“I have often felt that programming is an art form, whose real value can only be appreciated by another versed in the same arcane art;”

- Ed Nather
The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer

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“…it’s very easy to confuse the essence of what you are doing with the tools that you use.”

- Harold Ableson
EE & CS Professor at MIT
Overview and Introduction to Lisp

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All around it’s a nice machine. It copies fine without a computer attached, and it works like a dream with Kubuntu; scans and prints. It even shows up as an image source in Gimp. Nice.

For those you wanting to get it going on Linux, don’t bother looking for the drivers on the US support site, you have to hit the Europe one. Don’t ask me why, just go here: http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0010697.asp. They offer deb’s, rpm’s and source, so it should work pretty universally on a modern system. The debs went in flawlessly for me, and poof, the thing worked.

Print quality is good, crisp and clean. Scanning is another matter. I ran through some prints I got back the other day, and there is grain everywhere. It’s not unbearable, but check the next post to see what I mean.

All in all and good Linux compatible printer/scanner, for only $49 at Wal-Mart (oh the shame)

Also it has this weird thing called a “fax”. I’ve yet to figure out what that is or why you would want one.

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1. Review: Skullcandy Lowrider Headphones
2. GIMP Combat

Pretty nice, I’ve had them for years and I really love them. Planning on giving it a shot to bring them back to life with the soldering iron.

The second pair was some cheap Wal-Mart replacements for the Pysc’s.

After those died I decided to suck it up and grab a new pair of good headphones. I headed over to The Mart over lunch and picked out a pair of Skullcandy Lowrider headphones for sub-$30 before tax.

They aren’t bad, especially for a quick buy. Snazzy looks, 40mm driver, comfy padding, good isolation and they fold up nice. They are a bit floppy in the joints until you get them on your head, which feels (and probably looks) pretty silly. Cord is a bit shorter than I would expect too.

The unfortunate surprise came when I hooked them up. They sounded great in the store, but back at the office they were flat. Too much bass and mids. My guess is that they are optimized for hip-hop or something else. Either way, it wasn’t what I liked.

No problem though, after some experimentation I found an EQ curve to make up for the difference. This is what I worked out in Amarok. It feels right to me, I ran it through some Say Anything, Pedro The Lion, and Showbread. Reasonably diverse and fits my music taste.

End result? I like them, probably won’t take them to the coffee shop for fear of looking goofy, but they are pretty good for home or work listening.

Bonus Review – Skullcandy Warranty Registration

The Skullcandy website says it takes “only 10 minutes” to register your headphones for warranty. Plus you have to register on their site. Really Skullcandy? That’s the best you can do? No thanks, I’ll take my chances without a warranty.

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“Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be.”

- David Thornburg
Educational Technologies Researcher

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Naturally, it’s important that I incorporate technology into my weight loss somehow, right? So I decided to give the Google Visualizations API a spin.

I worked up a quick data format and a method to pop the data out. Nothing fancy, just a fixed width flat file. This doesn’t deserve a database.

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2010-06-30 235.4
2010-06-29 236.8

Easy to read, easy to edit, and easy to consume. Every morning I just hop on the server, add the day’s weight and log off.

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<?php
  // Get the max days back we want to look.
  $max_days = 7;
  if( isset( $_REQUEST['days'] ) and ! empty( $_REQUEST['days'] ) )
    $max_days = intval( $_REQUEST['days'] );
 
  $i = 0;
  $lines = array();
 
  $fh = fopen( 'data.txt', 'r' );
  while( ! feof( $fh ) and ++$i <= $max_days ) {
    $line = fgets( $fh );
    if( empty( $line ) ) { continue; }
    array_unshift( $lines, $line );
  }
  fclose( $fh );

Now I just needed to represent it. The API is very object oriented and easy to work with. I wish there was a less verbose way of presenting the data, but you can’t have everything.

Actually, there may be a better way, I just didn’t come across it while speed reading the docs.

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function drawChart() {
  var data = new google.visualization.DataTable();
  data.addColumn( 'string', 'Date' );
  data.addColumn( 'number', 'Weight' );
 
  data.addRows( <?php echo count( $lines ); ?> );
 
  <?php
    $i = 0;
    foreach( $lines as $line ):
  ?>
  data.setValue( 
    <?php echo $i; ?>, 
    0,
    '<?php echo substr( $line, 0, 10 ); ?>'
  );
 
  data.setValue(
    <?php echo $i; ?>,
    1,
    <?php echo floatval( substr( $line, 11 ) ); ?>
  );
  <?php
    ++$i;
    endforeach;
  ?>
 
  var chart_div = document.getElementById( 'chart_div' );
  var chart = new google.visualization.LineChart( chart_div );
  chart.draw(
    data,
    {
      width: 800,
      height: 600,
      title: 'Weight Over Time'
    }
  );
}

And there you have it, fancy charting in no time.

See it in action at http://static.velvetcache.org/weight.php

Get the full source at http://gist.github.com/459148.

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Tweepy has pretty good documentation, and the code is terse and readable, but what I found most useful was the examples repository, which had the only example of streaming with Tweepy that I could find in the official documentation.

It’s really straightforward. Implement a tweepy.streaming.StreamListener to consume data, set up a tweepy.streaming.Stream with that listener, then pull the trigger on the streaming function you want to use.

Here’s a quick example I set up to track the filter keyword “omaha”.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
from tweepy.streaming import StreamListener, Stream
 
class Listener ( StreamListener ):
  def on_status( self, status ):
    print '-' * 20
    print status.text
    return
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
 
  USERNAME = "YourUsernameHere"
  PASSWORD = "YourPasswordHere"
 
  listener = Listener()
  stream = Stream(
    USERNAME,
    PASSWORD,
    listener
  );
 
  stream.filter( track=( "omaha", ) )

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First off, when they say that a sachet is small, they mean it. However, this stuff goes a long way.

