Good luck!

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Updated: since iWork.com is going away shortly, I have migrated the full set of recipes to a Jekyll based blog.  This has the great advantage that I was able to properly format the (formerly) text only recipes.

New link: Student Cookbook.

I am leaving in the old links below for while iWork.com lasts:

• 101 – Kitchen Gear
• Macaroni Cheese
• Chicken & Ham Pie
• Chili
• Beef Stew (and Pie)
• Tarka Dhal
• Vegetable Curry
• Tomato Sauce
• Sausage Sauce for Pasta
• Pasta with Smoked Salmon
• Meatballs
• Black Bean Soup
• Semi Freddo

More recipes (text format only)

The Wrong Way

This is how most people buy things. Find a list of “features” (features are attributes of a product, and could be anything; true, false, or utterly fictional); then find an alternative product, and measure the length of the two lists. Buy the one with the longest list.

This is wrong because the buyer has no personal involvement in decision making, and swallows whole the tales of the sellers, who obviously have a vested interest in selling their product, by beating a competitor. This is what causes the phenomenon of the people who believe the last person they spoke to, ignoring all others. No discrimination is applied, and this approach will fail.

The Half Right Way

Do you know someone who always buys the cheapest comparative product? We all know someone like this. It’s a poor way of making a decision, but it’s the way governments do it, as well as shoppers in some supermarkets – the cheapest ones, obviously. This approach fails because it doesn’t consider value.

At its heart, value is something very simple. Is it worth more to you than it costs? When “worth” is easy to calculate, which it often is for a business; say, the number of man-months to write a program, or to build a new office, then that decision becomes simple, and anyone in a position to make that sort of decision should know enough about driving a spreadsheet (or a calculator) to be able to reduce the decision down to numbers, to a simple profit or loss.

But when making a decision over two packs of vegetables in a supermarket, or two brands of beans, you have to weigh the worth to you, or your family, or better taste, better nutrition, and better ease of use. Sometimes this can be a clear decision, but more usually it isn’t. in these cases, what works best is to have previously considered the relevant factors, and decided on their priority.

The Right Way

Gather lists of features. Consider them all, and separate them into three parts: “must have”, “nice to have”, and “irrelevant”. Then match each product against these lists. If only one product hits all of your “must have” features, then you know what to do. If more than one product has them all, then you can take into account the “nice” features. If no product has them all, then you can either reassess your feature lists, or (more sensibly) decide not to buy.

This is extremely simple. An easily led person can skew the lists to favour one competitor, but then it becomes obvious to everyone who is cheating, and how. This works for big decisions as well as small, everyday ones. Sometimes a decision seems hard, but becomes obvious when you understand which features are important.

I was hiring for technical support and programmer positions, ranging from IBM assembler and mainframe MVS experience to Java and Objective-C programmers; sometimes this would have been mainstream qualifications, and other times not. I did a good job of this; thinking back, most of my hires received a substantial promotion not long after joining – a real promotion, but just moving from a trainee grade to another; and some left to join Apple and other significant employers. I didn’t like that much, but I think it shows that my hiring approach was working.

Current practice seems to be to require applicants to jump through humiliating hoops to prove their current knowledge of existing technologies – JavaScript, C++, .NET, where the hoops are basic algorithm tests. But this doesn’t get anywhere near the real issues. However, I have the Internet, search engines, auto-completing syntax aware IDEs, and an excellent collections of books; and with new technologies coming out all the time, keeping up with the best solutions can be a full-time job. The exam approach just isn’t a good one; in fact, getting the right employee with this approach can only be a matter of luck, where the hiring manager effectively ignores the guidelines, knowingly or not.

I don’t want a new employee who will be bored with their routine work – I want to stretch them, and I want them to learn on the job; in fact, if they won’t be regularly learning, they are wrong for the job, and I don’t think I can emphasise this enough. I’m not alone in saying this; if you read any of the books and blogs over the last ten years, you’ll have seen this time and time again. So what’s going wrong?

