Tavern on the Meta - 2011-01-25 (page 1 of 8)

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12:11 AM

woohoo, rep as of right now: 10002

I have a construct where I expect to hit an exception on some totally random XYZ event, but if it does ever hit, I don't really care to catch it. I want to ignore any exceptions thrown at that point, because if I don't get a good response then I want to implant my own value into my return, so is it valid c# to write

try {
   //do whatever
} finally {
   // yeah baby
}

or do I have to have the catch block?

I know this is probably try 101, but I am groggy

hm

finally is guaranteed to always execute like in Java

but the exception will still throw later, right?

but is the catch (albeit empty) necessary?

@MarkE not if I put in my dummy catch (it'll throw, but nobody will know)

@drachenstern that's my point

this is not in a tight loop, btw. This is a once per dispatch call. Those are expected to be on the order of 50 per minute?

12:14 AM

if you want to suppress the exception I think you actually have to catch it

@MarkE oh I see your point

@MarkE Yeah

yeah I checked MSDN while typing here

'tis true, must catch and suppress

so er

with the flagged post tools

do i have any actions i can perform?

@MarkE you can flag them more

12:16 AM

heh, yeah

lol

I presume you mean flagged posts on chat since you're asking here without context?

@Zypher? You there?

@drachenstern no no, the context is i just broke 10k on SO

yep what's up

if you think a post is worth saving, you can try to edit out whatever seems to be irritating folks, but keep in mind that spurious flags go away after a while on their own.

12:18 AM

How was lunch?

haha it's on it's way now :)

one of THOSE days here

I'm ready to do the next round of fixes. Wondering if you have any feedback.

Yea but it's evening. Lunch, now?

ehh lunch/dinner combination :)

Ok when you are available, feel free to send me feedback or ping me on Google Chat.

will do

12:21 AM

Enjoy your food. And remind me to stop being such a pest.

I am going to bother my other testers now. I want to launch real soon.

@MarkE see how context changed the conversation there? ;) ... congrats btw

rock on no worries

Hear hear.

@drachenstern thanks. also, see earlier context: chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/470416#470416

@drach - how you feeling? I see you're a bit more active.

12:22 AM

@MarkE that's not contextgiving to "what to do with flags" tho :p ~ But yes I saw that briefly, just didn't correlate the two

@Moshe better, thanks for asking

@drachenstern shrug

@DanGrossman Yeah, that's pretty neat

@DanGrossman oh that's sick

Darn you Gravatar. Make less reddish gravatars.

@TimStone can't you paint your gravatar rainbow?

12:25 AM

Never!

Mark E's gravatar is definitely purple, if that's what brought that up :P

> Nominations close in 21 hours.

in [c], i = j = m = 0; does that actually set all 3 to 0?

@drachenstern 20 hours then before I jump in, knock someone else out, and enter the primary with no comments on my post. Muahahahahaha...

I remember something funky about this

@TimStone say what now?

@MarkE yes.

12:29 AM

@MarkElliot I dunno, normally when @badp complains about my gravatar it's because he can't differentiate it from someone else's, heh

got it

ahh cool, i can see others' deleted posts now

12:48 AM

@RebeccaChernoff sorry I was AFK...

That call I mentioned happened...

@TimStone @drachenstern and @Fosco, I can email you news if you care :-)

@Josh I gave you my email for a reason ;)

@Josh call?

@drachenstern You did -- you were helping me test to make sure my server switch worked :-)

@MarkElliot business conference call I was talking to these guys about earlier

oo

(some crazy stuff happened this morning, I was asking for advice)

12:51 AM

Ah well, before you go flagging

The State of the Web, Winter 2010

@badp Hey I was about to say that was awesome!

@Josh It still is!

@Josh Sure

@Josh what I rather meant was email me as you feel the desire to do so

> Buy one sack of ground beef and get a free aircraft-carrier-shaped cheese log! SWEET JESUS, BILL!

lmao

12:56 AM

@drachenstern I know. I was being sarcastic :-)

@Josh :p

(I do that sometimes to impress @RebeccaChernoff)

Rebecca Chernoff

huh?

My MacBook is freezing. Which idiot here said Mac OS never breaks?

@RebeccaChernoff I know, why is he going to such great lengths when he could just start typing his smilies backward?

12:59 AM

Mac OS's have always been more prone to freezing than Windows.

God damn that spinning beach ball.

Who cares that I was running mail, iTunes, Safari and Xcode together? I mean it's Mac!

Oh.

Xcode is done analyzing.