Sachet Size

My first fix was my beloved flip flops. I’ve had these for 5+ years and they are the most comfortable things ever. Darcy would tell you that I only hang on to them because she hates them BUT THATS A LIE! (mostly)

The Sandals (Post-Op)

These sandals had major issues. Before I repaired them there was a rip all the way through (depth wise) and almost all the way across (width wise). Previously I had closed that gap with long nails, which worked for most of a summer, but they were not a long term solution.

Underside Repair

But Sugru was just the ticket, it worked great. I followed the instructions and washed up then opened a packet and got to work. I found that it stuck to me more than the shoe in my case, but with some push and quick pull-back I managed to get it where I wanted it.

I used two sachets on this, but looking back I could have done the job with one. The first packet I put up top and I rushed a bit and got sloppy. Later I put the bottom packet on and I think that’s what actually did the job.

Foot Area Repair

All in all a nice experience. My only issue with Sugru is that is stained my hands for a while, but that’s a pretty minor complaint. My sandal is comfy, solid and ready for years more action.

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Update (2010-06-30)

So I got antsy about this and I upgraded to using pystache instead of my homebrew templating system. This was my first run in with mustache, and I have to say I like it, even though I used the bare minimum feature set.

New code is at http://github.com/jmhobbs/jmhobbs.github.com

Github has a cool feature called “Github Pages” that let you host static content on a subdomain of github, e.g. http://jmhobbs.github.com/.

They also provide an auto-generator for project pages that has a nice clean format which I really like. So I decided to make my user page match the look and feel of the project pages. And to boot I wanted to be able have it auto-generate since I want it to be “hands free”, otherwise I’ll forget to update it.

To make this happen I whipped up my template and then grabbed the excellent py-github from Dustin Sallings, which I have used before.

Without furthur ado I’ll just show you the source. It’s not complicated, just some API calls then search replace on a template file. If you want to use it, be sure to get the most recent version from http://github.com/jmhobbs/jmhobbs.github.com.

Throw in a cron job and you are set. Beware of lot’s of “page build” notices from Github though.

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# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
 
import github.github as github
import yaml
import time
from datetime import datetime
 
def repo_date_to_epoch ( date ):
  epoch = time.mktime(
    time.strptime(
      date[0:-6],
      "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"
    )
  )
  return int( epoch )
 
def main ():
 
  print "Loading settings...."
  f = open( 'settings.yaml' )
  settings = yaml.load( f )
  f.close()
 
  gh = github.GitHub()
 
  print "Fetching user information..."
  user = gh.users.show( settings['username'] )
 
  print "Fetching repository information..."
  repos = gh.repos.forUser( settings['username'] )
 
  print "Sorting repositories..."
  repos = sorted( repos, cmp=lambda a, b: repo_date_to_epoch( b.pushed_at ) - repo_date_to_epoch( a.pushed_at ) )
 
  print "Loading template..."
  f = open( 'index.html.tpl' )
  template = f.read()
  f.close()
 
  print "Mangling template..."
  template = template.replace( '<% username %>', settings['username'] )
  template = template.replace( '<% fullname %>', user.name )
  template = template.replace( '<% email %>', user.email )
  template = template.replace( '<% following %>', str( user.following_count ) )
  template = template.replace( '<% followers %>', str( user.followers_count ) )
  template = template.replace( '<% publicrepos %>', str( user.public_repo_count ) )
 
  repo_string = ''
 
  for repo in repos:
    if repo.private:
      continue
 
    repo_string = repo_string + '<div class="repo"><h3><a href="' + repo.url + '">' + repo.name + '</a>'
 
    try:
      repo_string = repo_string + ' - <span class="small"><a href="' + repo.homepage + '">' + repo.homepage + '</a></span>'
    except AttributeError:
      pass
 
    repo_string = repo_string + '</h3>'
 
    repo_string = repo_string + "Forks: " + str( repo.forks ) + " - Watchers: " + str( repo.watchers ) + ' | '
 
    if repo.has_issues:
      repo_string = repo_string + ' <a href="' + repo.url + '/issues">Issues</a> |'
 
    if repo.has_wiki:
      repo_string = repo_string + ' <a href="http://wiki.github.com/' + settings['username'] + '/' + repo.name + '">Wiki</a> |'
 
    if repo.has_downloads:
      repo_string = repo_string + ' <a href="' + repo.url + '/downloads">Downloads</a> |'
 
    repo_string = repo_string + '<br/>Last Push: ' + datetime.fromtimestamp( repo_date_to_epoch( repo.pushed_at ) ).ctime()
 
    try:
      repo_string = repo_string + '<pre>' + repo.description + '< /pre>'
    except AttributeError:
      repo_string = repo_string + '<br/><br/>'
      pass
 
    repo_string = repo_string + "</div><!--// .repo //-->\n"
 
  template = template.replace( '<% repos %>', repo_string )
 
  ga = """
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var _gaq = _gaq || [];
      _gaq.push(['_setAccount', '<% ga_code %>']);
      _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
      (function() {
        var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
        ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
        var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
      })();
    </script>
  """
 
  if False != settings['google_analytics']:
    template = template.replace( '<% google_analytics %>', ga )
    template = template.replace( '<% ga_code %>', settings['google_analytics'] )
  else:
    template = template.replace( '<% google_analytics %>', '' )
 
  print "Writing file..."
  f = open( 'index.html', 'w' )
  f.write( template )
  f.close()
 
  print "Done!"
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
  main()

Wow. You actually scrolled through all of that. Amazing.

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