Ross Redux Redux

Moving. Again. I just can't help it.

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:57:16 +0100

I just can’t seem to keep still, I’ve re-installed a blog back at the original place, and hopefully I’ll be blogging more there, and twittering less.

It's funny. Honest.

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:28:00 +0000

Of the many jokes that Estelle gets sent, this is the funniest we’ve had for a long while and I thought I’d share :)

Nicolas Sarkozy dîne avec la reine d’Angleterre. Soudain, il lui demande:

‘Votre Majesté, vous m’impressionnez, vous êtes toujours entourée de
Gens intelligents, comment faites-vous ?’

La reine lui répond: ‘C’est très simple. Je les tiens constamment en
Alerte. Je leur fais passer régulièrement des petits tests pour être bien sûre
Que leur intelligence reste vive.’

Nicolas est stupéfait: ‘Ah oui ? Comment faites-vous ça ?’

La reine s’empare du téléphone: ‘C’est très simple. Je vais vous montrer.

Elle appelle Tony Blair:
- Bonjour Tony !
- Bonjour Votre Majesté !

« Tony, j’ai un petit test d’intelligence pour vous.

- C’est l’enfant de votre père et de votre mère mais ce n’est ni votre
frère ni votre soeur. Qui est-ce?

- C’est moi !

- Bravo, c’est juste ! Merci Tony. A la prochaine.

La reine raccroche. Nicolas est impressionné: ‘Wow !’

De retour à Paris, Nico décide de mettre en pratique la technique de la
Reine d’Angleterre.Il téléphone à Carla Bruni:

« Bonjour Carla, c’est Nicolas ! J’ai un petit test d’intelligence pour toi !

- O.K. Vas-y.

- C’est l’enfant de ton père et de ta mère mais ce n’est ni ton frère,ni ta soeur. Qui est-ce ?

- Oh! Attends un petit peu. Je n’étais pas préparée à ça.Je note .
Laisse-moi quelques minutes pour réféchir . Je te rappelle. D’accord ?

- Pas de problème ! »

Carla Bruni s’empresse alors d’appeler Rachida Dati :

- Bonjour Rachida, c’est Carla . Je ne sais pas ce qui lui prend mais
Nico vient de me faire passer un test. Est-ce que tu veux bien m’aider ?
- Pas de problème, énonce-moi la question .

- C’est l’enfant de ton père et de ta mère mais ce n’est ni ton frère,ni ta soeur. Qui est-ce ?

- C’est moi !
- Aaah, Ok, merci !

Carla Bruni s’empresse de rappeler Nicolas .

- Nicolas , tu peux me reposer ton énigme ?

- Ok. C’est l’enfant de ton père et de ta mère mais ce n’est pas ni ton frère,ni ta soeur. Qui est-ce ?

- C’est Rachida Dati !
- Perdu ! C’est Tony Blair.

Nearly ready for Pycon

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:44:48 +0100

I finally got my laptop ready last night, so I should be ready for a weekend of Python at PyCon UK. Really, really looking forward to learning some new stuff. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to check out PyObjc before I go, so I won’t have anything to really compare IronPython and PyQT to in terms of Python GUI toolkits - but I have spent a small amount of time with both of them so at least I’ve a rough idea of how they work

One thing I did notice whilst playing with IronPython and System.Windows.Forms was how relevant any S.W.F. experience you already have is likely to be. Yes, you’ll be writing a lot less code, but apart from the fact you’re using a much nicer language, the way that the UI works is obviously the same - which for some reason wasn’t as obvious to me as it should have been.

So pending a failure to wake up at 6AM tomorrow to pick up Darren, I’m ready. Ish. Once I’ve packed.

