Ryan Anderson › Comments

Well, the whole whitespace thing drives me a little batty. And the failure modes are strange, for example there was a string replacement with a dict. It looks for %(cell)s. If it finds %(cell)s in the string it replaces, if it finds %(blah)s it throws an error, but if it finds nothing, it does nothing. Also, I have no idea what it's doing under the covers and it's clear that is very... more... - Leeann Bent

I mean, I'm sure a large part of my problem is that I just don't know it well enough. But the assumptions seem strange to me. - Leeann Bent

Oh, and it's possible to both dereference and sum lists (they call it union where I come from). - Leeann Bent

I don't understand what you mean by "if it finds nothing, it does nothing". The % operator for strings works left-to-right: the %(foo)s will be substituted with the value of the key "foo" in the dictionary. If the key "foo" doesn't exist, Python will raise KeyError. It's particularly useful when you have a dict and want to log a debug statement based on values in the dict: logging.info("address=%(address)s name=%(name)s date=%(date)s" % kwargs) - Tudor Bosman

Python is trying hard not to optimize very much under the covers. If you want (for example) a dict reference hoisted out of a loop, hoist it yourself. (although you probably don't need to; dict references with immutable keys of built-in types are pretty fast) - Tudor Bosman

Did you mean difference instead of dereference? You can't subtract lists; you can add them, but that's concatenation, not union. [2,3,4] + [4] = [2,3,4,4] - Tudor Bosman

So getting back to the first point (I think I understood your concern): the % operator is meant as a way to format strings, not as a way to format dicts :) So it doesn't check that all keys in the dict appear in the string, but it does check that all %(key)s in the string are in the dict. If you want to print the entire dict, str() or repr() probably do what you want (or write a simple generator comprehension over dict.iteritems() to print the way you want). - Tudor Bosman

example: " ".join("k=%s,v=%s" % (k,v) for (k,v) in d.iteritems()) - Tudor Bosman

(Disclaimer: I think Python is awesome; FF is written almost entirely in Python. I'd personally like to see Java die and have everyone write Python or C++, depending on how performance-critical the piece of code is) - Tudor Bosman

It is concatenation, you are correct. But it turns out you *can* deference a list when you give it as an argument (I think I saw this to iteritems). - Leeann Bent

Actually maybe it wasn't, but I cannot find the snippet b/c p4 is down. - Leeann Bent

Ah, you're probably referring to foo(*bar) -- pass down the values of bar as consecutive arguments to foo. so if you have def foo(a,b): return a+b, and c=[2,3], then foo(*c) returns 5. This is pretty useful for functions with variable arguments, such as when writing wrappers: say, a function that logs arguments, and then calls another function: def foo(*args): logging.info("args=%s", args); bar(*args) - Tudor Bosman

(a more elegant solution to the "log all arguments before calling the wrapped function" problem involves decorators) - Tudor Bosman

That more elegant solution will contain essentially identical code, of course. - Ryan Anderson

my Internet is always comcastic, Comcast lives up to its adverts after all :) - Prolific Programmer from IM

Comcast is down on the farm. - Seth

Comcast is down with that. - Seth

Comcast be down wid dat shit - Prolific Programmer from IM

comcast was down for me today too, the tech came out and fried my f*ing airport. i'm now "plugged" directly into the modem. awaiting boy carrying new airport. - Jenna Bilotta

Confirms my long held beliefs that Comcast is a dirty whore. - EricaJoy

I've found Comcast to be incredibly awesome, when working, and their customer service experience is always unpleasant and (at best) mildly frustrating. Some of the problems I've had with them were made worse through my own inaction (Suffering for a day or two through packet loss or flaky hardware before I bothered calling, etc.) - Ryan Anderson

Swapped the "new" modem Comcast gave us when we moved (mfg date: 06/05) for a purchased one. So far, no problems, and the VPN stays up longer than g-pa on Viagra now. - Neal Krummell

Comcast certainly knows how to 'get down'. - Dan Dashnaw

Sounds like Comcast is going down everywhere. Desperate times for them, desperate times indeed. But on the silver lining side, *great* customer service if they're doing this now *ahem* - Andy Bold