I don't think I got through a single digital art class in high school without the fruit-colored iMac freezing at least once.

2

Rambling / Ranting / Off-topic questions

Proposed Q&A site for people who just want to talk about whatever, and have noone to talk to. For people with ideas and noone to share it with. For people who want to debate.

Currently in defintion.

@rchern - need to borrow your diamond

@RebeccaChernoff I was saying you support my use of sarcasm

(or anyone's use of the device for that matter)

1:03 AM

@TimPost aka "I miss Yahoo Answers"

He's now trolling on MSO, and Progrmmers SE as well

20 hours ago, by ircmaxell

in JavaScript on Stack Overflow Chat, 50 mins ago, by Anonymous

MY JavaScript is better than all of you! You can't touch what I do. You think you're so great, using your prototype, well I have the DOM, and several hand-made JavaScript libraries to back me up. You talk about how to be cross-platform, yet you can't even support SeaMonkey. Fuck you.

Not to mention that before. :P

Is 4chan sending us rejects?

@TimPost haha

@RebeccaChernoff - Awake over there?

1:05 AM

-6

Q: I am afraid the government is watching us with technology.

Sites that are blind-accessible are also robot accessible, am I right? Also, wiretapping happens in emails! Government requests data from Google! Google sends automatically!

general paranoia

Yep. I have yet to find one positive contribution from this person on any site

You are free to post about exploding vaginas on your own forum, on your own web server, using your own bandwidth, power and time. – Tim Post 36 mins ago I never thought that I would use that combination of words in a single sentence during my adult life.

> Right, so the setup is a 650 site WordPress MU (network install) and as far as I know, there is no way to change it to use separate databases. It creates all the tables in the one database and about 9 per site. I don't have the time to change the WordPress code and can't change the platform, so I have to deal with the tables. The DB server will be a beefy server or three (not virtual) and will be Linux (probably Ubuntu). The setup will also have a large memcache setup to reduce DB load.

It's actually amazing how unique most sentences you write are. Pick a random sentence you've written today and search the web for it, it's probably never been written despite trillions of pages out there.

does that belong on DBA (where it is now) or something like webapps since it's all about WordPress?

WP

Imho

1:09 AM

Neither

There is no question

@drachenstern Is...there a question?

Ah, Dan beat me to it. :P

Oh ok. I retract. I spaced out there. Saw all WP.

Yay memory management. Double yay for analyzer.

Sorry, dealing with two things at one time

his original question was how to deal with 10k tables in one db effectively

since it's WP I presume it's MySQL

Yes

Was there an actual problem, or did he just not like the idea of having many tables to support his thousands of separate blogs?

@DanGrossman > No results found for "It's actually amazing how unique most sentences you write are".

1:15 AM

It's the same as a shared web hosting server, they don't have any problem with it

@Josh Yep.

ok, flying blind I see ... lemme do the right thing and deeplink

0

Q: What kind of hardware/software config should I look at for a MySQL database with 10,000 plus tables

I am looking at rolling out a CMS system that will require the creation of around 10,000 tables within the primary MySQL database of the system. The database will be the data store for several hundred small website front ends that might draw a modest load of around 150k unique viewers per month,...

@DanGrossman and also:

in Chat feedback, 30 secs ago, by Josh

Feature Request: Make quotes work when replying

I just can't believe that it will require 10k tables to be created, that's ludicrous

@drachenstern egads

@Josh did you explain the case well enough for it to make sense in six weeks?

1:17 AM

@drachenstern What do you think the database on a HostGator server looks like?

@DanGrossman Surely there are several databases?

A database is just a container for permissions, how does that affect anything else?

HostGator uses cPanel / WHM, so it's probably a highly tuned MySQL server (single)

@TimPost s/C-Panel/cPanel/

@Josh Dunno what you're talking about :P

1:19 AM

@DanGrossman anytime a database amasses 10k similarly named tables, a dba cries. Do you really want to make dbas cry? DO YOU? :p

@TimPost s/highly tuned MySQL/MySQL/

/afk

</nitpick><smiley />

I love it when users think we can just divine answers

0

Q: Why MySql query runs twice?

I got a page which is URLRewrited by the .htaccess which runs a MySQL query twice eventhough I place it once, no loops no nothing. every time i refresh the page it adds 2 page views to the database.

I know someone who worked there, they do have a reasonably solid configuration

1:21 AM

AH, OK. I only say that because cPanel alone can be horribly misconfigured

I have seen it all too often :-)

Yeah, basically no config

I work in the hosting industry (full time job), so we do keep up on our competition :)

Ah ok :-)

user image

ok, i'm off to watch house

see y'all later

Later @Mark!

