Trae Blain's Blog

Wallpaper I'm Into Right Now... [Part IV]

2012-05-22T21:46:08-07:00

S.H.I.E.L.D.: Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division. For you not in the know, S.H.I.E.L.D. is the agency responsible for the Avengers. This is a great background. Not busy and still works well with widgets and icons on your phone. For Android phones, select the Desktop option and crop to fit.

Check it out: Mantia SHIELD

Tools I've Been Enjoying

2012-04-21T15:56:10-07:00

Along with my Text Editors, Python and MATLAB, and my Portable Version of Nginx there a few other tools I’ve been using lately that I’ve been finding interesting. From a DVCS to some lesser known tools that has been a lot of fun.

Sublime Text

Again, already talked about my favorite Text Editors, but wanted to reiterate how awesome this text editor is. What really pushed it over the hump is when I found Package Control. So when someone creates something awesome, like Jinja2 Syntax Highlighting (here), Package Control has a repository where you can instantly install these great tools/plugins and run them. I want to get you looking at this again.

Git

Like I said, I’ve been playing with DVCS…in fact I’ve only been messing with version control systems for a few months…and have found Git and Mercurial (Hg) to be the best tools I can use. I use these to not only handle the changes to this blog, but also basic everyday scripts, from MATLAB to Python to Batch scripts. Having a repository that I can get all these tools is great. I really like the ease of use and Python integration of Hg, but Git has proven to be more informative and a more flexible in usage.

There are some great tools to help you get used to the Git system. I’ve been liking SmartGit but TortoiseGit has a much more familiar interface for many Windows users. MsysGit or Git for Windows has some good—albeit homely—tools as well.

TeraCopy

I never realized how inefficient Window’s standard copy is. When transferring large files, especially across a network, I’ve found Teracopy can save a nontrivial amount of time. 600MB to 1GB files can transfer up to 1 minute with Teracopy in some of my initial runs. But also Teracopy handles resuming with no problems in case you have a network error.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer has been a favorite of mine for a long time. Although VNC and Windows Remote Desktop work well, you’ve got to jump through some heavy hoops just to connect from an external network. TeamViewer just works. It might not be as fast as these other options, but again it does work smoothly.

Just some stuff I’ve been enjoying.

The DFW Fan Experience

2012-04-13T21:20:02-07:00

I was thinking about the fan experience here in the DFW (pronounced: Dee-Eff-Dub) and how it stacks up. There are some great sports venues and spectacular teams. The NBA Champions: Dallas Mavericks, The two time American League Champions: Texas Rangers. The newly De-Hicked Dallas Stars. Just to name a few. So how does it stack up?

Number 1: Texas Motor Speedway

Honestly, I’m not really a NASCAR fan. I never watch a race. I like to hear about what’s happening with the cars and changes, but don’t follow a racer or team. But you cannot deny the spectacular experience the race weekend provides. To go to an event with 170,000 other people, it’s BYOB with thousands of fun people, it’s a time when everyone just wants to have fun. If you’ve never been to a race, you should really plan a trip to your closest track and have fun.

Number 2: The American Airlines Center for Dallas Stars Hockey

The fan experience for a hockey game is fun. Dynamic play (whether winning or loosing) and fast action makes hockey one of the most enjoyable games to watch. The Dallas Stars keep the riff-raff out and put you in the company of other great hockey fans. Even the cheap seats in the arena put you in good company. For your reference, hockey is number 4 for me when I rank the Big 4 but as you see here, it’s Number 1 when it comes to fun.

Number 3: The Ballpark in Arlington, Home of the Texas Rangers

Baseball brings out great people to share a ballgame with. Due to it’s time and lack of constant action, only people that enjoy baseball (for the most part) attend games (outside of playoff/World Series). It’s the cheapest ticket in town, so even if it’s a bad game you don’t feel cheated out of your money. Even without that, the ballpark is full of things to do, pre/post-game, then you’ll always see some hard hits at the ballpark. Even when the Rangers were bad, you almost always saw a home run. It’s a fun environment, although more subdued than the previous events.

