programming – Page 11

Amusing Line From The Python Manual

I just extracted the following line from the Python documentation (for those of you who don’t know, Python is a relatively-new and somewhat unusual programming language who’s name is derived not from the snake but from Monty Python):

Attempts to pickle unpicklable objects will raise the PicklingError exception; when this happens, an unspecified number of bytes may have already been written to the underlying file.

You have to love any manual with that line in it! It almost beats the famous Fortran line about defining pi as a constant in case it’s value changes.

Alone, And With…

People who are in on the Secret Of The Jukebox will be delighted to hear that I’ve had a good long hack at it tonight (hence it being 4:30am) and I’ve managed to get heaps done and ready for Paul to break test, including but not limited to the new “Alone, And With…” engine, which doesn’t seem to suffer any longer from the age-old bug that gives it it’s name.

I’ve just finished listening to some old hard-to-get Goo Goo Dolls albums that I acquired a little while ago. One is silly over-punky shouty hard rock stuff; very coarse and unrefined, much unlike their later stuff. The other, ‘Hold Me Up’, is much recommendable: some tracks I’d heard before, some stuff I hadn’t heard, all very very good. In particular, enjoyed ‘Laughing’, ‘Kevin’s Song’, and the older version of ‘Two Days In February’. Toy.

I Wanna Wake Up Where You Are

Watching a Goo Goo Dolls concert on VideoCD.
They’re really quite remarkably good. I suppose you can’t help but respect the artistry that goes into making a song for which you need to re-tune your guitar such that five strings are tuned to the same note. I mean, can you see the conversation now? “Hey, Robby: tell you what, why don’t we see what this sounds like…” And Gutterflower is a simply stunning album.

Reading MMURTL v1.0 (Building Your Own 32 Bit Operating System)
It’s really quite remarkably geeky. I spent Christmas reading quotes from it to my family, Claire, and her dad. Claire understood bits of what I said. Sometimes. It’s great – a 600-page A4 book which contains at least 200 pages of solid assembly language (the most hardcore programming anybody could ever really justify doing) and another hundred of low-level C. It’s on a short print run – the attached CD-ROM is on CD-R media.

Missing Claire.

Some Days You’re The Statue; Some Days You’re The Pigeon

I’m at the office. It’s almost 5pm. So far today I’ve achieved what should be estimated as approximately 7 days work. Some days the code just flows. I like being me.

On the other hand, it may be that I’ve just written the wrong 7 days worth of code – as in; the 7 days worth of code I should be starting next week. Despite having achieved the entirety of my work schedule for the next month, I haven’t yet finished what I was supposed to be doing this morning.

My boss is pretty level-headed and appreciates the way I work, though – that if he doesn’t expect me to do things in the order he asks, and he doesn’t mind that some days I achieve nothing but surfing the web and posting to my blog, and that other days are like this one, with immense productivity. I’m an outlier even by software engineering standards. I’m a bit of a loose cannon. But in any case; I’m worth more than he’s paying me and we both know it, and neither of us care terribly, so everything’s pretty damn sweet.

Got my assignment in on time. Think I’ve done it quite well (actually went to the library and read old journals and books and things – very scary and academic and cool at the same time: after all; it’s just about possible to pass a comp. sci degree with Google as your primary reference). Time will tell.

Chez Geek night tonight at the Ship. Looking forward to it.

Bovini: A Week Well-Spent

It’s been a busy week. I’ve spent a lot of my time at the office, trying to get the replication model for Bovini working – causing much stress as it failed time and time again. For those of you without a grounding in computer science theory, replication is the art of making data be identical (and editable) in several places at once without the fundamental problems that this goes on to cause, such as data identity conflicts.

In this particular case, we have two master copies of a database, and five smaller copies of a particular one-fifth of the data each (plus a little shared data), split around seven UK sites, and who’s computers can only be made to talk to one another between the hours of midnight and 4am each weekday. So: not only does the program I’ve been writing (and sweating on, crying over, and shouting at, this week) have to pull all the data back together and spread it out, it also has to detect whether two users at different sites edit the same piece of data during the same day, work out who’s most likely to be ‘right’, and ‘fix’ the data accordingly. Or, if it’s not sure, know who to ask for assistance. It’s a clever program.

