Author: Gerry

Categories
Misc

Reality Check

Two things I’ll note from the weekend. First, while eating out on Sunday morning I was referred to as the “jacka$$ in the cowboy hat” by an elderly patron of the joint. I quietly scanned the room, noting a guy in a baseball cap and a guy in a fedora. So the problem wasn’t just that I was wearing the hat indoors. He made some other comments as well, but they weren’t as clear.

Now, the guy was at least 80 and my guess is he was speaking in a way such that he thought he wasn’t loud. In other words he was unaware that his target had heard him. None the less, I chose not to say anything at the time. Mainly because I couldn’t come up with something suitably condescending but not too belligerent. Afterwards, a couple of lines came to mind, but it was too late. I wish I had quicker responses for stuff like that. I suppose I could have walked over, put my hat on his head and said “Howdy, jacka$$!” but that still seems belligerent. Oh well.

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Categories
Computers Programming Python

uzbl and dmenu

I’ve been playing around with uzbl again and decided it was high time I tried out dmenu. What I’d read made it sound pretty slick, I was just leery of having to learn how to work with another application. Thankfully, dmenu is extremely easy to use. It isn’t available as a deb package, but the source is readily available. I built it with the vertical patch.

As practice I figured I’d rewrite one of the stock uzbl scripts as a python script. I chose the load_url_from_bookmarks.sh script since it was pretty easy for me to decipher. That’s not sayin’ much since my bash scripting foo is, well- ‘miserable’ is probably the right word.

The exercise proved valuable for a couple of reasons.

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Categories
Misc Woodworking

Post and Ye Shall Receive

I posted this a few days ago.

Today, look what shows up:

I wonder what else this works with?

Categories
Family

T-Ball- The Adventure Begins!

The boy starts his t-ball odyssey next Wednesday. Opening day is the following Saturday.

The last couple times, he taken to slamming his bat into the ground at the ball when his swing misses. He claims he doesn’t understand why he isn’t hitting ball because he’s “SWINGING AT THE BALL AT THE RIGHT TIME! BUT THE STUPID BALL DOESN’T GO ANYWHERE!” I don’t really believe he doesn’t understand. Also, he’s completely uninterested in playing catch- he just wants to practice batting.

I’m not afraid yet.

Just wary.

Very, wary.

Categories
Computers

More EEE Touchpad Nonsense

Oh for F!@#$%’s sake.

Another update to the xserver and my touchpad is broken. After googling for about 10 minutes, I come up with this thread from just a few days ago. Apparently udev configuration is out and the xorg.conf is back in.

This is definitely a weak point in open source stuff. Changes like this should be documented better or some kind of warning or explanation that current configuration techniques are about to be broken should be available.

I suppose this is what I get for using the ‘testing’ distro.

UPDATE:

Here’s the relevant section to add to xorg.conf:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier  "Synaptics"
    driver      "synaptics"
    MatchProduct    "ETPS/2"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event9"
    Option      "VertEdgeScroll"    "1"
    Option      "MaxSpeed"      "1"
    Option      "AccelFactor"       "0.05"
    Option      "TapButton1"        "1"
    Option      "TapButton2"        "2"
    Option      "TapButton3"        "3"
EndSection

See the InputClass section of the xorg.conf man page.

UPDATE II:

The two Match lines can be replaced with a MatchIsTouchpad "1" line. I don’t know if this is better or not- but it seems like it might be preferrable since InputClass sections are applied to anything that matches according to the man page. At least it’s limited to touchpads this way.

Categories
Family

The Boy Rides Again

The latest outing ended in much calmer fashion: with the boy gliding to stop in front of the car. There were several tense moments. Including one where he got up from a little spill and blamed the grass, the acorns and the bike (in that order) for why he kept falling when he turned. He was adamant that it was “not his fault”.

Regardless, all’s well that ends well.

Categories
Politics

Convenience is not Freedom

Another post over at Professor Bainbridge’s place centers around the definition of freedom. More specifically, he takes issue with Bruce Bartlett and James Joyner regarding a Heritage Foundation paper that “downgraded” our freedom status and now rates the US as less free than places like Singapore and Hong Kong. Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Joyner skoff at the notion, while Prof. Bainbridge is more apt to take this downgrade as a warning about our future.

In a political context, whenever the word “freedom” comes up, a quote from a high school English teacher comes to mind:

Freedom is our ability to move within the harness.