My strategy was simple: I wanted to hire people like me. Specifically, people who can think, can learn, and were motivated to achieve. I also had a hiring trick: my benchmark, if you like, was (and is) the classic hacker, as described in the appendix to Eric Raymond’s Jargon File (see here). The Pragmatic Programmer book covers the same ground from a different direction, but the conclusion is just the same.

This takes the data from the new SOE status page at http://www.soe.com/status/ and displays it on your phone; you can select data for a single game and refresh that display if you wish.

It runs on iPad as well as iPhone – it probably won’t run on iPhones using OSes older than 4.1. Now that it’s shown up in the store, there’s a couple of minor tweaks I will make and resubmit. Any suggestions or bug reports are welcome.

One of the ideas I had come across independently was the use of a personal wiki – I was using TiddlyWiki a few years ago (2006), mainly as a book reviewing tool, then gradually stopped using it. So this was my trigger to check if it still existed, and where it had gone to in the intervening years.

The good news is that TiddyWiki still exists, and seems to have gone from strength to strength. Back then, it was an implementation of a classic Wiki, all in html and Javascript in a single file. The current version has adopted an ingenious plug-in structure with its own ecosystem. There is also a GTD based modified TiddlyWiki, d3. Incidentally, I used to use Jayson Adams Notebook on NeXT, which approaches very close to being an older implementation of a visual/clippings based wiki – and seems to have reappeared on MacOS X in recent years, and I just discovered that there’s an iPad version.

To get an idea of TiddlyWiki’s current state, take a look at the multi-user forum in 15 minutes video.

The book is on the Pragmatic Programmer’s site at http://pragprog.com/book/ahptl/pragmatic-thinking-and-learning .

Where to stay

If I have to kill time in a USA town, I will check in to a cheap motel (needs advance research for in town, but out of town Motel 6 and too many other chains to mention – but still $40 – $80/night).  Some motels will give you a discount for showing your AA card, because it may be linked to the AAA (American Automobile Association); I have no idea if it really is, but the desk clerks often seem to think so.

Remember that if you are flying in from overseas, you will be required to give a street address on one of your forms – and “Motel 6, St Louis” doesn’t work, I know because I have tried it.  They actually want you to give a street number, which can be hard to find out.

Eating

Find a diner, because a cheap breakfast is dinner at any time, and quality is usually ok (Waffle House and IHOP good, Denny’s not so much – non-chain are usually the best).  One large smoothie (eg, Jamba Juice) has more than enough calories for dinner AND breakfast.  If you are in a small town, there is usually a restaurant of some form that can serve good steak and fries; failing that, look for a non-chain burger shack (seriously), as they can be good.  A lot of cheaper restaurants will include a free salad and vegetables, with their main course, so read the menu carefully to see what is included.

I like to find a supermarket, because I can spend a couple of minutes standing in front of the full section of spray cheese in amazement.  There are other scary things, like trying to find non-processed cheese. It is usually a good idea to buy a few bottles of water and/or diet soda, and a bag of bagels or fruit to cover snacks and non-diner breakfast days.  The problem there is that bagels aren’t great nutrition, and USA supermarket fruit is giant sized, looks great, and has the taste and texture of cotton wool.  I will probably buy toothpaste, shaving gel and disposable razors here, too.
Most supermarkets will also sell ok T-shirts – Hanes, Fruit of the Loom.  Although there are plenty of Gap and Old Navy for cheap and reliable supplies.

Comms

With food and basic shopping covered, the next priority is communications.

Take your phone!

Remember to disable mobile data, avoid texts like the plague, and try not to make phone calls if you don’t have to – although keep roaming on, so that you can call in an emergency.  But wifi enabled phones are really great to have with you.  Most coffee shops will have free wifi, as will McDonalds; most motels will probably have it too, but with awful signal quality.  Check email, use Skype and Facebook from your phone.  Free Skype voice calls beat phone calls one billion percent.  I usually would have a laptop, but back in the day I could make things work with a Palm (submitting stories and doing minor network admin work; I really need a real laptop for programming).