Number 4: The American Airlines Center for Dallas Mavericks Basketball

So this one was difficult to place. The Mavericks bring an interesting crowd to the court. The running joke around here is that it’s the “Makeup and Boobjob” crowd. Plenty of high maintenance women and their douche boyfriends at their side. Granted, the Dallas Mavericks do some nice things to counter this culture. With the Mav’s Maniacs section, the painted face group, and a good core of season ticket holders that are true basketball fans. I’ve been to games where the Platinum level was more of a club scene than people watching basketball. (That’s an expensive club entrance fee…)

Number 5: Pizza Hut Park for FC Dallas Soccer*

I * this because I actually have never been to a game. But I do know some season ticket holders and they say it is a good time, but you have to be a soccer fan. If you aren’t into the game you could be a bit uncomfortable. But it’s an intimate setting.

Number 6: Cowboy Stadium, Home of the Dallas Cowboys

In the US of A, you may think football is king. You’d be right. But the behemoth that Jerry built is the epitome of what football can seem to figure out. Like basketball of the 90s and early 00s, to make money you had to kick teams out of their fan-oriented, intimate settings and play your games in the attendance high arenas. Football is doing the same thing by alienating their fans in an effort to increase revenue. Jerry has also kicked his biggest supporters out of their parking lot. To attend once, it definitely is an awe-inspiring experience. To attend a second time, you’d rather not spend $300 on a ticket to watch the entire game on the television.

What do you think about my list? Do you have any differences of opinions? Should a TCU Horned Frog or SMU Mustang football game be on this list? What about UTA Maverick basketball?

Pretzel Fun

2012-03-25T16:20:03-07:00

Check it out. I was bored while my son was finishing eating that I started this simple project. Turns out a pretzel is an amazingly shaped object. Other than the ‘A’, most every other letter is instantly recognizable. I also couldn’t clean up the ‘S’ because every time I tried it would break. So it looks more like a backwards ‘Z’.

So enjoy the ‘Pretzel Alphabet’.

Portable Nginx

2012-03-22T14:35:03-07:00

If you are going to do web development, having a personal web server is invaluable. Having the capability to load up your work locally and view the results is almost necessary. Having an excellent development environment is key.

I’ve been using Nginx when I found out how small it is, better at serving static pages (as I am using a static site generator now), and how easier it is to use than Apache. But, I haven’t used an installable web server since abandoning Windows Web Platform Installer. I’ve used a Portable XAMPP but configuring and changing is a bit of a pain. And it was heavily taxing an old system I was using because of Apache’s memory usage.

Portable Nginx/MySQL/PHP

I’ve been working on this side project of having an install-less web server (like Portable XAMPP), but utilizing Nginx, pronounced Engine-EX. David Pennington set the groundwork for this, and his base system has been running strong for me for months. I then took his work and (as a limited work) took it a little further. David’s version was based on a BATCH script that would kick off the servers as well as stop them. This worked well, but you’d get the annoying things like Windows 7 is not a big fan of batch files and likes to annoy you about running them…although after clicking “OK” it would run just fine. As well as, David’s files would pop up multiple CMD screens before settling down.

I’ve taken his work, and created a compiled Python script that gives you a single program to start, stop, and eventually restart the server. Right now it’s not as easy as just double clicking the BATCH file, as there are parameters, but you could create a “lnk” file take care of this. But this lays the groundwork for what I eventually want to get.

Here’s the location of the project: Portable WNMP

Installation

You can install the script by cloning the repository to where you want, for instance a thumb drive or Dropbox folder. The proceed through the download process.

Clone this way:

git clone git://github.com/traeblain/wnmp.git

Download PHP and get the ‘no-install’ zip—non-thread-safe will be fine—file and extract it in the “php” directory.
Download Memcached, this is the best I could find. I’d recommend the 32-bit version for now. Place it in ‘memcached’ directory.
Download MySQL, using the ZIP file and place it in the the ‘mysql’ directory.
Download Nginx, place it in the ‘nginx’ directory.

