Monthly Archives: May 2009

A Wonderful House Near Joshua Tree

I recently had a chance to stay at the Moonway Lodge, and it may very well be the best vacation rental near Joshua Tree. This was my first trip to JT but not my first vacation rental, and I can’t remember a house that I more thoroughly enjoyed.

The building we rented had two nearly identical bungalows side-by-side, with a courtyard and pool fenced in between them. The place advertises it sleeps 6-8, but I think you can pack a few more in there, particularly if the weather is nice.

There were five of us on this trip, and two of us opted two sleep in the beds outside by the pool, two took the big beds in the bungalows, and one took the aptly named Heaven, which is a cool and breezy room upstairs, between the bungalows.

You can tell that the Moonway Lodge is a place the owners themselves enjoy and understand. Too many vacation rentals try to wow you with nice upholstery and modern appliances, but the Moonway Lodge actually had the things I wanted. Speakers to hook up iPods, that broadcast throughout the bungalows and courtyard. A pool that reaches 9 ft., which is a real gem in the desert. A vast expanse of desert to wander into. Wifi. And even a Wii!

If you have a few days, I heartily recommend a trip to the Moonway Lodge, and you can stop and see Joshua Tree while you are there. It’s just a few minutes away.

Can’t Index Strings in Javascript

I just found out the hard way that in Internet Explorer, you can’t index a string like an array. The following works OK in Firefox, but it fails in IE:

stringVar[foo]

That will be undefined in IE.

Refreshing Firefox From, And Other Thoughts On, Emacs

When I’m working on Javascript or Django templates, I often want to test a change in the browser (usually Firefox), which entails refreshing.

As it turns out, it’s a pretty simple matter to do what I want, using just a couple of lines in my .emacs file, and a plug-in a piece for emacs and Firefox. This fine fellow lays out the steps on his blog. However, just to clarify his instructions a bit and spare you from a pitfall that hung me up for a couple of minutes, take note.

After you install MozRepl integration in emacs, it won’t start up until you open a javascript file. If you don’t start MozRepl or open a javascript file before you try to ctrl-x p, or you will get this error:

“Symbol’s function definition is void: comint-send-string”

Maybe I should need to test less often, but until then, this tool is going to be very handy. Here are some other improvements I’d like to make to my emacs:

figure out how to store the state of tabs/buffers when I close emacs
get lines numbers to show up on the left
autocomplete file opening, Quicksilver style, without needing to enter directories and tabs
aquamacs spawns tabs for auto complete and such… I wish those would automatically close
get javascript to color properly in HTML templates
also, django template coloring would be a nice bonus