Why I am excited about the new macbook

I am not normally a super mac fanboy; it's true that I am typing this on a Macbook pro now but I did't buy it myself - it was provided for me. But I still love it and definitely would buy it as my next laptop.

Apple just released their latest line in the Macbook Pro series and I think it's really cool. Whenever you mention it your nearest (most likely, vim using) colleague will poo-poo it and complain that it has lost the escape key. However, in its place is something much more exciting. I really like the idea of the customizable screen at the top.

In the past most keyboards were fairly standard. There was the 99% of keyboards that were your standard qwerty (maybe with a few extra buttons for power or volume or media control) as well as was the gamer keyboards that used to have loads of custom buttons everywhere but no one ever took the time to properly hook those up to all their apps and doing so was tedious and error prone. Now applications will be able to provide great hardware shortcuts for all those common tasks using the screen at the top of the keyboard. It has been made accessible for the everyman.

Have you ever watched someone at an airline check in desk? Or watched someone use a trading terminal? They don't really look at the keyboard, they mash out keystrokes and shortcuts like it's an extension of their body. They don't interact with the computer as much as work with the computer. They work together to get the job done. This is how I see the button bar will be great for the Macbook. It will become second nature to zip through Photoshop or Chrome using that button bar along the top. You won't need to remember every changing or inconsistent keyboard combinations (RIP the backspace key in Chrome) but instead you'll naturally reach for the virtual key in the Macbook screen. You will work better with your Macbook and get every day tasks done that much faster. Maybe you'll have all your favourite internet shortcuts up there within a fingers reach, or maybe you'll be able to whizz through your photo albums after vacation without lifting your fingers for the mouse or keyboard. I know from my job that these special keys become second nature after a few goes of using them as they simply make everything faster and more natural.

I'm sure there will be some interesting apps that come out around everyday tasks that will become that little bit less mundane or tedious.

Having said all that, are we still in an age where the Caps lock key is still a thing? Really?

Do you collaborate or cooperate?

Some thought provoking reading on whether your organisation is working together in a collaborative mode or a cooperative mode. Never really thought about it like that before.

Why would you not differentiate member variables?

Another post from the llvm mailing list, this time on the topic of member variable naming conventions.

I remember hacking away on some llvm code and having a terrible time with this. It can also lead into dangerous ambiguities when you use local variables that actually hide member variables. The whole naming convention they use is insane. I wonder if they use any static analysis tools?

Holacracy

Someone pointed me to this article on Holacracy which is an interesting approach to organisation. You effectively form 'circles' of people who are focused on an area and it is composed of diverse sets of people. You are on multiple circles at once and move around. Seems like an interesting idea but a little anarchic.

Internals of Firefox Threading

Interesting post on the internals of firefox's new multithreading 

Mega repo or microrepos? Llvm-dev take

There is an interesting discussion going on at the llvm-dev mailing list as to whether to split their massive svn repo into multiple smaller repositories with git.

http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2016-July/103097.html

I have come across the problem so many time and the issue ultimately boils down to workflow: tools really don't support this. I want to build the modules individually and then sometimes for integration all together. If there is a dependency between repositories I sometimes need to express it.

Surely there is a better way.

Short Term Apartment Hunting in NY

I recently found myself searching for short term apartments in New York City. This was surprisingly difficult so I thought I would list some of the resources I found that met my constraints.

I wanted a furnished place for a maximum six months. I have no credit history (my first time here), no guarantor (I have no family here and wanted to avoid relying on friends). Finally, I wanted to be somewhere between the East Village and 60th Street in Manhattan or Williamsburg.

Without further ado, here are the websites that showed most promise:

• https://www.homeaway.com/ - like Airbnb but longer term and thus slightly cheaper.
• https://www.roomorama.com/ - same as above.
• http://streeteasy.com/ - dedicated to NYC but very hit and miss. Involves contacting realtors through the 'Contact' button which invariably leads to tedious email chains trying to arrange viewings etc. There are some 'No Fee' listings that are from directly from building management companies but these are few and far between.  

If you are really scraping the barrel, there is zillow and airbnb but both of these seemed either to have poor filtering (couldn't find furnished stuff on zillow) or expensive.
None of the usual longer term websites like zillow and streeteasy allow you to filter down to short term listings only with much reliability which makes life hard. Most email exchanges were 'Is this available for a six month lease?' to which you get 'No' or 'Yes, starting 2 months from now'. I needed to move in within a month.

Finally there is also http://www.nycityapartment.com/ which seemed to have promising stuff and specialised on short term leases. Good if you are really at your last tether. The prices were good and the realtor was nice but the places I looked at weren't particularly appealing - perhaps you could make them your home with a little TLC.

DIY Refit Hansgrohe Plug

One of the worst errors any proud Hansgrohe owner (a 'groher) can make is to attempt to dismantle their sink plug.

Fig 1.0 'grohe mechanism

Per fig 1.0, the plug mechanism is fairly involved. The bottom-most ring (low-ring) seen in fig 1.0 is to be inserted on a protruding 'prong' that is attached to a long arm for raising and lowering the plug to block the plug hole.

If the low-ring is disconnected from the prong then you're in trouble as you have to reconnect it to get a functioning sink plug.
If you have managed to drop any components for this process down the sink (by attempting to unscrew the silver top of the plug, for example), then you will need to buy something like a PUP pickup claw.

Once you have retrieved all the components that are part of the mechanism, you can begin to reassemble using our custom procedure below.

Components

Fig 2.0 Components laid out

Figure 2.0 shows the salient components for this procedure. From left to right: low-ring spike, mid-section and top-lid. Along the bottom sits a common kitchen straw which we'll use later to assemble the plug.

Step 1

If you have small hands you should be able to reattach the low-ring to the spike protruding from the sink inside the plug-hole. To do this, you need to disassemble everything as shown in Fig 2.0. Attaching the low-ring can be a risky operation so you might want to loop a small piece of thread through the low-ring so that you can hold onto it and attempt to reattach it without fear of losing it into the sink and having to retrieve it (as explained earlier).

Step 2

Now you want to reattach the mid-section to the low-ring spike without dropping the low-ring spike down the sink and ruining your hard work. However, you can't really hold onto the low-ring spike while it is attached to the prong as then you haven't got space to put the mid-section on. This is where the drinking straw comes in.

Fig 3.0 Straw usage

Place the drinking straw on top of the low-ring spike (hopefully your drinking straw is the same diameter as mine which was helpfully the right width to fit on top of the spike).

Step 3 

Using the straw you can maintain the position of the spike while lowering the mid-section down the straw. Fig 3.0 attempts to demonstrate this.
Slide the mid-section all the way down to the bottom of the straw and onto the spike. You should then be able to remove the straw and the width of the mid-section will hold the construction in place.

Step 4

Attach the top-section to the mid-section by placing it on top. Simply rotate the top-section to tighten the whole construction.

And there you have it. Now sit back and admire the rare earthly delight that is a fully-functioning 'grohe!