Configuration

The example.nginx.conf is a good start with PHP already enabled. It should get you started, at least. The php.ini for PHP and my.ini for MySQL are a bit more difficult, but using the mini my.ini and the development php.ini works well to get started. MySQL will take minimal initial configuration, but php.ini will take some customizing to enable the extensions.

Running

Like I said, just use the server.exe file to start everything. To run all servers and daemons simply start the server with:

server serve

To stop the server:

server stop

To run the server but not use MySQL:

server start -m

It’s as easy as that!

Future

I’m working on some developments to make it easier to use with the hope of having a GUI at some time that will monitor the servers (tell you if and what is running) as well as make the command line a bit easier to use. I also hope to prepare an installer that will automatically download the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, and Nginx so you won’t have to go and dig. Then I’ll have to figure out how to

I’m learning Python’s Window’s hook and more, so I’m moving forward in a slow fashion.

Let me know what you think. I’ll get a zip file for the non-git users as soon as I can.

Grab it here

Bracket Time

2012-03-15T08:18:11-07:00

Every year, I show everyone my bracket. So I decided to give you a nice little show here. I have invest a massive amount of time watching college basketball and evaluating each tourney team. Seriously, I probably have at least 37 minutes invested here. I’m pretty much an expert.

Second Round

(Yes it’s the second round, 60 teams recieved a first round bye and 4 teams had to compete for the the next round.)

I’ll update as the Tournament progresses…stay tuned.

Sweet 16

Mother of God…this is horrible. This will probably be my last update…because it’s horrible. Horrible.

Did I mention how horrible it is?

Back Yard Burgers [G.D. Burgers]

2012-03-14T15:34:14-07:00

Back Yard Burgers came out of nowhere. I’ve never heard of it, but found they are a ‘chain’ burger restaurant out of Cleveland, Mississippi. It’s a grill burger (as opposed to a griddle burger), but made quickly enough to be considered semi-fast-food. The big stick here is that Back Yard Burgers uses ‘Black Angus Beef’, so by definition it is frozen meat. It’s aged at low temperature improve tenderness. But with that said, if you are using frozen meat…this type is what you should use (outside Kobe). Angus beef has the best marbling and has been aged properly (it’s been standardized) to produce a tender meat. Back Yard Burgers are tender, juicy, and well seasoned. Like Griff’s they do really well with what they have. The bun was standard, but well toasted and tasted nice.

As far as veggies go, Back Yard Burger’s know what’s right. The iceberg lettuce was whole and crispy, the red onions were rings and not limp. Pickles were standard fair (which doesn’t detract). This was one of the best things about the burger, a semi-fast-food restaurant can give you delicious veggies. It’s not that common. They also hook you up with 4-5 different types of cheese, I choose Cheddar and it was thick and wonderful.

There was nothing special about the sauce, but yellow mustard is a quality addition. The fries were waffle fries and were crisp. Waffle fries can be tricky, sometimes you can get some good ones (like what Back Yard Burgers has) and sometimes you can get some soggy ones (every once in a while Chick-fil-a does this to me).

3 out of 5

To wrap up, I’m giving Back Yard Burger a 3 out of 5. This was also a wrestle with a 2 or a 3, but again when you can do what you are doing well, you get a boost. (In other words, if you are using frozen beef but cook it well, etc.) They do what they do very well and so they get the above average nod.

Do you have a Back Yard Burger? Let me know your thoughts.

Designated Hitter is here, for all...

2012-03-11T20:16:24-07:00

Every so often in various circles, the question of whether I like | dislike | agree with | hate or what ever the Designated Hitter rule comes up. I’ll relay my personal thoughts below, but my feeling for the future of Major League Baseball is that everyone will have a DH on their team in the future.

WHAT!?!? I can’t believe you are saying this!? National League baseball is pure! They will never alter the league rules!