Put microwave on the roof? - Cristo

Also, the new MS keyboards don't like being run through the dishwasher (with or without detergent). I had no problems washing two old MS Natural Keyboard Pro keyboards. - Tudor Bosman

They make sippy cups, no? - Andrew C

heehee - Jeanette Bosman

I usually just drink water at my desk, and generally from a valve-equipped, nearly spillproof water bottle. - Andrew C

The last time I washed a keyboard, I ended up letting it dry for a day or so before it worked again. - Ryan Anderson

I hate buying coffee - it usually tastes like dishwater. - Chris Loft

Yes, but on the 360 where it's better. - Alex Scoble

Only if by "better" you mean "packed with all the original exploits that were long patched on the PC". - Tudor Bosman

By better I mean on the 360 and on my big screen. - Alex Scoble

omg, I didn't even think of that! I soooo want one now. Picard was my idol. - Jeanette Bosman

And when Tudor comes home while I'm reading and I hear him at the door, I'll say "Come!" and "Yes, Number One?" - Jeanette Bosman

I love TNG :) I didn't think I would like the Kindle much. I used to read a lot when a few years ago. Now not so much.. However for the past couple of days I am looking around for the Kindle every single moment I am not on my laptop - Bindu Reddy

LOL....Jeanette that is really funny :)) - Bindu Reddy

Is anyone aware of an app that does something like this? - Tudor Bosman

but I'm a lazy programmer. Maybe someone's done it already, or maybe there's a workaround that I haven't thought of yet :) - Tudor Bosman

Beautiful. - Tudor Bosman

"The ping packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more ducks), spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the wise-eyed boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is scheduled under cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host (boat) by way of a bridge (a bridge)." - Tudor Bosman

This always irritates me a lot: "We're making offline Gmail available to everyone who uses Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days, so if you don't see it under the Labs tab yet, it should be there soon." You guys need to change your push process so things are available when they are announced or at a predictable time so I don't need to keep checking back for 48 hours... - Bret Taylor

Long time coming! Sweet. - Shawn Farner

Woo-hoo! Way cool. But yeah, very disappointing to not have it *right now*. - Richard Chen

@Bret are you suggesting that they roll it out silently, then tell people about it, then switch the feature on for everybody all at once? - Adewale Oshineye

Let's see if Bret still says that once there are 100 gazillion FriendFeed users each with 100 gazillion gigabytes of data. ; ) - DeWitt Clinton

Yes, more or less. (I think it should be available "imminently" or announced after it is actually available - that is what we did for most consumer products at Google). It is really weird to tell your users a feature has "launched" when it is not available to them, and there is no predictable path or timeline to use it. It seems like one could get the feature-turning-on process down below 30 mins or so. - Bret Taylor

DeWitt: I am not saying it is easy, just saying it is worthwhile. - Bret Taylor

I'm going to guess -- with no inside knowledge -- that flipping the bit on the accounts is easy compared with the scaling problem of having those millions of people all downloading all of their email at exactly the same time. But I could be wrong. - DeWitt Clinton

But more to the point: holy crap, offline gmail launched! - DeWitt Clinton

Has Google Reader always had offline support as well? Just noticed the little green online/offline toggle in the upper right menu... - Ken Sheppardson

@Ken: yah, Reader launched with Offline support the day we launched Gears at the fist Google developer conference a year and a half ago. - Bret Taylor

Bret: Nice. I completely missed that. Just installed Gears earlier today to use RTM offline, next thing you know... heh. - Ken Sheppardson

Agree with letting users know after it is available... I was frustrated when I couldn't get to the skins feature and everyone was talking about it. I think this it is some sort of a miracle that this feature actually launched. Good for GMail :) - Bindu Reddy

arf... still waiting for it in my labs. - Justin Hart

WARNING: Anyone with access to your computer will be able to read your offline emails, due to the lack of encryption in Gears databases - lautaro

lautaro, true but presumably you should put some kind of protection on your computer in general, lest someone be able to read/delete all the files on your computer. Only use Offline Gmail on computers you can secure or in trusted environments. Treat it like files on your computer. - Kevin Fox

