2008 – Page 3 – Made by Mikal

Foundation’s Edge

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 19, 2008
Post category:Book

I'm back to reading Foundation Series books actually written by Isaac Asimov. This one is the fourth in the Foundation Series if you count them in the order they were written, but is the second last in chronological terms. Its set 500 years after the failure of the first galactic empire, and follows the first Foundation's attempt to discover if the second Foundation still exists. Well, its a bit more complicated than that, but I don't want to ruin it for you. As an aside, the user interface described for the ship's computer is really cool. Its a bit like augmented reality, mixed with gesture control, mixed with a direct interface into the brain. I'm not saying I want one in my house, but its cool that a book written in 1983 still has a user interface description which isn't dated, and still seems plausible. This book has minor inconsistencies with the story presented in the second foundation trilogy (Foundation's Fear, Foundation and Chaos and Foundation's Triumph), but I see that more as a failure in those followup authors than in this book. In fact, I've already complained about how untrue to Asimov's vision some of those books are elsewhere.…

Automatically creating folders for mailing lists

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 18, 2008
Post category:Procmail

I've been using some simple procmail rules to automatically create folders for mailing lists for ages. Tony asked me for those rules today, so I figured I'd just put them online. ########################################################################## # Mailman :0: * List-Id:.*]* $MATCH :0: * List-Post: ]* $MATCH ########################################################################## # Majordomo lists (sometimes don't have 's around the address :0: * X-Mailing-List:.*]* $MATCH :0: * X-Mailing-List:.*\/.* $MATCH ########################################################################## # Ezmlm :0: * Mailing-List: .* \/[^ ;]* $MATCH ########################################################################## # I'm not sure what creates this one... :0: * X-Loop: \/.* $MATCH

Wanted: someone to edit / review some MythTV stuff for me

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 18, 2008
Post category:Mythtv

I'm looking for someone with solid MythTV experience and a good grasp of the English language to help me out with a project. All I can promise in return is glory, and that will be proportional to the eventual success of the project. If you're interested in spending some time (probably around 40 hours or so, spread over a couple of months) on such a project drop me a line.

The Riftwar Series

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 16, 2008
Post category:Book

This series follows to young kids who grow up in a rural castle on the edge of an empire. Pug ends up being the greatest Magician to ever live, and Thomas ends up being merged with an ancient being of massive power. Its a good series, even if people accuse it of being steeped in cliche. 1982: Magician (later sold as Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master) 1985: Silverthorn 1986: A Darkness at Sethanon

A Darkness at Sethanon

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 16, 2008
Post category:Book

This book took longer to read that I would have liked, because I have been busy with other things. Its a good book though, and a fine conclusion to the Riftwar Series. I liked this book a lot, although I do think that Magician (Apprentice and Master) was a better book. [isbn: 0553263285]

irtrans remote control stops working

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 13, 2008
Post category:Mythtv

I've been using a Zalman HD160B media center case for quite some time, and I love it. It came with an irtrans based LCD and remote control built into the case, which has always worked nicely as well. Until yesterday when the remote stopped working. When I run the irserver command in a terminal so I can see the output, I get this: # ./irserver -codedump -debug_code -loglevel 4 /dev/ttyUSB0 Name : Version: D5.03.08 FW SNo : 18780 Capab : Power On; FW Cap : 3964953 USB SNo: Node : /dev/ttyUSB0 IRServer Version 5.7.08 [ 0]: D5.03.08 SN: 18780 Remote zalman compiled: 1 Timings - 45 Commands Total: 1 Remotes - 1 Timings - 45 Commands 0 CCF Data - 0 CCF RAW - 0 CCF Error No joy. Rebooting the machine, replacing all the batteries, and restarting the server all did nothing. The server still doesn't see events from the remote. I'm not sure how to determine if this is a receiver hardware problem or not -- I'm kinda out of other ideas. Suggestions welcome. Update: of course, disassembling the PC and reseating all the cables fixed the problem. I wonder if it is temperature related?

Finding locking deadlocks in python

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 12, 2008
Post category:Python

I re-factored some code today, and in the process managed to create a lock deadlock for myself. In the end it turned out to be an exception was being thrown when a lock was held, and adding a try / finally resolved the real underlying problem. However, in the process I ended up writing this little helper that I am sure will be useful in the future. import gflags import thread import threading import traceback import logging ... FLAGS = gflags.FLAGS gflags.DEFINE_boolean('dumplocks', False, 'If true, dumps information about lock activity') ... class LockHelper(object): """A wrapper which makes it easier to see what locks are doing.""" lock = thread.allocate_lock() def acquire(self): if FLAGS.dumplocks: logging.info('%s acquiring lock' % threading.currentThread().getName()) for s in traceback.extract_stack(): logging.info(' Trace %s:%s [%s] %s' % s) self.lock.acquire() def release(self): if FLAGS.dumplocks: logging.info('%s releasing lock' % threading.currentThread().getName()) for s in traceback.extract_stack(): logging.info(' Trace %s:%s [%s] %s' % s) self.lock.release() Now I can just use this helper in the place of thread.allocate_lock() when I want to see what is happening with locking. It saved me a lot of staring at random code today.

Bill the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 10, 2008
Post category:Book

(Edited by Harry Harrison.) This book started off better than Planet of the Robot Slaves, but I found the random Star Trek and Star Wars rip offs in the middle of the book intensely annoying. This isn't so much a satire it is a disjointed list of ideas. I'm disappointed to be honest. [isbn: 0380756625]

Foundation’s Triumph

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 9, 2008
Post category:Book

This book is pretty good. I'd say its the best of the three Second Foundation Trilogy books in fact. Unfortunately, you need to read the other two in order for this one to make any sense, which is a shame because the first one sucked, and the second one was ok. A lot of loose ends get cleaned up in this book. Why did Earth get abandoned? Why did everyone forget their history? Why is Trantor built much like the cities in the Naked Sun? Why are there all those habitable worlds for the galactic empire to reside on? It seems odd that there would be 25 million habitable worlds out there. There are other examples as well, but I wont bore you with them all. Another good bit of this book is the time line of all Asimov Foundation stories at the back of the book. I am sure it would have been useful to know about that earlier. [isbn: 0061056391]

Belgarath the Sorcerer

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 6, 2008
Post category:Book

This book is a follow on from The Belgariad and The Malloreon written from the perspective of one of the protagonists in those two series -- Belgarath the Sorcerer. This book has quite a different style from the others. It is written in the first person as Belgarath's personal memoir. The book is really long at over 700 pages, and covers a 6,000 year (ish) period. That means that the book tends to skip around and over some things at a very high level. That's probably a good thing, as it stops you from getting bogged down in boring detail you don't care about. One problem with this book is that to people who have read the previous series, this is all old territory. You totally know what is about to happen, and that makes it a lot less fun to read. I'm also not sure I'm a big fan of the first person style either. However, I did enjoy this book more than some of the others I have read recently, despite it not being Eddings' best work. [isbn: 0345403959]