Older blog entries for pjones (starting at number 134)

ich bin ein papierklammerhalter

I was looking for a paperclip a few minutes ago, and couldn't find one.

When I asked my local coworkers, one of them immediately pointed out that somebody from facilities had brought by these little desktop trinkets, which we'd all dismissed as totally useless, but actually did contain paperclips.



We all have paperclips now.

Ich bin ein papierklatterhalter.

Sorry.

Syndicated 2006-09-06 14:49:38 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

the morning after

My friend Paul moved back to London this Friday (well, he flies today, which is Friday). I inherited some book shelves from him, which I picked up Wednesday evening, as the shelves weren't worth shipping overseas. So late Wednesday night, I rummaged around my apartment for all the books which weren't currently shelved (as you all know, this is usually at least a few dozen), and randomly tossed them onto the new shelving in my bedroom.

This is what I saw when I woke up this morning.

Syndicated 2006-09-01 05:52:46 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

OMFG.

This might be the best picture EVAR.

<sub>p.s. Sammy can't see this icon. At all. Awesome. Goddam colorblind motherfuckers.

p.p.s. this image is huge. I hate you all.</sub>

Syndicated 2006-08-19 06:36:13 from THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE

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.