Suddenly, all my window decorators disappeared!

I could stil use the windows, but could not move them.

Searching for an answer, I found this page, and figured out that my personal solution was to run:

gtk-window-decorator –replace

All good now.

Worked great, looks better than plain old Ubuntu, even though the additions are fairly minor. However, wireless kept dropping out. After a bit of research on the Firefox, figured I probably need to upgrade form kernel 2.6.32-21 to 2.6.32-22.

However, to do this in Linux Mint, I need to start Administration -> Update Manager -> Edit -> Preferences -> Levels and make levels 4 and 5 visible, buit not safe. This made the updated kernel visible, but not automatically checked. I checked the linux-headers- and linux-image-2.6.32-22.33 packages, updated and rebooted. Et voila, working wireless.

It appears that the kernel is marked unsafe because of problems with nVidia drivers, which doesn’t affect me, and no other problems noticed (that weren’t there before the update).

I tried Phatch, but do you understand that documentation?  I don’t have time to figure it out.  However, jhead was just what I needed. With a few test runs, I got my files renamed using:

jhead -n%Y-%m-%dT%H%M%S-%f *.jpg *.JPG

which renamed the files with the date and time (in ISO 8601 format – what a geek!), keeping the original name at the end.

So P1030698.JPG becomes 2010-05-25T172104-P1030698.jpg which at least allows me to sort photos by date. Unfortunately, it doesn’t identify the location yet.

what a waste of money the memory card is a full size one not a micro card with adapter it was for my mobile i waited a week for it now i have nothing because i smashed everything up including my expensive mobile

His only other review says:

i bought this case for my old 60gb hdd from my ps3 the blue light is on but nothing shows up on my ps3 dashboard can anybody help me

which seems reasonable enough, except he also rated the product 5 stars. He obviously enjoys blue lights.

Playing the game requires that you check their web page every 20 minutes, which sounds like fun, but without the fun bit.

Of course, this is what Python is perfect for, being a surrogate monkey. So I whipped up a little script to download the page every 20 minutes, check if my name is there, and email me if it is.

It would have been better if it texted me, but I couldn’t find any good ways for my program to text me, most sites required too much signing in and screen-scraping to send a text. Sounds like a future project, though. Skype is promising, since they allow you to text from a Skype client, using your Skype credits, which you probably already have (unlike all these other fly-by-night companies).

Anyhoo, email will have to do – it’s a lot less obtrusive to check if I have new messages than to check a web page. So here’s the script what I wrote:

import re, smtplib, sys, time, traceback, urllib2

URL = "http://magic.fm.url.deleted"
EMAIL = "spam@pythonesq.eu"

def send_mail(subject, message):
 msg = 'Subject: %s\n\n%s\n' % (subject, message)
 smtp = smtplib.SMTP()
 smtp.connect()
 smtp.sendmail(EMAIL, EMAIL, msg)
 smtp.quit()

def get_letters():
  f = urllib2.urlopen(URL)
  try:
    buf = f.read()
  finally:
    f.close()
  idx = buf.index("<p class='mix-name'>")
  buf = buf[idx:]
  idx = buf.index("</p>")
  buf = buf[:idx]
  # each character is inside a span tag
  chars = re.findall('">(.)</span>', buf)
  s = ''.join(chars)
  name, phone = s.split('-')
  if 'J' in name and 'G' in name:
    send_mail(s, s)
  sys.stdout.write('%s %s %s\n' % (time.ctime(), name, phone))
  sys.stdout.flush()

if __name__ == '__main__':
  while 1:
    t = time.localtime(time.time())
    try:
      # Competition runs from 7am to 6pm, every 20 minutes
      if (t.tm_hour >= 7 orand t.tm_hour < 18) and t.tm_min % 20 == 2:
        get_letters()
    except:
      send_mail('Magic error', traceback.format_exc())
    time.sleep(50)

Rather than break out the XML parser or even regex for this, I just used simple string matching – for this purpose, it’s simple and efficient, way ahead of actually parsing the XML.

On the other hand, I use some really inefficient buffer slicing (the [:] notation), which has to copy large strings around.

I’m only running this every 20 minutes, so whatever is quickest to code works for me.

