A long time ago – all the way back when people still said “write once, run anywhere” with a straight face – I wrote a simple Java app called Iceberg. It reported on the directory sizes of your disk, and presented a simple UI for poking around to find the big ones.

Although it had a lot of shortcomings, it continued to be a really useful little tool every now and then. Whenever I ran low on disk space, it more often than not helped identify some big, dumb files that were unnecessarily hogging space: old downloads, video files, log files, unused apps, etc. Sometimes I even managed to run it on the remote Unix machines at work, which was often similarly enlightening.

But Java has slowly and steadily lost whatever sheen it once had. From having the Oracle logo on it nowadays to Apple recently removing the plugin from OS X web browsers, its day in the sun has passed (see what I did there?).

Out of the ashes of that goofy little side project app now arises: another goofy little side project app! Meet Iceberg 2 (v.1.9.7). That page gives all the details and usage info necessary, as well as a link to the GitHub repo. The “1.9.7” is a nod to this not quite being finished enough to fully call 2.0 yet. I’m hoping additional use will shake out some issues, and am also hoping to speed it up more.

As you’ll immediately see, I’m accepting from the start that this isn’t going to be a utility for everyone, that it’s a tool for me and my kind: geeks who use a *nix command line (and who know what “*nix” means). The generator script currently has no Windows support (unless it miraculously works under Cygwin), but if someone wants to contribute a version that works there (Perl? Ruby? Python? .NET.ASP.C# RT Professional.bat?), that would be great.

The generator script works fine on Mac OS X, and also on the handful of Linuxes I’ve tried it on (Ubuntu, RedHat, & CentOS). The HTML files it creates should work fine in any modern browser, on any OS.

If this sounds like something up your alley, check it out and let me know what you think: Iceberg 2.

This anecdote by Marco Arment of happening by a Microsoft store on Surface launch day is snooty and condescending, which makes me feel a little abashed that it resonates so much. On the other hand, I can appreciate how satisfying it is to long-time Apple users for the tables to be to turned on the old monopoly.

But I don’t think many Surface buyers are going to comparison-shop with the iPad, or vice versa. It’s very clear who the Surface is for, and it’s not us.

The Surface is partially for Microsoft’s world of denial: the world in which this store contains no elephants and Microsoft invented the silver store with the glass front and the glowing logo and blue shirts and white lanyards and these table layouts and the modern tablet and its magnetic power cable. In that world, this is a groundbreaking new tablet that you can finally use at work and leave your big creaky plastic Dell laptop behind when you go to the conference room to have a conference call on the starfish phone with all of the wires and dysfunctional communication.

But it’s also for people like that salesman who don’t agree with Apple’s choices: people who want to have more hardware options, more customization, more hackability, and fewer people saying “no” to what they can do on their devices.

Apple’s products say, “You can’t do that because we think it would suck.” Microsoft’s products say, “We’ll let you try to do anything on anything if you really want to, even if it sucks.”

That last bit is especially pertinent to me, with regard to design and feature decisions we’re making at work. Though all of us there admire and wish to emulate that spirit of Apple’s products, I think we have to admit that for our products, in our market, with our users, we’ll never be able to be that strict. (Of course, we’ll do our best to minimize the “even if it sucks” part.)

This rant/beatdown by sci-fi author John Scalzi, Who Gets To Be a Geek? Anyone Who Wants to Be, is a couple of months old, but I just came across it. The beatdown itself is maybe a bit much, given the victim’s subsequent appearance in the (extremely long) comments section with claims of being misunderstood, feeling bad about it, being a big fan of Scalzi’s, etc. And Scalzi does destroy him; it’s Truly Epic.

But regardless of whether and how much of a smackdown was deserved or delivered, I thought the central points in praise of geekiness of all kinds were extremely well put. The following, on the difference between hipsters and geeks, is a great sample, but I recommend you read it all.

Many people believe geekdom is defined by a love of a thing, but I think — and my experience of geekdom bears on this thinking — that the true sign of a geek is a delight in sharing a thing. It’s the major difference between a geek and a hipster, you know: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.”