1:37 AM

user image

What is this, reddit? An orangered envelope? Why is there a separate message area there anyway?

Not to mention that it's wrong half the time

I don't know what it was alerting me to, honestly. I don't see any replies I haven't already read...

@Dan: it was there long before the notification icon on the left of your image was

@DanGrossman could be replies, favorite changes, up/down votes (I think?), badges, and something else I thought

I find the MultiCollider more useful

I think it might be @ircmaxell editing my answer

1:39 AM

edits and favorite changes are the only thing that the envelope signals that the notification in the upper-left don't

and it prob was my edit :-D

stackoverflow.com/posts/4789139/revisions

I can't tell what you changed

@ircmaxell thanks, edits was the thing I couldn't think of

the link didn't appear at first (it showed as [sleep][0])

0

Q: How safe is it to use phpass between several servers?

With 'portable_hashes' turned on. I've noticed that for whatever reason, the hashes it generates aren't always the same - but always return as valid when passed through 'CheckPassword'. I've also noticed that 'PHP_VERSION' is used in the generation of the hash - these two things combined have me ...

php security authentication hashing phpass

I saw that

1:42 AM

Seems off topic to me? Question about how some software works and how suitable it is, not a programming question...

Ok dinnertime for me, catch you guys later

@DanGrossman yeah, it's borderline...

Well his question ultimately is:

> If there's even the slightest chance that the passwords will ever be made invalid - what steps would I have to take to make my own password hash generator?

which is pretty broad

but is a valid question, I'd say

Anyway, I can't eat StackOverflow questions so I'm off to find edible food

3

0

A: How safe is it to use phpass between several servers?

The only use that I can see of PHP_VERSION is in this line: $output .= $this->itoa64[min($this->iteration_count_log2 + ((PHP_VERSION >= '5') ? 5 : 3), 30)]; Now, all that's saying is determining the maximum number of iterations. And it's in the gensalt_private method which genera...

actually, check out this answer. Really? I mean really?

1

A: PHP - using microtime() to measure CPU usage of a function/code block

PHP always amazes me with how fast it is. Your code seems to be right. Maybe your code is really only taking 3 milliseconds. You could try making a long loop, something like this: $x=0; while ($x<1000000) { $x++; } Add this code inside of your timer. For me, looping 1 million times u...

@YiJiang's election page has been loaded over 1000 times by over 780 unique people so far today.

I was amused at how sleep(5) [and getting the time] took 4.9997 seconds ;)

yeah, that's pretty funny, but it makes sense

kind of

I guess

maybe not

could just be rounding error

1:49 AM

that's pretty big for rounding errors

or maybe sleep()'s implementation makes some assumptions to be approximately true

but possible I guess

Well, sleep() is just a proxy for c's sleep

Does it change if you sleep(5.0) ?

sleep(5): 5.0019340515137

sleep(5.0): 5.001394033432

Doing it in C I saw a slightly larger difference (as reported by times)

It's just float precision

1:52 AM

thats big for float error tho

Yes, it is

hehehe

That's a pretty funny answer. The comment followup is great too.

judging by my own results running it a few times, I don't think it's rounding

5 0m0.448s 0m0.080s
0m5.952s 0m1.708s

rather

0m0.448s 0m0.080s
0m5.952s 0m1.708s
(for sleep(5))

I'm getting up to milliseconds in difference between sequential sleep(5)'s

1:53 AM

0m0.456s 0m0.080s
0m6.072s 0m1.744s

(for sleep(5.0))

[root@www admin]# php tmp.php
5.0026750564575
5.0128259658813
[root@www admin]# php tmp.php
5.0011899471283
5.0015609264374

Sleep, in most implementations, is not precision. It simply says, "Hey, OS, you can have some time to do stuff. Come back in about X mS, kthxbye"

Now let me try it with an obnoxiously larger float

There are timers that will delay more precisely than sleep in most languages.

actually that's true

1:55 AM

Yes, but I didn't realize just how ... imprecise .. it really was

it prob puts it back in the CPU scheduler at approximately 5 seconds, the exact time it gets the CPU will then depend on CPU load.

I believe you will get better delays with usleep and nanosleep in php. Sleep is more of a clumsy drunken timer.

lol

But I suspect that those delays actually eat processing time.

