The Problem Weblog

3:28PM - Facebook: How to block people who blocked you

I know that most people are grown ups and don't have feel the need to retribute, but for those who do..

If a person blocked you, but sent you a message (or a chat message) before that, then you can block her through the messages screen - through the "Actions" menu. This way, that person will not be able to talk with you if she decides to unblock you.

Additional keywords: Blocking someone who blocked you; blocking a friend who blocked you; blocking someone who blocked you in facebook; How do i block someone who already has blocked me

11:27PM - git: Find your outgoing commits

Hey, fellow git users around the world. Can I get a hug?

When you do git commit and then git status, you'll see this message:

# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by X commits.

So how can you know what commits, exactly, will be sent to your master when you do git push?

Well - the answer is buried deep inside the git man-page: The command is:

git cherry -v

It will give you a nice list of the outgoing commits.

It is interesting that nobody ever seemed to have asked that question on the net, and it pretty much bugged me a lot.

For more information: git-cherry man page.
Do not confuse between this and cherry-pick which is something else.

Note: The Cherry command may give you less lines than the X of the 'git status' command. It may happen if you do 'git pull' (since when you do it there's a merge action which also gets stored in history)

___________
(Git is a lovely version control program. I used to like SVN because it's much better than the horrid SourceSafe I used during 1999 - but apparently, git is even better - and mostly faster. Plus you gotta love it because it got such a lovely name).

Additional keywords: Find what commits I am going to send to master next time I do "git push"; Find outgoing commits in git

8:04PM - עוד כל מיני שטויות על האח הגדול

7:18PM - איפה הפייבוריטית שלי?‏

1:47AM - מצב המעריצים - ה23 לנובמבר

טוב, מישהו צריך לעשות את העבודה השחורה של לסכם כמה מעריצים יש למתמודדים, ובסוף גם לעשות את גרף האקסל המתבקש.
בבקשה:

שם	אוהדים
אלכס וליטל	2109
סטייסי	1463
חופית ואלון	991
סיון וזורנזון	985
לימור ושגיא	888
סהר וברברבאום	702
אור ונלה	684
רם וכריסטין	571
נועה ורוברט	510
ירון וענבל	423
קרן ואלון ב.	415
תמר ואלעד	274

אז מה, נראה שהמצב לא נראה משהו מבחינתי. אה? אבל אני שמח לראות שסטייסי היא לא מקום ראשון. זה מחזיר לי את האמון בבני אדם..

3:18PM - Downloading Adobe free software (Flash, Acrobat) without DLM

When you try to download Flash or Acrobat, Adobe will not plainly give you the executable setup. Instead, they will want you to install some sort of a download manager called "Adobe DLM (Powered by getPlus(R))" which will download the setup for you.

The problem (besides of the redundancy) is that this DLM is just a plain piece of crap. When I tried updating Flash, the DLM just didn't do anything - it showed an empty interface. Clicking it just suggested me to add more crapware to my download.

It is infuriating.

So what is the solution?

For Reader, download it through Google Chrome. Seems that the DLM is not supported for it, so Adobe's site will happily hand you the executable setup (which is a piece of ugly bloatware by itself. 26megs of stupid plugins that you'll never use, probably full of security holes)

For Flash, when you get to the download page, choose "Different browser or operating system", and download for the OTHER browser. For example, if you want to download Flash for IE, download it through Firefox. This way you'll get the setup instead of the ugly, disgusting, nonfunctional download manager.
Alternative method would be to try logging in with the adminstrator account of XP and then Flash will ask you if to update itself (I don't know how to invoke that check manually)

Thank you. And Adobe bonehead executives - I am not going to tell you what kind of physical abuse you deserve.

1:50PM - PHP code: Finding if a GIF is animated

Hey people! Long time no post. Here's something I had to code since I didn't find it on the web, so let me give it back to you, dear internet: A PHP function that counts how many frames there are in an animated GIF.
( Read more... )

6:49PM - PHP+Regular expression: How to detect whether a unicode string contains non-alphanumeric characters

Updated 2011-01-27: I modified the post to use preg_match instead of the deprecated ereg_match.


Here's a question which I've encountered today, and the web failed to answer.

I have to forbid non-alphanumeric characters in a Unicode text field. Which means - I have to allow all kinds of letters in every possible language, but to disallow punctuation marks and the like.

If it was just ASCII, I could use a simple regular expression, or even to scan the string manually. But Unicode contains many possibilities. So how do I do that?

With the PHP function preg_match, ofcourse.

For example, to allow digits (\d), spaces and all kind of unicode letters (\pL), use this code:

$ok = !preg_match("/[^\d \pL]/u", $a_string_which_may_not_contain_non_alphanumeric_characters);

2:13AM - A message to kerella from OkCupid

I got your message, and answered it, but you seem to be inactive.
Those horribly-annoying OkCupid will not send alerts to me by email for some reason, and they won't even check what it the problem. So I saw your message only now...

So if you happen to see this journal, do answer.

Hugs,
Yaron

12:37PM - A stupid eclipse problem that I solved

Here's a technical post! Have you missed those?

