Author archives: Mike
Abandoned building in a park (Machiavelli's palace???)
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Design Theory,
Knight Errant,
Vindaloo.
Highlight of yesterday's wandering was actually a wrong turn. We were wanting to get to the Pitti gardens (and then the Pitti palace, and then...) but missed the little side-gate that is the entrance to Pitti and went through the "main" gate. There was this grand building at the back of the park, and another ...
Days in the Italian Countryside (In Florence now...)
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Design Theory,
Vindaloo.
Arrived in Florence yesterday. Spent the first four days of the trip with Soni's brother, sister-in-law and niece (my niece pretty soon (I'm Jagi Maku :) ). Great people, very fun and relaxed. There are 355 pictures just of them (mostly our niece).Running into the limits of the camera rather frequently, mostly zoom-related (can't ...
Off to Italy... (Well, after lunch...)
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Vindaloo.
We're pretty much packed up, just have to drop the three computers in the luggage, pack up the MP3 players, check the cameras and otherwise assemble the panoply of gadgets that seem to have attached themselves to the trip. Turns out that travelling with someone else means that you take 4x as much luggage as ...
Just 1.5 days left (Little odds and ends of work...)
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Knight Errant,
Young Coders.
We spent the whole day on billing-system stuff, nothing huge, just going through and seeing which tickets we can get done before we head off to Italy. Bit of project management too, grooming the ticket-tracker to find the old, already-finished tickets, marking tickets waiting that are blocked, that kind of thing.
Tomorrow will be more ...
Crash-on-start is sub-optimal too (But that's somewhat fixed now...)
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Young Coders.
Spent the whole day working on the code for the Laptop. Some time on sketching the network-setup UI Myles and I were discussing as well. Biggest problem is that such a project will take months and we've only got about 3 months until we need to think about shipping. That said, I really wish I ...
Crash-on-save is frustrating (As a feature, that is...)
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Tuxedo.
Just had OpenOffice crash when I went to open the "File" menu to save the document I'd just finished. The computer was loaded, but not horrifically so, but once that menu started the whole machine just stopped responding (even to ssh logins)... other than a cursor, no signs of life.
This is now the second ...
Long day's documentation (22+ person-hours of work)
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Young Coders.
Amanda, Soni, Myles and I did a documentation sprint today. We were adding docstrings to the various service modules. Still some of that still-to-land tomorrow. Anyway, very tired now, worked more than 10 straight hours myself. Seneca also did some work toward her idea of a Turtle "robot" built out of cheap motors using the ...
First Toronto OLPC Developer's Meetup (Should have done a general introduction...)
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Young Coders.
Reasonably good turn out at the OLPC Developer's meetup. I'd been hoping to get the whole group to sit down and work on documenting Sugar. However, most of the people at the meeting hadn't really begun working on the environment, and a number hadn't really been through any informational session... we should have spent some ...
Reasonable day's work (Despite an afternoon nap...)
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Knight Errant,
Young Coders.
Soni and I were just too tired to go back to work after lunch today. Wound up sleeping for 3 hours until just before Simon and Fan dropped in. Simon's going to try to drop into the Toronto OLPC Developer's group at Linux Caffe tomorrow (Thursday) night (7pm).
Since they left we've been head-down-and-working. A ...
Crashes (Moments out of the stream of life...)
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Vindaloo.
Taking the TTC home today I had to get out a few blocks away. There was an accident on Bathurst. Looked like a head-on collision at very high speed. The car was completely totaled, the van had jumped way over into the courtyard of a nearby building.
Whoever had been in the cars was long ...
Mike C. Fletcher, the VRPlumber, is a philosopher of design turned computer programmer based in Toronto, Canada. He works primarily in the Python programming language, and maintains a large number of Open Source software packages. You can reach him at: mcfletch@vrplumber.com.