Or at least, that’s a close approximation.

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Categories
Woodworking

Nice Looking Planes

Oooooh!

Ahhhhh!

WOW!

Categories
Family

Riding a Bike

The boy wanted to go for a bike ride today.

Taking him for a ride is a big production for the time being. He’s still learning so he needs training wheels. That means that he can’t really ride on anything other than a smooth surface. Our driveway is all gravel and obvious our lawn is grass- except where it isn’t, which is more than I like.

But I digress…

So I loaded up the Wife’s bike, the boy’s bike and the lass’ bike into the car and we went up to a bike/ walking path up in the next town. The loading also consisted of putting the bike rack on and packing roller blades. Nothing like following up the bike riding with roller blading.

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Categories
Politics

Couldn’t have Said it Better Myself

Professor Bainbridge has a post where he scoffs at the notion that libertarians and liberals/progressives/whatever-they-call-themselves can get together and make nice. There’s a fantastic comment to the post that I wanted to excerpt because I think it’s summarizes my own politics pretty well:

This is ultimately the problem with Progressives. Any real, sustained objection to their clawing for power is going too far. Here’s a very simple idea: if you, Mr. Just, Wise and Thoughtful Liberal believe certain things must happen why don’t you gasp go out and do them yourself? Why don’t you get your own resources together, get your friends together, and use your time, your efforts and your resources to build something useful and convince the rest of us to join in? You fascist Democrats talk about community, but you have no idea what it is: people willingly and freely working together. What you can’t get through your self-righteous head is that freedom is FREEDOM. There’s nothing dogmatic about it. There’s nothing immoderate about it. You’re free to go live in a commune in the hills not making your own food, your own clothes or your own electricity, and the rest of us won’t stop you. Go ahead. We’re that respectful of you that we want you to be happy doing what you want to do. So long as you don’t make us do it, too. But that’s not good enough for you. Because what you want is not the moderate thing: freedom. What you want is the ugly, immoderate thing: power.

If interested, here’s the post.

Categories
Computers Programming Python

Dynamic Modules in Python

I have defined a rather simple class for an XML proxy server to facilitate interacting with a blog. Right now, I’ve implemented a WordPress version so I can work with my own blog. Theoretically, it should be possible to implement other classes specific to other blog types thus making my program more general, and useful to others.

What I hadn’t figured out was how to structure the code so as to minimize monkeying around with multiple files when adding the new class. My goal was to come up with a structure that simply called for adding a module to extend the functionality.

Today, I finally came up with something and it utilizes the dynamic module loading capabilities of python.

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Categories
Misc

Painting Sucks

Especially when it’s a stairwell.

And one wall is 16 feet high.

Up by the ceiling.

And the only option is a paint brush on a stick.

sigh

Categories
Family

Growing Pains

Once aspect of the boy’s behavior that we’re trying to change are tantrums. No, I don’t think we’ll get rid of them entirely. Heck, I still throw tantrums every now and again- but at least I don’t put holes in walls anymore. At least, no other people’s walls.

Anyway, we’d like to start getting rid of 3 and 4 year old tantrum type of stuff, such as the one he had this morning over one of his Lego kits. It’s a small kit which he managed to assemble all-by-his-lonesome out of the box. Unfortunately, the small Lego kits don’t tend to stay together when subjected to actual play conditions. I’ve had to reassemble the darn thing more times than I can count. So this morning, when it fell apart again I decided it was time for him to apply himself and figure it out himself.

He had other ideas.

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Categories
Misc

Droid does…

… go on the wishlist. I can’t really say why, exactly, though. I was never all that enthralled with the iPhone. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was neat to play with. Not exactly a toy, but something like that. But I never felt the “I want one” thing kick in.

The Droid was different. I played with it, and I doubt it does anything that the iPhone can’t do, and the more I played with it the more I liked it. I didn’t even try to use it as a phone. Probably should have. Maybe it was the sense that, I could make it mine. As opposed to the iPhone which, by comparison, I’d just be renting from Steve Jobs.

For roughly the same price I could get a netbook- but a netbook won’t fit in my shirt pocket either. Plus, I’ve got one I’m happy with. Can’t say that about my cell phone.

Definitely on the wishlist.

