Monday, October 31st, 2005
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ ./floc.py --stats
Statistics on the index:
Known files: 0
Known words: 0
Known dirs : 0
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ ./floc.py --check-index /home/user/notes/
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ ./floc.py --update-index
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ ./floc.py --stats
Statistics on the index:
Known files: 108
Known words: 5103
Known dirs : 31
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ ./floc.py --query "vakantie"
/home/user/notes/personal/vakantie/research.txt
/home/user/notes/work/organisatorisch/todo.otl
/home/user/notes/work/development/zx/wiki/pmwiki_status
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ cat /home/user/notes/personal/software/laptop_stats
HP Compaq NC6120 P740 NL,EN
PM740
512MB
60GB
DVDRW
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ ./floc.py --query "compaq nc6120"
/home/user/notes/personal/software/laptop_stats
[user@jib]~/dev/PERS/floc$ ./floc.py --query "compaq 512mb"
/home/user/notes/personal/software/laptop_stats
Coming soon to a theatre near you.
Monday, October 31st, 2005
I recently downloaded OpenOffice.org v2 and am quite happy with it. There are just two problems I’ve found so far.
One if that the cursor sometimes shows up wrong. For instance, I’ll be editing on a line, but the cursor will show up on the line below. Annoying, but not something I can’t live with. I’m sure they’ll fix it in v2.1.
Another problem, which isn’t a bug really, is that the default page size is set to Letter. Since I’m don’t live in America, this isn’t correct. Whenever I print a Letter page, I’ll have to cancel the job on the printer, walk back, change the papersize and print again.
Fortunatelly, it can be changed to A4, but it takes a little searching. The problem seems to be in the default template. The default template has its page size set to letter. To change the default template, follow these steps:
- Create a new document.
File → New → Text document (or whatever you’d like to change the default template for).
- Change the document any way you like. Add styles, modify bullets, etc. Here are some nice improvements:
- Change the default paper size:
Format → Page → Format = A4.
- Add numbers to headings:
Tools → Outline numbering → Level = 1-10 → Number = 1, 2, 3...
- Now create a new template from the document:
File → Templates → Save → Enter Filename → Save.
- Set the new template as the default:
File → Templates → Organize → Double click My Templates → Select Filename → Commands → Set as default template.
- Done.
Monday, October 31st, 2005
Version 0.3 of gExec released. Changes:
- Bugfixes
- Addition of the –keepopen option which will keep gExec open after running a command.
Project page
Download
Saturday, October 29th, 2005
One of my main issues with Python was the terrible documentation. The module reference manual often omitted various methods and other details. It’s even completely down right now.
Turns out though that this problem is quite easily solved by the ‘pydoc’ utility. I’d already used pydoc to generate documentation for my own programs, kind of like javadoc. Turns out though you can also use it on a complete directory, including the modules directory:
[todsah@jib]~/doc/py_ref$ pydoc -w /usr/lib/python2.3/
wrote encodings.base64_codec.html
wrote encodings.html
wrote encodings.aliases.html
wrote email.Generator.html
wrote email.Charset.html
wrote email.Encoders.html
wrote email.Errors.html
wrote logging.html
wrote logging.config.html
wrote logging.handlers.html
...
Drawbacks:
- No index file, apparently.
- Not recursive
Even beter is pydoc’s built-in HTTP server:
[todsah@jib]~$ pydoc -p 10000
pydoc server ready at http://localhost:10000/
Now fire up your browser and point it to the URL mentioned. Presto! A full index of all documentation, generated live from the documentation strings in the various modules.
Well, this sure fixes the documentation drawback. :)
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
Yesterday evening, being the lazy slacker that I am, instead of working on my project, I was surfing around. I went to freshmeat, saw some interesting project, visited the author’s homepage, saw a link, got to some other guys website where I read that he was the inventor of the word Vexel.
There was a link on his site to the Vexel site and I spent some time surfing that, viewing different Vexels. Then I came across this artist’s profile. First check out this thumbnail. Looks like a photographs, doesn’t it? But then check out the full version! It’s actually a hand-made vector-oriented image! It was even just her fourth Vexel. Took 900 layers to create. That might not mean much to you if you’re not into computer graphics, but it’s a lot. The most layers I ever used in a computer generated image was about 200. And about a fifth of those were automatically generated and another fifth were just throw-away layers.
Now that’s talent. Her online portfolio contains more great art, btw.
