Archives August 2004

I use PyTable fairly extensively (actually exclusively) when I'm working with databases. Today, however, I've come up against a limitation that I've long known to exist, but have never before had a reason to fix. Makes for a rather slow hacking day I'm afraid.

In particular, PostgreSQL has a feature which defines distinct namespaces for ...

Party went well. Lots of people I haven't seen in a long time. Snacks, drinks, beautiful women, lots of conversation, and then a rather heated game of Cranium until around 3am. What more could anyone want out of life? Shane took a few pictures for us, so here they are...

I am almost to the point of saying "screw it" and rebuilding the entire Gentoo install. At the least it will give me a chance to practice my backup/restore skills under Linux. So I am currently downloading the CD images for both the generic i686 and the Athlon64 versions.

I figure I'll try the Athlon64 ...

We had rather an involved discussion at the PyGTA meeting on Tuesday. By way of background, a number of the Python programmers in Toronto are working on a project called the "Art Interface Device", which is, in essence an attempt to create a standardized framework for animatronic artwork. At the moment, the system works at ...

Wound up getting two coffee's at the pool hall this evening, so I'm a bit wired. Sounds like the perfect time to try Gentoo again. How many times am I going to rebuild this dratted system I wonder to myself... oh well, maybe it'll build character.

The secret: twisted.web.client.getPage(url) handles SSL (https://) protocols automatically. Nothing I could find in the documentation mentions that. There are references to the ContextFactory, but nothing is mentioned about whether you need to pass one in or not (you don't). So, a simple script to download an SSL page with Twisted looks something like this:

from ...

Rosey went to Canadian Tire to pick up some lamps (her room and the living room are unlivably dark (I get horribly depressed when it's always dark)). Apparently she didn't have time to find any lamps she liked, but she did pick up a replacement bulb for my big halogen floor lamp.

That lamp almost ...

Tim came by and we discussed the EFT server project for an hour or so (I am so not looking forward to that project now). After that we switched to discussing the MediaCorp page-checker project, much better specified (i.e. at least minimally specified).

Spent a solid 7 hours on that, with the result being a ...

The machine with the little switch hanging off it is basically all old hardware. Unfortunately, the CD-ROM seems to work only for the first 2 or 3 minutes that the machine is up, just enough to boot Knoppix 3.3, but not Knoppix 3.4, and just enough to start booting Gentoo (then it starts getting I/O ...

As some of you will undoubtedly remember, I haven't been having stellar luck with the hardware I ordered from TigerDirect. The CPU cooler doesn't seem to be properly cooling the Athlon64 (though I seem to have got it to the point where it's stable and reliable, though still 10 degrees warmer than it really should ...