Tavern on the Meta

Yi Jiang

12:18 AM

Who called me? (And why does it involve urinals?)

Tim Stone

Heh :P

Aiden Bell

12:30 AM

Hello @TimStone

Tim Stone

How's everything?

Aiden Bell

Shit really.

Thinking of starting a blog, but realize I have nothing to say

Yi Jiang

@AidenBell Start with the time I killed you with a giant <b> tag

Tim Stone

Ah, I'm sorry to hear that. :/ Heh, I used to blog for my university....that didn't go so well.

Aiden Bell

Ah well, that's life. Maybe I should get out more.

How's things with you?

Yi Jiang

12:33 AM

0

A: JQuery val() does not work for textarea in Opera

THE RUSSIAN HAS IT!!!!!

.....

Tim Stone

....

WTF?

@AidenBell Pretty good right now. Just coding away the night as usual, but it's been a fairly productive last few days for once.

Aiden Bell

Sounds pretty good to me @TimStone

Tim Stone

Yeah, no complaints on my end. :)

Aiden Bell

I just got back from a 1.5 hour drive to Leeds ... and the motorway was like a swimming pool. I pretty much sailed there

Tim Stone

That doesn't sound particularly pleasant. It's mostly just been windy here the last few weeks, I don't think we've seen real rain in a while thankfully.

Aiden Bell

12:37 AM

Imagine that but dark, with trucks either side

on an unlit 4-lane motorway

where, 90mph is the fast lane speed and 70mph is the slow lane in normal conditions

Tim Stone

Wow, that's pretty intense.

Aiden Bell

Shitting bricks mate.

What made it so worrying was that my windscreen wipers weren't clearing water

Tim Stone

At least you got home in one piece eh?

Aiden Bell

True. Though some time in hospital may have been a nice relaxing break :P

Tim Stone

That happened once while I was in the car with my dad and his wife...she couldn't see the lines anymore, so her solution was to panic and take her hands off the wheel.

I now opt to drive as often as possible in these scenarios. :P

Aiden Bell

12:40 AM

Na, go faster until you see them again. I averaged 80mph (but 70 if the police ask)

and 40 if my mum does lol

Tim Stone

Heheh

Aiden Bell

@TimStone you are in the US is that right?

Tim Stone

Aye

Aiden Bell

Right ... question:

On the US police shows when a car chase kicks off, they are all like "OH MY GOD, THIS GUY IS DOING 90MPH ... HE IS CRAAAZZY", whereas on UK ones it takes 120mph to raise an eyebrow and be deemed "a hazard"

Is that US consensus or just the increased levels of drama on US TV?

Obviously you speak for the whole of America

Tim Stone

Average highway traffic is probably somewhere in the 70-80 MPH range, so I guess they consider it excessive given that the person is weaving in and out of traffic in an attempt to avoid the police.

Of course ;)

Aiden Bell

12:45 AM

Weaving at 90 wouldn't be bonkers by any measure over here from our "Cops with Cameras" type stuff.

Tim Stone

Plus, since public transport is god-awful here, there's an excessive amount of people on the road who shouldn't be, so I consider driving period to generally be a hazard, heh.

Aiden Bell

Fair enough

You frequently see people doing 100+ just going home on the M6 over here.

We get alot of old people on the roads doing stupid stuff.

Tim Stone

Traffic congestion in many areas is also ridiculous. I'm not sure how it compares to the area around you, but I know it's much greater than other places I've lived/been (with the exception of Hong Kong, but everyone seems to drive very well there for whatever reason :P)

Aiden Bell

In Hong Kong, the cars drive the people :P
Congestion over hear is pretty bad, an entire crammed motorway with everyone moving at 90 is everyone going at 90 so busy!=slow in our case

Tim Stone

My car starts to feel a bit unstable above 80, so normally I stick around 75. Plus it's a good speed for their to be others going faster than I am, so they can pick up whatever police are sitting around with speed traps set up. ;)

Ah, good stuff. It seems that 50% of people on the road here don't know where they're going, so I find myself in many unnecessary traffic jams as people try and merge back and forth between lanes to make exits at the last minute and such.