$time = 5; while (($time = sleep($time)) > 0) {}

1:57 AM

Well it's the time it takes to yield + context switch, and depending on if the process was paged out ... so yeah, sleep(5) could actually end up being sleep(6)

but it looks like (linux anyway) puts it in ahead of time instead of late

2

Proposed Q&A site for people who just want to talk about whatever.

Currently in defintion.

I wish that thing would be closed before he has more 'fun' with it

lol

Some of the questions are downright vulgar and offensive

lol

Rebecca Chernoff

Hm? Opening...

I wanted to follow that.

2:01 AM

@Tim - I went thinking I could make something of it. Then I read his example questions. Oh My. CLOSE.

I thought the worst proposal question I'd ever see was "How do amputees have sex?" .. but this person broke the record.

You have piqued my curiosity, where can I follow said proposal?

Nevermind, answers.com has this one covered

lol

guys, do you also think that holywar.stackexchange is pointless to create?

yeah

2:09 AM

why? It could be fun

Erick Robertson

Why shouldn't we kill all the Methodists?

And all other religions probably

What happens when the scientologists get wind of it?

CRITICAL MASS ACHIEVED!

lol

Erick Robertson

2:27 AM

If the Buddhists and the Taoists fought to the death, who would win?

I shouldn't be still posting on SO. I should be packing

sigh

@ErickRobertson Impossible scenario, they'd just keep reincarnating

Erick Robertson

2:44 AM

I actually got to ask in a meeting today: Are we going to design this interface by consensus, or is someone going to take the lead here?

2

2:57 AM

@DanGrossman why aren't you on dba on a regular basis?

I don't have enough experience administrating SQL Server or Oracle to offer sound advice to those people, and I wasn't in the beta so the site's only been open a short while for me

I like writing queries, and more of those questions are on SO too

Bah, there's PLENTY of MySQL folks that come over there. You should consider spending a little more time over there. I hear you have at least two more months ;)

@DanGrossman yeah the concensus so far is to try and nudge purely query how-do-I to SO, and to push the performance of a query questions to dba, but I'm still wobbly on that one

SQL really isn't like most other languages (most other languages here being defined as 3G c-like languages, whereas it is like functional languages in that they naturally work on sets) so most devs have no idea what they're doing (seeing as how most devs have a hard time with things like inner vs left)

Erick Robertson

Didn't know there was a site purely for performance and admin questions. Might stop by there except I don't really do it anymore.

@ErickRobertson see, I'm trying to evangelize ;)

I'm itching to release this app!

Someone stop me.

It's going to be terrible.

Erick Robertson

3:06 AM

Um. Is it riddled with bugs?

No, it's been tested over the last few days.

Thanks to @Zypher and a few others.

I am just deciding if the iPad version should go up at the same time as a universal binary.

Yes

@drachenstern - yes?

Erick Robertson

Oh, it's been tested for a few days by SO. Sounds ready to me.

@ErickRobertson - The remaining questions are about gameplay and stuff, but it's almost done and pretty stable.

3:08 AM

@Moshe yes, I would release both together

Well ,@Zypher is the only one on SO to test, but my friends here tested it too.

Erick Robertson

Only has some gameplay issues?

@drachenstern - Ok. So my next question is if the iPad version can be colorful, since it's not the same as the original anyways.

@ErickRobertson - And those are minor, depending on which tester you ask.

Erick Robertson

You should just decide.

@drachenstern - You do know about this app, right?

3:10 AM

@Moshe I have heard you prattle on about it yes.

Heh.

So do you think the iPad version can be colorful?

Bad question

Erick Robertson

Who's developing this app?

@ErickRobertson - Me.

@drachenstern - why?

"I have two designs, can you help me decide which one looks better?"

3:11 AM

Ah, right.

then present TWO designs. Not three. Not one.

Lemme rephrase.

Two shall be the number that thee shall present.

3

ok

I'm glad somebody realized the immediate reference there, even tho it's poorly presented :D

3:12 AM

My question is as follows: Must my iPad design be a larger, blown up version of the iPhone app, or may it have a completely different UI?

Erick Robertson

Looks better to whom?

So Moshe how long will it take you to mock up the interfaces for us to review with you?

I'm thinking of the Twitter app.

there's nothing like a hallway usability test

And thinking that I can colorize my iPad app a bit.

3:13 AM

@Moshe it may be larger if that is what you would like

Erick Robertson

It may have whatever cool iPad features you care to spend the time creating.

some people don't like to see different UIs between apps, it just depends

does your app lend to using a larger screen better than using a smaller screen?

Well the iPod version is a throwback, the iPad version is not.

