As you know, this Sunday is Mothers Day here in the US. Please celebrate it with your fellow Senators by ratifying the Women’s Treaty, known as CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).

It means a lot to a lot of people in Charlottesville, Virginia, the United States and the World.  If nothing else, it’d be a chance to distinguish ourselves from Iran, one of the only other countries not to have signed on.

Regards,

Jeff Lavezzo
Charlottesville

The most useful session I attended was John Feminella‘s presentation on Internet Privacy. It was a great example of the kind of nuance that I see missing from general public discourse on any topic. The first step in addressing any problem is understanding the problem. And when the problem is privacy on the Internet, we have to understand what we mean by privacy.  John’s main point was

privacy != secrecy

that is, our privacy is not achieved through secrecy.  Instead what we really want is control over our information.  When Facebook changes their settings or when we find out about Spokeo’s listing on us it’s the lack of control that causes our anxiety, not the lack of secrecy. We don’t put secrets on Facebook for our friends to read and Spokeo’s data is collected from public records like the Charlottesville City Assessor’s Office. The problem starts when we feel that we don’t have control over how the information is distributed.

Facebook’s big change this year was their new “API” or interface (called Facebook Open Graph) for other websites and applications to read data out of their site.  And by data I mean what you and I have put on Facebook. They reorganized their privacy settings to align with this new API and to align with their business goals of making money off our information.  The two big problems with the new privacy settings are that many of them defaulted to be more sharing than most people like and that it’s very hard to tell when you’ve locked them down enough to suit you.   That’s where the tool John Feminella showed comes in handy.  Not sure what the Internet can see of your Facebook profile? Go to http://zesty.ca/facebook/ and put in your Facebook ID.  Click on the links in the list it generates to see what anyone else can see about you.  Because the tool’s navigation is not the best, I recommend ‘center-clicking’ to open the links in a new tab or ‘shift-clicking’ to open in a new window. Review each category of information, then go back into Facebook and change the settings.  Because of the loose structure of Facebook’s database, there may be a time delay between changing the settings and seeing the changes on Zesty’s tool.

I locked my profile down a few days ago and now the only thing it shows is a list of “likes” I belong to.

Hope this helps you feel okay about staying on Facebook.

def downloadFiles = { sourceUrls->
 def stagingDir = "/tmp/stagingdir"
 new File(stagingDir).mkdirs()
 sourceUrls.each { sourceUrl ->
   def filename = sourceUrl.tokenize('/')[-1]
   def file = new FileOutputStream("$stagingDir/$filename")
   def out = new BufferedOutputStream(file)
   out << new URL(sourceUrl).openStream()
   out.close()
 }
}

downloadFiles(
 ["http://lavezzo.com/saic/mvnBuildLifecycle.png",
 "http://lavezzo.com/saic/settings.xml"
 ])

Looks reasonable, right?

What happens if we call it like this?

downloadFiles(
 ["http://lavezzo.com/saic/mvnBuildLifecycle.png",
 "http://lavezzo.com/saic/I have a space.png"
 ])

Disaster!  java.net.URL can’t handle spaces? Now normally, if I were writing the URLs I’d just add in my own %20s and call it a day. But in this case that array of URL strings is the output of an XmlSlurper pointed at an html file. I have no control over the spaces in that file. java.net.URLEncoder seems like a good place to look, but it turns out that class is intended for use when composing links for html files. It substitutes a + for spaces, which don’t work in java.net.URL. java.net.URI‘s documentation mentions that it encodes non-US-ASCII characters but not with the URI(String str) constructor. Again, this class seems to assume that you are making this URL yourself and can enter the protocol, port, hostname, etc each in its own constructor argument.