Lots of slowing to a crawl and all that.

Aiden Bell

12:53 AM

Yea, if it is windy, my car gets sketchy above 90*, 120 is the Aerodynamic cusp of fear**, however it can do around 130-ish on the redline***. I get mad in sitting traffic. On the way home there was a 3-car smash and another plonker put his car upside-down.
*obviously tried in a legal, on-track environment with proper safety provisions. **Again, not on the public roads ***Same disclaimer.

Tim Stone

Hahah ;)

Aiden Bell

Is fairly standard traffic levels

And this is the same motorway (the one I was on) back in the good-old-days:

Tim Stone

Nice, hahah

Aiden Bell

Not too bad

Interestingly, the UK motorways had no speed limit until UK police clocked one of these:

Doing 140 from the AC factory

Tim Stone

Yeah, it normally only really gets bad in areas where the road is terribly designed. Which unfortunately happens to be several key junctures, heh.

Yi Jiang

12:58 AM

Bukit Timah Road

Bukit Timah Road (Chinese: 武吉知马路; ) is a major road in Singapore extending from the city centre to Woodlands Road on the way to Johor Bahru in Malaysia. The road has a distance of 25km (15.5 miles), which is one of the longest roads in Singapore, and the road takes its name from the hill. En route, it passes through the areas of Little India, Newton Road, Farrer Road, Singapore Botanic Gardens and Bukit Timah. Bukit Timah Road splits into two roads at Newton Circus, the west-bound Bukit Timah Road and east-bound Dunearn Road, both of which straddle a canal along their entire lengths. Buk...

> The road was built in 1845 and the area was populated with tigers that it was said to be a serious threat to humans

2

Aiden Bell

Nice

Yi Jiang

I have to go through this road every school day. It gets jammed up well before 5pm rush hour

Aiden Bell

The AC Cobra is a cultural cousin of:

rchern

o:

Tim Stone

'Ello @rchern

rchern

1:00 AM

''llo

Aiden Bell

@YiJiang - do you get many of:

In Singapore?

Yi Jiang

@AidenBell Eh... no

Aiden Bell

?

Though if I list another Asian-region car, I may be accused of racism and stereotyping.

Yi Jiang

I have no idea what that car is

Though to be fair, car ownership rate in Singapore is only 30%

The government rate limits the number of cars that get sold each year actually

Aiden Bell

Really ... how do they decide who gets one?

Presuming the cap is below demand

Yi Jiang

1:05 AM

@AidenBell Auctions. People (or their agents) bid for new permits

Aiden Bell

Wow.

Yi Jiang

Certificate of Entitlement

The Certificate of Entitlement (COE), instituted by the government of Singapore since May 1990, is a program designed to limit car ownership, and hence, the number of vehicles on the country's roads. This system, in effect, requires residents of Singapore to bid for the right to buy a motor vehicle, with the number of certificates deliberately restricted. The COE allows holders to own a car for a period of 10 years, after which they must either scrap or export their car with financial incentives, or bid for another COE at the prevailing rate then if they wish to continue using their car f...

Aiden Bell

Anyway, time for me to stop boring everyone with talk of motorway congestion levels and the history of speed limits on the M1.

@YiJiang is that just to keep the congestion down?

Tim Stone

I think that Hong Kong went a different route and just taxed the hell out of car registrations.

Yi Jiang

@AidenBell Mainly. With a population density of 7000 per square km it's probably necessary

Aiden Bell

1:08 AM

@Yu

Tim Stone

> Cars are subjected to a first-time registration tax, which varies from 35% to over 100%, based on the size and value of the car.

Aiden Bell

@YiJiang - whats the punishment for getting busted?

Yi Jiang

@AidenBell You erm... can't. It's impossible to buy a car without the certificate.

Aiden Bell

@TimStone - The main regulator here is insurance

@YiJiang - Can't you buy one in a neighboring country and drive it in?

