June 2004
Konfabulator Officially Sucks
Dashboard vs. Konfabulator
Required listening ... for everyone!
I’ve been listening to:
Taking Back Sunday – Where you want to be
An awesome CD. I “aquired” this CD online somewhere and its just great. My favorite tracks are Bonus Mosh Pit II and Set Phaser to Stun
Midtown – Forget What You Know iTunes Link
I can’t say I have any favorites that stick out at me off this disc. It officially was released today so you can go out and buy it....
Required Reading ... for supernerds
I’ve been reading two books for the past month or so. I checked them out from the local library (who would’ve guessed?)
I also recently ordered three books, they are:
Programming Python buy Python in a Nutshell buy Python Programming on Win32 buy Python Cookbook buy Advanced PHP Programming buy
Emails out of the blue
Got an email out of the blue today from someone who works in the Creative Services department at Jungle Jims International Market about my previous posts about our trips to the store.
They really loved the “incognito” camera phone shots and how much we enjoyed the store :)
We actually were just back there this previous sunday (we’ve been alternating between a Meijer that is 11 miles away and...
Signs of Oldness!
You sign up for your 401k
You have health benefits of your own
You have frequent discussions about investments and spending budgets
You start getting tired around 11pm
Got any more?
Oh snap!
A Couple Days in Vegas
A while back someone from the Ars Technica forums contacted me about an image that was floating around in my photo gallery:
It was an idea I had put together for a possible redesign of this site. It was scrapped but Hal (the guy who contacted me) really liked the illustration of me in that pictures. Unfourtunately I am not gifted enough to create that level of artwork! :) Those...
A Photo-Tour of My Daily Walk Home From Work!
Check it out in my gallery
Fahrenheit 9/11
Saw this today with Jacqui. It’s a moving movie which I hope a lot of “average” people will see. By “average” I mean people who don’t watch news, or read thought-provoking forums like Ars Technica’s Soap Box where people debate the issues. Maybe people in America have ill-concieved notions about a lot of important things going on in the world, and I think that this movie, while not a “true”...
Instiki
Instiki is a Wiki that runs as an application on your Mac (or windows or *nix machine). What’s a Wiki ? Have you ever used Wikipedia ?
Basically a Wiki is a collaborative editing system meant for managing web content via any web browser. It lets anyone provide content, correct mistakes, and provide useful feedback in a non-intrusive manner!
A lot of open-source projects...
Poor America :(
I think that anyone that does much flying will recognize shades of the reporter’s experience. Flying back from Denver the other day, I was asked by a TSA lady whether I had a video camera. When I replied that I did not, but I had a digital camera she smirked and said that “that’s okay… for now.” This has nothing to do with public safety, but the knowledge of the very real power held kept me from...
Excel tip
You can’t have more than 255 series in a single graph :)
Annoying GPRS issue with Nokia 6600
There is really only one super-annoying thing I’ve found with my phone
Sometimes when I go out of GPRS coverage for a minute or so, my phone will stick in a “NO GPRS” mode until you reset it. Its happened quite a few times and it’s pretty annoying!
Phone Cam Dump
Speaking of Excel and Python
According to the VB Object browser, the AxisGroup property of a series is read/write and it would appear that that is true. When I record a macro of me changing a series’ axis from primary to secondary I see something like
series.AxisGroup = 2
However, if I try to perform the same action in Python I get an error along the lines of:
...
Making heterogeneous charts using Python/COM and...
Something that took me a while to figure out, but is well worth remembering here. If you’re looking to make a chart in excel with one or more series that differ in type (Line graph, Area) from the others like such:
Sample chart with two “area” series and one “line” series
You might run into a little problem implementing it in Python. I initially set the charttype of the chart to...
GMAIL
12 9 4 Gmail invites to the next 4 commenters. I don’t care who you are, even if you’re search engine searching slime.
A Conflict of Apparel
I saw a guy wearing a shirt I own today
…[H]e (Clint) is unable to “take that risk” that they may, one day, wear the same shirt on the same day.
I can’t risk it! I’ll be the laughing stock of the whole office. I can see it now. Jokes about how we called each other up before coming to work so we could coordinate our outfits! :)
Project: Parse an Outlook PST using Python
I’m still getting some endian issues and code quirks figured out (as this is my first foray into a python project) but I’m coming along. The big part is going to be figuring out is the pointers I’m reading are accurate :) Whoever made the PST file format should be shot!
Anyways, read the excerpt if you want to see what I have so far (which I believe is correct, amazingly enough) ==...
Date generation in Python
Without any funky modulo crap on your part! Python is a bit strict on type conversions oppposed to PHP and also requires a strict format (9 item tuple) to generate Epoch timestamps. Anyways, in PHP I would do something like this:
for($i=0;$i<60;$i++)
{
$date = mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d")-1,date("Y"));
echo date("m/d/Y",$date)."\n"
}
and I was able to replicate that in Python...
Keeping track of things I want to remember
file() syntax Python Built-in Functions File Objects Efficient arrays of numeric values
os.byteorder will tell you the endianess of the machine you’re on so you can determine whether you should call the array.byteswap() function on your stored data
Python Source Colorizer
Good Python Editors:
SPE – Stani’s Python Editor lots of features, but a bit overwhelming BBEdit pretty much the...
More geeky crap
Automating Excel Using the Excel Object Model
Got some more indepth stuff done today using python and COM to control excel. Actually graphed some stuff :O
Phone Cam Dump
Graffiti on the building next door:
The side of that building opposite the graffiti. Our building is the light tan building on the left! Notice the T-Mobile cell tower antennas peeking over the red building’s roof!
