This post is only intended for those who actually run GNOME and Linux, just a warning 🙂 I just replaced network-manager on my Ubuntu Jaunty desktop with wicd.  See wicd here: http://wicd.sourceforge.net/ What's so great about wicd?  I used to think nm-applet and NetworkManager were the best thing since sliced bread, but have grown increasingly … Continue reading For Linux/GNOME users: tired of nm-applet? Try wicd
Today, I decided to finally sit down and upgrade my Ubuntu Intrepid installation to Ubuntu Jaunty. I torrented the live DVD last night (causing my roommates to complain of major Internet hoggage — it was downloading at 1.2MB/sec!). I then performed a full system backup to a remote hard drive, and then repartitioned my drives … Continue reading Ubuntu Jaunty installation process
I attended PyCon 2009 this year, which was a whole lot of fun. Quite a few people have asked me which talks I liked, so I decided to put together my “top 5 talks” list, in ranked order: A Whirlwind Excursion through Writing a C Extension. This talk by Ned Batchelder (author of coverage.py and … Continue reading Favorite PyCon 2009 talks
I am teaching a technical course on the popular and ubiquitous version control system, Subversion, this Monday. I thought it might be fun to give my class a little “extra credit” reading from the O’Reilly book, Beautiful Code. In it, one of the original authors of Subversion, Karl Fogel, shares what he considers to be … Continue reading Beautiful Code and a Beautiful Bug
I just got back from San Francisco. This wasn’t my first time to the west coast, but it was my first time to Northern California. Overall, I had an amazing time.
The following post has been sitting in my “drafts” section of WordPress for a good while. I don’t know why I never posted it — it’s been there for more than a year. I think I just thought the article deserved such careful attention that I never sat down to really edit it and prepare … Continue reading Common Criticisms of Linux, parsed and analyzed
Note: this post was written in January 2007, but it has stood the test of time. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, … Continue reading Solving “accidents” and “essences” of programming with better languages
Check it out. It’s called rubber, written in Python.
Mark Shuttleworth has written a nice little blog post about the tools we learn through life and how we discard old tools and learn new ones. I personally find this to be very true in my life. When I was in high school, I prided myself (from the point of view of “tools”) as knowing … Continue reading Changing the tools you use
I met with Runar (he’ll have a blog soon, I swear) today, and we discussed open source, Python, and all related goodness over coffee and vegetarian lunch free-riding on the ‘sNice wireless network. We spent about 3 hours there, just talking about Runar’s project, “sqlstring”, my ideas about inferred typing and static source code analysis … Continue reading Met Runar, Discussed Software
