I was bored this afternoon, so I tweaked my bloxsom plugin which was already using ISBN number tags to produce links to LibraryThing. It now fetches cover art for the book (if available) and puts that into posts magically. If you're interested in such things its really easy to fetch cover images from LibraryThing.
Perhaps it would have been better if Feist had kept Magician all as one book. In the first book you hear of Guy (a bad guy!) briefly, and then nothing more. Then, hundreds of pages later in the second book he comes up again as a major plot element. If you haven't recently read the first book, then you are at a disadvantage. Apart from that, this is a good book that I would have preferred to read faster. Unfortunately work has kept me unusually busy recently, so this one took a while to read. [isbn: 0553564935]
This is the reworked version of Magician, although its split into two books and there is some content that was dropped as part of the editing process for the original version. This version was developed for the tenth anniversary of the original publication. I read the original version as a kid and was so proud of myself when it finished it -- it was by far the longest book I had ever read at the time. I've seen people online complain that this book is just a big ball of cliche. There are dwarves, wizards with funny hats, elves, and so on. But there are also new ideas here, such as alien invaders in a fantasy novel and so on. Overall I think the cliches don't get in the way and are largely used a sort of short hand... Feist doesn't need to explain what a dwarf is, so he can skip that bit and get on with telling the story. After rereading this as an adult, I still really like this book. [isbn: 0553564943]
This book is weak compared to some of the best Stainless Steel Rat books. It suffers from the same almost-impossible-to-believe plot lines as The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World and The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You. Frankly, the book also jumps around a lot, and I found it hard to follow. On the other hand, this series has never pretended to be great literature, and this book is light years better than the work of the world's most boring author. [isbn: 0812551079]
This is the third book in the Amtrak Wars series. I think this is a better book than First Family, which suffered from not having much plot development. This book on the other hand moves the plot along, whilst being interesting. You also get to learn more about the Iron Masters, as well as how dodgy the First Family is. A good read. [isbn: 0671653385;0722185189]
I have a paramiko program which sshs to a large number of machines, and sometimes it hits a machine where Channel.exec_command() doesn't return. I know this is a problem with the remote machine, because the same thing happens when I try to ssh to the machine from the command line. However, I don't have any way of determining which machines are broken beforehand. Paramiko doesn't support a timeout for exec_command(), so I am looking for a generic way of running a function call with a timeout. I can see sample code which does this using threads, but that's pretty ugly. I can't use SIGALARM because I am not running on the main thread. Can anyone think of a better way of doing this?
New things in this release: Better testing: r114: Unit tests for video.py r148: Updated unit test now that we create more tables r151: Start work on syndication unit tests r153: Unit test for bad syndication dates, as well as more flexibility in db connections needed for this unit test r157: Nicer unit test failure output, and refactor GetVideoDir() into the utility module r181: Slightly improve syndication unit tests r183: Add flag parsing to unit tests, and fix some more flag name changes Better documentation: r117: Added a man page for video.py -- I'm not 100% happy with its name though Bug fixes: r114: Fixed a bug where the new filename for video transcode could be the same as the input filename, resulting in video corruption. This was found with one of the new video.py unit tests r116: The logic for the --prompt flag was the wrong way around. Fixed. r119: Nicer download status messages r121: Handle 404s in feed updates better r129: Slight tweak to SVN submit script r131: More accurate tracking of proxy usage (update during download, instead of just at the end) r137: Proxy budget being exceeded doesn't count as a failed download attempt r143: Subscribe now renables…
This is the followup series to the Belgariad. Its mostly a sequel series, but is quite readable and worth the effort. 1988: Guardians of the West 1989: King of the Murgos 1989: Demon Lord of Karanda 1990: Sorceress of Darshiva 1992: Seeress of Kell
The conclusion to the Malloreon. Quite a good read, although the plot twists are predictable. [isbn: 0345377591]
Enchanters' End Game Robot Visions Forward the Foundation Foundation Foundation and Empire Guardians of the West The Stainless Steel Rat for President King of the Murgos Second Foundation Sticklers, Sideburns and Bikinis (not fully read yet, its a reference book) Foundation's Fear (didn't finish cause it sucked) Demon Lord of Karanda Sorceress of Darshiva