This decision will happen and it will be controvertial. It will surpass steroids in it’s polarizing effect. But like players finding new ways to enhance their performance to give them an edge, it will happen. And it looks like with the latest CBA, it might be sooner than later.

In 1973, MLB announced that the American League would add a 10th member to it’s starting roster and play a regular DH in the place of the pitcher (according to Rule 6.10). This was in hopes of boosting it’s offense to bring more fan attendance…and it worked. The American League franchises now hold the many of the top spots in revenue, wins, and valuation.

Why will this happen sooner rather than later? In 2013, the new CBA will move the Houston Astros to the American League creating a symmetrical MLB and year round inter-league play. When we have all these games with changing rules, it will make the decision much easier. Not only is SI suggesting that we are close to this happening, but Yahoo! Sports is also commenting on it’s inevitability.

So why would the National League adopt the DH and not let the American League drop the DH? First, there’s no change the Player’s Association will allow what equates to essentially 15 players to end their career. Here’s the AL DH lineup as I know it:

Baltimore Orioles: Wilson Betemit (Age: 31) (Vladimir Guerrero last year, Age 37)
Boston Red Sox: David Ortiz (Age: 36)
New York Yankees: Raul Ibanez (Age: 39) (Jorge Posada last year, Age 40)
Tampa Bay Rays: Luke Scott (Age: 33)
Toronto Blue Jays: Edwin Encarnacion (Age: 29) (Although not sure if this is correct)
Chicago White Sox: Adam Dunn (Age: 32) (Note, Weight: almost 300lbs)
Cleveland Indians: Travis Hafner (Age: 34)
Detroit Tigers: Unknown (Prince Fielder will fill this spot in the future)
Kansas City Royals: Billy Butler (Age: 25)
Minnesota Twins: Ryan Doumit (Age: 30)
Houston Astros: Unknown, possibly Jack Cust?
L.A. Angels of Anaheim: Kendrys Morales (Age: 28) (Pujols will move into this role soon)
Oakland Athletics: Manny Ramirez (Age: 39, after first 50 games)
Seattle Mariners: Mike Carp (Age: 25)
Your Texas Rangers: Michael Young (Age: 35)

So taking that list, knowing that the Royals and Mariners don’t have much money for an older player, that’s 13 guys either entering or in their twilight or flat out of a job. Young, Morales, Doumit, Encarnacion and Scott would find jobs elsewhere, as they still have something left. The Player’s Association cannot justify dropping those guys out in the cold.

Second, the DH was brought in to do a job. Boost offense to drive ticket sales and fan enjoyment. So the owners will have a hard time justifying to themselves that dropping the DH will help their revenue. It won’t. It may not hurt the league as a whole, but it definitely won’t help.

Third. Owners operate on a Risk/Reward system. Paying CC Sabathia to breakdown hitters and generate outs is worth $23mil a year. Paying CC Sabathia $23mil to lug his 290lbs on an infield single (cross your fingers kids!) and possibly break an ankle or leg is ludicrous. Even the top 5 NL pitchers (salary here) can’t break .175 batting average, and Zito barely tops .100 (.101). So all you people arguing that ‘real players’ play both sides, look at this. The top NL pitchers don’t play both sides, I bet Zito’s 1-in-10 comes from a bunt every third game (which as a pitcher is roughly 1 hit per 15 days)?

Fourth is my personal opinion. I know my opinion isn’t the popular one, but it’s true. Fans will love the DH and it’s the better way to play the game.

You shut your mouth when you are talking to me!

It’s true. Even my NL purist fans say they enjoy inter-league games because when the 9-hole comes up, it’s nice not to see what is essentially another out. They actually watch the at bat instead of schedule there bathroom breaks then. That engagement is what the MBL will notice, no matter how loud the ‘Purists’ scream. I know people will argue that pitchers hitting is how you play the game, yet the National League (and its ML Affiliates) is the only organized league that hits the pitcher. From youth to high school to college to amateur they all use a DH now. International Baseball uses the DH (save one division in Japan’s Nippon League, which I guarantee would change if the NL did).