I has it! Woo!! - Nick Humphries

Everyone should have it; if you don't, reload Gmail and it should appear. (That's generally true of everything we do for Labs, fwiw. The fact that you have to turn it on manually counts as a 'slow rollout'.) - Ryan Anderson

@Ryan Anderson Actually not the case. Neither refreshing nor logging out and logging back in again brings the offline feature into my labs choices. - Ben Greenberg

@Ben, sorry, I appear to have misread some mail earlier today, ignore me. - Ryan Anderson

@bret -- it's tough to manage a large number of users enabling offline simultaneously, each downloading thousands of messages/attachments on initial sync. We could do as you suggest, and only announce the feature after the rollout was complete, but that's problematic too (it still wouldn't do much to stagger the initial load, plus the press would break the news before we did, which is confusing for users...). Any ideas? :-) - Todd Jackson

@todd Boarding a long flight at 2pm EST tomorrow and hoping I get the tab to go offline before then. Hint... hint.... :) - Christopher Sacca

Todd: Re "Any ideas", absolutely... let users know when they can expect to have the functionality enabled on their account. You could either use the Cable Installer Method ("sometime between 8AM and Noon on Tuesday"), or the Rolling Blackout Method ("you're in block 4. We're on block 2 right now"), Alphabetical Order ("you're an M, we're on E")... Time Zones... State... whatever... - Ken Sheppardson

Also, maybe you could find out how many users actually use the Labs features and how frequently they use Gmail. These users would be the most likely to appreciate the new features. For instance, my roomate has the new feature and didn't even know about it, so he wouldn't have missed it. (I guess it's hard to determine who reads the Google Blog though :P) - Brandon Titus

What you *could* roll out to everbody is a little button in Gmail Labs so that a user could indicate they've heard about the feature and would like to be added to a queue such that if you explicitly ask to use the feature, it moves you up to the head of the line... or the tail of the list of other people who've specifically requested the feature. - Ken Sheppardson

I agree with Ken on this. I feel like people who aren't really interested get the feature first and this irritates me. - Brandon Titus

Anyone have any guesses as to how this will work if you have multiple Gmail accounts being used on a single computer? Or if I have a Gmail account and an App account that I’d like to have both run offline on the same computer? - Chris Stevenson

Good question Chris. Looks like there is a bug with using it with multiple accounts anyway (not exactly what you were looking for, but interesting. http://groups.google.com/group... - Brandon Titus

Can't wait for it to work outside of the US & UK... - Eitan Burcat

Can't wait for it to actually get to my account...another friend of mine just got it. Too bad he uses Mail to manage his Gmail account instead of actually using the web interface. There needs to be a way to opt-in to get priority position on the role out. - Brandon Titus

Instead of these "offline web apps" I rather use real desktop apps, thank you... - Jemm

@Brandon Titus - Thanks for the link! Reads like I should avoid this if I have more than one account used on a computer to be safe. - Chris Stevenson

Options to limit the time for which messages are downloaded, the disk space used, and ESPECIALLY TO NOT DOWNLOAD LARGE ATTACHMENTS would be a plus. 500+ attachments were downloaded from my gmail account. No options to avoid it. http://tinyurl.com/t3hsUk - iSteeve

what's the difference between gmail off-line with thunderbird/outlook? I prefer thunderbird, which works both offiline and online. - xiawinter

Take a bow Gmail. You have done a wonderful job. It was delayed but after using I know why it was delayed. :-) - Sidharth Dassani

Gmail Offline status after 12h of synch: "Finished downloading messages, 1463 attachments still to be downloaded" & 1.53GB less on my HD :( - Xavier Donat

well, I guess friendfeed wins the social experiment... trying to determine which community would give the most positive feedback about itself - Mike Sego

Nobody else has our "liking" technology :) - Paul Buchheit

which others did you try? :) - Private Sanjeev

Mike, not sure if the experiment is set up correctly ... On FF you will always get more likes because you are friends with some of the most active people and FF allows for comments/likes from non-friends. FB on the other hand won't allow for that :) - Bindu Reddy

just facebook and twitter... my group of friends is different on each, so it isn't exactly a scientific experiment... but yeah, I think it's that "like" technology, which I'm sure you patented =) - Mike Sego