Also, I don’t worry about actually checking the anagram strictly – any string that has my initials in it is good enough – any false positives will reassure me the system is working. There’s no mechanism to inform me if the program dies – the try/except traps the most likely code to fail, but if the send_mail function fails, over she goes. We’re not saving lives here.

And of course, there’s a moral question – is using bots to assist with competitions fair? Signing up for stuff automatically is dubious, that’s why so many sites use captchas, but what about assisting you to play the competition?

Ooops, gotta go, I’ve got mail!

Darn…

One of the benefits of 3 is free Skype access, which I use quite a lot, especially for collaboration with people overseas. I like using my phone for Skype, as it frees up my laptop for reviewing documents and I can use the 20 minute walk between home and work to organise stuff.

However, to get free Skype, you need to use 3′s software, which is actually made by iSkoot. It’s fairly basic, but I can cope with not having video and not being able to initiate conference calls. And it does allow SkypeOut to non-UK numbers which means I can make ludicrously cheap international calls from my mobile.

But there are 3 really annoying design flaws:

1. The Chat mode turns on predictive text, globally. Because my phone has a Qwerty keyboard, predictive text gets in the way, so I have it turned off. Get a Skype chat message and it’s turned on again, everywhere! I managed to fix this on the Nokia E71 by going to Menu/Tools/Settings/General/Personalisation/Language/Predictive Text Settings (you may need Predictive Text on to go into this submenu). Turn off Typing correction and Auto word correction. Now, although Predictive Text is on, it doesn’t do much.
2. When I lose connectivity, it beeps and displays a dialog. There’s no way to switch this off. My phone doesn’t beep when it loses the phone network, why should Skype?
3. On the other hand, the default setting is not to beep when there’s a new chat message. I want my phone to beep for this because I’m not looking at its screen all the time! (Fix this by changing Skype/Options/Settings/Audio Notifications to enabled.)
4. [Nov 27] Four flaws…I’ll come in again…amongst the design flaws are such diverse elements as the fact that the Chr key on the E71 normally provides access to many characters not directly accessible on the keyboard, but in Skype, only supports dash, comma and full stop. Notably missing is the underscore, which can make it impossible to add contacts without getting the other party to initiate.

Fusion-io have lauched a new hard drive, which is seen as an alternative to current ones.

Well, duh! The paraphrased original article says:

Fusion-io, an Utah-based start-up company has created a better alternative to traditional hard drives.

Or how about this article, where the metaphorical animal is described in more details than the product:

Did I leave my backpack around here? (Piekfrosch at de.wikipedia)

The Pangolin backpack is an unusual backpack.  It is modeled after an animal called the pangolin.  The pangolin is a scaly anteater that has large scales covering its skin.  Most pangolins are found in tropical areas like Asia and Africa and the animal spends most of the daytime curled up into a ball, sleeping.  The Pangolin backpack is made to resemble the animal and has large protective scales

Mind you the linked article, while snappier, is not your usual marketing material:

The Pangolin is a spiny anteater covered in razor sharp scales, with razor sharp claws, that can shoot acid out of its anus. This backpack is inspired by the creature.

It is made from old truck tires.

Most times I go for lunch at the university refectory, I end up regretting my choice. However, it’s excellent fodder for a blog with Pythonesque in the title.

Today, when I asked for the steak and mushroom pie, the server asked “What would you like with that?” The choice is usually chips, vegetables or 50/50. So I said, “chips and veggies”.

His response:

“Because it’s Roast Chicken Day, I can only give you one veg. I’ve had my orders from up high”.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to discover the existence of Yet Another Mysterious Deity who likes to create improbable feast days with their own whimsical rules.

And maybe this explains why I found a discarded chicken carcass in my front yard yesterday. Or is that just someone’s idea of an appropriate segue from Halloween to Thanskgiving?

An obvious addition was to combine the singing with Mr Walken’s dancing from Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice.

Then we get both entertainment and education with this version by YouTube user stephencgregory. I particularly like the incidental nature of what we learn during this clip, both a brief introduction to the wind controller, and the use of text bubbles to present information that might interest some folk, while staying out of the way of those who just want to hear the remix.

For all I know, this is a subtle ad for Yamaha electronic musical instruments (I don’t really believe that). But this is how advertising should be: subtle, informative and entertaining, without trying to convince me that whatever will make me beautiful and sexy (sorry, Stephen).