Author archives: Mike

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Shane's Famous! (And he never told me...)


Was looking for Shane's web-site to add a link in another post and couldn't find one (not surprising, he's not really all that into computers, but still, you hope), but did find an article written about having tea with him. Cute little article. I never would have known about it without the almighty Google. ...

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PyTable Release while I'm screaming (Upgrading and importing, and crashing and importing, and throwing machine out window...)


Well, since the absolutely newest code needs a new feature of PyTable I decided to do a release while I was waiting. Mostly this just makes working with the DBRow objects a little more intuitive. Setting a field to NULL deletes the value, and setting a foreign-key field to a DBRow instance tries to find ...

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Working with faulty substrates (Ruminations as I rebuild the database yet again)


Hard disks are generally reliable technology. However, I have managed to have two IBM drives, both of which have had failure rates that would make a bed-wetting 6-year-old blush. The second was to replace the first... how wonderful now that it's off warranty. It makes me think, however, how much of my skill is actually ...

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How do I manage to find so many holes in PostgreSQL? (You'd think I was doing something out-of-the-ordinary)


Am I just abusing this poor little PostgreSQL installation on Win32? Is it just the flaky disks? I mean, infinite running time for a simple select * from table and some freaky error with clogs getting started, remembered, but not retained... you don't really hear about this being the normal experience of PostgreSQL users. Of ...

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And now it's working again (Argh, debugging is hard when the debugged thing stops failing...)


Looks as though they've continued migrating modems off the old CMTS, so cmon has dropped below whatever magical threshold was causing the weirdness with PostgreSQL. I really do need to get TwistedSNMP to the level where it can simulate an entire Cable plant if I'm going to be able to properly debug these things. Problem ...

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Mind wandered for a few minutes (Cheap solar-powered dirigibles for virtual tourism)


There's been a lot of interest lately in extremely efficient air and sea "glider" craft which can be extremely efficient by using differential buoyancy to let them travel in a vertical zig-zag pattern with very little energy used. I'm thinking, if one could reduce total cost for an aerial version to around $200CDN, it would ...

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Patience sparrow, trust the code (If I'd just waited it would have been a less critical error...)


I'd forgotten that the manager process actually terminates hung scanning processes after a given period. Doesn't help with fixing the bug, but does at least mean the scanner can keep scanning everything else... though with a multi-hour glottal stop in the middle :( . The real thing it proves is that it's just scanning the ...

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Ach, overslept! (Well, more like just couldn't get up...)


Wound up popping up and down for the first few hours of trying to sleep trying out new approaches to solving hanging problem. By the time noon came around I just couldn't get up (back, mostly, but the hands are trashed too). Last few hours of sleeping was all nightmares. Blah. Oh well, day is ...

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Still no reservation... (Herding programmers and cats)


Realised that I couldn't book without first confirming with Shane that we're not going to try to find a place with triple-occupancy allowed. I'm seriously considering the hostel on the PyConForCheap page. It's almost the same price as splitting a $100/night room 3 ways, and I don't really need much from my hotel, just a ...

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Think I need to take a real break (Writing blogs as I watch the scanner stall isn't helping...)


Obviously I'm just missing something obvious. Wish Lawrence didn't have a guest tonight so I could go get a snack, or even go on a walk. Though I already walked quite a bit today. Should work on the metaclass presentation... or more critically, rent a hotel room for PyCon!