And now it seems to be done. And working. Great!

Unfortunately, working like a dog on this little project has only taken time (and energy) away from my preferred software project – Three Rings – a program I’m writing for free for National Nightline. I’m likely to have a busy weekend catching up!

Regardless, tonight… will be a night for relaxing – Bryn, Claire, Paul, Kit and I are going to spend the evening in the Ship & Castle, drinking Real Ale and playing Chez Geek. A perfect way to end a week.

Edge of darkness

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

This repost was published in hindsight, on 22 March 2019.

Kit wrote:

A day of energy and focus. Paul and I hacking through stuff, fixing, tweaking, making work, prodding, pushing.

Its a slick operation. Paul and I discuss bugs and problems, mark them up on a whiteboard on the wall (installed for the purpose) and clear off fixed issues. Dan chews through problems in staccato style – a quick hit and run raid on a bad patch of bugs, followed by some Civilisation 3.

I spent much of the early part of the day creating new icons for the help section and improving some others. Later on Paul replaced me at the terminal – weaving together a gossamer of information into a cohesive and structured explanation of how the system works.

Bryn closes hostilities with a QA roundup. Vigorous and detailed, he pulled out anything he found that was out of place or untidy in the help system and listed it for change.

So its morning. We’re a touch behind schedule – but quality of the product is all. We are determined to fix the “showstoppers” (big bugs) and make a good dent in anything silly outstanding before we declare it released. I can see that taking a few more days.

Paul and I were left discussing its worth in our currently debris-strewn living room. What does this project actually mean? It means a lot – to me, to Dan, to everyone involved. Most of all its yet more proof of the magic that is Aberystwyth.

At the edge of darkness, all that is left is tomorrow.

Progress!

Working late. I’ve got Club 977 (best 80’s cheese on the ‘net!) playing as loud as this computer goes, slamming out code at a rate more productive than I’ve been all week. Finally got past a bug that’d been troubling me for days. Phew! Just in time for a meeting tomorrow!

I’ve been getting a lot of concerned attention after my post, “Stress!”, earlier (I didn’t think I had so many avid readers). Thanks, all of you; you concern means a lot, but really – I’ll be okay: I land on my feet, remember! Just need to get my head down and get on with some stuff, that’s all, and a little bit of de-stressing onto the web was good, too.

A few more lines of code, methinks, before Claire arrives (she’s kindly giving me lifts to and from work while I’m being a lazy bugger and not sorting out my bike, the star).

Take care, y’all;

AbNib

I’m almost ready to launch AbNib (main site may be down during development, but try the temporary mirror), a site dedicated to the weblogs of Aberites: people who live in or love Aberystwyth.

There are some funky new and cool features to come. But this is a weblog-community in the making.

Rock on.

Hawaii

I’m scared. Kit is researching the laws governing marriage in Hawaii, and I’m not exactly sure why.

“Hey; you can get married at 15 in Hawaii!”

Meanwhile, I’m currently coding a wiki engine. For those of you who aren’t in-the-know, a wiki is a collaborative network of web pages that anybody can edit. They’re fun, if a little anarchic.

Back to the code…

Back From Lancashire

Spent the last four days in Lancashire and elsewhere in the North of England, visiting my folks (among other things). Details follow…

Thursday 26th June 2003
Linux Expo 2003, Birmingham
Sorted out Claire’s bank, packed bags, and set off for Birmingham to the last day of Linux Expo 2003 at the National Exhibition Centre, to meet up with Gareth and some other geeks to talk about a project on which my input could be valuable. Gareth is going to come over to Aberystwyth next weekend and we’ll knock together a prototype of the system we’ve suggested.