Oh, registration

nm

Tim Stone

Heh, the HK government also has a 150% tax on petrol.

Aiden Bell

1:10 AM

For a 16 year old male to be insured on a 1.4L 4-cylinder small and safe car that is old is like £4,000 per-year

£6-7k isn't unusual, but pretty much always more than the car is worth

UK£ 4000 = 6 456.8 U.S. dollars

Tim Stone

I remember watching a Top Gear episode where the contest was to find the cheapest starter car, heh. I thought the insurance was a bit steep.

My sister is about to be of driving age, I think she's going to end up costing $2400 a year.

Aiden Bell

Mind you, males in this country drive this:

and end up with

24 hours later

Under 25s that is ..

Tim Stone

Hahah

Aiden Bell

Anyway, off to bed. Later @TimStone @YiJiang

Tim Stone

G'night @AidenBell

Yi Jiang

1:16 AM

@AidenBell Byee..

Almost done, hooray.

(:

Nice!

I'm thinking about stealing your chat messages navigation code.

Tim Stone

Heheh, oh yeah?

@YiJiang Thanks :)

rchern

1:18 AM

20

Q: Add keyboard shortcuts to Stack Overflow

Just a thought, but would Stack Overflow be able to add some keyboard navigation shortcuts? Something along these lines: Shortcut Key - Page to navigate to: H - Home Q - Questions T - Tags U - Users B - Badges N - Unanswered ...

Tim Stone

Currently it obeys the comment reply rules (almost), but I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing...since it intentionally won't work if you try to add another @-mention in the comment (since it won't do anything...)

@rchern Ah, nice :)

rchern

navigating the posts would be much like your navigating the chat messages

Tim Stone

I'm adding in a minor other feature to SEModifications once I get done the auto-complete, but (unsurprisingly) it's a surprise ;)

Yeah

rchern

oO

Tim Stone

Then I need to remember to merge before doing anything on the chat script since I botched that up somehow.

rchern

1:23 AM

seriously, who do you think you are? @YiJiang?

hides

@rchern ???

Hahah

(;

I'm still quite confused

Moshe

Hi all.

Anyone here no Actionscript/Flash?

Tim Stone

1:25 AM

Enough to despise it with every fiber of my being.

Yi Jiang

@Moshe I used to dabble in AS2

Moshe

Can you explain the Bitmap and BitmapData classes?

Yi Jiang

@Moshe Well, you can start with the online documentation, or by asking on SO

Moshe

ok

@YiJiang - I hate Adobe documentation

Is it just me or do all the big software companies have clunky docs online?

MSDN, Adobe Docs and Apple Docs all could use less sidebars and more AJAXy goodnes for improved speed

Yi Jiang

@Moshe It's not that bad. Or at least it wasn't that bad when the documentation was baked into the F1 button

Moshe

1:31 AM

Now it's a standalone app

Written in AIR no less

and it seriously has too many nested sidebar/top panes

Yi Jiang

@Moshe ding You have one new answer on your question

Moshe

@YiJiang - A decent answer too!

Moshe

2:20 AM

0

Q: What factors determine my default avatar?

I know that my avatar is based on my email address, but how can I predict the kinds of shapes and the color of my avatar based on my email address? Does it depend on the length, starting letter, other things?

discussion avatar

Yi Jiang

Identicon

An Identicon is a visual representation of a hash value, usually of the IP address, serving to identify a user of a computer system; compare avatars. The original Identicon is a 9-block graphic, which has been extended to other graphic forms by third parties some of whom have used MD5 instead of the IP address as the identifier. In summary, an Identicon is a privacy protecting derivative of each user's IP address built into a 9-block image and displayed next the user's name. A visual representation is thought to be easier to compare than one which uses only numbers and more importantly,...

Moshe

@YiJiang - I was told that my email determined that. And, I changed my account email and found that it did indeed change my avatar.

Yi Jiang

@Moshe Yes - it uses a md5 has of your email address

Moshe

And how does it translate it?