The view from Newport, KY looking east into Ohio
Looking to the West from New Port towards Downtown Cincinnati:
Crossing the Ohio river at night (East of...
Things we've done in Cincinnati (and surrounding...
Eaten at:
Buca di Beppo
Teak
Redfish
Wah Mee’s
The Fish Market
The Cheesecake Factory
Shopped At:
The World Market
Jungle Jims
Tri-County Mall
Kenwood Towne Center
Newport on the Levee
Jacqui has GMail Invites
Jacqui has Gmail invites!
I think that if you send her a polite email she might give you one.
NOTICE: If you’re an Internet sleezeball googling for GMail accounts, you need not apply :)
Upgraded the site
I upgraded the site today to MovableType 3.0 which means you’ll be needing to mosey on over to Typekey to make yourself a typekey account to make comments on my site.
Yes I know its retarded that its come to this but you’d be floored by the amount of SPAM that this site gets constantly flooded with. On somedays I’ll have hundreds of attempts to post penis pill comments to every post on my...
Odds and Ends #2
Mail Appetizer has been updated with a lot of cool new features.
Python/PHP/Excel/COM Stuff
Required links:
Parsing Excel XML
Python and Excel
Simple (and crappy) Excel Spreadsheets
PyXLWriter
Plotting in Excel through Python/COM
PHP: COM and .Net
Pear Packager: Spreadsheet_Excel
Odd and Ends
Cool s60 Software and Resources
Goboy Opera s60 Agile Messenger Salling Clicker
Salling Clicker is the coolest s60 application BY FAR. It allows you to do a number of things but the central task is to control applications on your Mac via bluetooth. You can control iTunes, Keynote, Powerpoint, DVD Player, and even other applications with a press of a button on your phone! You can write...
The Real World
Jacqui makes a post about the Real World we’ve been told so much about! Where is it?? :)
P.S. We’re working on a cool layout for Jacqui’s new site which should be ready in a week or two.
Gmail Invites (geez)
I got 2 more left. You know the drill.
Ran out of these a while back!
Office Chairs
I’ve been getting new chairs recently, both at work and at home!
Just the other day my work chair was acting a bit funky and a coworker suggested I find a new chair somewhere in the office. I was looking around in the back room and spotted a Herman Miller Aeron office chair :O
For those of you who don’t know, Aeron chairs had their heyday back during the dot-com boom. Companies getting...
More gmail
I got 5 more Gmail invites and there are 3 remaining, get ahold of my if you want one.
All gone!
Wow
I just realised that last month this website has been my blog in some fashion for over three years!
First Post was about finishing up my Sophomore year at Purdue.
I sold out and started using MovableType on October 22, 2002 and currently this website has 712 posts and 385 comments, quite impressive :)
Gmail Accounts
I have 4 Gmail accounts to dish out. Let me know if you want one. I will not give out accounts to people I don’t know or who don’t at least try to amuse me. Highest priority will go to people I know and who don’t already have a Gmail account.
AIM: IdiosyncrasyFG Email: clintology@gmail.com
They are all gone d00ders ;)
Nokia Series 60 Worm
EPOC.Cabir is a proof-of-concept worm that replicates on Nokia Series 60 phones. It repeatedly sends itself to the first Bluetooth-enabled device that it can find, regardless of the type of device (ie even a Bluetooth-enabled printer will be attacked if it is within range).
The worm spreads as a .SIS file, which is automatically installed into the “APPS” directory when the receiver accepts...
Mozilla Shirt
I need to get one of these:
Link via Asa
Cool phone stuff
My Nokia 6600 is turning out to be quite the capable little device!
View the whole gallery
Jungle Jims Redux
Jungle Jims was AWESOME. I’ve got so many funny pictures. They seriously have EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE. They even have rare american groceries ;)
I’m downloading a ton of pics from my phone over bluetooth, so check back in this post in a bit for the good stuff :)
Some choice pics:
Every imaginable sort of parmesian cheese:
Cheese from every corner of the world!
...
Cool new chairs
Yesterday we went to World Market in Fairfield, OH (a suburb of Cincinnati) to find some chairs! Wouldn’t you know it? We finally found some chairs we liked! They’re really cool and we think they match up with the style of the table(s)† really well.
Before picking these chairs we saw a lot of other ones that we might’ve liked. I took some picture of the candidates with my phone:
This...
Posting from phone!
Testing 123
New Cell Phones Have Arrived!
Me and Jacqui got our cell phones we ordered through my employee deal.
I got me a Nokia 6600 and its really sweet:
It takes pictures:
and has bluetooth:
Jacqui got a Motorolla v300 which is real cool too ;) So I took a picture of it!
the entire gallery of pictures
Justin Williams is a beautiful human being!
I got a GMail account from the fabulous Justin Williams
clintology@gmail.com
Fabulous PEAR Usage
Today at work I got tired of going through an arduous process to download CSV raw data files from our Metrica †. So I implemented a bit of screen scraping to get the job done.
There are a series of issues that making the automatic retrieval of information from this particular database difficult.
Firstly, there is only a web frontend available. You must select the type of report and...
Apple's Retail Operations Make History
Apple retail stores have reached the US$1 billion mark for total sales, which makes Apple the fastest retailer to achieve the mark (previous record held by Old Navy).
More Apartment Stuff
Some stuff that’s been going on:
Got some bank accounts with Bank One
Working 3rd shift tonight doing a “frequency retune” of the Dayton market
Got a new TV stand and media holder thinga-ma-bob:
We’ve also repurposed my PC as a video input into the TV system and as a fileserver and webcam station :) It’s connected to the network via a USB 802.11b adapter and now sports a...