Note to self:
Some things I haven’t tried with IronPython yet that I intend to (i.e. need to remember to try)
1. self.listbox.Items.AddRange( [“item”, “item”, “item” ] ) - I so want this to work, and suspect that it might.
2. P/Invoke
3. Handling class attributes
4. What, if any, support there is for System.Collections.Generic

Custom fixed size listbox items in IronPython in 30 seconds

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:36:00 +0100

Just a reminder so I can remember how to draw fixed height custom listbox items. Syntax highlighting would be nice … ho hum.

class MyForm(Form):
    def __init__(self):
        self.listbox = ListBox( Location=... )
        self.listbox.DrawMode   = DrawMode.OwnerDrawFixed
        self.listbox.ItemHeight = 80
        self.listbox.DrawItem  += self.drawListboxItem
        # Add your items as necessary, remembering they don't need to be strings 
        self.Controls.Add( self.listbox )

    """ Called when an item needs drawing 
        evt is a DrawItemEventArgs """
    def drawListboxItem(self, sender, evt):
        # Draw the default background
        evt.DrawBackground() 
    
        # Get the item that is being drawn
        item = self.listbox.Items[evt.Index]
    
        # Use the Graphics object to draw your item using evt.Bounds to
        # determine where to draw (pay attention to the evt.Bounds.X and 
        # evt.Bounds.Y
        evt.Graphics.Draw...

        # Draw the selection rectangle
        evt.DrawFocusRectangle()

La Machine

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:34:00 +0100

Off to see La Machine tonight, and probably again tomorrow afternoon whilst E is watching High School Musical. I couldn’t work out where it was going to be tomorrow, as it is apparently getting a bit temperamental so I’ve put together a quick map.

I managed to see the Sultan’s Elephant at les machines de l’ile when I was in Nantes last, and it was pretty impressive. We didn’t manage to get a ride on the elephant, but did follow it around for a short while before checking out the other ‘creations’.

Looking forward to seeing what they (flash heavy site warning) do next.

I feel like this.

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:35:31 +0100

I feel like this.

No news is good news

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:32:52 +0100

It has just suddenly dawned on me that PyCon UK is coming up fairly soon, so I’ve taken a bit of time to take a look at IronPython before Michael Foord’s tutorial on the 12th. Hopefully I’ll have some time to check out PyQt too before we go, and PyObjC just out of interest.

So far, and apart from the painful startup time, its looking good, pretty easy to write WinForm apps and managed to get my first IronPython user control written in a half hour or so (should be quicker from now on). Apparently there is an IDE for it, but seeing as I’ll be doing the tutorial on a Mac I may as well get used to writing without one.

I am just debating at what point I should import * instead of import (Point, Color, Rectangle, Size, Brushes, Font, FontStyle, StringFormat, StringFormatFlags, Image). I guess around about now is probably a good time :)

There is still this niggling little feeling at the back of my mind though asking what the point of IronPython is - is it *just* for .Net integration? Is it supposed to have much better performance? How long will I have to wait for Python on V8? So many questions…

Expert Systems

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:13:16 +0100

I’ve decided that trying to brush off the rust wrt Expert Systems, on a weekend when I’ve been taken out drinking (as a non-drinker it wasn’t a pleasant sight) is generally not a good idea.

More and more over recent weeks I’ve been thinking about ES again, and thought that after a break of a couple of years, maybe I should take another look, but maybe I should wait until I’ve got rid of this hangover first.

And definitely, no more drinking.

From TUAW

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:53:00 +0100

From TUAW

Starting on a new diet today - hopefully I can last out on this one long enough for it to make a...

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:33:49 +0100

Starting on a new diet today - hopefully I can last out on this one long enough for it to make a difference.

What is FluidInfo?

Fri, 30 May 2008 14:22:00 +0100

Alright, I have no idea what FluidInfo is, but I’d really really like to know. I know what curiosity did to the cat, but all the same - can someone please tell me.

Why do I want to know?

We’re designing and building a distributed storage architecture for a new representation of information

Now, I can’t just not know.

Edit: I found out, but now I can’t tell you :P It’ll be worth the wait though.

Is that really a WAP book in the background?

Tue, 13 May 2008 18:45:27 +0100

Is that really a WAP book in the background?

Unbinding C# projects from SVN

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:25:00 +0100

Update: Or you could, as Chris suggested, just use the SVN export command. Ahem :( That’ll teach me to slow down and look around in future…

~~I love SVN, but I hate that I have to clean up projects by removing the .svn folders before sending them to clients.~~

So, I wrote a little utility to do it for me in C#, and it is fairly basic - it walks through the folder structure underneath a folder that you give it and it deletes the .svn folders that it finds, after ensuring that all of the contents have the read-only flag removed. So just in case anyone finds it useful, it is ~~here~~.

