ivixlog

AberQuotes

dan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:58:28 +0000

As mentioned in my last posting, I made a web app to teach myself Django.
I didn’t want to create yet another blog engine, so I took the time to come up with something which was a little bit more interesting.

What I came up with is AberQuotes.

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A month of Django

dan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:49:43 +0000

The best way of learning is by doing, so a month ago I set myself the task of learning Django by using it to create a simple web app. About three weeks ago, I briefly wrote up my first impressions of Django. For the benefit of the untold masses which are no doubt hanging on my every word, here is the first-month report.

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wifi (WPA) on an acer 7003 laptop with ubuntu gutsy

dan — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:39:54 +0000

So I inherited a laptop. Or rather, a tabletop since this is more of a luggable computer than anything else. The screen is 17″ and the whole lot weighs over 4kg. Still, can’t complain about a free laptop, even if one corner is smashed in somewhat.

Anyway, hopefully this can save someone some time. Forget about the native driver, it can’t *quite* connect properly with WPA(1/2). Once you have installed the firmware the wifi chip needs (apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter), follow these instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff

Basically, simply disable the native driver, and use the windows driver with ndiswrapper.

Follow part 2A not 2C. Works fine and you can still use Network Manager.

Romanian adverts

dan — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:05:01 +0000

Great set of stylish communism-era Romanian adverts

Link

Domain squatter of the year

dan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:36:11 +0000

http://www.sdfsdfds.com/

Earthquake?

dan — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:09:46 +0000

we just had an earth quake
:\
it was so bad my entire house (about 10 people) are in the landing maoning about it
woke everyone up
walls shook to fuck]
oh
was it an earthquake?

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PHP/Wordpress is daft

dan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:26:16 +0000

I’ve just had to upgrade wordpress to fix this bug:

http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5487 -

1. Create a draft post

2. Log out

3. Visit http://yourblog.com/index.php/wp-admin/

is_admin() spots the wp-admin in the request and returns true

query.php uses is_admin() to decide to return future, draft or pending posts

That’s not how you’re supposed to do authentication!

‘Code is poetry’, indeed.

Django

dan — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:16:31 +0000

Anyone who watches the Python jobs/contracting market will have noticed by now that Django has firmly established itself as the de-facto python-powered webapp platform. Turbogears doesn’t even appear on the horizon. Not quite as bad as HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray but close.

This is a bit unfortunate for me, having written thousands of lines of code within Turbogears/CherryPy. I attribute Django’s win to a couple of thing

1. The django website and documentation are better

This is pretty important, and partly related to point 2. To find proper docs on TG you need to dive off into the websites of other projects, which are of varying quality/completeness.

2. They own all the code

This too is important. With Turbogears you get a bit of a ‘mish-mash’ feel at times. Bugs upstream occasionally don’t get fixed for months. The API (such as there is) seems to change too much between releases.

Anyway, I’m having a play with Django. My first site will be a web2.0ish effort which will first collect together all the #aber topics for as many years as can be found, then push the lot into a database and allow people to rate, tag, and comment on them. So far it’s parsing the topics out of xchat log files.

First impressions of Django:

Documentation is great
Template system is ugly (everyone says this)
Database API is nice. Handier than SQLObject, but not as abstruse as SQLAlchemy
Rule/Regex based url dispatch is ok, but I didn’t really have a problem with the CherryPy style
The modularisation of sub-apps within a ‘website’ is cool but I’m not sure of a use yet
The admin system seems to have little use other than in debugging or if you were writing a straight content publishing site. Nice though.

Carpathian Mountains

dan — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:51:16 +0000

Just got back from a holiday seeing the in-laws in Romania. We also spent 4 days in the Carpathians, in a small town named Cheia, which is nice country for hiking.

Cheia (Key) is so named because of its status as a former border town between the states of Transylvania and Wallachia, two of the former main three principalities which make up modern Romania.

Pictures on the gallery.

Oddly despite being very remote, Cheia must be one of the best connected villages in Romania.

This is a satellite ground station which is used for transmitting Romanian tv to the US/Canada, amongst other things including data services. It also serves as a backup for several satellite control operations. The village is linked nationally via two 155mbit SDH/STM lines, leaving in opposite directions.

Project Myth [pt1]

dan — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:01:59 +0000

I started cooking up Project Myth after I discovered you can get a DVB-T(Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial) USB stick for £30. Everybody probably knew this already, I was just too lazy to find out. I haven’t had a tv tuner card since the 20th century when they cost £100’s.

This comes with a remote and antenna.

This £30 stick is hopefully going to be the basis of my new, thrifty (cheapskate) home cinema setup.

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