Money

I don’t think I have ever been asked to enter my PIN, except at an ATM; just a signature for credit cards.  But UK banks (for me) usually won’t accept international charges unless I have told them in advance.  Which is why I still always take relatively large sums of cash with me (converted to dollars at the airport).  ATMs are fine, but there will probably be extra charges and lousy exchange rates.  Remember to tip!  15-20% in restaurants, seriously.

Downtime

Make a list of special features that the places you are visiting are noted for. Browse some guide books – Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, Time Out – but do that in the UK and make notes, as you won’t want to be lunking ultra heavy books with you.  Look for free apps from these publishers for your iPhone (and if you don’t have an iPhone, tough luck).  There are some really good one region guide books that you can only find in the local area in the USA, so check the book stores after arrival if you run out of things to do (I’m think of ones like ‘Maui Revealed’).  There may be newspaper articles with suggestions of things to do, which Google can find quickly for you – but again, do this in advance and make lists of places and web sites.  You may like museums and art galleries; or you may find rollercoasters and sports bars more exciting.

You can also plan walks based on the guide book maps in city centres; I had a great walk route in San Francisco, and ones for New York and Washington DC too.

You can sit in bookstores and coffee shops and read and people watch for hours.

Find a cinema to catch up on films that aren’t out here, although the lag on release dates has been dramatically reduced – but it’s still a great way to kill time; don’t forget the popcorn, hot dog, slurpee and candy experience, too.

Find a mall.  You can window shop for hours, find a food court to eat or a coffee shop to just sit.  And it can be great exercise, just walking around the large ones.

Find a bookstore.  I like books, and will buy ones to read and dump.

One that I have almost never tried, but really should: go to a game (that means football, baseball, (ice) hockey, according to season and region).  I did it once at a Microsoft Developer Conference, and it was both fun and sensible, unlike (British) football.

See also: San Francisco.

It was over 20 years ago, and the flying involved planes.  I would fly around Europe a couple of times a week, and could bank on an intercontinental flight once a month.  My packing checklist was very simple – tickets, passport, wallet (UK cash, credit cards, driving license).  Visas would have been arranged, and collected, beforehand.  The rest was trivial – as flights were almost all business class, suiter or overnight bag with washing kit (razor, gel, shampoo for long trips), socks, underpants, spare shirt, spare suit.  Long trips would get a change of shoes, which is a smart tip for the inexperienced.  I might even have packed a Leatherman!  Then change money to the local currency at the airport as I was leaving.

But it’s a different world now, and my circumstances have changed.  No sharps, no liquids over 100ml, strict baggage size checks, charges for checked baggage, diabetes, and economy class.

Essentials

The essentials haven’t changed – ticket, passport, wallet – although a lot has been added, and they don’t work the same way.  Tickets can be an e-ticket; most airlines will expect you to have printed them (which is as dumb a thing as I can imagine).  Make sure that your passport is valid for long enough – I think the USA wants at least six month, but then you will also need to have paid for the ESTA form online ($14; lasts for two years, and it is very important to make a note of your reference number, as it won’t be sent to you).

Money

Phone your bank (for your credit cards) and tell them that you will be travelling, and where.  I have several times now had my credit cards sneakily deactivated.  If credit cards are a problem, in the USA you should be able to purchase fixed amount cards at gas stations and other places (I haven’t ever needed to do this, so I’m not sure of the details).

Wash kit

Wash kit hasn’t much changed; disposable razor and gel. You can’t readily get gel in 100ml sizes, so buy some at your destination, although l’Occitane make some small size aerosol gels.  Lush make some good solid shampoo bars, and if you experiment you can probably find some hand soaps that work for shampoo, shaving (but then you’ll need a brush) and clothes washing.

Medical issues

Medical issues make this all a lot more complicated.  Travel insurance is essential: for Europe, you can get the EHIC form, but it may be worthwhile buying annual insurance for a family, rather than single trip insurance; I have used Centurion for some time.  Make sure that you declare any pre-existing conditions – you only need one medical evacuation to repay the premiums for a millennium.  If you need medications, take the tear off bottom part of your repeat prescription with you, and ask for a doctor’s letter (this will cost money – £10 for my last one).  A copy of an eyeglasses prescription may also be useful in emergencies.