The first issue of the new, Kickstarter-funded Howler magazine arrived today. I love soccer writing, so I still look forward to reading the articles. But after flipping through this first, enormously formatted and overly designed monstrosity, I’m glad I only backed them at the “get one issue” level and not the “full subscription” level.

Maybe I’m just in a foul mood after watching Liverpool play well but lose YET AGAIN (3-2 at home to Udinese in Europa League), but this thing just isn’t my bag. A couple of quick examples of what’s put me off:

[caption id=“attachment_177” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] Like this sort-of, kind-of funny picture of Rooney and Kompany that’s part of the article title? Fooled you! It’s not part of the article! At all! It’s just a sort-of, kind-of funny picture, all by itself! The text to the left is the end of the article prior! No caption (just the title, “Gents”, and the artist), no accompaniment, no point. It’s Art, I guess! (Also, how about that giant red bar? A capital “I”? Maybe! A random red bar? Yes! Relation to anything at all? None!)[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_178” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] Know what this diagram of Bs, Ds, and Gs is meant to illustrate? Fooled you again, it’s not a diagram at all! It’s the title of an article! Called, “BDGB BDGB”, OBVIOUSLY! It’s about being a fan of Man U in the 70s, OBVIOUSLY! More Art, I guess! (Also, see the random circles and lines and colored bars and shadows sprinkled haphazardly all over? Still more Art, apparently!)[/caption]

Anyway, as I recall they did say in their Kickstarter promo, with all fair warning to me, that they would have “some of the most striking art and design you’ll find in any publication being made today”. And there are some neat graphics in here, certainly; some that even seem to serve a purpose beyond their creator showing off to other magazine/design people. And I am optimistic about the writing, but I’m disappointed overall. Best of luck to you, Howler, but I won’t be subscribing.

Scene: James Bond endures terrifying turbulence on a flight across the Caribbean, and gets just a teeny bit morbid about it.

You are linked to the ground mechanic's careless fingers in Nassau just as you are linked to the weak head of the little man in the family saloon who mistakes the red light for the green and meets you head-on, for the first and last time, as you are motoring quietly home from some private sin. There's nothing to do about it. You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother's womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world. Perhaps they'll even let you get to Jamaica tonight.

— Live And Let Die, Ian Fleming

One thing I know for sure about being a fan is this: it is not a vicarious pleasure, despite all appearances to the contrary, and those who say that they would rather do than watch are missing the point. Football is a context where watching becomes doing . . . When there is some kind of triumph, the pleasure does not radiate from the players outwards until it reaches the likes of us at the back of the terraces in a pale and diminished form; our fun is not a watery version of the team’s fun, even though they are the ones that get to score the goals and climb the steps at Wembley to meet Princess Diana. The joy we feel on occasions like this is not a celebration of others’ good fortune, but a celebration of our own; and when there is a disastrous defeat the sorrow that engulfs us is, in effect, self-pity, and anyone who wishes to understand how football is consumed must realise this above all things.

The players are merely our representatives, chosen by the manager rather than elected by us, but our representatives nonetheless . . . I am a part of the club, just as the club is a part of me; and I say this fully aware that the club exploits me, disregards my views, and treats me shoddily on occasions, so my feeling of organic connection is not built on a muddle-headed and sentimental misunderstanding of how professional football works. This Wembley win belonged to me every bit as much as it belonged to Charlie Nicholas or George Graham . . . and I worked every bit as hard for it as they did. The only difference between me and them is that I have put in more hours, more years, more decades than them, and so had a better understanding of the afternoon, a sweeter appreciation of why the sun still shines when I remember it.

– Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby

I’ve long scoffed at people who recount their team’s exploits using the personal pronoun “we”. What’s this “we”? You’re not the person out there doing anything, you’re sitting in the stands, or more probably on your couch at home watching TV.

But in my more recent, soccer fanatic years, I’ve had the impulse to speak this way myself, though I’ve fought against it. After reading the excellent passage above, no more. “They” may not understand it, but it truly is “we”.

Odd coincidences: coming across this name-drop at roughly the same time that the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team won gold at the London Olympics.

