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Friday, October 9, 2009

Mercurial server-side clone support for Project Hosting on Google Code

When we launched Mercurial support our goal was to get to a point where we could enable a social coding experience. Today, I am happy to announce that today we have support for both 'project' clones and 'user' clones.

Project owners can now create multiple repositories for their project, and they can choose to make any of those new repositories a clone of any of the project's other repositories. These project clones share the same commit access permissions as the original project and make it easier for project members to work together on new features. A common pattern in the Mercurial world is to place each "official" branch into a separate repository with naming conventions like "project-crew", "project-stable", and so on.

In addition to project clones, any user can visit any Mercurial repository and create a server-side user clone of that repository, without asking permission from the project owner. These personal user clones can be easily shared with other developers -- who also can make a clone of that clone. Once a user has finished her changes in a user clone, she can coordinate with the canonical project's contributors to review and incorporate her changes.

User clones aren't forks, in the traditional sense, where a fork has little intention to contribute back to the original project. Rather, the entire purpose of a user clone is to allow users to contribute to projects without requiring official commit access permissions. Because mercurial is a distributed (peer-to-peer) version control system, it excels at branching and merging. If the project maintainers like the new code, they just "pull" the changesets from the clone and merge them into an official project repository. It's all much more elegant than emailing patches back and forth, anonymous contributors get to use the same tools as core developers.

The instructions for creating a user clone can be found on the checkout page for any Mercurial project (e.g. twisty) and existing clones for a project can be found under the Clones sub-tab under Source.

Please let us know if you have any feedback or find any issues. Happy cloning!

By Nathaniel Manista and Jacob Lee, Project Hosting on Google Code

Friday Favorite: The World's Shittiest Mixtape.... NOT!

I almost posted this last week for the Friday Favorite, but knowing that I was going to ask people about the most depressing songs they've heard, reposting today seemed like a more ideal solution.

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College Humor once again gave me something to ponder. Two guys made a bet about who could make, and I quote "the world's shittiest mixtape", with the loser having to carry a boombox blasting out the entire contents of the contest.

And while I do admire the fact that the loser did go out of the street with a big boombox for the afternoon after losing, I think that both contestants could have done so much more with the challenge.

I mean, in actuality, I would call what they ended up making at best, a lame mixtape, because really, the barrel has so much more crap at the bottom of it and neither party got even close to scraping said bottom.

Paula Cole? Sixpence None the richer? Gloria Estefan? Really... this is the best they could come up with? The whole point of the exercise was not only did the songs have to be bad, but they had to be really embarrassing to be associated with.

Get some polka on that thing... some Tiny Tim, or some really weird found music. There was a lot of ways they could have made a horrifyingly shitty mixtape, and I just think they copped out.

When I started watching the video, I thought something like YMCA by the Village People would pop up or anything disco really. Or what about this. It looked like late summer/early autumn... why not Jingle Bells as performed by dogs. And the world of covers alone could have won that contest. The possibilities seem endless, but the execution was weak.

So, what would you have put on the world's shittiest mixtape?

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And in thinking about this post, I can think of so many more warped things that could have been on that tape. I mean, if you went to a dollar store and bought discount cds there, you could probably fill many such tapes with ease.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Dust Storm Redux?

A dry weekend is ahead, but there is some interesting meteorological action in our future. A fairly strong cold front followed by rapidly increasing pressure will push into eastern Washington tomorrow...with several pulses of cold air and high pressure over the weekend. Take a look at several forecast charts over the next few days--they show sea level pressure, surface winds, and temperature (with blue being cold). Notice how the cold colors push in as the cold front moves southward.

This surge of cold air will cause fairly strong winds from the north and northeast...but not as strong as last Sunday. Winds will surely reach 20-30 mph, with some stronger gusts--and such winds are strong enough to raise dust.

The problem is that many farmer's have tilled the soil in preparation for next season, and the ground is very dry. As noted above, it takes a 20-30 mph winds to raise significant dust and we will probably attain this--with the strongest winds probably on Sunday. The Spokane NWS office has already put out a warning for poor visibilities in blowing dust. So be careful if you are driving east of the Cascades this weekend.

If you look carefully at the forecast pressure maps above you will note that there is a tongue of particularly high pressure over the eastern slopes of the Cascades. This is caused by cold-air damming whereby cold air is pushed up over the eastern slopes. Strong easterly winds should also pour out of the Fraser Valley..so Bellingham and NW Washington will also get strong winds. But no dust.

Posts I've Been Trying to Write

I was just looking over the drafts I have sitting waiting for some more polish or even enough attention to get a passable first draft of something, and some interesting articles seemed to have appeared, and I thought I would talk about some of them so that if they ever did end up being completed, you could be as amazed as I am that they got published.

-I've been meaning to call out all the people in the political sphere who have been so casually throwing out terms like Nazi and calling their opponents Hitler or other prominent Nazi officials for not having any real perspective... and you know I would have been all kindness and consideration on that one, wouldn't you?

-My weird fascination with real life disaster and its recreation on both television and in the movies.

-Remembering Streets of Fire (though truth be told, now that Yum Yum got this one, I might not do this one at all or I'll delay it for many more months).

-What I mean when I call someone a douchebag and an asshole respectively.

-A post on how much I enjoy intertextuality.

-How I would have made Good Luck Chuck a good movie.

And the grand daddy of them all, the legendary Open Letter to Roger Ebert which was meant to counter his anti-video game arguments. I started this thing back in July of 2007, and every time I go back to it, I think of more things to say. I do believe its time has passed, but wow, if I would have gotten it done in a timely manner, it would have been an epic post (or series of posts).