Reminds me of that demo-scene pixel-artist guy’s work I saw a couple of years ago. The guy used some age-old DOS port of an Amiga image editing program to draw, completely by hand, an almost picture-perfect image of a woman. There were even individual little blond hairs on her arms. Amazing what some people can do with some free time and some artsy skills. Wish I could do it.
Thursday, October 27th, 2005
Okay, pop-ups are out. Everybody’s got their blocker installed, courtesy of Firefox and Internet Explorer 6 SP2 (or something). Content-providers Companies are standing around pulling their hair out: Now they can’t torture and agonize their website-visitors anymore! What to do?!
Don’t worry, the new scheme goes like this:
Before allowing access to some half-assed piece of ‘content’ (read: 80% of the screen filled with flashing, moving, beeping, advertising garbage versus 20% of content), they’ll show a full-screen ad with some little ‘Skip ad’-link hidden somewhere on the page! Awesome idea. And as if this wasn’t enough to make me want to puke and leave the site immediately, cookies are required to skip the ad!
Cookies are the spawn of Satan, everybody knows this. Anybody that doesn’t know this fully deserves to have their privacy and anonymity brutally violated. Anyway.. Naturally I’ve got cookies disabled. There’s absolutely NO reason WHATSOEVER why EVERY site out there needs to bombard my browser with all kinds of useless cookies. I’m talking about sites where I don’t even log in to some account! So, I don’t allow cookies. If I want to log into a site, I manually add it to my ‘Can set cookies if it absolutely has to’-list. Now, do you really think I’m going to go through all the trouble of adding a site to this list, just to be able to skip an ad? Maybe if my browser didn’t have a Back button I would. Alas for the ‘Content providers’ (god, I hate that word. HATE. IT), it does. There goes another dissatisfied customer, Mr. Content Provider! See ya!
For some reason content providers like Hollywood, TV stations, papers, magazines and websites actually think their content is so interesting, people put up with the day-in-day-out constant annoyances. I don’t know about you, but not me.
I don’t watch TV. Haven’t done so for years. The shows and movies are crap, the ads are too long and too frequent.
I don’t visit The New-York Times On-line and many other websites. I refuse to give my name, address, phone number, e-mail, DNA, fingerprints, social security number, pin code and first-born child just to read 50 words worth of article riddled with ads and FlashInformation (I just invented that word; FlashInformation is like that bullshit excuse for information you see scrolling at the bottom of the screen during the American ‘news’-shows. Not informative, not catchy, not worthy).
I don’t read magazines. They’re 72% ads, 15% actual content and 13% filler information. (Eight years ago I actually counted all the ad-space in five magazines and that’s what I came up with).
I don’t read newspapers because they all, one: assume I’m an idiot; two: aren’t scannable so I can quickly see what’s useful information to me and what’s not and three: give only, like, a tenth of the available information about a topic and still manage to completely screw up the impression that that information leaves.
Look, we’re still living in the ‘Information age’. Incredible amounts of information are trying to get my attention during each of my waking hours. No matter where I go or at what time I’m going there, there’s always a shit-load of information to process. Cue nature’s most incredible invention to date: The Human Brain! The human brain has (content-providers may want to pay attention here:) FILTERS! You know what triggers those filters? B U L L S H I T! (That and ugly chicks). When bullshit is encountered, it gets filtered out!
Now then. Imagine you’re a content provider (newspaper, TV station, anything). Wait! Don’t kill yourself yet, this is purely hypothetical. Okay, you’re a content provider and your content sucks. Nobody wants to view it. There are two things you can do. One is to just force your content onto the people. Bypass those bullshit-filters and make them view your content! Give them full-screen ads, call them during dinner to offer crappy products, halt them in the streets to get them to sign up for some shitty deal, whatever! Unfortunately, being a content provider, your IQ is only about as high as that shitty little dog down the street from here, so you don’t actually realize that the most annoying thing you can do is bypass the magnificent filters in our brains. It makes people not just not interested in your product, it makes them hate it and you. Too much ads, too much trouble to go through before reaching a meager amount of trivial information, and people look on for other information.
There’s an easier solution, you know… Make your content easily accessible to the people who are actually interested in it. Make your content more interesting. Make your ads appear at a time that makes sense. If Google, of all companies, can get it, why can’t the rest?
I hate mediums. I hate them all. TV, radio, newspapers, the world-wide-web. Hate, hate, HATE! How come I have to pay for shitty quality and STILL have to watch ads?!
And the best thing is, it’s only getting worse. I think I’m gonna live out the rest of my life a hermit.