These games evolve. When you discover a better way to operate, while staying true to the game, you adapt. Letting the pitchers pitch and a hitter hit is still true to the game of baseball. If a fan catches a Home Run or Foul Ball, calling the batter out is not true to baseball. Giving the outfielders rocket boots to let them get air to catch balls is not true to the game of baseball. If you find someone arguing that the DH isn’t baseball, ask them if video replay should be used more (if at all) and I’ll bet you’ll expose their hypocrisy. Playing the game like they did in 1909 is not the answer, and everyone knows it. The DH is just something tangible enough ignite fires.

Another argument commonly is that people feel the lack of strategy managers need without a DH. To that I introduce, Verlander, Hernandez, and Weaver. These men are the future of MLB pitching, all AL pitchers, and all capable of keeping the game scoring low. That’s one aspect. Second, I introduce the Texas Rangers. After years of slugging their way into wins and failing, the Rangers put an emphasis on pitching and received 2 trips to the World Series. Third, I bring you the Oakland Athletics. Built around stats and limited field strategy (no stealing, squeeze plays, pitch outs, etc.), sure they once had 20 wins in a row, but could never advance.

The game has been experimented with over and again and the only thing that works is talented pitching, strategic management and the ability to manufacture runs. These are all the items people talk about when pushing the NL rules. What they don’t talk about is how better their pitchers could be if they weren’t prematurely pulled because the manager didn’t want to waste a batting spot in the 6th inning. I get so annoyed to see an NL pitcher pitching an awesome 1 run game and get pulled because the manager wanted to chance some breathing room. In the AL that guy would be able to gut it out to 100 pitches in the 8th or even a complete game.

So the fact is the DH is here to stay. And the faster the so called ‘Purists’ understand that all these games evolve and it doesn’t ruin the game, the better Baseball will be.

Equal Pay, Let's Talk

2012-03-08T16:09:11-08:00

It seems like much talk has been thrown around lately about Equal Pay and how women don’t get paid the same work. First off, I want everyone to know that men and women should not be compensated differently. I share a cube with an extremely intelligent and competent female engineer that I trust no less (if not more) than her male counterparts. I don’t believe that she should be compensated any differently. But I do have a problem with many of the people speaking out about pay equality because they are being extremely short sighted and uninformed. The reason I’m writing this is because Gina Trapani has recently developed this site out of her outrage over this Gender Gap. Whereas I have respected Gina’s writings through Lifehacker and afterwards, simply screaming that ‘Paying Women Less is Illegal’ actually hurts her cause and doesn’t help bring unity among men and women in order to rectify this issue. The primary statistical source of her argument (from what I saw) lies with this report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that indicates that women make on average 85% of what men do in the same type of job.

Risk / Reward

Employment is a business agreement. A transaction between employer and employee that includes Risk, Evaluation, and Reward. When hiring an employee there is a risk that the performance will not be as expected and therefore the company will lose money (in a localized manner) on that employee. In other words a person will be paid more than their expected production. This lends to the evaluation period where the business can alter their compensation aligning better with renewed expectations, lowering the companies risk.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (source of material showing the pay disparity) also conducted a study to determine if it is more difficult to identify non-quitters in young men or women. Simply put, it is harder to find non-quitters in women than in men because female turnover is influenced by two key factors: getting married and a newborn child. It’s difficult to hire someone that has a hazardous risk of leaving. You don’t want to pour in compensation and training when you may have to invest in that training again later due to the employee’s tendency to leave.

This is not the only factor that’s thought about.

Compensated for Productivity

Another issue is that women are afforded rights beyond men and many companies most likely see that these areas of compensation make up for the take-home pay disparity. The most common compensation is Maternity Leave. Although the Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) was signed in 1978. Where the PDA might have been thought of a huge step for equal employment and civil rights (which it is), it also affords rights unequally to women. Essentially the act tells employers to treat pregnancy the same as any other temporary disability.

