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Articles by Michael Durrant
Op-Ed | The Bottle Bill is bad for the industry and bad for consumers
Legislation was recently proposed in New York’s legislature to expand the state’s bottle bill (S.237C/A. 6353). A major part of this proposal is doubling the deposit fees paid for each beverage container that we recycle in our state. The Food Industry Alliance of New York State, which represents the full spectrum of the retail food industry in New York, has significant concerns with this bill and enacting into law would be a significant misstep by Albany.
Hilary Mantel and the blurred line between history and fiction
'When writers of historical fiction make stuff up about the past, they sometimes do so in an effort to sharpen, rather than dull, our capacities to separate fact from fiction' BL PREMIUM 14 June 2017 - 11:16 Michael Durrant In a recent talk at the Hay literary festival, Cambridge historian and biographer John Guy said he had seen an increasing number of prospective students citing Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning historical novels, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, as supporting evidence...
Letter: Who should pay for senator's salaries?
States should pay the salary of their representatives and senators that they send to Washington, D.C., to work for them. Comment on this story Also, the people who work for them should be paid for by the states that get the benefit of them being in D.C. Then Congress could not vote themselves a raise whenever they want one — that and their health insurance would be up to each state that elected them. This would also mean that their retirement package would be their own responsibility.
‘Facts are not truth’: Hilary Mantel explains why fantasy must inhabit historical fiction
In a recent talk at the Hay literary festival, Cambridge historian and biographer John Guy said he had seen an increasing number of prospective students citing Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning historical novels, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, as supporting evidence for their knowledge of Tudor history.
Hilary Mantel goes on the record about historical fiction
In a recent talk at the Hay literary festival, Cambridge historian and biographer John Guy said he had seen an increasing number of prospective students citing Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning historical novels, Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, as supporting evidence for their knowledge of Tudor history.
How do so ls with a wildcard and see the directory name
I have a directory called selenium_IDE if I do ls sel* I get to see directories that are in it, e.g. $ ls sel* HAPPY HAPPY_PLUS_OPTIONS SAD SAD_PLUS_OPTIONS but not the directory itself, i.e. selenium_IDE/ I tried using -d1 (depth 1) which has worked for me in the past on some system. It does work in that it shows the selenium_IDE directory but also shows a error here on OSX $ ls sel* -d1 ls: -d1: No such file or directory selenium_IDE: HAPPY HAPPY_PLUS_OPTIONS SAD SAD_PLUS_OPTIONS
sed - how to capitalize every 3rd word?
With GNU sed: sed -E 's/[[:alpha:]]+/\u&/3' Would capitalise the third sequence of letters from each line. To capitalise every third sequence of letters in each line: sed -E 's/(([[:alpha:]]+[^[:alpha:]]+){2})([[:alpha:]]+)/\1\u\3/g' To capitalise every third sequence of letters in the whole input, with GNU awk: awk -v RS='[^[:alpha:]]+' -v ORS= ' NR % 3 == 0 {$0=toupper(substr($0,1,1)) substr($0,2)} {print $0 RT}' Or with perl: perl -Mopen=locale -pe 's/\p{alpha}+/++$n % 3 == 0 ?
awk or sed to lowercase/uppercase only one character in string?
Using awk: awk -F_ '{printf "%s_%s_%s_%s",$1,toupper(substr($2,1,1))substr($2,2,2),$3,$4"\n"}' foo or awk -F_ '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) {if(i==2){printf "%s",toupper(substr($i,1,1))substr($i,2,length($i)-1)} else {printf "%s",$i} if(i<NF) {printf "%s","_"}} printf "%s","\n"}' foo Example % cat foo syslog_apr_24_30 syslog_mar_01_17 % awk -F_ '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) {if(i==2){printf "%s",toupper(substr($i,1,1))substr($i,2,length($i)-1)} else {printf "%s",$i} if(i<NF) {printf "%s","_"}} printf...
messaging.sh: line 29: [: missing `]'
I don't know if this is a bad thing, or what it means. My script still seems to work fine, but should I fix it?
Is there an equivalent way to remember directories on mounted volumes like DOS
A while ago, I moved from a purely Windows environment to using Windows and a Mac. Whilst I am slowly getting used to my Mac and loving it, there are a few things that frustrate me. One of them is the fact that there is only 1 working directory on the filesystem. That may seem odd to those only ever run Unix, but follow this as my experience on Windows. I have C: (programs), D: (data), E: (CD/DVD) and F: & G: (USB keys). assuming that those are all valid paths, the output will be ...