Yi Jiang

@Moshe Look at the source codes referenced in the wiki article

Moshe

2:26 AM

Ok

Yi Jiang

You might also want to look at @balpha's unicornify algorithm

Moshe

Ah, same concept then.

Joe Philllips

3:03 AM

anyone (with access) having trouble getting on meta.homebrew.stackoverflow.com ?

rchern

are you having the same dns problem?

ie, did you add the ip for both homebrew and meta.homebrew?

also...

3

A: Is Homebrew.SE in private beta?

We screwed up the DNS on this. We'll be emailing everyone again tomorrow. Sorry about that.

Joe Philllips

@rchern I can get to the site I just can't login. And this is at home now (was at work earlier)

Tim Stone

sighs at Firebug

Joe Philllips

@rchern Oh, haha. Nice find... I don't feel so silly now

Yi Jiang

Grrr... why doesn't this work

var comments = document.getElementById('comments_2285902');

for(var i = 0; i < comments.childElementCount; i++){
	comments.appendChild(comments.firstElementChild);
}

Tim Stone

3:15 AM

Err..

Joe Philllips

@Yi wouldnt that be an infinite loop?

Yi Jiang

Swap the document.getElementById with any other list element's id, then run the code - you get back the same list

@JoePhilllips It's not, since the loop will only run once

Tim Stone

I don't get what you're trying to accomplish :P

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Running this on a set of DOM elements will reverse the set of DOM elements

[a, b, c, d] -> [d, c, b, a]

rchern

array.reverse?

Yi Jiang

3:20 AM

@rchern I need to do it to a set of DOM elements

rchern

array of dom elements .reverse() ?

Yi Jiang

@rchern First of all, a DOMList isn't an array, secondly, I'd rather do an in-place reverse

Okay, wait I know why. Sigh... I'm such an idiot

Tim Stone

1, 2, 3 -> 2, 3, 1 -> 3, 1, 2 -> 1, 2, 3 ?

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Yeah... I blame... erm... (goes off to spin the wheel)

Tim Stone

;)

rchern

3:25 AM

Tim Stone

Alright, Firebug must die.

Yi Jiang

@rchern Oy!

Tim Stone

I spend more time fighting with it than I do actually debugging code.

rchern

@TimStone I don't think it's supposed to be like that.

Tim Stone

@rchern Tell it that. :P

Preferably in a forcible manner.

Moshe

3:30 AM

Wheel of blame?

What's that?

Just dropped my iPhone.

A friend was holding a cat and the cat's tail hit me.

Now whose fault is that?

rchern

@Moshe hold please

Yi Jiang

12 hours ago, by Yi Jiang

Introducing (tatadadada!!) The Wheel of Blame! Care to take it for a spin?

Go ahead, blame someone

rchern

Moshe

@rchern's fault. I knew it.

rchern

lies.

Moshe

3:34 AM

@rchern Nope.

Yi Jiang

@rchern The Wheel is never wrong!

rchern

The WOB said it is Michael's fault though!

Moshe

Nope. It's @rchern's fault again and again.

I did get Michael once though.

It's both of your faults.

You were accomplice to the crime.

@YiJiang - Add kitty please. Ir's the cat's fault.

About to slow my internet to a crawl. Download iOS 4.2 GM for all three of my iOs devices at once!

cya all later!

Joe Philllips

@YiJiang Was the problem that you weren't deleting an element? Does appendChild move or copy?

Yi Jiang

@JoePhilllips No no... it was a (very) stupid mistake

Tim Stone

3:42 AM

Hahah, WTF?

The progression of classes for the 'x characters left' is 'cool', 'warm', 'hot', 'supernova'

rchern

hehe

Yi Jiang

@TimStone You don't know?

It's defined in the CSS file, and is used for a lot of things

For instance, the number of views, comment vote count

Tim Stone

I guess I never looked at anything related to that.

rchern

oh, @TimStone, random fyi. I find myself using your navigation about equal percentage of the time to typing in the id. if it is something near the top of the screen i'm still typing in the id

Tim Stone

Heheh, cool

Yi Jiang

3:46 AM

.cool {
    color:#999999 !important;
}
.warm {
    color:#555555 !important;
}
.hot {
    color:#000000 !important;
}
.supernova {
   color:#4E0000 !important;
}

It's also used for accept rate

Tim Stone

And yeah, if something is too far up, it takes a relative while to get up to the message, even with the faster navigation.