At the time [1970], the club disapproved of perimeter advertising and pre-match DJs, and so we had neither; Chelsea fans may have been listening to the Beatles and the Stones, but at Highbury half-time entertainment was provided by the Metropolitan Police Band and their vocalist, Constable Alex Morgan. Constable Morgan (whose rank never changed throughout his long Highbury career) sang highlights from light operettas and Hollywood musicals: my programme for the Derby game says that he performed Lehár's 'Girls Were Made To Love and Kiss' that afternoon.

– Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby

Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the "Follies." The party has begun.

– The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

I think I have a new hero.

I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel that four or five hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and in the evening I see friends, read or watch a movie. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, what time?

– The ‘Busy’ Trap, Tim Kreider on NYTimes.com (via Mike Industries)

(I also love the following line, even though I don’t recall seeing any cats or boa constrictors developing software. Come to think of it, I don’t remember any boa constrictors. Surely he wasn’t thinking of Lowly Worm?)

More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary.

This is a repost from “An Absolute Cracker”, a short-lived Tumblr of mine.

Most of the shots of the blue & yellow crowd at the Ukraine-Sweden game were totally baffling. Were they Ukraine fans? Sweden fans? I COULD NOT TELL. But this cute little Ukraine fan (and of course all the people cheering immediately after a goal) was the exception. Lots of people are loving his reaction – pure, unadulterated celebration – but the almost better part to me is the look right before, wide-eyed & expectant… This. This is what it’s all about.

This is a repost from “An Absolute Cracker”, a short-lived Tumblr of mine.

What a soccer day yesterday, with two big games. First – well, actually, first was the Championship promotion game between Blackpool and West Ham, which on most other days would be big, but yesterday it was little more than a footnote to my soccer day.

Anyway, first for real was the Champions League final. I was technically a neutral, but got pretty wound up in anti-Chelsea fervor during the run-up to the game. I really wanted Bayern to solidly beat Chelsea, if not outright humiliate them. Alas, it was not to be.

And then the second big game: the return to the field of my hometown team, the Austin Aztex. There’s a lot of history for me with the Aztex (a whole other blog’s worth), but bottom line, I was just pumped to go to a live game again, without having to road-trip to Houston, Dallas or San Antonio for the privilege.

It was fantastic. This new team is “just” PDL (amateur, mostly college guys playing over their summer breaks), and the competition is “just” other teams from around Texas (El Paso, Laredo, Midland, etc.). But even though it was supposed to be a lower level of play than the previous pro Aztex team – and maybe it was, it’s hard to compare after just one game – it didn’t matter a bit. It was a blast.

Winning 6-1 over a team that had 2 players ejected didn’t hurt the celebratory homecoming, either. :-)

Here’s the double-decker bus we rode from the Lion & Rose to the stadium, also a blast. Bonus that nobody was decapitated by power lines or tree branches.

So the day featured two games from the farthest extremes of world soccer. From some of the biggest names in the game playing on manicured grass in a packed Allianz Arena, to a bunch of amateurs playing on artificial turf in a 70-year old high school football stadium.

Some fans might find that swing, from the very pinnacle of the game to essentially the very base, too far to stomach. But I love it. Because across all the miles and characters and stories, it’s still the exact. Same. Game.

This is a repost from “An Absolute Cracker”, a short-lived Tumblr of mine.

I was excited to see that Fox’s own Jamie Trecker personally attended and then wrote about the women’s Champions League final today. Until I read it, that is. What an insulting, condescending turd.

Take the same piece and imagine it being written by some baseball or NFL journalist, attending the men’s final, then patronizingly patting everyone on the head for a nice little time with your little ball, but concluding with a sniff that their sport was still The Bestest. You’d have soccer fans everywhere up in arms. But somehow the so-called “senior editor” at Fox Soccer gets away with gems like the following:

While you might turn up your nose at the idea of seeing a women’s club match (as some of my fellow ink-stained wretches did when I mentioned it to them this morning)

No need to be apologetic about going to a world-class soccer game, bro. I’m sure they’ll still let you back into the clubhouse when you get back.

Before you ask, yes, it was a “real” soccer crowd

Again with the defensiveness. Not sure what else 50,000 fans would be. I guess he expected all soccer moms and little kids, plus players' families?

