Pythoneer

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I wanted a simple web based "download and run"-SQLite browser. So my choice was of course a PHP tool, first thing to look for is something like phpMyAdmin just for SQLite.

There are two of them, with the same name "phpSQLiteAdmin":

1. One by Yves Glodt
2. Another one by Richard Heyes

and none of them works out of the box! So here is what I did to get number 2 (phpSQLiteAdmin by Richard Heyes) running.

I used to like to compile PHP myself, that just felt geeky. It made me feel special, just as if I was almost a real geek, nerd or whatever. I liked to torture myself and install other packages and dependencies before. But only the right version please! I liked to find out that the order of the --with config-switches made a difference. I liked to watch the configure process running for quite a while to finally see that another error occured again! I liked to watch the make and see it fail with some missing dependency or some library it could not link because the exported symbols didn't match.

NO, I didn't!

It was always an aweful waste of time. But somehow it made me understand better, what happens underneath. And sometimes it also made you look into the source code, which definitely was not bad. But at the current level of specialization that people have, it might need to be avoidable.

What am I saying here? I needed to have PHP and MySQL running on my Mac - quickly. The Apache fortunately is already running by default (just switch it on in the System Preferences/Sharing). So I started to compile PHP, which was taking too long in my eyes. After two or three errors because of missing deps I knew that was going to take longer. Back to the web and search for a .dmg! But a certain version of PHP, as the customer requires it! That was really easy. Thanks to Marc Liyanage you can find a lot of different binary versions of PHP at entropy.ch. And installing MySQL is not a problem either. There are enough different binary versions of MySQL. Now I only had to modify the /etc/httpd.conf and/or /private/etc/httpd/users/<username>.conf and set the proper DocumentRoot and Options I needed and I was done. Cool! That's what I call usability, very nice.

Less pain - more spare time :-)

An article from an American!

Where is New Orleans located? Africa ... no ... South America ... no ... in Korea ... no ... I give up ...

As already mentioned twice my keyboard strikes. Even now after the reinstall of Mac OS X. What is this, heeelp ... does nobody else have the same problem? The keyboard just reacts on nothing anymore, I open TextEdit and mostly it starts to work again.

It took very long to get all Ubuntu installed, but for running inside a Virtual PC on my Mac I was not expecting it to be really fast and I don't care.

When it was done the graphics card seemed to be configured badly, but with the help of this site I knew what to do. Watch out when you are using Ubuntu 5.04 (or above I guess too) read the help until the end, or do it as I describe here.

By default the X11 window is visible, any normal user that sees this and the graphics is screwed up, won't know what to do, I guess. I didn't know either, until I remembered that there was some key shortcut to jump to a console, yes CTRL+ALT+Fx where x is 1-6, 7 is the graphical screen (X11). On a Mac this is not all that easy :-) But CTRL+ALT+FN+F1 works, just a bit slower, but it does!

• Then I needed to become root in ubuntu, simply type "sudo bash" and your password and you have a root shell.
• There you have to edit "/etc/X11/xorg.conf", I used vi.
• Change the value for "DefaultDepth" from 24 to 16.

Make sure to reboot (type "reboot" as root) and your X should run smoothly after the restart. Good luck ...

or Deficits of pyUnit

I don't even know for sure if unittests is the perfect testing method in my case, but until now the methodology of it works fine for me, it's just those little things that sometimes bother me.

Here is what I am missing

• run tests X times, we have timing issues and unless the tests didn't succeed a hundred times i don't trust them to always pass, I need e.g. a simple command line parameter "--repeat=100"
• if i call assert*() inside a method multiple times it shall also be counted as that number of tests. E.g. i write the function test_x() and inside i have three times assert() calls, because i am too lazy to write 3 seperate functions, this shall also count three tests!

Yeah I realize now, that those are not big things, but I just started yesterday writing down what I miss, so this list might grow. I am sure there is someone out there who can help ... thanks

This page gives a nice overview of what the files and directories on your disk are for.

I am a little bit surprised, positively. Last night at around 8 I started backing up my home directory and just two or three other directories in order to reinstall Mac OS X. The backup was quick, less than an hour for about 10GB, that's ok.

Then I inserted the Tiger disk and told it to reinstall, despite all my fear to have forgotten to backup something important. It didn't bother me with much asking. I told it to empty the disk and install a clean copy. And then I went to watch TV for a while. One hour later I came back and it was done. Cool.

