passionate about your customers

Joel has a great article on how he sped up the process of shipping dvds. Joel is a prolific writer on software development, and runs a software company. Which is why I was surprised that he put three days of effort into building a kickass mailing system instead of getting some other company to do it.

Why he did that is explained here

sloppy, yahoo!

ugh. yahoo! buys del.icio.us, and now I get this<:
I'm disappointed. They should have error handlers that prevent detailed errors like this being shown to users.

System error
error:   Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13.
context:   
...   
9:   my $usedb = 'master';
10:   my $ret;
11:   
12:   if (!$auth_user) { $usedb = 'user' }
13:   if (!exists ($db->{$usedb})) { $usedb = 'master' }
14:   $user_name_q->{$usedb} = $db->{$usedb}->prepare('select * from users where user_name = ?');
15:   my $query = $user_name_q->{$usedb};
16:   $query->execute(lc($user_name));
17:   
...   
code stack:   /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get:13
/www/del.icio.us/comp/settings/antisocial:52
/www/del.icio.us/site/settings/dhandler:9
/www/del.icio.us/site/autohandler:110
raw error



Can't call method "prepare" on an undefined value at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13.


Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 131
HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "prepare" on an undefined value at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13.^J') called at /www/del.icio.us/comp/user/get line 13
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__('dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'user_name', 'hbhanoo') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x1d03aa0)', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'user_name', 'hbhanoo') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1069
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'user_name', 'hbhanoo') called at /www/del.icio.us/comp/settings/antisocial line 52
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__('cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'tagview', 'list', 'browser', 'ff', 'bundleview', 'show', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'items', 10) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x37d1ba0)', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'tagview', 'list', 'browser', 'ff', 'bundleview', 'show', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'items', 10) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1074
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'tagview', 'list', 'browser', 'ff', 'bundleview', 'show', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'items', 10) called at /www/del.icio.us/site/settings/dhandler line 9
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__('dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x21c9ab0)', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1074
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 760
HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x2fc7ed0)', 'dbh', 'DBI::db=HASH(0x1b66b20)', 'auth_user', 'hbhanoo', 'items', 10, 'tagview', 'list', 'tagsort', 'alpha', 'bundleview', 'show', 'cookies', 'HASH(0x2fcb2b0)', 'browser', 'ff') called at /www/del.icio.us/site/autohandler line 110
HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x1b04180)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1069
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1068
HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 338
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 338
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 297
HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x2fc7ed0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 134
eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 134
HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x2fc7ed0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 793
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x1ac5e90)', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x27ced60)') called at (eval 43) line 8
HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache=SCALAR(0x27ced60)') called at /dev/null line 0
eval {...} at /dev/null line 0

Update: Also, auto-complete for tags (when posting a new link) seems to not be working anymore. What happened to the kickass del.icio.us site that we know and love?

VOIP

So I signed up for this service called SkypeIn - offered by skype. I now have a US number where you can call me and my laptop will ring in India. Contact me for the phone number.
PS: remember that I'm still in India; don't call me in the middle of the night! Check here before calling me.

origami

check out this podcast about origami. If you don't have 15 minutes to listen to it, check out this site and click on the 'science' section. It's amazing! I didn't know there was so much depth to origami.

fc goodness

just catching up on a few months worth of fc posts:

From The Value of Rough Seas

In life, it's the rough patches that build your strength and character. They test you. They make you dig deeper, think harder, and risk more. Use them to your advantage. Don't play the victim. Get up and get creative. It's what you do when the going gets tough that defines you.

In a separate post, they recommended Clapton's GuitarClick on the 'look inside the book' link to read a few pages from it.
From OXO's Favorite Mistakes

"Everybody talks about their successes, but the failures, the mistakes, are the most interesting things," says Alex Lee, OXO's president. "Our wrong assumptions lead to the best learning."

From Dr. Brilliant Vs. the Devil of Ambition

That is why Brilliant has devoted his life to understanding that one simple, puzzling mantra: "Live your life without ambition. But live as those who are ambitious." Do that, and you discover the discipline of living an authentic life -- and of living hard, as if each day counts. That said, there is no mistaking that Brilliant is, well, weird. He is maybe three statistical variations from the norm, which he also fully accepts.

Dublin, Helsinki, Montreal, Sydney, and Vancouver are listed as FC's global fast cities.