Now, let me be frank and say that the game would not have made you forget Manchester City.

Well that’s no shocker, since that Man City match was widely regarded as one of the most exciting games in modern Premier League history. And remember, nobody seems to think Saturday’s Champions League final will make me forget Man City, either, even though those players have boy parts instead of girl parts.

the only people who didn’t look like they enjoyed the atmosphere were the players – they looked very nervous in front of the wall of people . . . partly because the women usually play to pitiful, invisible crowds.

This was a bigger than usual crowd for them, okay, fair point. You don’t have to be quite that vicious about it, though. I mean, really: “pitiful” and “invisible”?

And even though the level of play isn’t that of the Premiership, Lyon wasn’t half bad. Still, the future of the sport is not feminine.

Whuh . . . WHAT? What. What the fuck is that? Ohhhhhh. Ah, yes. That’s a reference to ol' Sepp’s comment ("We have always believed that the future of football is feminine").

And there we have it: Trecker’s whole point in going, his whole point in writing about it. To refute year-old empty rhetoric from a corrupt old dickbag that nobody likes or even believes about anything, anyway.

Dear Jamie. The sport doesn’t have to be masculine or feminine. It can be both. There’s enough room for both! There are apparently 50,000 people who are into women’s soccer enough to attend that match just two days before the vaunted men’s final is held in that very same city. That fact will probably not hurt attendance on Saturday. It’s okay. Men’s soccer is not in danger, and you don’t need to defend it. And if you’re uncomfortable with or incapable of covering women’s games as, you know, actual games, then please don’t bother. Your contribution will not be missed.

The moral of the story: forget Trecker and Fox’s “coverage” of the women’s game, and just read Jenna Pel at Pro Soccer Talk. Instead of one token paragraph, you get a whole story about the actual game, with no gender agenda either way.

At work recently, we had new business cards printed. As a developer with few in-person interactions with current or potential customers, I’ve given out all of maybe five business cards, ever, in my career. But the company’s sending the development team to RailsConf, and the boss wants us to be able to hand a card to prospective job seekers, etc.

We don’t have actual formal titles – I usually go with a generic “software developer” when I have to give one – but business cards seem like they should somehow indicate one’s role. It wasn’t long before some of the brainstorming for this turned silly, and then, as occasionally happens, I had a short-term obsession with thinking up clever (more or less) titles.

Here’s the resultant list, in no order whatsoever, which I hereby release to the public domain, as if anybody else in the public domain would give a damn. Some are pop-culture references, some are unpop-culture references, some are just random ideas of my own.

• '); DROP TABLE Contacts; --
• Misanthrope
• sudoer
• Onceler in Chief
• Ringwinner, Luckwearer, Barrel-rider
• Señor Developer
• Asshole
• Spelchecker
• Assistant to Ms. Paltrow
• God of the Harvest
• Unicode Expert�
• ���������
• Scapegoat
• Curmudgeon
• Captain of Industry
• Lieutenant of Industry
• Vice Officer
• Assistant to the General Manager
• Corporate Espionage
• Clockwatcher
• // TODO set title
• implements Developer
• Replicant
• Lazy Developer
• Earthman
• Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council
• King of the Britons
• Iterator
• Not Sure
• Cleaner
• Grandmaster
• Pawn
• Perfectonist
• Patient Zero

For this batch of cards, I went with the first one, the xkcd reference.

A couple years ago, I started doing my own personal “best of the year” selections in iTunes. It’s easy to make an iTunes smart playlist that includes all the tracks added during the calendar year. Just set “Date Added”, “is in the range”, and pick the dates (I also add rules to exclude some tracks, like audiobooks, podcasts, etc.).

I use “date added” rather than “year”, so my selections are based on music that I bought during the year, regardless of when it was originally released. If I discover an old artist or pick up an old album years later, then so be it.

I buy full albums only; I never buy just single tracks. And so that’s what I pick 10 favorites of: albums. Here are my 2011 selections, in alphabetical order (yes, really) by artist. The links are to Wikipedia, and a playlist of these albums (except Dum Dum Girls and Francisca Valenzuela, unfortunately) is here on Spotify.

1. Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell - released in 2010, but I only heard about it in 2011. A "folk opera", it's one continuous story from start to finish. There are some tracks that I don't love (the Justin Vernon ones, mostly), but others that are fantastic ("Why We Build the Wall" and "How Long?", in particular - though they pack more punch if listened to as part of the whole work).
   
   
2. A Bestiary Of, The Creatures - A much older one, released in 1983. I've been a Siouxsie and the Banshees fan forever, but somehow never checked out the Creatures side project until I came across this CD, at the library of all places. It's a little uneven, honestly, but it earns a place here for helping me discover Siouxsie music I was missing out on.
   
   
3. Only In Dreams, Dum Dum Girls - This one actually did come out in 2011. I discovered this band because they played a free set at Waterloo Records during SXSW. Good fuzz-guitar pop rock.
   
   
4. The Valley, Eisley - Another 2011 release. This band is one that I'd seen a few videos of and heard here and there, but never really checked out. This album is solid all the way through.
   
   
5. Ceremonials, Florence + the Machine - and:
6. Lungs, Florence + the Machine - How on Earth I hadn't already known about Florence + the Machine, I couldn't tell you. I finally found them in November, including 2009's Lungs, and dig both albums so much that they're both on this list.
   
   
7. Buen Soldado, Francisca Valenzuela - I've liked her since her first album, and her performance at Austin City Limits Music Festival was fantastic.
   
   
8. Oh Land, Oh Land - Slightly odd Danish electro-pop. Another one I found because they played a free set at Waterloo Records for SXSW.
   
   
9. Wild Flag, Wild Flag - While I also saw this band at Waterloo's SXSW showcase, the chances of me not loving a band that includes two-thirds of Sleater-Kinney were always low. I subsequently saw a full concert at La Zona Rosa, which was awesome. . . right up to the point where they skipped the encore. This band is great, but I may hold a grudge about that forever.
   
   
10. Civilian, Wye Oak - Yet another band I caught live at Waterloo during SXSW, and which I also saw later at The Parish. This album is good, but as Paul Krugman found during his appearance on Sound Opinions (yes, really), their live performance is an order of magnitude more awesome than their recorded material.

So those are my favorite “new” albums of 2011.

There are good albums among the rest of what I picked up in 2011, and good tracks even on the not-so-good albums. To keep them from getting lost in the iTunes library, I also made a playlist of favorite single tracks from all of the year’s albums that didn’t make the best-album cut. (Some albums were so close to best-of status that they get two tracks here.) This “Best of the Rest” is also a playlist on Spotify, minus, once again, the few tracks they don’t carry.

1. About To Happen — Siouxsie (Mantaray)
2. Romance Is Boring — Los Campesinos! (Romance Is Boring)
3. Don't Carry It All — The Decemberists (The King Is Dead)
4. Bhang, Bhang, I'm a Burnout — Dum Dum Girls (I Will Be)
5. Neighborhood Girls — Suzanne Vega (Suzanne Vega)
6. Lero-Lero — Luisa Maita (Lero-Lero)
7. Revel In Contempt — Buke And Gass (Riposte)
8. (Don't Go Back To) Rockville — R.E.M. (Reckoning)
9. Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole — Martha Wainwright (Martha Wainwright)
10. Oro Y Plata — Hello Seahorse! (Lejos. No Tan Lejos)
11. Culture Of Fear — Thievery Corporation (Culture Of Fear)
12. Nylons in a Rip — Nikka Costa (Pro*Whoa! EP)
13. Cruel — St. Vincent (Strange Mercy)
14. Americano — Lady Gaga (Born This Way)
15. Nail In My Coffin — The Kills (Blood Pressures)
16. You Won't Let Me Down Again — Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan (Hawk)
17. Down By The Water — The Decemberists (The King Is Dead)
18. Smart — Girl In A Coma (Exits and all the Rest)
19. There Is a Light That Never Goes Out — Dum Dum Girls (He Gets Me High)

I hope this helps someone who comes across it discover another band or two they like; let me know on Twitter if so.