But the big surprise came later. I started setting up stuff and installing the programs I needed and tuning the settings as I am used to it. But what was really cool, is that almost all applications are that civilized that the really only store their data in the ~/Library directory. So copying the old configuration data from the backup back into the new system was just all I had to do. Way cool!!! And that works for all the programs: Mail, Safari, iCal, Addressbook, Colloquy, Adium, Skype, etc.

It was less a pain than I thought ... know it only has to run smoother than before, to "vale la pena"

Gotta read some stuff about configuration management and the software development process besides hacking. It seems there is a lack of tools in the open source world. Even though I am always again surprised how much better it works than in some companies. Actually it's the other way around, I know that it works in the open source world, I am surprised that it doesn't work in some companies.

Finally he puts his opinions online, I am very curious to read ... at least some people start writing more intelligent stuff than me :-)

After reading some tiger reinstall articles I think I need that too ... And as if my Tiger could feel that it started to behave strangely. The only thing that I feel could be my fault is that I upgraded the RAM from 1GB to 2GB, mainly for Virtual PC, but after that Virtual PC crashed much more often. The current symptoms why I need and will reinstall are the following:

• Safari crashes sometimes, even when I am not doing anything, sometimes I am just reading and tssst it's gone
• sometimes the system reaches the state that no application can be started anymore, they all crash and bring up this "do you want to restart" shitty screen ... I have to reboot
• I even got a you-must-reboot-screen once when I wanted to log on after the computer woke up
• QuickSilver crashes lately, without a reason
• Virtual PC crashes without a reason, it never did before
• my wife's little (12") PowerBook (also with a Tiger-over-Panther installation) turns on the fan too often, even when nothing special is going on

Actually I am quite disappointed by Mac OS X for that. I really had thought: "how cool, I can simply install Tiger over Pather and it works", it kind of did for a while.

So this weekend - reinstall. It can only get better ... I just need to get over this week :-)

Now that I am traveling more frequent I realize that the battery of my PowerBook is not really what I expect from a mobile computer. Two hours is the absolute maximum for my current battery and that can not be it (lately only 1,5 hours)!

Is there some really high capacity battery for my PowerBook Aluminum 15"? I learned that there is one from newer technology, but honestly: 11% more power is not what I am looking for. I want much more! Is there anything, just let me know. Thanks.

Either because we were unlucky or we simply didn't call the right person yet, but it seems impossible to find some kind of day care for our little son. The biggest problem is that it has to start in September! The bavarian government doesn't seem to be aware of this bottleneck. There are even a lot parent initiatives (I guess that's what they are called) that the government should see that there is a big need. I read somewhere that those parent initiatives are taking care of more than 2000 kids (>2000!).  Is that not sign enough?

Anyway, if there is someone out there who knows someone ... and so on. Just let us know. ... I can be patient, but ...

I read the book two months ago, but I never wrote a line of AppleScript. But now I did!

-- Open the terminal application and two windows
-- the right window shall be a python shell and shall
-- have the full height and be at the right edge of the screen
-- the first window stays at the left side of the screen
-- in normal size
tell application "Terminal"
  activate

-- this is cruel, there is no "make new window" I have
-- to step through the menu
-- yucky ... but it works .... jippi
-- thanks to to Fork on #ignmac and to
-- http://bbs.applescript.net/viewtopic.php?pid=32691
tell application "System Events"
   click menu item "Neues Shell-Fenster" of menu "Ablage"\
   of menu bar item "Ablage" of menu bar 1 of process "Terminal"
end tell

tell window 1
set position to {0, 0}
end tell

-- get the width+height of the screen
-- http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050428173653581
try
  set window_info to do shell script\
  "defaults read com.apple.loginwindow\
  | grep -w 'NSWindow Frame About This Mac'"
  set screen_width to (word 13 of window_info as number)
  set screen_height to (word 14 of window_info as number)
on error -- use defaults on failure
  set screen_width to 1024
  set screen_height to 768
end try

-- set window 2 dims
tell window 2
  set position to {screen_width - 1000, 0}
  set size to {1000, screen_height}
end tell

-- open the python shell in window 2
do script "clear; python" in window 2

end tell