Pedro Assunção » findings

Red Hot Chili Peppers lyrics generator

Pedro Assunção — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:09:40 +0000

Here’s a little something i tried yesterday: a ruby script that mixes and matches verbs, nouns, adjectives, and colors to come up with crazy ass lyrics, red hot style. Enjoy

$nouns = IO.readlines('names.txt')
$adjectives = IO.readlines('adjectives.txt')
$verbs = IO.readlines('verbs.txt')
$adjectives << ['red','blue','green','white','black','yellow','brown','gray']
$pronouns = IO.readlines('pronouns.txt')
$adverbs = IO.readlines('adverbs.txt')
$prepositions = IO.readlines('prepositions.txt')

def get_rand(collection)
  sleep rand / 10000
  collection[rand * collection.length.to_i - 1]
end

def preposition_phrase
  "#{get_rand($prepositions).strip} the #{get_rand($nouns).strip}"
end

def adjectivated_subject_phrase
  the_part = "the" if rand.to_f > 0.5
  adjective = get_rand($adjectives).strip if rand.to_f > 0.5
  return "#{the_part} #{adjective} #{get_rand($nouns).strip}" if the_part and adjective
  nil
end

def generate_phrase
  as = adjectivated_subject_phrase
  adjectivated_subject_part = as.nil? ? get_rand($pronouns).strip : as
  preposition_part = rand.to_f > 0.5 ? preposition_phrase : ""
  verb_part = get_rand($verbs).strip
  object_part = rand.to_f > 0.25 ? get_rand($nouns).strip : ""
  the_part = (rand.to_f > 0.5 and object_part != "") ? "the" : ""
  adverb_part = rand.to_f > 0.75 ? get_rand($adverbs).strip : ""

  "#{adjectivated_subject_part} #{preposition_part} #{verb_part} #{the_part} #{object_part} #{adverb_part}".squeeze(" ").strip
end

def generate_lyrics
  result = ""
  (1..5).each do
    first_phrase = generate_phrase
    new_phrase = generate_phrase
    while new_phrase[-2, 2] != first_phrase[-2, 2] or new_phrase.split(" ")[-1] == first_phrase.split(" ")[-1] do
      new_phrase = generate_phrase
    end
    result << "#{first_phrase}\r\n#{new_phrase}\r\n\r\n"
  end
  result
end

puts generate_lyrics

Here are the sources: rhcp_lyrics_v2.tar. As a bonus there is a script to see how many attempts are required to reach the phrase “The quick brown fox”

Bird versus window

Pedro Assunção — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:16:01 +0000

Is it me or did a bird crash into this window? The smudges on the outside really suggest it. Fascinating stuff! Except for the bird, that is

No related posts.

Arm broken equals free time

Pedro Assunção — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:18:46 +0000

I have broken an arm. This is the 1st time in my life that I have broken any bones in my body. And it sucks!

But, rather than being all pessimistic about it, I prefer to see the positive side. See, you get a lot of free time to do things that you probably have been postponing for ages. For instance, taking care of your taxes, organizing all the receipts of last year’s expenses, or even turning an old laptop into a hallway digital information system (yes, with one arm). These are the kind of things that I would definitely be dragging on for years before I finally came around to doing them.

Another good side of this situation is the fact that you learn how to be more resourceful because, obviously with only one available arm, trivial everyday tasks become rather challenging. To give you an example I bet that you have never tried to put on socks or open bottles with only one hand. This actually gave me an interesting idea which is to write a couple of posts about easier ways to perform some of these tasks. But that’s something for another occasion.

The same good side about breaking a bone, time, is also in itself really crappy. I cannot wait to go skydiving again so, naturally, I had to ask my doctor whether there was a way I could speed up the healing process. Maybe with some kind of calcium and/or vitamin supplements, I thought, my body would be good to go in a month. Of course the doctor, after laughing in my face, proceeded to explain that there isn’t really anything you can do but wait. The tissue regeneration takes about 3 weeks. Because, when you break a bone, you also do a lot of damage to the surrounding flesh, tendons, and muscles. The bone itself takes about 5 weeks to reach a state of good calcification. Finally, when you get the cast taken off, you have to do a bit of physiotherapy to get back the amplitude of movement on the joint(s) that have been on cast. The bone calcification will continue on for one or 2 months, after which it will be so much stronger that you will never break it in that same place again.

The bottom line is my doctor has now become my newest skydiving instructor: I will only be allowed to go up when he says so

Swatch to sell touchscreen watches

Pedro Assunção — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:45:33 +0000

They are coming out October 26th and i want one. Enough said

No related posts.

Export Mysql result as CSV

Pedro Assunção — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:25:04 +0000

Don’t ask me how the sed magic works, but it does. Taken from here.

Running this:

mysql -u -p  -B -e "select * from videos_video;" | sed 's/\t/","/g;s/^/"/;s/$/"/;s/\n//g'

will produce something like this:

"id","title","url"
"1","video 1","http://youtube(...)"
"2","video 2","http://youtube(...)"
"3","video 3","http://youtube(...)"