End-of-rant.
PS: This article was non-informative. Please don’t read it.
Friday, October 21st, 2005
Version 0.12.1 of PROMS was just released.
Changes in this release include:
- Fixed a bug in the setup script which caused upgrades to fail.
If anybody’s wondering what happened to the release of v0.12: It contained a bug which was found prior to actually releasing it. The bug has been fixed in v0.12.1. You should not use v0.12!. Even if you’re upgrading from v0.11 you should use v0.12.1. There’s no need to upgrade to v0.12 first.
Changes for v0.12 and therefor also for v0.12.1 (since v0.12 should be skipped) are:
- Fixed a bug in the mail sending routine that caused a failure in the mailing of notifications.
- Fixed a bug in the permissions while creating the directories that hold a project’s files.
- A notice was added to the README documenting the fact that PHP’s short_open_tag setting must be on.
- The ‘Manage’ tab is no longer shown if the user is not logged in.
- Projects can now be flagged as ‘private’ so that they will only show up for project members and the project owner.
- Added the ability to delete todo’s.
- Added the ability to delete files.
Tuesday, October 18th, 2005
I just released version 0.4 of RSSMerger which features the following changes:
- Added copyright and GPL notices to source.
- Added a –version option
- Fixed a bug which caused RSSMerger to crash on feeds containing empty title tags. Thanks to Jeroen Leijen.
Monday, October 17th, 2005
I’ll start replying to all the e-mail that piled up during my vacation Really Soon Now. Please bare with me as I sort it all out. If you’re awaiting an awnser to something you should have it in about two days.
Monday, October 17th, 2005
As you can make out from the post below, I’m back from vacation.
Since we’d both been slacking off just before we actually went on vacation we hadn’t gone through the trouble of planning and making reservations for a trip of any kind. Initially we thought about going to Cuba, but that wasn’t do-able on such short notice (unless you want to spend two weeks in a very very boring resort with mostly old people). Instead we booked a last-minute flight to Greece on thursday and left on a friday (I’m glad I can pack my bag in less than half an hour). Of course on the day we had to leave the whole train station in Utrecht was down due to a computer malfunction and no trains could enter or leave the station, including the one to Schiphol airport. Fortunatelly, Michiel could find it in his heart to put off drinking his whine for about an hour and a half in order to drive me to Utrecht by car. From there we could get into the train station and wait until the malfunction was over or, alternativelly, take a taxi to the airport.
We (wouter and me) spent two weeks in Greece in a small village called Parga. Since it’s quite a small village, you won’t find it on the map, but it’s on the west coast of Greece right between Préveza and Igoumenítsa. It’s also fairly tourist-oriented which made communicating with the locals a lot easier. Many inhabitants own restaurants, bars or various other tourist accomodations and have got a pretty good grasp of the English language. Many greeks also spoke very good German. The tour-guide had an explanation for that, but I wasn’t really paying attention to her. Naturally we tried to learn as much as possible of the Greek language, but more than a very basic grasp of the vocabulary was out of the question. At least now I know how to order two beers and perform a toast when in Greece.
As for our activities there… we didn’t do much. We just hung around, drank beer, read some books, did a bit of swimming and climbed some mountains. There was plenty of nature to see there, but most of it was olive trees. The beaches and mountains were beautiful though; as where the fabulous fortress ruines. We met two great Czechs and the four of us rented a car so we could drive to a nearby town called Igoumenítsa. Unfortunatelly we arrived at the start of the Siesta (which ran from 14:00 to 17:00) so the place was pretty much deserted. We actually had the plan to rent a car for more days in order to drive around greece but, let’s face it, we were way to lazy and didn’t really feel like it. And since it’s our vacation we weren’t willing to go around and do stuff we didn’t feel like doing.
Even though we didn’t really do anything the two weeks where over before we knew it. On saturday we had to get up at 6:00 in order to catch the plane back to the Netherlands. This vacation was actually the first time I’d been on a plane, and I really can’t see what all the fuss is about. People were being nervous and air-sick, but all I could think was “This is just a really noisy, large bus with a better view; wouldn’t want to sit in one for eight hours straight either”.
Anyway, I’m back and had a great time (even though the beds felt like they where made out of solid concrete and my leg-muscles still ache from all the steep roads in Parga). I’ve got another week of leisure-time vacation ahead which I will no doubt enjoy and then it’s back to the normal working routine again. Let’s see if I can put my free time to some good use.
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