In the US, on average a woman will have 6-8 weeks maternity leave, this is often paid leave provided by the companies disability insurance. The places that don’t have paid leave are typically places that have smaller than average gender gaps (Personal Aides and Teachers). Whereas, I completely agree that women should be given this right without threat of job loss. Why do I bring this up? Because if a woman is having a child on average every 2 years and has on average 2 (depending on race, etc. from census data 1.18 rounded up assuming working class has higher chance of more kids…which could be erroneous). That is to say suddenly women can be 85% as productive as men (curious number? based on 4 months leave over a possible 26 month period) over that period. And a business cannot deduct 15% from your next years pay because of the legal action that it opens them up to. So a business sees this as, less productivity equal less pay. I choose maternity leave because this disability is something men specifically aren’t at risk. I also highlight this because child birth is one of the two factors in losing a female employee, another risk the company has to take on. Look at this real world example:

A woman after 2 years of service becomes pregnant with her first child (Based on service and policies she has 180 hours Paid Time Off or PTO). Upon closing in on her delivery date, she takes the previous week off on PTO to prepare. After a C-Section delivery, she’s on paid disability (100% pay) for 8 weeks. After the 8 weeks, she returns for 1 week to wrap anything up to say she’s leaving to raise her new child. She then takes 3 weeks PTO to finish off her time, the PTO balance considered unearned. This is a true story

So a company paid this employee through direct payment and disability insurance for 13 weeks of work for what equated to 1 week of ‘wrap-up’ work. This is not an isolated incident and I’ve heard this story from a number of managers before.

On the contrary position, if a company offers paternity leave and still maintains a close to 85% gender disparity, than this definitely should be rectified.

Other Little Things

There a number of other little things that I’ll bring up, but place them far down on the argument. Chiefly because these are personal experience items and might not be universally accomplished. But women do (again, in my personal experience) see other advantages. In my work, I have heard and seen areas where women were given special awards / promotions / achievements based on their gender. The company did not come out and say this, but the recipients of these awards have confided that they knew exactly why they were chosen. Having a female representative (just as having any minority representative) looks good on a company. And being that representative looks good on them. Although it’s not a monetary compensation, it is compensation none the less.

So What Should Women Do Instead

Being that this post was initiated by the Trapani website, I wanted to offer these suggestions. If you want equal compensation, first you have to ask for it. You are a woman that doesn’t fit the standard risk models for female employees (not getting married, already married, no child plans, children older or grown, etc.) you should indicate this to your possible employer and ask for a better starting salary. If you were indicating these risk factors and chose to work and no longer one, this benefits the company and should be talked about and asked for. They took on the risk and have been rewarded.

Also, you can fight to get men on your side. By Trapani’s own supporting data women only make up 45% of the work force. You are simply banking on some men’s goodwill to bring this to a simple majority. One option is to fight for Paternity Leave before fighting for a gap-less workforce. I don’t necessarily want 8 weeks of 24 hours with a post-hormonal woman and a newborn that only eats, sleeps, and poops and I’m only able to contribute to the nasty one of the three. But as the primary caretaker for my wife and new child, I’d like some time that doesn’t get charged against my yearly PTO for this event that doesn’t happen every year to ensure she’s fully taken care of.

Lastly, your approach should be mindful of the men you are alienating. Like before, pick your battles. Start with professions and situations that show specific and egregious gender bias. For instance, female executives are probably the least likely to leave after kids and most likely to have mature families. Ensure that the low risk positions are taken care of because these have least likelihood of alienating their male counterparts.

Finally

I want to reiterate that I do not believe that gender inequality is right. In fact, I believe that taking advantage of one group of people (male or female) is not only wrong but unethical and at times illegal. But I don’t think that compensation is on paycheck alone. If this was the case, companies would not invest millions in HR departments that investigate health insurance, PTO, disability (long and short), etc. The entire package should be looked at and considered. Honestly, most people I hear complain about paycheck disparity are people that don’t fit the standard risk models and if they aren’t personally doing something about it on their paycheck then it’s a personal problem not a universal one.

Now, let the male-chauvinism comments commence!