Wesley Tanaka's Blog

Toys

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:16:05 GMT

The calories that Americans eat

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:02:34 GMT

An approximate intake of calories per person in the U.S. from 1970 to 2007, broken down by category:

Source: USDA

Sulfur Miners in Indonesia

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:49:52 GMT

I doubt this is what Phil Gramm meant by "nation of whiners", but this memorable phrase of his sometimes to mind when I hear Americans complaining about their lot in news interviews.

Evolution and Homosexuality

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:59:50 GMT

From what little I know, gay rights activists seem to generally advance the imprecise meme that being homosexual is an inborn trait. I particularly remember this hilariously uncomfortable interview:

Vendor on bike cart

Sun, 31 May 2009 13:46:28 GMT

A vendor and riding home from the horse festival on a bicycle cart

Vendor on bike cart

Sun, 31 May 2009 13:09:14 GMT

Girl at Horse Festival

Thu, 28 May 2009 12:32:38 GMT

Jon Stewart, Communist

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 10:21:43 GMT

During a recent descent into Wikipedia, I ran across this succinct description of Marxism:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 13:55:26 GMT

". . . the family buys a . . . BIG house" read more...

This site may harm your computer

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:21:21 GMT

At first, I thought I had been hacked:

Show ignored files in Git

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:24:05 GMT

How do you see or find ignored, untracked files in your Git working copy?

Files which do not show up in git status because they match a pattern/line in .gitignore or .git/info/exclude with this command:

Git 1.6:
git ls-files --others -i --exclude-standard

Git 1.4, 1.5:
git ls-files --others -i \ --exclude-from="`git rev-parse --git-dir`/info/exclude" \ --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore

Google App Engine Helper For Django with App Engine 1.1.8

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 04:50:10 GMT

Google App Engine Helper for Django r52—the one that works with the Django 0.96 that comes stock with Google App Engine—no longer works with Google App Engine 1.1.8. It gives an error like:

cd mysite; /usr/bin/python manage.py runserver
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "manage.py", line 18, in <module>
    InstallAppengineHelperForDjango()
  File ".../mysite/appengine_django/__init__.py", line 440, in InstallAppengineHelperForDjango read more...

Dried fruit shell helmet

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:34:57 GMT

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) – Police in Nigeria have arrested scores of motorcycle taxi riders with dried fruit shells, paint pots or pieces of rubber tire tied to their heads with string to avoid a new law requiring them to wear helmets. read more...

Simple Tests in Drupal 6

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:00:18 GMT

There are two simpletest modules for Drupal 6. The 2.x branch (currently at 6.x-2.5) is a backport of the unit testing framework that will be included in Drupal 7.

Unfortunately, error handling is not very good and it is possible to get inscrutable errors like this when running a test:

Running SimpleTests

An error has occurred.
Please continue to the error page
An error occurred. /batch?id=30&op=do
read more...

Who is BP?

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:06:17 GMT

This NPR podcast starts with, "Support for NPR podcasts comes from BP, who believes that we can achieve energy security by . . ."

Colorado Definition of Person

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:47:30 GMT

Here's what I don't get about the Colorado "definition of person" thing:

If a fertilized egg were to be defined as a person -- presumably in order to define abortion as a form of murder -- then wouldn't that also define miscarriage as a form of manslaughter?

Gay Marriage

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:41:01 GMT

Here's what I don't understand about the gay marriage debate:

1. Are there any salient legal differences between heterosexual civil marriage and a homosexual civil union other than the name? Can two people in a civil union file their federal income tax as married?

2. In this modern day, why is the government even involved in (heterosexual) marriage in the first place? Wouldn't it be possible to split marriage into:

A) The religious part, called "marriage", which is handled by your church (or not) as you please.

More sleep, fewer heart attacks

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:54:50 GMT

There's a relationship between daylight savings switchover days and heart attacks. The scientist guesses that more sleep and/or regular sleep patterns help prevent heart attacks, and that less sleep and/or irregular sleep patterns cause more heart attacks.

More heart attacks in the week after losing an hour and fewer in the week after gaining an hour

Turkey Tek in the New York Times

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:50:27 GMT

A subsequent revision of the oversized pecan pie has been mentioned in the New York Times.

(via beetree)

Blurry Kitten Photos

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:51:30 GMT

Keep still, you!

unfiglet

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:44:00 GMT

I got my first figlet spam today. The spammer didn't choose a very legible figlet font. Still, I thought it was clever. Dan Egnor's unfiglet script—merely a funny joke back then—actually needs to be written for real now. I bet the gmail people already have one.

Previously

Unintuitive Python Behavior

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:22:43 GMT

Curious about the Google App Engine, I started playing with it, which meant writing code in Python.

Unicode support in Python seems to be a tangle of confusing function names, source code file encodings, backslash escapes, the letter "u" before strings, and probably other things. Together, this smells to me like the language originally didn't support Unicode, but wanted to keep backward compatibility with pre-unicode support scripts.

Guard, Tiananmen

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:59:48 GMT

Guard in front of Tian An Men

Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China

中国北京市天安门广场

Car Crash

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:23:32 GMT

A typical automobile accident in China, and typical dispute resolution: people stand around and discuss or argue until some agreement is reached. Crowds gather, bystanders start piping in...

Shangri-La, Yunnan, China

中国云南迪庆州香格里拉

Puppy Update

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:17:27 GMT

There are two puppies left, out of the litter of five. Tiny #1 and Tiny #2 died the afternoon and evening that Zhuoma left for Weixi, which was the day after Jumbo had suddenly ballooned to about 3x their size. I think they got out-competed for milk.

Small died two nights ago. I had been trying to micromanage him into living the two days previous to that, but he simply wasn't eating.