Nifty, just need to get the tab button working and I'll (finally) be done.

rchern

is falling behind oO

Tim Stone

Heheh

rchern

hahaha, I was scrolling through the chat script and my eye caught on the if (expectedTypes) in the validation function

except that I definitely read it as expectedTypos

Tim Stone

Hahahah

github.com/rchern/StackExchangeScripts/issues#issue/22

shakes head

rchern

3:55 AM

I think instead of stackflair.com, using the wiki or Github Pages would be better

Yi Jiang

@TimStone I've been slacking off on readme duty I guess :P

Tim Stone

@YiJiang Yeah, this was more what I was getting at ;)

rchern

wiki created

Tim Stone

@rchern Yeah. I just wish it wasn't so annoying to get the files off of Github, argh.

Yi Jiang

@TimStone I'm sorry sir, it won't happen again

rchern

3:56 AM

though y'all probably don't have access

Tim Stone

Better not!

She doesn't trust us @YiJiang :(

rchern

@TimStone yeah, but with the wiki pages we should be able to link to the latest raw version

Tim Stone

Yeah, that makes sense :)

Yi Jiang

@rchern I just tried, I can edit it yes

rchern

Hahaha, I meant that in a "it'd be nice if you did, but I doubt access is public"

not sure though.

ah

excellent!

That means I can just make you do it all. Mwuahahahaha

I mean......

Tim Stone

3:58 AM

We're busy adding new lines ;)

Yi Jiang

@rchern (Goes over, copy-paste readme over) And we're done!

hehehe

Hooray!

good step 1

No one will read it anyway, including us. :P

rchern

3:59 AM

hrmph.

I think a wiki page per script would still be good though

Tim Stone

Works for me

rchern

someone needs to convince @balpha to add this (;

Tim Stone

I did want to harass him later to know how the chat handles those pesky people with special characters. :P

Since looking would involve effort..and...

Yi Jiang

@TimStone (Goes over and change my display name to my Chinese name)

Tim Stone

That actually would be fine, since I'd only expect matches if I typed the correct character. :P

Yi Jiang

4:03 AM

@TimStone That means that nobody can reply to me with the @ character unless they have the Chinese IME

Could be useful on chat.se, stopping people @-mentioning me unless absolutely necessary

Tim Stone

I've got the reply link userscript too. ;)

Yi Jiang

My eyes would bleed a little less

George Edison

4:15 AM

Is it just me or did Meta just go down?

It's back up now, though.

What's weird is that somebody upvoted me during the downtime.

:P

Here's what I got:

Nick

yeah i got that too, only when I clicked the meta.se logo, though. other pages ok.

George Edison

Oh.

Joe Philllips

It sounded like Atwood was pretty bothered by the fact that DNS is on crack today

I'm thinking someone made an oopsy

Tim Stone

To the Wheel of Blame!

Joe Philllips

Haha... oh lord

Tim Stone

4:23 AM

He was taunting you about it earlier, so it seems likely.

Joe Philllips

I must've missed that

He will pay. In blood.

rchern

o:

Yi Jiang

@rchern goto o;

Tim Stone

Hmmmmm

Interesting.

Yi Jiang

We're getting a lot of Michael Mrozek today

But don't fret, the Wheel of Blame is an equal opportunity blamer. Everybody will get their chance to be blamed

Tim Stone

4:31 AM

There's a small bug in the keyboard navigation, not sure if it's worth fixing though. :P

rchern

define small bug (;

small bug = big feature?

Tim Stone

Super awesome feature!

If you try to select a message as it's being updated due to an edit, weird things happen.

rchern

fun!

Tim Stone

I'll just /blame @YiJiang and forget about it.

