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• POE: What POE Is
  POE is a framework for creating event-driven multitasking programs in Perl.
  (tags: perl framework POE multitasking)

• Drill Bits are Boring
  (tags: drill+bits this+old+house tutorial tools home)

• Rule 240
  airline regulations which determine how you are compensated for flight delays
  (tags: airline howto reference travel tips rule240 flights)

I gave up on videos once they all became “Bentleys, ass, cut”, but a band named Fujiya & Miyagi have a way-cool video you’ve got to check out.

I can’t tell whether the domino segments are entirely CG or bona fide stop-motion — what do you all think?

(Via VeryShortList.)

Technorati Tags:
fujiya+miyagi, video, pop+culture

Now you can get vi behavior in OS X text windows with viAllOver. Still in beta. As if that’s the only reason to avoid it.

vi was written…on a Lear-Siegler ADM3A terminal. On this machine, the Escape key was where the Tab key is nowadays, thus enabling users to very efficiently switch modes. Also, the keys hjkl had arrows, thus explaining the usage of these keys for moving around.

Wikipedia

Aha! So Vi was designed for an arcane entry system no longer in use.

photo by Andre Nantel

Technorati Tags:
os+x, cruel+shoes, vi

…or at least like a motivated amateur.

After Steve Smart, my friend from the St Louis BMW Club, showed me how to do this, my friends Jarret and Todd asked me to share what I had learned. And since I’d already written this up for them, I thought I’d post it here, too.

While it’s certainly possible to do all of this by hand, the single most important thing I learned from Steve is that a good polisher makes a huge difference in how much long it takes and how much you enjoy the process. Really the strain on your arms isn’t worth the money you save by doing it manually.

How much does a polisher cost? Steve has the Porter-Cable 7424 dual-action polisher, which is ~$125 new at Amazon. You buy a backing plate that screws onto the spindle. It’s got a velcro surface, and you can buy matching pads with the other half of the velcro on their backs. The 7424 is the standard unit that pretty much everybody uses.

You can find cheaper ones at Harbor Freight, but try as I might I cannot get on the Harbor Freight bandwagon. I feel dirty using their products, what can I say.

You’ll want to get polyurethane, open-cell foam pads for it not the wool ones, which are too abrasive. Get like a medium density one for the “deep clean” and a low density foam soft one for the waxing.

The idea is to use a pad that matches the aggressiveness of the product. So the softest pads available for the wax, an slightly firmer one for the cleaner/polish (if you do that step), and an even firmer one for the deep clean. Also, don’t use the same pad for more than one product.

In my walk-through below, the products I mention are the ones that I used at Steve’s house. Obviously they represent one set of options which he has settled on; things like the wheel cleaner and the wash soap you could probably use any of several brands. Steve described the Meguiar’s brand as a good bang for the buck. There are cheaper products that aren’t as good and more expensive products that might be better, but these will work well and are affordable. Likewise, some brands of wheel cleaner will leave a high-gloss shine and others will be more of a semi-gloss satin finish; which one you choose is purely a matter of preference. The important thing for all of this is the general procedure.

Here I’ll outline the steps and the products we used. It seems like a lot to do, but remember that the first two steps (paint cleaning and polishing) you will rarely need to do. Once you have a good foundation of clean paint, you can stick to just washing and waxing.
And of course with a good coat of wax your car will stay cleaner in
the first place.

Do this in the shade if you can, as the sun will heat up the car’s surface and cause the stuff you apply to it to dry up too fast (as well as the water which will evaporate and leave spots).

1. Clean your wheels (not the tires).

   It may take some elbow grease to get the brake dust and tar off. Things like Scotch–Brite scouring pads work well. Rinse the wheels.

2. Optional De-poop

   If there are any stubborn spots or bird shit on your paint, use a bug and tar remover. Any brand will do.

3. Wash your car.

   Mix the soap into a bucket with water as directed on the label. Wet the whole car first, and then use a fat sponge or wash mitt to soap wash the entire car. Start on the roof and work your way down to about the top half of the doors and fenders. If you have plastic or rubber trim horizontally along the door, use that as your stopping point.

   Once you’ve done the top half, switch to a different sponge or mitt. The bottom half of your car is much dirtier than the top half, but it’s also the part you don’t see as much when you look at the car. You’ll want to dedicate this sponge or mitt to always be used for the bottom half. Only use it for that part — keep a separate sponge/mitt for the top half.

   Don’t be stingy with the volume of water/soap mixture you’re using. When you dunk the sponge into the water, you want the dirt to settle to the bottom while getting fresh clean suds from the top of the bucket. If you don’t have enough water in the bucket, you’ll be picking up the crap from the bottom of the bucket. If the water gets really dirty, dump it and start with a fresh bucket of soap and water.

4. Dry your car.

   If you have one of those squeegee things for pushing off most of the water, use it.

   If you don’t have one of those, use a towel or a chamois or whatever. Either way, use soft towels to finish drying the car.

5. Feel your paint.

   If it’s completely smooth where your finger slides effortlessly across the paint with no resistance, then your paint is very clean and you can skip directly to the waxing step. If you do feel some resistance or roughness, then do step 6 (and if you wanna be super anal and thorough, step 7 too).

