Comments for Benjamin Oakes

Comment on Rails Timezones by Ben

Ben — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:05:01 +0000

Happy it helped you, Nathan. I’m not sure what standards exist around time zone naming, but it seems like the policy for Rails needs to be clearer. Even over 2 years later! :)

Comment on Rails Timezones by Nathan Marley

Nathan Marley — Fri, 10 May 2013 01:01:21 +0000

Thanks Ben. This is helpful. It is incredibly frustrating trying to wade through the documentation to find a list of valid time zones (and still not find them).

Comment on Is an iPad Mini or a Nexus 7 Better for a Geek? by Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes

Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:35:18 +0000

[...] I considered getting one of these tablets just to run Cyanogen Mod (back before I decided on Nexus 7). I’m happy that these can stay useful longer; who knows what garage sales they’ll show [...]

Comment on Weekly roundup by Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes

Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:39:38 +0000

[...] Like last week, these are some interesting posts I found around the web, along with some commentary from me. [...]

Comment on Weekly roundup by Joe

Joe — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 06:21:51 +0000

Haha, yeah. They are quite handy. Bobby pins are another uber-tool in my book.

If anyone can influence web standards, it’s Mozilla. Unfortunately the term “web standards” teeters on being an oxymoron since they are always evolving, and mobile browsers have been notoriously terrible at compliance for as long as I can remember (as if IE wasn’t rebellious enough). On the plus side, they can parse real HTML these days and not just C-HTML like 6-7 years ago. That’s something of a silver lining.

I have a feeling things will start to become more standardized now. Browsers were the biggest selling point of mobile devices over the last 3-5 years and arguably the biggest reason behind Blackberry’s market decline since theirs was junk and Android/iOS kept pushing, but there isn’t much room for serious improvement anymore. Hopefully that translates to more standards compliance in the future.

Comment on SSH Agent Forwarding with Vagrant AWS by Making Puppet’s fqdn_rand play nice with Vagrant – Benjamin Oakes

Making Puppet’s fqdn_rand play nice with Vagrant – Benjamin Oakes — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:26:23 +0000

[...] We’ve been using Vagrant more and more, especially for testing our Puppet code. It can be much more flexible than testing on an existing box, and Vagrant AWS is really promising. [...]

Comment on Weekly roundup by Ben

Ben — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:18:15 +0000

Glad you enjoyed it, Joe! I’m always interested in the MacGyver tricks… I’m convinced binder clips can do anything. :)

With Firefox OS, I’m hoping Mozilla pushes forward on standards that actually get adopted by, say, Google. We’ve been moving away from web standards a lot over the last few years, mostly driven by mobile platforms.

Comment on Weekly roundup by Joe

Joe — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:46:24 +0000

Cool MacGyver tricks; that rubber band tip is really clever. Lifehacker rocks.

I suspect that since the Firefox phone is based on Android and runs on ARM chips it will certainly be ported to at least the Android phones running on the same chips. Hackers gonna hack.

Comment on Weekly roundup by Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes

Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:45:19 +0000

[...] interesting posts I found around the web this week, along with some commentary from me. You can check out last week’s roundup too. [...]

Comment on Is an iPad Mini or a Nexus 7 Better for a Geek? by Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes

Weekly roundup – Benjamin Oakes — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 03:01:09 +0000

[...] Apple changes its rules, Facebook won’t have a Home on iOS – One of several reasons my next phone won’t be an iPhone. Not that I want Facebook Home that much — but it’s nice knowing that it’s an [...]