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As a sidenote, I sort of wanted to put together a post of the most depressing songs ever written, and I'd love to have your input. If you have a suggestion, leave me a comment telling me about the song or email me at campybeaver@gmail.com.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Midweek Video: Gremlins: The New Batch VOD/DVD sequence

A dude named Sacha Feiner put together an awesome new sequence for Gremlins 2: The New Batch to replace the two medium specific cuts this movie had (for the film release, there is a sequence which involves the Gremlins destroying the film and the theatre manager going to Hulk Hogan in the audience yelling at them so they fix the film and there is a VHS-specific edit as well).

Sacha decided that the age of the DVD and Video On Demand service needed its own sequence, so on a shoestring budget, he decided to see what he could come up with. I have to say, he did some first rate work.

And I respect the fact that Sacha used puppets for his edits... which is indeed in keeping with the original film.

I've read that Joe Dante has seen this and is very taken with it (I've read further rumor that he actually wants to include it in future DVD cuts of the movie).

I guess it just goes to show you that you don't need a big budget to do great effects work (the figure of 3 grand has been bandied about for this whole thing).

The Dream Files: Planet Terror Reimagined

Generally, hearing about other people's dreams is about as interesting as hearing about what someone pulled out of their navel... but I think this is one of those rare occasions where it is worth mentioning (like if I had pulled a diamond ring out of my navel).

You see, I had a dream over the weekend where the characters from the movie Planet Terror were replaced by fast food commercial characters. Naturally, if you haven't seen the movie, there may be a few spoilers in this.

This gets really weird really fast. Won't you join me in the laughs.

I have to mention one of the strangest substitutions first, because it sets up everything else.

Rose McGowan's Cherry Darling was Grimace. Now picture that freak of nature trying to do the pole dancing with its short legs and stubby arms. I can't stop laughing because that image is just so strangely funny. And the idea of Grimace running around with a gun for a leg is just bizarre.

Marley Shelton's Dr. Dakota Block was played by Birdie, which isn't that weird considering. There isn't that many female characters in the fast food world, so this makes sense (though some would argue that my subconscious should have made Cherry Birdie, but that is just splitting hairs really).

Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) was The Burger King, which is best dream casting ever, because he is the creepiest character in that movie. Of course, if the dream was utilizing the framework of No Country for Old Men, you know that the Burger King would have been Anton Chigurh.

Freddy Rodriguez's Wray was The Hamburglar, and when he did that sweet running flip off the wall, the hat stayed on, making the maneuver that much more awesome. Now, imagine Hamburglar riding the minibike. Of course, when you think about the fact that later in the movie, Hamburglar and Grimace get it on, you can understand why that reel of reel the movie went missing.

Deputy Tolo and Sheriff Hague (Tom Savini and Michael Biehn respectively) were played by Officer Big Mac and Mayor McCheese. I would have thought that J.T. would have been one of those two characters because the Sheriff is his brother and those two McDonald's characters share more than a passing similarity to each other.

And J.T. (Jeff Fahey) was Jack in the Box, Bruce Willis was The Big Boy and Naveen Andrews was Colonel Sanders.

Also notable is the fact that Naveen Andrews' line "I also want the balls" was transmogrified as "I also want the McNuggets." I don't know if he was referring to testicles as McNuggets or if he really wanted McNuggets (I could see a character based on the Colonel having a bag full of the testicles of his fast food enemies.

But what I find hilarious is that despite the fact that McDonald's characters dominated it, there was no Ronald McDonald. I don't know... maybe if the dream would have continued, he would have been Machete or someone from another trailer in the Grind House feature.

I don't have nightmares... but I think this once again proves that I have weird dreams.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Touch: The Skittles Ad I can't Stop Thinking About

I know Skittles commercials are supposed to be surreal and weird, but there is just something about one of the ads in particular, Touch, that bothers me and makes me ask a lot of questions about that particular version of the world.

Maybe it is the fact that someone thought it was a good idea to have someone whose touch turns objects into Skittles working at a desk with a computer and a phone. I mean, really, what does he do at his place of work exactly? Is he the implied threat of doom if you don't perform? I mean, it seems sort of mean to have someone sit at a desk with things they can't use, in a way that is almost mocking him day in and day out. That's just sadistic. I mean, given his limitations as a worker, I guess the only people he could possibly work for would be Mars, the maker of Skittles. It is a talent which could be very useful for them, as he can turn anything into the candy, so I could see them using this particular talent/curse to turn even garbage into Skittles, making that division the greenest industrial activity in the world.

That'd probably have to label them as such of course, and then some plucky policemen would discover that in addition to vast piles of trash, the occasional dead body would be thrown into the mix, and he start running through the streets yelling "Skittles Green is made from people!" and that wouldn't be good for anyone. Maybe he could feed starving children in the third world with his skill though (that or because of the sugar content of the candy, arable land which is used to grow sugar cane could be put to other use).

When they show this commercial on TV, they usually cut out the part where he talks about killing someone by shaking their hand... because that is really brutal for a commercial. And you just know some little kid on that bus ate some of the Skittles, which is doubly upsetting because a) they used to be part of a human being and b) I've seen the floor of a bus, and you don't want to eat anything off of one. Which begs the question: does he pay for the bus with Skittles?

I also wonder how this individual managed the act of lovemaking without touching his lover with his hands... did she milk his prostate? Or did he develop the Skittles curse after she was impregnated (and I think having hands that turned things into Skittles would all but bar you from adoption).

I wonder how many Skittles this dude eats in a day, because if you are making something which is marginally considered food from your fingertips, you probably eat a few of them... though I can imagine that he would utterly despise them now as they represent everything that is evil in the world to him. Does he go to a support group.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that girl Flo from those Progressive Commercials?

Clearly it is a commercial that asks more questions than it answers.