Yay Blogger! Or Chrome?

So for the longest time the blogger shortcuts didn't work with chrome.

These ones:

Shortcuts: press Ctrl with: B = Bold, I = Italic, P = Publish, S = Save, D = Draft

Which I found mildly amusing since they're both Google products. Well, at least on my version of Chrome for linux the shortcuts now work, and that makes me happy.

Oracle, the Fail Whale

Database Systems - a required course for all CS majors at the University of Central Arkansas. Cool deal, not a problem for me.

What is a problem, however, is Oracle's website. You can download oracle for free, for prototyping and self-educational purposes, which is sure nice of them. What is stupid of them is that they require the use of cookies to allow you validation to the download link, which means I can't use wget to download the file, as far as I know anyway.

And that makes Oracle fail.

Or it could just be the fact that I already have a headache and it just annoys me further.

Python for Unix and Linux System Administrators: A Book in Revue

So it's been about 6 months, but I'm finally sitting down to write a review of Python for Unix and Linux System Administrators by Noah Gift and Jeremy M. Jones, available from O'Reilly books. ISBN 978-0-596-51582-9

Disclosure: I am in no way related to Noah or Jeremy. I received this book for free when I attended a class given by Noah at PyArkansas in October of 2008.

Python is a great book for anyone who deals with Linux/Unix on a daily basis, and especially those who preform many repetitive tasks. Written in a clean style with plenty of code examples, if you are a sys admin this is a book that belongs on your shelf.

Broken up into chapters, Python has topics for a wide range of admin activities. From log/text and XML parsing, up to building GUI apps with GTK, to writing a script to tar files with certain extensions and sending you an email, this book is light enough for skimming for a solution, but also allows you to dive deep enough to develop applications to meet your needs.

I was a novice python programmer when I first encountered this book, and since then my progress has made leaps and bounds. Every so often I come back to this book for new material, and if I were a sys admin I'm sure this would be one of, if not the prime resource.

Wine, Wonderful Wine...

So, there's a program called Wine (WINdows Emulator, IIRC). I'm working on getting it to work with my scriptures again, and OpenCanvas, with all the spiffin pressure sensitivity and... not inverting the Y-axis.

Currently, with oC, it goes severely wonky. It has pressure sensitivity fine, but it inverts the Y-axis of my tablet. So when I move down, it moves up. When I move left it moves left. When I move up it moves down. Needless to say, art would get a little confusing!

So I'm working on some fixes to that at the moment.

In addition, there's a seriously wonky problem in the LDS Scriptures CD-ROM, where the search function... works backwards? Basically it used to work fine. Then when you clicked in the search box it crashed. Then that was fixed, and now it does something creepy. Say you wanted to search for "israel". So in the box you type "israel". What is now in the box, however is " learsi". Spaces and backwards! Weirded out!! So that's next on the list of fix attempts. w00t.

s'all for now, enjoy your wine ^_^

Open Source vs. Industry Standard?

So, I was looking for some various art programs for linux, and I came across this post. I must confess intrigue as I read through it. The open-mindedness of this particular professor surprised me somewhat, considering the more or less... "not-ness" of much of my particular school in general.

However, the comments on that post basically came down to one of these different boilerplate responses:

1) "OMG, ur liek so TOTALLY right! Macs suxxorrszzz!!1!!!" (When the author made no such mention, or even really any insinuation.

2) "D00d!11! Ur so ruining t3h studentz lives by teaching them OS inst3rd of teh industrie standards!!!"

3) "I admire your open-mindedness in trying to teach your students other options"

What was intriguing to me was that only ONE single person who offered negative feedback suggested they were actually working in "the industry", all other critics offered no such qualifications. The interesting thing to me is the fact that at least with Pixar they often write their OWN plugins/extensions/software. Many large studios use open source programs (I can't find a list, though there used to be some floating around on the 'net). I know a few people who work in "the industry", and I don't know that they're required to use any specific software. But just to make sure I'll ask on the art forum I'm a part of, though I'm pretty sure they use what they're most comfortable with, and it's their actual output that is of the most concern.

The moral of the story? Think critically before you post. Please please please!

Also, exposure to many different types of programs is NOT a hindrance! As a matter of fact, the more you know about various different skill sets, especially if you are proficient in them and skilled in at least one, the better off you will be.

Post #490

It's big. It's round. It's post number 490. Stay tuned for a larger, rounder post when we get to 500!

Right now I'm working on this amazingly old laptop, trying to get it to run decently enough. But I'm having slight problems... mainly that it's SOOO slow. The other part is that for some reason it doesn't like to see the CDROM drive so it could do something useful, like boot from it. Also for some reason I seem to have lost my ... train of thought. It appears to have been derailed, killing 12 people in the process.

Ooops.

Oh that's what I lost! my ubuntu CD... it's odd... it doesn't seem to be really anywhere. So I'm currently downloading the most recent version. I may end out using it to upgrade my installation on my other laptop as well... it's going to be a weekend full of fun and profit! Well... fun at least :P

Huzzah!

First day of classes? Mission: Accomplished.

Yeah, it was pretty good. I only had two classes, my writing class and my math class... it seems like they should both be some good classes.

Dr. Forssman Hill is my writing teacher, and Professor Booher is my math teacher, and they both seem like competent, nice ladies. Of course, the way I see it, that basically makes them teachers anyway, this way they simply get paid for it.

Well... I think that's about it for now... I'm rather tired - I've been up since 5AM, see... Heh... it could be fun to take a nap like I learned in the Worst Case Scenario Handbook: College Survival guide... One of the things I enjoy about college is people watching. Especially after being here for a semester... I can pretty much pick the freshmen out like nobodies business - they all seem to have this startled "deer in the headlights" look - slightly unsure and more or less worried. It's cute, really. I wonder if I looked like that my first semester... I doubt it, simply because I've done so much and I'm so easygoing that I was probably like "eh, whatever." Maybe.

Tomorrow I have math again, (bleh, I really need to get books & things) and Biology... what a horrid book. Both of those books will end out around $200 for the two classes. You know, the books should really just be included in tuition or something... about $1500 of random fees is anyway, so why not those?

I'm pretty sure that next semester I'll try to get back with the MWF classes... I just think it'll be a bit easier. Of course that also depends on everything else... like, say work schedule... wheee... so much fun.

So I'm learning myself the Python programming language. It's been a lot of fun so far, I now need to learn how to open/edit files... w00t. And then I wanna start learning how to play with PyGTK+ - it's a programming language/widget set that's pretty darn cool. That's what the GIMP and pidgin are programmed in.

Pretty sweet stuff.

Well, that's enough rambling for now, I think I'll go draft a letter I'm supposed to write for creative writing class... joi de vivre!