Author archives: Mike
Breaching going better this time (Don't use USB keyboard and mouse for Knoppix, oh, and use the actual Gentoo CD)
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Snaking.
I'm up to the stage where one builds the kernel in the latest Gentoo install. Probably 4 hours wasted trying to get Knoppix to work as the hosting/building environment.
For some silly reason it kept losing my USB keyboard and mouse. After I switched both to PS/2 connectors that problem was solved, but then the ...
A few days of paying work (Just for a change...)
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Snaking.
Switched back to the web-"spidering" application yesterday, a few more hours of work today on it. This is really just a web-checking engine that goes out and sees if any of a few tens of thousands of pages have changed in the last day or so and reports the results.
Nothing really complex there, but ...
Hitting the limits of your tools... (...is limiting.)
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Snaking.
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 goes very well (Pictures for everyone!)
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Vindaloo.
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...
Breaching from scratch (Let there be isos)
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Snaking.
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 ...
Why you can't just flutter the eyelashes anymore (Ruminations on a discussion at PyGTA...)
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Design Theory.
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 ...
Back into the breach (Gentoo setup attempt since I can't sleep...)
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Snaking.
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.
Twisted web client and ssl (Since it took close to an hour to figure this out...)
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Snaking.
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 ...
Let there be light! (Rosey's excursion to Canadian Tire)
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Vindaloo.
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 ...
Change and rests and suchalike (MediaCorp project work for most of the day...)
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Snaking.
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 ...
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.