Will gameplay be consistent if you redesign the screen a lot?

Erick Robertson

The screen is like, 8 times larger. Of course it's a feature to have a better interface.

3:14 AM

@drachenstern Yea, I don't intend on changing core design elements, just dressing it up. Colors, Icons next to text, fancier font.

@ErickRobertson only if you don't totally destroy the gameplay concepts ;)

So, my final vote in this question is: when you present me three screens (current iPhone screen, rejuiced iPhone screen for the iPad [same basic elements, no touchups], and a colorized version of the rejuiced iPhone screen for the iPad) then I will personally be able to say "yes that was a good idea" or "no, don't change it from b

@ErickRobertson ;)

ok

will do.

gimme a few minutes

I will grant you this @Moshe ... you are persistent. I pity the elephant that tries to get in your way.

Heh.

Thanks.

I apologize if I'm bugging you.

Erick Robertson

Yes. He won't know if he even likes peanuts when @Moshe is through with him.

3

3:19 AM

You should meet my friend... haha.

brb gotta dress up my UI.

@Moshe You're not. If you are I'm not afraid to tell you off. I believe you've experienced that ;)

@drachenstern Yep :-) still working

Erick Robertson

Put the UI in that mini-skirt that you look so cute in.

@ErickRobertson What?

is confused and busy, but mostly confused

Don't worry @Moshe I'm confused too, I think it was humor that went ****whoooosh*******

3:25 AM

I think it might be a mistaken reference to my avater, but...

it might

hrm...

The odd thing is, I might like the new design as I make it, which may decide for me.

*is liking the new design...

@Moshe Do you really think I was asking for my OWN benefit? I could tell you hadn't made the UI yet. Additionally, as you make this UI you're going to realize that there's parts of the small UI that need to be redone. You're going to hate me after this experiment ;)

@drachenstern - You are right on all counts, but I don't hate you. I appreciate it.

Actually, I did make the UI once, for the iPhone. I dumped it for memory reasons.

And i originally made it months ago, my coding skills have come a long way since.

You're not done yet. Count the number of revisions you go through between now and ship.

3:37 AM

There are small parts that need reworking.

I'm not done.

not at all.

But you see my point

This is revision 1.

I do.

Between now and then you're going to at some point be like "damnit I could've been done but noooo"

@drachenstern That was tonight, btw.

lol, seeeeee

3:43 AM

I didn't have the game in iPad form 3 hours ago.

I copied over my code to the iPad portion of the project.

And started changing the graphics.

Yay! Woot added affiliates!

Still wondering if Apple will complain that the two games look completely different.

@ircmaxell Shouldn't that be "Woot! Woot added affiliates!"?

if they're the same app they shouldn't

yeah

that could increase my revenue slightly (or more than slightly)

@drachenstern Apple shouldn't complain, or the app shouldn't look different?

@ircmaxell - got a link to that?

3:49 AM

woot.com/minions

Right now, I'm just making advertising, but the affiliate (if it works correctly, and I can mangle my links to it) should net me quite a bit

they shouldn't complain

Ok. busily goes to finish new UI

ok, time to finish packing

tty tomorrow

@ircmaxell - Not sure where you're going, but have a safe trip and enjoy.

I'm off to the UK tomorrow

3:52 AM

@drachenstern - Here's the current iPhone UI.

...wait for it...

user image

Here's an old on which I made for iPhone, and want to implement for iPad:

...wait for it...

@Moshe protip: we're always waiting for it ;)

@drachenstern - see the idea?

iphone or ipad?

Okay, those were both iPhone, but the second one is ideally on iPad.

First one is current iPhone.

The second one is the design originally made for iPhone, going to be made for iPad.

Ok, so I like either on the iPhone, or the iPad, but those are just the entry screens. What about actual gameplay? The loading screen is nice and all, but it really has no meat and potatoes.

3:57 AM

Okay, hang on... coming up...

I see where you're going, but I think you missed the point of my assignment

I don't think I did. The iPad is not done, but i figured I'd show it to you anway.

Ok, well so I don't see why you can't do that screen twice, once for iPhone, once for iPad, or figure out how to downscale it neatly on the device

The first one?

does the system support vector graphics? Could look smooth there, and scale nicely ... idk, just a dreamyidea

the second screen

3:59 AM

I want the first one on the iPhone regardless, because it's a throwback to Dope Wars, a Palm/Calculator game.

My question is scaling the second one up for the iPad.

but I would drag the "Nippon" and the half-sun ^^^ up on the page, and add a tad more space between the entries

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