6. Deep clean your paint

   We used Meguiar’s Medallion Premium Paint Cleaner, which unfortunately is discontinued. You can still probably find it online somewhere. A substitute would be something like P21S Paint Cleaner or Meguiar’s Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner.

   Squirt a little onto the pad, put the pad against the car, and then turn on the polisher. Work in a relatively small area at a time, maybe 2 square feet or so — whatever you feel comfortable with. Move the polisher around at a medium pace — let the polisher do the work. You can use some pressure against the surface, but you don’t need a ton.

   Then take a soft cloth and wipe the area you just worked on to remove the excess. Feel the paint there with your fingers, then feel an unpolished area. You should feel a difference. You should also be able to see a difference in the reflectivity of the paint. If you don’t, try redoing the area using a little more pressure and taking a little more time. But I’d be surprised if you need to.

   Go over the entire car in this fashion, a section at a time. Switch to a fresh cloth when the one you’re using feels like it’s full.

7. Optional polish, and remove scratches and swirls

   I didn’t do this step myself and still saw fantastic results. But Steve told me normally you would do this after paint cleaning and before waxing. Switch to a softer pad and just apply the polish just like you did with the paint cleaner, wiping off the excess again with a soft cloth. e.g. Meguiar’s Dual Action Cleaner/Polish.

8. Apply wax.

   Use an even softer pad and apply the wax just like you did with the paint cleaner or polish, again wiping off with a soft cloth. By this point, your car will look totally awesome. I think we used Meguiars #20 Polymer Sealant. Use a liquid wax with the polisher machine, not the paste.

9. Optional Dress tires.

   Steve and I used this product called “Grape Tire Dressing” which is cheap ($6.95) and works really well. I don’t know if you can get it locally, but here’s one source.

   You don’t have to do it, but it doesn’t take much time and looks great.

10. Optional Plastic and rubber trim shine.

    I was amazed at what a difference this made on my side mirror housings and plastic trim. I don’t remember what we used, but the same company that makes the Grape Tire Dressing also makes “Molding and Bumper Renew” (again for $6.95).

    You can use any one of a number of alternatives like “Black Again”, “Forever Black”, or “Afro-Momma”. Actually, I just made that last one up. But the first two are real.

    Again, it’s optional, but it’s a pretty quick process and it really goes a long way to making your car look as good as it did when new.

11. Optional metal polish

    I don’t know if you can use the same stuff that you use on the plastic trim, but the purpose is the same: to remove oxidation. Steve did the “325i” logo thingy on my trunk and I thought it was probably overkill. But take five minutes with an old toothbrush, and I swear to god, I was amazed at the difference. Before cleaning, you don’t really notice the logo. Afterwards, though, your eye zooms in on it when you’re looking at the back of the car.

That’s it. Like I said, you may think it’s overkill, in which case there are one-step cleaner/polisher/waxers available that probably do a decent enough job. The real clean car fanatics would look at the above and consider it merely adequate. But I think it’s a good compromise.

Photo courtesy of Kevin Steele

Technorati Tags:
howto, car, auto, BMW, wash, wax, detail

Despite what I’ve read before, installing the current stable version under OS X is no longer a big deal. By default, everything is installed under /usr/local/ so it won’t clobber Apple’s perl 5.8.6, which can be found in /usr/. And it compiles cleanly, too.

The included instructions are pretty straightforward but long, so to cut to the chase:

1. Download perl 5.8.8. Unpack as usual and enter that directory.

	% tar zxf perl-5.8.8.tar.gz
	% cd perl-5.8.8

2. Run the included configuration script with a bunch of flags. Hint: swipe each line separately, building one long command line, rather than grabbing all 6 lines in one go.

	% ./Configure -Accflags="-nostdinc
	-B/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/include/gcc
	-B/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/lib/gcc
	-isystem/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/usr/include
	-F/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks"
	-Aldflags="-Wl,-syslibroot,/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk" -de

3. Take a quick peek at the resulting settings to make sure everything’s kosher. I just scrolled up in my terminal window, but you can look in config.sh, too.

4. make, make test, make install as usual.

5. That’s it — you’re done! You can verify that your new installation is now your default perl.

	% which perl
	/usr/local/bin/perl
	% perl --version

	This is perl, v5.8.8 built for darwin-2level
	[...etc...]

If your results are different, make sure that /usr/local/bin is before /usr/bin in your path.

Photo by Laughing Squid

Technorati Tags:
perl, os+x, howto, apple

For those wanting to share greeting card sentiments without buying a stamp or spending time in a Walgreens, try some ecards. “When you care enough to hit send.”

(via Pop Candy)

Can you believe they’re on the web? I mean, look at this:

I read a fascinating article about AJ Khubani, an infomercial magnate and, more importantly, the man who got 12 million people to buy a cardboard map of the US to stick state quarters in. Shlockmeister though he may be, we can learn from him. You see, Khubani shoots about 20 infomercials every year. Each one get only a week to prove itself, and if it can’t earn twice it advertising costs in that week, he kills the product faster than you can say “Set it and forget it”.

What a great example of the adage that successful entrepreneurs should fail often and fail early. When your product isn’t working, the sooner you accept that your idea is a loser — no matter how much you loved it — the sooner you can move on to something that actually might work.

photo courtesy of numlok™