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Hey, use the Wheel, it's the right thing to do

Tim Stone

4:36 AM

It was your message though, so. :P

Yi Jiang

@TimStone External factors. Spin the Wheel, and we'll find a way to blame the person in question

Tim Stone

It said it was Marc's fault. I guess we could work with that.

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Alright, because Marc built the chat such that updating messages get their classes wiped, the script fails, therefore /blame @Marc

(I'm guessing that's the cause)

Tim Stone

I'm game

Apparently the DOM node gets removed and then a new one is inserted

rchern

heh

Tim Stone

4:39 AM

Based on the error message at least.

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Seems like a pretty lazy way of updating a message

When just updating the content will do

Tim Stone

Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that.

Yi Jiang

Also explain the visual defects on Firefox - it redraws the screen when this happens

Tim Stone

Ah, you get that too? Annoying isn't it?

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Very. I was thinking of adding a min-height rule, but I think the redraws are unavoidable.

rchern

4:41 AM

Chrome > *

Tim Stone

@rchern I was waiting for that comment :P

rchern

Wouldn't want to disappoint!

Tim Stone

@YiJiang Yeah, I think so...Silly Firefox.

claps

Yi Jiang

@rchern Tosh. This is what I got when I asked the Wheel on who's to blame for the visual defects

Tim Stone

That's what he gets for making chat without first also being a Mozilla developer who has fixed Firefox's rendering quirks.

Yi Jiang

4:43 AM

@rchern Actually, I don't think getting all direct descendent of the chrome element is a very efficient way of doing styling

Better to stick to more specific selectors

rchern

Oy.

Tim Stone

Optimization after the fact ;)

Hmm...Right, comment autocomplete.

Yi Jiang

@rchern She's giving me the "You know what I'm talking about" look again. I wonder why... (whistle innocently)

rchern

heh

Tim Stone

5:18 AM

Hmm

.find('.post-signature .user-details a:first') only gives me one a, is that expected?

(given that there are two .user-details)

Yi Jiang

@TimStone Yeah, why?

It should give you the first

Tim Stone

Hrm...I want the first a from each .user-details, I guess I can rework that. :P

@rchern ....Where the hell is the open file dialog in Chrome?

Hooray, comment autocomplete...complete.

waffles

did anyone notice anything different about meta.stackoverflow.com (hint look at recent tags)

Tim Stone

I'm missing it. :P

Yi Jiang

@waffles (stares) erm... no, what?

waffles

5:32 AM

@Tim have a look on Stack Overflow ... see what tags show up there

it bumps interesting and "top" tags to the top

a "top" tag is a tag you have more than 5 answers in

it also filters out tags that only show up once

Tim Stone

Ah ha. :)

Yi Jiang

@waffles Erm.... great... erm...

waffles

it makes that list somewhat useful ... :)

Lance Roberts

@waffles, are you talking the homepage/active view?

Chacha102

►

waffles

5:39 AM

@Lance all home page views now use the new "Recent Tag" algorithm

Chacha102

umm

I don't see PHP stuff near the top..

Lance Roberts

@waffles, not sure it's working then, since the only Interesting Tag I have on Meta is 'feature-request', and all of those are at the bottom.

waffles

no no no just talking about the "Recent Tags" tag list on the right hand column

Chacha102

@LanceRoberts He said SO

Lance Roberts

@Chacha102, he said Meta earlier before you dropped in

waffles

5:41 AM

the interesting view is at stackoverflow.com/?tab=interesting ... its still being balanced

its like an mmo

Yi Jiang

▶ Watch The Sandwich Movie by Sean Christensen on Vimeo

waffles

(note) active view remains unchanged ... if I touch that I will be toasted

Chacha102

NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!

toasted?

waffles

(yumm) toasted waffles

Yi Jiang

Just what I need... to remind me it's lunchtime again

Chacha102

5:43 AM

Aren't you a waffle?

@YiJiang You mean you don't want to think of warm, bubbly mac and cheese served with some soft, golden garlic toast and a nice cool glass of hand-squeezed lemonade glistening in the sunlight?