I'm using Eclipse 3.3.0 (codename Europa) with the PHP processing thing (PDT).
And it was running fine until today, where it spewed me an ugly dialog box with this sort of an error message:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.core.jobs 4 2 2008-01-10 11:55:41.345
!MESSAGE An internal error occurred during: "Building workspace".
!STACK 0
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
at org.eclipse.php.internal.core.util.SerializationUtil.deserializeFunctionsParameterArray(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.php.internal.core.util.SerializationUtil.deserializeFunctionData(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.php.internal.core.util.SerializationUtil.deserializeFunctionDataArray(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.php.internal.core.util.SerializationUtil.deserializeClassData(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.php.internal.core.util.SerializationUtil.deserializeClassDataArray(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.php.internal.core.util.SerializationUtil.deserializePHPFileData(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.php.internal.core.util.SerializationUtil.deserializePHPFileDataArray(Unknown Source)


etc etc.
And then Eclipse didn't recognize the PHP language in the project. It didn't show the function list and other annoying stuff.

Erasing the configuration didn't help (I can't erase the project/workspace since it's shared).. and then I saw that other team members got the same error message. So what did I do?

I reviewed the list of all recently changed files (using mc. Gnome file manager and Konqueror just failed bringing me that list), and saw the .cache folder in the project folder. That looks like a thing which is fun to delete, no? So I renamed it, and guess what? Eclipse built it again.. and now it works!

Isn't it lovely?

Isn't it a good enough reason to marry me? Or at least go out with me. Girls, you gotta appreciate it.

Current mood: hungry

4:23PM - Fuck you, Apple! How dare you create a limited phone?!?

Apple really pissed me off!

I waited so much for their iPhone, and hoped it would be the phone which will finally make me happy. A phone which will satisfy all my demands (list of demands coming soon).

And then it came up, and it looks like a stupid, limited thing that fails to do what even my good 'ol Nokia 6131 can do:

• No copy & paste. Why be so stupid and forget it?? You really deserve good spanks, dear Apple engineers.
  
• You can't use MP3s (or other audio files) as ringtones. That's the part of my phone I need the most- the ability to choose custom music files, so my phone will be always distinct, and I'll always know it's my phone ringing.
  I guess it's in order to force people to buy ringtones, instead of be able to define their own. But even the feature to buy ringtones doesn't exist yet.
  
• No video recording. I admit I rarely record videos in my phone, but still, this feature can be useful sometimes.
  

Current mood: pissed off

7:38PM - Who is it?

Someone knocks at my door. Who might it be? I'm not expecting visitors.
"Who is it?", I ask.
"Dreslen, from Jerusalem".
"I don't know any Dreslen from Jerusalem."
"But he'll be pleased to know you".
Should I ignore that person? It might be more secure to do so, but curiosity wins and I open the door. I see an ultra-orthodox sefaradi guy.
"Oh, you're trying to save me from secularity, don't you?".
"No no."
"So what do you want?"
"I want to show you a book"
He shows me a book with a colorful back. I don't even remember its name, but it's insignificant. Probably something about kabala or a similar ritual weirdness.
"I am sorry", I say, "I believe in Elkobim, the god of the dice, and he doesn't allow me to believe in other gods."
I close the door in front of his astonished face.

6:13PM - Moving out

Hi darlings,

I will be moving out (it's about time, for Elkobim's sake) at the 15th of this month. I've found a small one-room appartment in Hadar Yosef, Tel Aviv, for the price of 380$/month, which is pretty cheap for an appartment in the center.

I hope it'd help me in the romantic field.

Now I have to choose which landline phone company should I use: Bezeq or Hot?

10:27PM - Looking for an appartment

11:29PM - Has anyone emailed me?

I logged on to gmail to check for emails that went into the spam folder, and a moment before I clicked on "delete all" I saw an email titled "stories".. but it was too late. :(

So, if anyone sent it to my address, please re-send and also comment here.

Thanks.

7:50PM - Rejoice! Story blog opened

I decided to make a seperate journal for all my stories. It is here.
People who know the seventh-dot-one blog of mine will not be thrilled because they probably know all those stories. But other people might enjoy it. From now on, my next stories will be published there, unless I write a story which is tied to a certain blog persona.
Feel free to add as a friend.

9:14PM - Problem: Outlook Express ignores request to save draft

Applies to: Outlook Express 6 (XP)

( Read more... )

6:39PM - Going to Belgium

Hey people.

Thought you wanted to know I'm visiting a friend from Belgium (who happens to read 2 of my blogs, too). If you got any recommendations on places to visit, please tell! (Although my friends promises me we'll have a lot of places to see).
I'll be there for a week.

I'm also planning to make some order with my web presence, and use this as my public blog - the one that I wouldn't mind that even my family would read, and post here my stories and stuff.

Hugs,
me.

9:40PM - Animal identification request

I found some kind of an unidentified arthropod (it's not an insect as it has 8 legs), and I have no idea whether to release it or eliminate it. Would anyone advise?

( Warning: scary pictures ahead )

(crossposted: israeli, my journal)


Update: Thanks to the people in israeli, I found it's a pseudoscorpion. I released it in the wild (after it survived almost 2 days without eating anything), although after reading more about it, it appeared I should have just put it on the floor, since it's a useful predator which eats booklice, mites, bed bugs and all other annoying bugs, and doesn't harm humans in any way.

12:42AM - Should I update this blog?

I wanted to post here a translation of a blog entry I wrote titled "A pest from a parallel universe". But the question is: Should I bother? People hardly answer to my LJ entries...