Take more than enough medicines for your trip; if they include needles, the doctor’s letter is essential.  General recommendations are to take double the supplies you need, pack one set in baggage, and keep the other with you.  If you are travelling with hand-luggage only, which is a really good idea if you can do it, put one set in your carry on and try to have the other set on your person: even carry on bags can get stolen.

Packing

For other packing, I try to go with hand luggage only, even for a one/two week stay.  That is likely to mean that I plan on buying some change of clothing at my destination, as well as hand washing dirties.  Useful tip: the cheaper motels usually have a laundrette available for guests; stock up on quarters. There can be a lot of discussion about using a hold-all or a wheelie bag; personally, I hate the impact of a heavy bag on my back, so I often prefer a wheelie.  But the wheels and extendable handle take up a lot of space.  As the heaviest items are often books, invest in a Kindle (or just use iBooks, if you are that way inclined).  Remember that the walk from security to your checkin gate can take 15-20 minutes at a large airport; when changing flights, you may have to do that twice (once at the arriving terminal, change terminals, then again at your departure terminal).

Gadgets

Turn off data plans; in fact, don’t use your UK SIM abroad except in emergencies.  It may be possible to get a short-term pay as you go SIM at your destination, but the USA certainly isn’t as sophisticated as the UK for these matters.  The smart part of smartphones will often work – free wifi is more widely available (now) in the USA than it is in the UK.  But the phone part will be dangerously expensive, especially data.

Take chargers.  UK plugs are bulky, so it’s worth seeing if you have US (two prong) plugs for important devices.  If not, there’s a good chance that your devices can be charged via a USB socket, so you may be able to share the charger.  Both Apple and Kindle have this sort of charging system.

Airline food sucks

So refuse it, and either pack your own, or see if one of the airport restaurants sells a decent salad or sandwich.  Drinking alcohol on a plane isn’t usually a good idea, although it can help put you to sleep in desperation.

Security checkpoints

When packing, put any liquids, in individual containers no more than 100ml each (that’s about 1.6 fl oz, I believe?), into a large, transparent, plastic bag, and have that in the top of your carry-on.  Wear shoes that can easily be taken on and off (so boots are bad, and so are complex laces), and pack any belt.  You will be told (if you are lucky) to put shoes, belt, liquids bag, all outer clothing (jackets and coats) and laptop into trays and put them through the X-ray machine.  It’s a good idea to make sure that your pockets are empty, as keys and loose coins will probably set off the metal detectors.

There’s a long list of food items that you can’t take through security checkpoints: meat, fruit, bottles of water.  So plan on buying any of these supplies air-side.

When filling in the landing forms, remember that you must have a street address for your first night’s stay; just “Motel 6″ won’t pass muster – so write down an address for Motel 6 or Holiday Inn at your destination, before leaving.

Finally – the Leatherman?  Sorry, I’ve lost too many of these by forgetting to remove them from my bags. Let’s add scissors, forks (that one’s for Chris!), sewing kits and loads of others to that list.  All of which means you won’t be able to break into the stupid thick plastic most gadget purchases are wrapped in.

Stupid story: if you’re British, you know what Christmas pudding is. It’s outstanding characteristic is that it is solid. Well, Americans think that “pudding” is a semi-liquid goop. So the security goons decided we couldn’t take it as a present to our son.

Reasons for the decision: well, they fitted into the niches on either side of the bathroom door remarkably closely, and we could get mirrored doors, just like the ones in our last house.  So we ordered on-line the set of parts we thought we needed (and accidentally twice as many shelves as we wanted, it was easy to miss that they came in pairs).  That was two 201cm x 100cm x 60cm PAX plus four doors, with four sets of hinges.  All good so far.

While we were waiting for the delivery, we found and watched a good video on YouTube about the assembly.  It was amusing, looked easy, and the video gave some good tips.

