2. Just paid most of my Ferrari fund against the principal of my mortgage. This can’t be undone, so let’s see how i feel about this tomorrow.

3. Am about to eat Lentils for lunch instead of a delicious burger. I’ve put on quite a lot of weight. Someone at soccer told me “You’re good at stopper because of your mass”. Lol and sad. Maybe eating a lot and working out can have a happy balance?

Had an awesome time in Cali. DH, SS, and I made a guys weekend out of it.

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http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/on-facebook-some-friendly-energy-rivalry/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120404

I keep getting errors like:
onfigure:2986: error: in `/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/src/yaml-0.1.3′:
configure:2989: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log’ for more details.

and
./configure: line 2940: /usr/bin/gcc-4.2.1: No such file or directory
in config.log.
I am told to “Install system tools” because they’re not installed.

Problem:

The compilers, cc and gcc, are not linked to the right versions. There is something called ‘llvm’ that I haven’t had time to look up yet that is apparently a newcomer to xcode. The paths to cc and gcc were moved.

Investigation:

Check the symbolic links in /usr/bin. They SHOULD look like this:
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 wheel 12 Mar 13 16:19 cc -> llvm-gcc-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 wheel 12 Mar 13 16:19 gcc -> llvm-gcc-4.2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 562992 May 16 2011 i686-apple-darwin11-gcc-4.2.1
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 admin 52 Mar 13 16:19 i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-g++-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-g++-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 admin 52 Mar 13 16:19 i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 admin 32 Mar 13 16:19 llvm-cpp-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-cpp-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 admin 32 Mar 13 16:19 llvm-g++ -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-g++-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 admin 32 Mar 13 16:19 llvm-g++-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-g++-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 admin 32 Mar 13 16:19 llvm-gcc -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-gcc-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 501 admin 32 Mar 13 16:19 llvm-gcc-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-gcc-4.2

But if you’re reading this article, they probably are not.

Several posts on stackoverflow.com like this one give various suggestions like exporting a new CC= variable, but that did not work for me.

Solution:

Clean up that directory:
sudo rm /usr/bin/cc
sudo rm /usr/bin/gcc

make sure /Developer/usr/bin is clear of any symbolic links to cc or gcc:
$ ll /Developer/usr/bin | grep cc
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 97392 Oct 24 2010 gcc-4.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 166128 Oct 24 2010 gcc-4.2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 369696 Oct 24 2010 i686-apple-darwin10-gcc-4.0.1
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 816560 Oct 24 2010 i686-apple-darwin10-gcc-4.2.1
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 52 Dec 9 13:45 i686-apple-darwin10-llvm-g++-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/i686-apple-darwin10-llvm-g++-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 52 Dec 9 13:45 i686-apple-darwin10-llvm-gcc-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/i686-apple-darwin10-llvm-gcc-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 32 Dec 9 13:45 llvm-cpp-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-cpp-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 32 Dec 9 13:45 llvm-g++ -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-g++-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 32 Dec 9 13:45 llvm-g++-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-g++-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 32 Dec 9 13:45 llvm-gcc -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-gcc-4.2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 32 Dec 9 13:45 llvm-gcc-4.2 -> ../llvm-gcc-4.2/bin/llvm-gcc-4.2
…

Once your system is sufficiently cleaned up, Install this package, the OSX Gcc installer:
https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer

It is a subset of XCode with only the good stuff you need. If you cleaned up your system sufficiently, this should place the correct symlinks in /usr/bin and /Developer/usr/bin so that you don’t have to muck around anymore.

Good luck.

I ordered a Raspberry Pi Model B a few days ago. Have you heard of it, it is the ~$40 PC that can play HD video and only consumes of 5 volts of electricity and minimal wattage. I’ve been dying to get it set up. When running, I’ll use it to control my CT-30 WiFi Thermostat, lights, appliances, and maybe bit torrent in my condo.

This thermostat that I got is very basic. I can connect to it and find out the current indoor temperature, if the heat, AC, or fan is running, but it keeps no memory. That memory is vital to generate any useful data and to create graphs. The OPower / Honeywell thermostat will do such things later this year, but I don’t know when it will be available to the general public, myself included.

I also want to set up an audio recording and video setup: Ambulances come down my street toward Howard University Hospital, blaring their sirens at unbelievable decibels, in totally unnecessary situations, even at green lights. I want to write code to monitor the decibel level on my balcony and take webcam shots of the offending ambulances. The noise level is unhealthy and disruptive.

But I’ll have to wait till June.

I’m seeing this exception thrown while parsing a file returned by the contractors:

incompatible character encodings: US-ASCII and UTF-8

From infile.gets().

There are two problems here: The translators put a UTF8 code point that tells the text editor the “endian”-ness of the file. My script can’t handle this. The first line of the file is a comment for a java application.properties file:

  # =============== (The # indicates comment, the rest is for aesthetics)

The Octal Dump of the file indicates there is something else there:
 $ od -c form-messages_en_AU.properties | head -n 2
 0000000 357 273 277 # = = = = = = = = = = =
 0000020 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

357 273 277 – that isn’t a printing character!

That’s where my scripts were choking. The solution is twofold:
1. Read the file in the right encoding
2. Learn to ignore the character in question.

Part 1: Change the encoding type to UTF8 on File.open:
 infile = File.new(filename, "r", encoding: Encoding::UTF_8)

Part 2: Learn to ignore the character in question:
 if line.start_with?("#") or line.start_with?("\uFEFF#")
   logger.debug "skipping line #{line}"
 else
   @messages << Message.new(line)
 end

Et voila, the exception goes away as a result of Part 1, and I can safely ignore the comment on the first line. If you are not lucky enough to have a comment on the first line, like most cases, you can use string manipulation to throw away \uFEFF once you’ve identified it.

and this one for my uncles:

Both from http://damnyouautocorrect.com/

My uncle and aunt in California gave Melissa and I an engagement gift of a credit to a nice furniture store in DC. Used it to get an awesome home office setup. I wish I got to use it more, but today is the perfect day to stay home and do some research.

The monument is sticking out in the background. The view is splendid.

For NYE, we went to Fripp Island, SC with some good friends. I’ll post some pictures shortly. The highlights were a great golf game with Mitch and an Oyster roast on New Years Eve. Regarding golf, let me just say that if Caroline is my scorekeeper, I might make par someday, otherwise there is no chance.

I’m pleased that one of my almae matres made it to the list, Widener Library at Harvard:

But sad that UIUC did not make it with its ingenious underground library.

Did you know that by building the library underground, UIUC was able to keep the Morrow Plots, one of the oldest gardens in Central Illinois, in full sunshine!