offsite backup. I guess, since you already own the Drobo, you could continue using it for this purpose, simply upgrading it's internal drives as needed.

* Between dupes, my offsite peace-of-mind comes from keeping all my current files in Dropbox, which means it is not only on my internal drive, but also offsite "in the cloud", and automatically synchronized onto multiple computers. Obviously, I don't keep 2 TB in the cloud. But by segregating music and movies and photo albums to my "BIG DRIVE", everything else important is under 100 GB.

That's me. But I guess it depends what y'all have got filling up 2 TB.

Re: Review: Meditations on Middle-Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien by Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raymond E. Fei

James "willia4" Williams — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:07:43 -0000

I'm starting to think I may not have read this book in the right frame of mind. It's probably much better than I think it is: good for what it is, but not for what I want it to be. So, the fault is really more with me than the authors.

That doesn't excuse the spell-check fiascos, though!

Re: Someone Please Build This: My Killer Notetaking App

Michael Carnell — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:33:44 -0000

Interesting points. Did you make sure Evernote sees them? I guess some of it really depends on user too. I rarely at all use Delicious so that one never hits me. i use FoxMarks for storing all bookmarks and kind of think of them differently than notes. Good thoughts to ponder though!

Re: Still Not King

Chuck Boyd — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:30:31 -0000

I certainly have answered comments on my blog but THIS is the first time I've seen the blogger himself make the first comment!

Oh sure, you're "testing" to make sure it works. Seriously, after I had asked you several times if you blogged...here you are.

Thanks for the comment about using two credit cards on a purchase back in 2005. What surprised me was it simply had a box to check for "more than one card?" (I backtracked your comment to find your NEW blog.)

Bring Bren (and your camera) next Wednesday for the Photography group at 7pm. You can treat her to a Greek meal.