Tue 08 Jun 2004

  • python: In python, os.path.join has a somewhat unexpected behavior. For example:

    os.path.join (‘/tmp’, ‘foo’) => ‘/tmp/foo’

    os.path.join (‘/tmp’, ‘/foo’) => ‘/foo’

    Consider the following example code:

    os.system (‘rm -rf ‘ + os.path.join (chroot_path, ‘/dev’))

    Eek.

  • python (update): A better way to do this is to do:

    os.path.normpath (chroot_path + os.path.sep + subpath)

Sun 06 Jun 2004

  • AisleRiot: I fixed a bug in the hint code in odessa.scm that has been bugging me for seven years. While testing it, I found another bug (crasher) that must have been there for at least as long. My scheme skills are rusty.

  • weather: Zana and I went to the beach with Brian and Delphine, yesterday. We tried to fly the kite that they had gotten in California, but it wasn’t windy enough. So we flew my kite instead.

Fri 07 May 2004

  • sysadmin: Time to get back to the grind. It’s moving day tomorrow and we have a lot to do. We have a pretty good idea of what needs doing as, for better or worse, we had a practice run a couple weeks ago.

    The new machines and setup will give us a lot of really nice features. I’m excited about having shared home directories among all the machines now. The manual syncing mechanism we were using before was prone to mistakes. Having a centralized naming scheme is a huge improvement. Additionally, we’ll have extra horse-power for bugzilla. That should make Luis happy.

Fri 30 Apr 2004

  • life: …and now, Zana I have been married for four years. It has been a wonderful time, and I wouldn’t give them up for anything. To celebrate, we went out for sushi followed by a trip to the bookstore for coffee and cheesecake. We enjoyed just sitting there, chatting and flipping through some books.

  • music (later): My attempts to add a CD to Zana’s rhythmbox has crashed it horribly. Grr…

Thu 22 Apr 2004

  • mime: Seth and I spent some time today discussing the “Open with…” dialog. It’s not a very exciting dialog, and I was pretty uninspired doing it. Still, I updated the proposed MIME spec when done and am ready to get back to implementing it.

Fri 16 Apr 2004

  • GTK+: It’s coming up to branch time. I’m looking forward to putting typeahead into GtkTreeView I did some prep for this on Sunday, and should be in good shape to do it next week. I think it’ll really work well.

  • bugzilla: Spent much of the week going through both GNOME and Red Hat bugzilla, trying to get my bugs under control. Had pretty good luck with my GTK+ bugs, less luck with the other ones.

  • sports streaks: 63 saves and 15 wins. Both are worth watching.

  • weekend: Great weekend! My brother came to Boston to look at schools, and we took a day off to go do touristy things with him. We went to Salem and looked at the old town there. It was a little chilly, but otherwise a gorgeous spring day. After looking at houses and boats, we went back to Groton and had a nice dinner.

    The next day, Zana and I dropped off my brother to go to an interview and went down the the esplenade for a walk. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and felt like the first real spring day that we’ve had. We then went to Bartley’s in Harvard Square and went book shopping.

Tue 06 Apr 2004

  • life: It’s been almost a month since I last wrote something. In that time, I jumped from working frantically on GTK+ 2.4.0 to doing sysadmin work full time. I’m quite exhausted.

  • games: I found a great site dedicated to preserving underrated arcade and video games (http://www.the-underdogs.org/). Most excitingly, they have Douglas Adams’ “Bureaucracy” available. I spent a lot of time playing that as a kid, and never quite beat it. My copy of that game died years ago though I still have the disk. I also lost the excellent manual, and they have a high quality copy of that. I got it working with dosbox tonight, and have been playing again just in time for tax season.