Well it was hard for me to believe but the answer was to separate out JUST the http portion of the URL string I collected from the web page and pass those into the URI(String scheme, String ssp, String fragment) constructor and then call URI’s toURL() method.  Some Groovy array manipulation convienences made it a little easier:

def downloadFiles = { sourceUrls->
 def stagingDir = "/tmp/stagingdir"
 new File(stagingDir).mkdirs()
 sourceUrls.each { sourceUrl ->
   def filename = sourceUrl.tokenize('/')[-1]
   def file = new FileOutputStream("$stagingDir/$filename")
   def protocolUrlTokens = sourceUrl.tokenize(':')
   def sourceUrlAsURI = new URI(protocolUrlTokens[0],
       protocolUrlTokens[1..(protocolUrlTokens.size-1)].join(":"), "")
   def out = new BufferedOutputStream(file)
   out << sourceUrlAsURI.toURL().openStream()
   out.close()
 }
}

downloadFiles(
 ["http://lavezzo.com/saic/mvnBuildLifecycle.png",
 "http://lavezzo.com/saic/I have a space.png"
 ])

It looks silly to be splitting out the http just to put it back together in the constructor.  Seems like a simple point of improvement in the one argument constructor to URI to parse the String for protocol and then use the three argument constructor internally.

In Charlottesville, Virginia
Jeff

[Ed: Now with SyntaxHighlighter goodness]

http://www.YadysAlterations.com

While they’ve only been in Charlottesville for a few years, they’ve been doing this kind of work internationally for a while:

Yady’s Alterations brings you more than 30 years experience. Our goal is to satisfy our customers with the lowest price in shortest time.

A great family-owned and operated business, they are happy to tackle any job, big or small:

From custom couture to small repairs, bridesmaid’s dresses to backpacks, costumes to curtains, Yady’s Alteration has done it all.

Can’t get the right fit? Arms are too long? Pants are too short? Just a small hole doesn’t have to ruin it. That backpack would be perfect if it only had that extra feature. We have a solution to these common problems. We alter clothing and add features to equipment, returning your item with a “factory finished” look.

They’re a great “Green” asset for our town because they can fix things that we might normally be tempted to trash and replace.

We have the experience to bring your items back to “good as new” status. Most zipper repairs are simple and inexpensive. We offer many alternatives for repairing rips and tears with multiple color and fabric choices. We can repair almost anything including tents, packs, parkas, pants, sleeping bags, and dry suits.

We also make dresses, pants, skirts, shirts, coats, jackets, pajamas, nighties, robes, pillows, curtains, and costumes for any event.

I’m looking forward to many years of success for them in Charlottesville.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Jeff Lavezzo

beCamp 2010 is almost here! April 30th and May 1st are just four weeks away!

If you’re a geek in or around the Charlottesville metroplex or even if you’re merely tech-curious, this is the event you don’t want to miss. beCamp is Charlottesville’s version of the BarCamp unconference phenomenon—organized on the fly by attendees, for attendees. Realizing that the most energizing parts of any tech conference are the ad hoc conversations that take place in the hallways between the sessions, beCamp facilitates these types of interactions for an entire event.

So if you’re a programmer (or “geek” or “tech-curious”) in Charlottesville and NOT trekking to Reston for No Fluff Just Stuff Sign up and show up. I have some experience with the Open-Spaces-Technology philosophy of conference and the results are consistently interesting and unexpected.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Jeff Lavezzo

Q: What did the kneecap say to the top bunk?
A: Stop hitting me

Q: What happened to the cup that fell off the table?
A: Nothing. It landed on a pillow.

Q: What did the elbow say to the loose hair?
A: Stop tickling me!

Q: What did the cup say to the bowl?
A: We’re both good at holding milk!

Well… No one ever said 10 year olds were at their best at 9:45 at night.

From the US Naval Observatory

It’s bothered me for a while that while the equinox means that the day is exactly 12 hours long, the day is a few minutes longer than 12 hours on the equinox. The only explanation I have come up with so far is that the elevation accounts for the extra minutes. If I were at sea level the day would be 12 hours long on the equinox.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Jeff Lavezzo

4th grader 2: [grabbing 4th grader 1's belly] “Ha! Got your small intestine!”

4th grader 3: [sniffing at 4th grader 1]
4th grader 1: “Why are you sniffing me?”
4th grader 3: “Because I’m a real live dog detective!”