So here’s what we found that annoyed me (I can be easily annoyed).  First – the supplied diagram didn’t point out important alignment issues (and in some cases, neither did the video).  It also showed different configurations than we had ordered, which made checking the alignment of parts harder than it needed to be.

The video did make it clear that the initial assembly, consisting of two sides plus top and bottom and the two bottom boards, had almost no structural integrity; the Ikea instructions didn’t make that clear enough.  What gives the little rigidity that the structure possesses comes 90% from nailing in the backboard.  When the box flexes, as it will because it can’t stand upright unsupported, the dowels fixing the bottom boards will pull out and/or break.  I would suggest using some PVA glue to help hold it together, although we didn’t try that ourselves (too little, too late!).  At that point things may go south rather rapidly.

Don’t place any lateral pressure on the frame until the back is nailed in place; it must stay very close to a right-angle at all four corners all the time.  Fail to do that and dowels will snap, fittings will pull out and even fibreboard will break.

Another untried suggestion from me would be to add a few (four per wardrobe) right-angle braces to the middle of each corner.

Next point belongs to the door hinges.  First, the big half of the hinge attaches to the door, and the small half to the frame, as the video makes clear.  We managed to get the lesser half (on the frame) the wrong way around at first: the answer is that it has a small chevron pressed into the middle of the hinge part, and that chevron should point towards the door.  If the parts are correctly aligned, and you match up the door side of the hinge before the read side, the hinge will snap together with very little pressure.  If this isn’t clear, try to assemble a hinge before attaching it to the door.  There is a small lever at the back of the hinge (facing towards the rear of the wardrobe when in place) that will let you disassemble it easily.

So, if your problem is Twitter, XAuth is the answer – or part of it. The “standard” solution to Twitter integration is MGTwitterEngine, but it has been very slow to support XAuth. Various people have made their own forks of MGTwitterEngine in the middle of the enhancement process, and released their own “solutions” with frozen copies of half-upgraded MGTwitterEngine and other necessary components.

This forced me to work out my own solution, free of all the crud and using current versions of the standard components. But that’s not all… there is also a user experience issue, as we should be authenticating each application one time only, and enabling a separate UX that permits deauthenticating when required. So here is my solution; a demo application using two standard view controllers, one for posting, one for authenticating, with instructions on how to get your XAuth code, and how to keep your MGTwitterEngine, OAuthConsumer and HFSFKeychainUtils current – all supplied as unmodified source files. Look at the README.TXT inside the project.

The basic principle is to call TweetController modally from one of your controllers, and implement the delegate protocol to dismiss the controller when it’s done. Make sure that you have put in your application’s XAuth key and secret into the .m file, or this won’t work. If there is no OAuth secret stashed in the keychain, the TwitterAuth view controller will be displayed modally. It asks for username/password, then talks to Twitter. The details are saved to the keychain, which ensures that they are encrypted, which means that they are safe from iPhone hackers – a good ploy for any login details. The posting interface has a button to remove the authentication from the keychain, plus a button to turn on and off geolocation details – defaulting to off. There’s a simple text length counter included in the UI, and the API lets you set a starting value for the post text.

Source code (including current versions of the components, please update them!) here.

It works out well; there is effectively only one class that you have to think about, ADBannerView – although you will see log messages from at least one other class messing up your log files; and one delegate protocol to implement, with optional methods.

In practice, there are a few scenarios that you will have to handle. The highest priority for most people will be handling situations where there is no connection to the ad server, so that you should avoid displaying an ad. There’s a delegate method for that, both one for notifying the delivery of an ad, and a fail method.

Then you may way to switch orientations; all ads should be supplied in both formats, but a quirk of the system means that ads align to their bottom, and as landscape ads are shorter than portrait ads, a top aligned ad will have to be shifted up to cope with this.

See the code for examples. I copied liberally from the Apple documentation, with just some minor tweaks to implement basic solutions for these problems. My code won’t work correctly for bottom aligned ads, but it will be trivial to adjust, as it is the simpler case. I position the banner off-screen to start with, then move it on-screen to a designated location when the ad is delivered.

Source for the project here.