talk about facepalms

learning javascript: valuable
relearning trigonometry: way valuable
spending 2 hours trying to code Math.atan2 in plain javascript because you were too stubborn to spend 6 seconds searching for how to get that stupid angle at any quadrant of the unit circle: priceless!

in related news, Math.atan2 is very useful (altho why its arguments are (deltaY, deltaX) and not vice versa eludes me), and pixi.js is very fun.

unexplainable 500 errors with flask and jquery ajax on google app engine

I was trying to do something simple - get a preloaded partial from the server via ajax. my api call worked directly in the browser, worked when I ran it with $.get() from the console after the page was loaded, but was returning 500 during page load (as in, only failing when it was called as js running at after dom load). I could confirm that the correct flask view was running and succeeding using logging, but the 500 I was getting had NO responsetext, and nothing useful..

After fighting and fruitless searching for 40 minutes, I disabled the flask debug toolbar. Voila! everything worked as expected.

Moral of the story: F$@# the flask debug toolbar.

facepalms: 8

displayport / hdmi not recognized in ubuntu 14 when eighth inch audio jack is not plugged into sound system (lenovo t430s)

yeah you read that title right. can you believe it? I fought with my computer for an hour early this morning, installed a super fresh kernel, played with intel drivers, but nothing wanted to make ubuntu 14 recognize the displayport. It was working the night before!

finally gave up and went to put some music on. boom! screen turned on. what the hell? unplugged the eighth inch cable again. boom! screen turned off. also, the amplifier turned off and on each time I plugged or unplugged the cable. I'm still 99% baffled here but there's another clue - a buzz on the line that I can audibly hear thru the speakers when this particular sound system is connected, that also changes when I restart the computer.

Note that when I plugged headphones into the eighth inch jack, the screen did not turn on (altho there may have been some signs of life briefly).

So best guess (which is probably very wrong?) is that there's a loose connection somewhere in the laptop, and that the added power from my stereo thru the eighth inch connection (which should be flowing the other direction, but this is an input / output jack) is bridging the loose wire? hence the buzz?

UPDATE 6:30pm same night:
scratch the above theory - new shit has come to light!
when I moved my laptop to the living room and plugged the mini displayport into the projector, everything worked as always - without a sound system being plugged in. So then, being the good scientist that I am, I lugged one of my screens into the living room and plugged it into the displayport, and holy moly, it worked fine, no audio cord plugged in. So it's actually proximity to my crazy stereo system that's causing this issue. Unfortunately I don't know enough about sound systems and electronics to posit a complete theory, altho I bet this is enough for someone to be able to. My general idea now is that the magnetic field cast by the bass amplifier on the floor right next to the monitor is somehow involved.

As before, if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear em.
facepalms: 7.5 (would have been 10 but tempered by the sweet relief of seeing that screen turn on)