Just pipe it to a .csv file and you’re done

Nice tweaks for OSX

Pedro Assunção — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:11:06 +0000

I think most of them work on both Snow Leopard and Lion. Not sure about previous versions. Just type the ones you want to activate/deactivate on the command line and have fun.

# Enable full keyboard access for all controls (e.g. enable Tab in modal dialogs)
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleKeyboardUIMode -int 3

# Enable the 2D Dock
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -bool true

# Disable menu bar transparency
defaults write -g AppleEnableMenuBarTransparency -bool false

# Expand save panel by default
defaults write -g NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool true

# Expand print panel by default
defaults write -g PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint -bool true

# Disable shadow in screenshots
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

# Enable highlight hover effect for the grid view of a stack (Dock)
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -bool true

# Enable spring loading for all Dock items
defaults write enable-spring-load-actions-on-all-items -bool true

# Disable press-and-hold for keys in favor of key repeat
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

# Disable auto-correct
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticSpellingCorrectionEnabled -bool false

# Disable window animations
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false

# Disable disk image verification
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify -bool true
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify-locked -bool true
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify-remote -bool true

# Automatically open a new Finder window when a volume is mounted
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages auto-open-ro-root -bool true
defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages auto-open-rw-root -bool true

# Avoid creating .DS_Store files on network volumes
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true

# Disable Safari’s thumbnail cache for History and Top Sites
defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy -int 2

# Enable Safari’s debug menu
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu -bool true

# Remove useless icons from Safari’s bookmarks bar
defaults write com.apple.Safari ProxiesInBookmarksBar "()"

# Disable send and reply animations in Mail.app
defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableReplyAnimations -bool true
defaults write com.apple.Mail DisableSendAnimations -bool true

# Disable Resume system-wide
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

# Enable Dashboard dev mode (allows keeping widgets on the desktop)
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode -bool true

# Reset Launchpad
rm ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db

# Show the ~/Library folder
chflags nohidden ~/Library

# Disable local Time Machine backups
sudo tmutil disablelocal

# Kill affected applications
for app in Safari Finder Dock Mail; do killall "$app"; done

# Fix for the ancient UTF-8 bug in QuickLook (http://mths.be/bbo)
echo "0x08000100:0" > ~/.CFUserTextEncoding

The original source can be found here.

Browser and visitor statistics

Pedro Assunção — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:50:33 +0000

Was just now looking at google analytics for my blog and got some surprises, especially when it comes to the browser people use to access it. Seems that Chrome is leading and Internet Explorer is dead. Long live Internet Explorer

Browser usage

Also, very interesting is the fact that i’m Portuguese and Portugal is not on the top visitors’ countries list. Special thanks to my followers in India, you know who you are

Language

UPDATE: As requested by a friend of mine, here are some more statistics: Top sources and keywords.

Top sources chart

Top sources list

Top keywords

Peace out

200 skydives and a long way to go

Pedro Assunção — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 10:25:47 +0000

This Saturday – while coming back from the dropzone – i noticed that my last jump of the day had been my 200th. After realizing it, i started thinking about what it means and came to the conclusion that it means nothing. Think about it: that’s only about 3 hours of training (each skydive is around 1 minute), diluted across endless times of waiting to jump. Now, in any other sport, you can easily practice much more frequently and more at a time. And you would still be far, far away from becoming a pro. Hell, even people with 30 hours of skydiving time would not be considered even remotely close to pro in any other sport, since it takes much more than that to master anything.

So, while it does make me feel good to have achieved almost half of one of my current skydiving goals (becoming an instructor) and fully accomplishing another one (have enough jumps to start practicing wingsuit flying) i have to conclude that there is still a loooong way to go to achieve perfection. In the meantime, one tries to have fun walking the path

Blue skies.

OSX: Change time machine auto backup interval

Pedro Assunção — Thu, 26 May 2011 07:56:45 +0000

The default time machine backup interval is every hour. Sometimes this can be really annoying so, if you find yourself in need to change this, here’s how:

Navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and locate the file named com.apple.backupd-auto.plist.

Inside this file you will find the following content:

 StartInterval
 3600

3600 means hourly (60 minutes X 60 seconds). If you multiply by 4, for instance, and use that value (14400) you will have automatic backups every 4 hours instead. Or whatever interval you prefer.
Happy backing up

NonUniqueObjectException: a different object with the same identifier value was already associated with the session

Pedro Assunção — Thu, 05 May 2011 18:00:26 +0000

If you are developing in Swing and using hibernate you might – at some point in time – run into this exception:

org.hibernate.NonUniqueObjectException: a different object with the same identifier value was already associated with the session

What happened, you might ask? Well, turns out that when you close the session that created a given hibernate-managed object, this object becomes “detached” (meaning hibernate no longer has any control over it). So, when you attempt to save or update it in another session, hibernate will complain with that exception, because it can no longer tell which is the “true” version of the object.

The solution(s)? Look inside your code for places where you might be closing the session and take that out. That’s the solution in the case where you are using a long session (one that spans the entirety of the application’s life). In case you really want to close the session, you might consider using the session’s merge() method, which basically merges the fields in both the attached and non-attached instances of the object, and performs an update.

Hope that saves someone half a day of debugging