Older blog entries for pjones (starting at number 131)

Well, this was interesting for about a minute.

Syndicated 2006-08-11 02:23:38 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

fun with suspend and resume

Plenty of times I've suspended my laptop with my headphones on, while listening to music. Of course when I resumed, the music would still be playing. This is obviously not preffered.

So tonight I wrote some code to fix it. It's way more complicated than should be needed. Rhythmbox talks to dbus, but only to the session, not to the system. So the suspend/resume scripts can't talk to it[1]. So, since the obvious 5 line shell script won't work, I had to write a rhythmbox plugin that listens on dbus, and then make the shell script talk to that.

Rhythmbox's python binding method is pretty much backwards from what you'd expect, and it registers itself through an __init__ method call, rather than the obvious way. That's a little weird at first, but using dbus's python bindings are like trying to stab yourself in the foot with a rubber ball. The introspection methods are entirely useless (actually, they don't provide any introspection at all).

So, anyway, here's a tarball. I'll look at packaging it somewhere later.



[1] We should really make some infrastructure to fix this recurring problem...

Syndicated 2006-07-29 05:38:12 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

Why does reality seem to differ from person to person?

I am so there. Trailers are here.

Syndicated 2006-07-01 19:04:35 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

I just couldn't help myself...

So, I just updated our "pykickstart" package to handle configuration of multipath devices -- disks with redundant cabling. Don't ask why. Just as I was about to commit it, the best changelog entry ever sprung to mind:

Leeloo: Leeloo Dallas mul-ti-path.
Korben Dallas: Yeah.
Leeloo: Mul-ti-path.
Korben Dallas: Yeah, multipath, she knows it's a multipath. Leeloo Dallas. This is my wife.
Leeloo: Mul-ti-path.
Korben Dallas: We're newlyweds. Just met. You know how it is. We bumped into each other, sparks happen...
Leeloo: Mul-ti-path.
Korben Dallas: Yes, she knows it's a multipath. Anyway, we're in love.

Sometimes, I kill me.

Syndicated 2006-05-17 18:43:09 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

It's that time again.

Every once in a while, I have to note that the Tropical Fish Song does not have enough representation on the Internet.

To help correct this problem, I have also posted a link on my people page.

Syndicated 2006-05-14 22:01:07 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

Ilan, do you participate in the LUG at NCSU? I don't recognize your name, but that's not indicative of much; I'm not good with names.

You speak of dissatisfaction with the state of the LUG, but whenever we ask for input as to what we could do to serve the needs of Linux users on campus more thoroughly, there's a dull silence and the sound of crickets. It's a serious problem; the LUG is quickly succombing to atrophy, with fewer and fewer members. We really want to grow, and to be a more inclusive group, but the people who are (supposedly) being excluded don't appear to be making any effort towards inclusion. What can we do?

sej: I think you mean the halting problem, not the travelling salesman problem.

Bryce: The blonde woman is Olga, his wife.

Perl's DBI API sucks
Python's DBI API sucks

Oracle has the right idea for transactions; a transaction is a child of a connection, and a statement is a child of that. Perl and Python both assume that a connection is a transaction, and that really sucks.

Oracle sucks

OCIServerAttach() allocates some memory; its reciprocal function, OCIServerDetach(), frees 344 bytes less. That's right -- if you make a connection to Oracle, you're excersizing a memory leak.

So I wonder what it takes to get mirwin to certify you.