Author archives: Mike

RSS feed of Mike

Watch your Django field defaults do not load objects if you use South

Just ran into a South migration issue.  Basically we had a field that looked like this (simplified):

class MyModel( models.Model ):
    hostname = models.CharField(
        default = random_unique_hostname,
    )

where random_unique_hostname() was written like so (again, simplified):

def random_unique_hostname():
    test = generate_random()
    try:
        MyModel.objects.get( hostname = test )
    except MyModel.DoesNotExist, err:
        return test
    else:
        return random_unique_hostname() ...

Continue reading

Fake French is Fun!

Ran FakeLion over our current project.  It's actually pretty cool just as a design tool.  The text is backward and in a weird "font", so you aren't distracted by what is says, you just see the site's layout with text-where-text-will-be.  With this being the third time we've used it on the project, there really wasn't ...

Continue reading

Bad Coder, No Cookie

We use globalsub and MockProc extensively in our test-suite at work.  Today I wanted to look up the name of the argument in MockProc (we use globalsub in almost every test case, so I don't need to look that up).  So, look up the docs... wow, whoever wrote this library really sucks, there's just some ...

Continue reading

Minor changes to OpenGL.raw

I've just done a bit of hacking to make the (Py)OpenGL.raw hierarchy a little more "normal" looking when you read the auto-generated code.  There are now functions declared, the functions are then annotated with decorators to make them into wrappers (which actually replaces the original functions).  Doesn't really affect how the code works, it just ...

Continue reading

Forget "pledges" to release updates and fuzzy timelines

Hey, google/android peoples. Here's a proposal: shame *every* licensee into releasing official unlockers for *every* Android phone ever released.  The unlocker should just install an open bootloader that can install whatever ROM the user wishes (it can scream loudly at the user that they are voiding their warranty, of course).

To be clear; not for ...

Continue reading

Modernising PyVRML97

Spent a few hours working on getting PyVRML97 (on which OpenGLContext is built) updated to use Cython instead of hand-coded C modules for the accelerators.  The transformation-matrix stuff worked pretty well, but so far the frustum-culling code isn't happy.  I'd like to get the rework done before releasing a new version of OpenGLContext (which really ...

Continue reading

Android 2.2 seems pretty 2.1-like...

Got one of the phones flashed up to 2.2 (an unsupported release for it), so in theory I'll be able to develop/test OpenGL ES 2.0 now.  I spent far longer than I should have doing that (the whole day, basically, what with various mis-steps and spending hours trying to figure out what the best ROM ...

Continue reading

Android Dev Setup: What is step one, really?

Finally got a few minutes to poke a toe into the world of Android development.  Started the installation of the Android SDK for Ubuntu (Oneiric).  Eclipse won't start.  Segfault just after telling it where the workspace should be.  Apparently no one has ever changed the default working directory in the first dialog they ever see ...

Continue reading

GLES 1.1 Really? In 2012?

Shiny new Android dev environment.  Start reading through the documentation (yeah, a bit retro), okay, Intents seem rocking... oh, the intro just sort of dumps you off in the middle of nowhere... well, let's look at the familiar stuff; OpenGL should rock with everything being modern and shiny.

GLES 1.1 only on 2.1! (Which is ...

Continue reading

SilleScope, a trivial OpenGL oscilloscope-like thingy for kids

My (2 year old) son likes screaming at the OLPC "Measure" application, so I'd like to have something like that for all of our computers (i.e. something that displays audio as a simple view that lets you see your own voice).  SilleScope is the result.  At the moment it only has an ALSA source (i.e. ...

Continue reading