~~There are lots of caveats to using it, so you may well find it easier to do this by hand, but hey ho.~~

~~This took 30 minutes and has not been thoroughly tested. Caveat Emptor.~~
~~The code is neither elegant, or beautiful, but it is functional. Ish.~~
~~Please don’t use this on your working folder.~~
~~If it deletes something it shouldn’t - don’t come running to me, I don’t intend to ever look at this code again - see points 1 and 2.~~
~~It is written in .Net 1.1, and therefore you need 1.1 or later installed. Why 1.1? It was what I had open when I started writing - sorry.~~
~~Did I mention this wasn’t~~ ~~thoroughly~~ ~~tested?~~

On the plus side, it does work either as a winapp, or from the command line if you specify an argument (the folder to clean) but don’t forget to quote the path if it has spaces. I have no doubt that there are better solutions out there, but you know how it is - quicker to write something than spend the time looking all over the Internet for it. Anyway, back to what I should have been doing.

Now that I am back from France ...

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:25:40 +0100

…. Passion Fruit flavoured tic-tacs? Now when you see something like that you just have to, don’t you. And I did. Not so much passion fruit flavour as chemical flavour with a hint of passion fruit that stays stuck in your throat for about 45 minutes.

I think I’ll stick with mint from now on.

If I went in for schadenfreude...

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:23:04 +0100

.. I’d probably get some sort of satisfaction from this. Luckily I don’t, and eagerly away the patch to fix it, but I am not holding my breath.

”Word documents generated by today’s version of Microsoft Office 2007 do not conform to the Office Open XML standard under development by the International Organization for Standardization”

"Postel really said ” in general, only a subset of a protocol is actually used in real life...."

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:08:00 +0000

“Postel really said ” in general, only a subset of a protocol is actually used in real life. So, you should be conservative and only generate that subset. However, you should also be liberal and accept everything that the protocol permits, even if it appears that nobody will ever use it.””

- via Mark Crispin via Stu Charlton

Webkit/ACID3 and Mobile Safari

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:17:30 +0000

I love that the Webkit guys are m aking strides in trying to be the first to complete the ACID3 test, and I’ve no doubt they’ll do it - I just hope that nobody has forgotten about fixing the bugs in Mobile Safari. It’s been all love and joy for me for the past few weeks, but then I had 4 crashes in a row on the same day visiting sites I had visited before :(

"Why is there never enough time to do a job right, but always enough time to do it over?"

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:27:06 +0000

“Why is there never enough time to do a job right, but always enough time to do it over?”

- Anecdotal

My brush with UK government software piracy.

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:11:56 +0000

I only mention this now, because it turns out it might be more prevalent than I thought - but worth mentioning because of the irony involved.

So, last year I accidentally drove through a very badly signposted bus lane in the beautiful city of Bath - and then a few days letter I got a letter from the council there telling me I had to give them money. Fair enough, I made a mistake and get fined, so I paid up.

Whilst on the automated phoneline trying to pay I noticed the letter had a picture of my car, but at the bottom was the typical Elecard ’demo license expired’ message. Elecard, for those that don’t know is a Russian company who write a lot of software related to video - in this case it was their MPG2 codec that was being used without a license.

It amused me, but being a busybody I contacted Elecard to tell them about it, because let’s face it - it isn’t right.

And then yesterday, I find out that Camden council are doing the exact same thing with an expired demo codec.

I always assumed that my taxes went to ensuring that my local council (neither of those mentioned above) was legal in the software dept as well as the occassional service (police? haven’t seen any on the beat for months). Now I find out that some councils are useing expired demo software to extract money from normal people. Given that there seems to be a widely held belief that Russia is a hotbed of software piracy, it amused me to see somewhere like the UK blatantly abusing the license of a Russian company.

Apparently there are about 4,200,000 closed circuit cameras in the UK - if I were Elecard I’d be contacting FAST to check them all on my behalf about now.

iPhone wifi with The Cloud

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:44:00 +0000

When I first heard I could use my iPhone wifi free on any of The Cloud hotspots, my first reaction was - great, but how do I find them.

The answer?

Users simply text “CLOUD” to 82085 to receive a message with their nearest Cloud hotspot. If they text “CLOUD” a second time, they will receive a map of the area, as well as a list of three other nearby Cloud hotspots.

That might just come in useful.