I always meet people in the course of living. I find it works out better that way. I do the things I like to do and hopefully run into people that I'm compatible with. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

When I came to ATL 3.5 yrs ago I found the ATL Flickr group. - Russellreno

lol...you don't...actually alcohol always help - jamar78

@Adam Infinite Loop Error: To make friends you host a party and invite friends... @Sheen Thats very vague. What do you do in the course of living that allows you to meet people of the same sex? - EricaJoy from IM

good question. pretty much all my friends these days are either coworkers, neighbors, or parents of my kids' friends (or all of the above). if you are so inclined, a lot of people would advise you to join a church or other religious organization. but i'm guessing many on friendfeed wouldn't go for that solution. - Nathan Rein

Erica, your original post implied you already have friends that are of the opposite sex. So both my party ideas seem plausible. "But Adam," I hear you protesting, "I can't imagine inviting all my guy friends to a party and insisting upon BYOW" and to that, I'd retort... Erica, it's Silicon Valley. Show me a party 'round here with more than 10% women and I'll show a juggling water buffalo. - Adam Lasnik

A juggling water buffalo certainly would be a hit at parties. - Andrew C

Oh, I have the same problem! I am quite shy in social situations which I think makes me appear dull and/or stupid. (no really, I have been told this on multiple occasions) I am neither dull, nor stupid (I swear) but it's difficult to know when, where or how to approach people. - Jeanette Bosman

Historically, the way I've met folks is in clubs. Cycling clubs, sailing clubs, wherever there's enthusiasts for hobbies that you like is a great way to meet friends. In fact, since hobbies seem to segregate naturally by gender, that's one easy way to meet same-gendered friends. In this age of Bowling Alone (https://www.amazon.com/dp...&), clubs are dying, but there are still many active ones. - Piaw Na

Historically, the way I've met folks is in clubs. Ruby Skye is one great place to meet people. - j1m

@Adam: I dunno, the parties I've been to in the city have had a pretty healthy mix of men and women. - Ryan Anderson

I saw this a few weeks ago. Awesome. - Ryan Anderson

This game is awesome! - Ross Miller

Wow, this is a lot of fun. - Benjamin Golub

i love this - Alex Gawley

Do it!!! - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

I saw one at Target a few weeks back. I also see a FriendFeed mug when I walk to Moma, but I think that 's yours Erica! - Roshan Vyas

@Roshan Heheh yep that is my mug in the window in 45. - EricaJoy

I don't have themes yet, can we not go back to the old default once the new one is rolled out? - Benjamin Golub

I'm unable to change my theme, but I definitely got the new ugly one! - Patrick Lightbody

Patrick: if you got the new theme but no "themes" tab in settings, log out and log back in. - Tudor Bosman

I think browser reload should be sufficient (or just enter https://mail.google.com/mail/ in the nav bar). - Paul Buchheit

If you have the new 'darker blue' theme, you can sign out and back in and themes will be active. Go into settings -> themes and choose 'Classic' to get back to where you were this morning. - Kevin Fox

I guess it makes sense if you think that the user will have to go into themes to change back into 'classic'. But I thought that Google went above and beyond such gimicks? - sofiagk

Patrick, a reload should do the trick. - Private Sanjeev

And then some people still don't have the option to change it just yet. They are rolling it out in groups!! - Paul

Log out/log in, refresh, hard refresh, no luck. May just be a long rollout. - Christopher Galtenberg

Duncan Riley says "roll-out isn't immediate but everyone should have access by the end of the week" - Christopher Galtenberg

got mine yesterday using desk at the moment just have a diff look is a release - Trevor Cook

Seriously. My first thought when I saw the new default was "how do I change this?" - Amber

We did pretty extensive testing on the new default colors. Both surveys and logs showed it to be preferred to the classic skin. People actually thought Gmail was faster with the new colors. - Michael Leggett

As a designer, I think the classic skin is a better pallet for the app b/c the subtle blue lets text, links, and things like new chats stand out better. - Michael Leggett

I've been using skins (internally) for so long the old version looks ugly to me now. (And, humorously, my personal accounts don't have themes yet, heh.) - Ryan Anderson