Claire got scared by the vast numbers of stereotypical geeks (and the distinct overdose of testosterone in the air – she was one of only three women in the whole place), and by the fact that, unlike normal, she couldn’t understand one in three words spoken. I smiled. She’s got a little way to go to earn her geek stripes, yet.

Bon Jovi, Manchester
Arrived late at Old Trafford – missed the support group, but in time to try to find standing room before Bon Jovi came on-stage. All-in-all, a good concert: Claire was a little short for standing on the pitch to have been a good idea, and the sound quality was a little below-par owing to a lack of adequate repeater speakers, and the only beer available was Budweiser and Boddingtons, but it was still a pretty good gig. Went to a Manchester pub afterwards before catching a really, really late train home. Got to bed sometime after 3am.

More to follow…

Claire’s Back

=o)

Last night was fun. After spending most of a day hacking into the BBC’s weather centre (I wanted a weather forecast XML stream, but couldn’t find a free one, so with Kit’s help I stole one instead), he, Claire (recently returned) and I went down to the beach after midnight with a bottle of Caern O’Moor Bramble Wine and enjoyed the first cool air the town has seen in most of a week.

I had a weird dream last night. Apparently, so did Kit. Must’ve been something in the wine.

Dreadful Deadlines

Just been working like a demon towards a 13:00 deadline this afternoon, delivering a piece of software to a client. Barely made it, but what a buzz!!! Celebrated with a pub lunch with two colleagues, Lisa (the SQL Queen) and Alex (the CodeMonkey, our office pet).

Claire called from Norfolk to say “Hi!” I’d have liked to chat longer, but I have work to do.

Have promised to scan and archive some old magazines with Kit this evening. Ho hum.

Makes You Feel Stupid

Don’t you feel really stupid when you plan to go via somewhere on the way to somewhere else, and completely forget about it. I managed that this morning: I’d put some keys in to get cut at the hardware shop around the corner from where I live, gone and bought my lunch from Somerfield, then returned home. When I went to work, past the shop, I forgot entirely to pick up the keys, until I got about a third of the way to the office and had to turn back. D’oh!

One of Claire’s birthday presents – being delivered by post – hasn’t arrived yet, and her birthday’s on Monday. Must remember to phone the company today and find out what’s happened to it. Can’t say what it is, here, ‘cos she reads this page, too.

Keep having to give my work colleague PHP tips so that he stands a chance of writing the website of Borth Surf Club. Looking at the web site so far, I can’t help but feel that it’s not PHP tips I should be giving him, but basic design pointers! Like not putting the title of the page as “Untitled Document”, for one. Here’s a chunk of code I just lifted out of the web site:

             

For the non-techies out there, I’ll explain what this bit of code does. It prints seven empty paragraphs. Exciting, eh?

I’ll resist strangling him with my keyboard cable on account of the fact that I believe that there is some hope for him, yet. We’ll see.

Anyway, better get some work done…

Scatmania Launched

Well; I finally did it. I finally got myself a weblog. After weeks of peer pressure by such friends as Paul, Alec, and Kit with their shiny LiveJournals, I decided to have one of my own.

Just to remind anybody who doesn’t already know that this isn’t, technically, my first weblog. My first one ran from 1998 to 1999 – before the term ‘blog’ was coined, and before it became fashionable to ramble on about yourself online. The “Avatar Diary”, on my old, old web site, was a source of perpetual interest from all kinds of people for some time. Well; until I got a scary cyberstalker (really, it scared me, and very little does), and then I packed it in.

I suppose now I’d better get something more productive done. I’m not getting paid for this.

New Site Preps For Launch

The new version of AvAngel.com is under full developmental swing… and within a week or two it’ll be uploaded. Of course, you know what we’re like for deadlines, so don’t hold your breath – but if you don’t believe us, catch Dan online (e-mail him for his ICQ number) and he’ll show you what he’s working on!

The new site will include a brand new interface and a host of new features… I’m not going to give away too much unless you catch me online or come round to my house, but I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

Oh, and for the time being, I’ve uploaded my new CV, ‘cos I’m looking for a job…