How to use printf and %s when there are color codes?
I had these lines: if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then printf "$fail_color Error - Function: $function, Line: $line_number \n" printf "do_test: Third parameter missing - expected result\n" exit 1 fi This works fine and gives me the intended output of Error - Function: words, Line: 94 I then used ShellCheck and it recommended printf "$fail_color Error - Function: $function, Line: $line_number \n ^––SC2059 Don't use variables in the printf format string. Use printf "..%s.." "$foo".
abstraction - Can you implement "object-oriented" programming without the class keyword? - Programmers Stack Exchange
Say we want to provide an abstraction of an "account" in a bank. Here's one approach, using a function object in Python: def account(): """Return a dispatch dictionary representing a bank account.
Is there an English word for "the ability to delete something"?
No. Deletability is morphologically fine and understandable in context, but it is not an established term (0 hits in COCA, 0 hits in BNC, 0 hits in OneLook) and you run the risk of sounding comical or helpless. I can think of no other words that would fit the bill. But all that is beside the point. The option to be toggled already is labeled or called something, and that is the label you must be using. This is techical documentation, not poetry. Refer to things by their actual names.
Is there an English word for "the ability to be deleted"?
No. Deletability is morphologically fine and understandable in context, but it is not an established term (0 hits in COCA, 0 hits in BNC, 0 hits in OneLook) and you run the risk of sounding comical or helpless. I can think of no other words that would fit the bill. But all that is beside the point. The option to be toggled already is labeled or called something, and that is the label you must be using. This is techical documentation, not poetry. Refer to things by their actual names.
Rails 2.x and conventions vs. "enterprise" architecture
Note: this is from the spring of 2008, thus ancient in rails land. I am about to revisit a startup idea and my platform of choice is Ruby on Rails. I've also recently started re-reading the book "Enterprise Rails" which suggests that you do not follow the Rails default conventions but instead separate out your layers into "physical" and "logical" components.
What is a closure and how is it implemented in Ruby?
Try this link: Understanding Ruby Closures. Another one: Understanding Ruby Blocks, Procs, and Lambdas. In a nutshell, a closure is a function plus a context in which the function is called. The context contains state information that the function can access, but which isn't part of the function itself. Ruby has several different kinds of closures: blocks, procs, and lambdas.
Is it ever OK to commit non-working code?
One of the branching philosophies (section Developing Branching Strategy and Codeline Policy in Advanced SCM Branching Strategies - also read Perforce Best practices, its a pdf but goes into some other details) is that you branch on incompatabile policy. A codeline policy specifies the fair use and permissible check-ins for the codeline, and is the essential user’s manual for codeline SCM.
Most efficient way of saving images and sending them to client browser
I'm building an app where users list items for sale and they can include up to five photos for each item. I'm using Azure Blob storage for storing the images. In my app, I'll be displaying these images in several different ways and sizes. I'll show them as thumbnails, as roughly 250px in width and full size, depending on the page on which they are being displayed. I'd like to know best practice for storing these images and sending them to the client. I have a couple choices.
What does "Increment" in Agile software development mean?
In this context, "increment" or "iteration" refer to making relatively small changes to a program before rebuilding or redeploying it. One of the core ideas of agile is that you want to aim for frequent, rapid iterations. In agile you typically want the program to be buildable and shippable at all times.
Is being an honors student really worth it?
Are you in it for the extra line or two you have on your CV or diploma, or the learning experience, or the potential opportunities that arise from your undergraduate institution? Look carefully at how you've "sold" the Honors College to us. A list of requirements, a mention of a waste of time, and pointing out that you can do everything the HC provides to you without assistance. You come across as dissatisfied with the system.
How can I remove a blank homescreen page once I've moved all the apps off it
I've consolidated my 5 'pages' of apps into 3 pages. Now I have two blank pages that have no icons in them. These are the pages that are represented by the small squares on the home page screen that take you to these various pages that have colletions of app icons. Having moved apps/icon to other pages, the last two pages are now blank. How can I actually remove them? This is a Samsung Galaxy s5 running Android 4.4
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