Categories
Computers

Installing ProFont on Debian

I wish I could say it was a rewarding experience, alas, I cannot. At least not without descending into maniacal laughter for a few moments.

One of my personal quirks is an inability to let something go. Especially if it’s computer related. Being unable to just let-it-go has it’s pluses as minuses. On the plus side, I’ve solved some pretty tricky computer related problems and learned some interesting lessons along the way. On the minus side, I can waste hours working the problem, finding a solution and feel like I’ve wasted that time.

This experience goes in the minus column.

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Categories
Politics

Unintended Consequences

Glenn Reynolds has a nice article about some of the early consequences of HCR. He refers to it as a “second order knowldege” problem. I think what he’s talking about is better known as “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” My guess is this is just the opening round of these sorts of adverse, HCR related news. Ultimately, I think this will be a major thorn in the progressive narrative regarding HCR. They won’t be able to point to improvements as a result of HCR because it doesn’t fully kick in until 2014. But between now and then, these sorts of stories are going to be commonplace. The notion that legislation like this is “unrepealable” will be seriously challenged as a result.

Categories
Armoire Woodworking

Hardware In

The handles we chose for the armoire are in earlier than expected. That will mean the end of construction of the lower half. The Wife wants to paint the bedroom before putting it in the room. It’ll be nice to put it in its final resting place.

I already have the upper half figured out in my mind, just a matter of dimensioning everything. Perhaps tonight.

Categories
Family

Trusting the Kids

A couple of days ago, I realized that I can’t trust the lass. The moment came when I picked her up at school. The previous night, she showed me a book that she wanted to bring for share day. I told her no- it wasn’t really a good thing to bring for share day. Then, as she came out of the classroom her teacher handed her the book. My first comment to her was not “Hi” but rather “I thought I told you not to bring that.” She was caught red-handed, and she knew it.

The next question is, how big a deal is this? She’s only 4 after all. Perhaps it’s less a matter of coming to trust her and more a matter of understanding the type of person she’s becoming. In this regard, she’s a little girl that will listen when it suits her. When it doesn’t, she’ll have no hesitation to do what she wants. This behavior isn’t necessarily something to reject out-of-hand. Independence is something to be nurtured.

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Categories
Computers

Debian Updates?

I’ve got apt-mirror setup here to serve updates for my debian based computers here at home. The update script hasn’t downloaded an update for AMD64 squeeze or my EEE laptop for almost a week. I’ve done sanity checks as well by swapping out my sources.list file to pull directly from the debian servers and I get the same result. Very odd for that amount of time to pass with no updates.

I’m assuming that ‘squeeze’ is in the process of being frozen and this has also temporarily frozen the ‘testing’ repo. I actually pull updates from ‘testing’ as opposed to ‘squeeze’ so I’m a little surprised that I’m affected. More than likely this is a consequence of my ignorance regarding the actual management of the repos. I haven’t seen any announcements regarding freezing the current testing code, so that’s my main cause for confusion.

Hopefully we get back to normally scheduled updating soon.

UPDATE: Apparently a main server has failed so updates are frozen for the time being. Thanks to Willian in the comments.

UPDATE 4/4/10: Cool beans- repo’s available again. Back to regularly scheduled updating.

Categories
Misc

And the Winner is…

The Sony Bravia!! The 40EX500 to be exact.

Originally, I thought my dithering cost me about $150 since the price I paid last night was higher than what I thought I’d seen a couple of weeks ago. After a little investigation, it turns out the model I was looking at then was the 40EX400. The main difference appears to be the 120Hz refresh on the 500 model versus standard 60Hz on the 400 model. So there’s a metric for future reference.

Anyway, I got it setup last night. Always fun playing with A/V cabling because it quickly becomes a dizzying array of inputs and outputs and which TV input gives which capabilities. I got an assist from the Bro last night as we had to reverse engineer our cable-box/ Tivo/ DVD player configuration. The main difference was feeding the cable to the TV directly from the wall to get access to the digital channels- fortunately, I had an extra splitter lying around.

The only ‘gotcha’ I encountered had to do with the physical setup of the TV. The pedestal causes the set to sit back about 3 inches from the front of the cabinet. The screen width exactly matches the width of the cabinet opening, so when viewed from an angle, part of the view of the screen is blocked by the cabinet. I’ll have to figure out something to remedy that.

Otherwise, looks nice. On to the next thing…