Made by Mikal – Page 75

Sticklers, Sideburns and Bikinis

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 25, 2008
Post category:Book

This is the second book I have got from the LibraryThing early reviewer program (the previous book was The Spy Within). I'm going to have to be honest with this book and say that I haven't read all of it yet. Its basically a dictionary and I don't tend to read those cover to cover. On the other hand, I have read about 10% of this book so far, and do intend to read it all. This book is great. The content is interesting, well laid out, and excellently written. That's probably made a lot easier by how interesting the content is -- the stories behind various works tend to be short and novel, which is fun. The book is also useful -- it's already ended an office debate over the origin of the word "hooker". [isbn: 9781846033001]

Please help me test trunk

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 25, 2008
Post category:Mythtv

I'm getting ready to do another MythNetTV release, as I've fixed quite a few things recently. I'd appreciate people testing the new code before I do an official release. You can get the current code like this: svn co http://www.stillhq.com/mythtv/mythnettv/svn That will create a directory called mythnettv, with a subdirectory named trunk, which is the latest development version of the code. You should probably create that directory somewhere where you don't mind a new directory being created. This release has lots of small changes, which are listed in the ChangeLog which will be downloaded with the code. Thanks.

Second Foundation

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 24, 2008
Post category:Book

I am starting to think that there is something missing in the Foundation trilogy. Specifically, there isn't much action. Most of it is just people talking at each other -- with pages and pages of dialog. This makes these three books much harder to read (and therefore less compelling) than those elsewhere in the extended Foundation Series. I did enjoy this book, I just feel that I could have done with some more action to make it less hard work. [isbn: 0345336291;0345309014]

King of the Murgos

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 23, 2008
Post category:Book

This is book two of the Malloreon, the sequel series to the Belgariad. Some people complain that this series is just a repeat of the previous series with some of the names changed, and I certainly used to think that myself. Now that I've read this book again I think that's unfair -- the story line is actually quite different, and the characters are generally older and wiser (which makes them feel more developed). I enjoyed this book, probably more than I did Guardians of the West. [isbn: 0345358805]

The Stainless Steel Rat for President

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 18, 2008
Post category:Book

I need a break from all this serious reading, and the Stainless Steel Rat books are always amusing. In fact, this book was much better than the previous two I have read (The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World and The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You) as it didn't suffer from the incredibly weak plot lines that books involving time travel seem to cause for Harrison. This book is back to the classic rat -- a simple criminal romp through an unsuspecting society, his hottie wife in tow, and with his two now grown kids along for the fun. I enjoyed this book a lot. [isbn: 0553227599]

Fixed LibraryThing links

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 18, 2008
Post category:Book

I only just realized that the links to LibraryThing that I automatically insert into book posts only work if you have a LibraryThing account. I've now fixed that so that there is a link to a public page, as well as a link to your personal library if you use LibraryThing and also have a book that I mention.

Guardians of the West

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 17, 2008
Post category:Book

I read this book as a child, and must admit I didn't like it. That's interesting to me, because it quite liked it this time. Its not the greatest literature ever written, but it is a good read. You need to have read the Belgariad first though, because this book (the first of the Mallorean) reuses the characters without spending a lot of time introducing them to you. I think I prefer it that way because it would be annoying to have to go through all that character development again as someone who has read the first series. [isbn: 0345352661]

Weird paramiko problem

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 17, 2008
Post category:Python

I had a strange paramiko problem the other day. Sometimes executing a command through a channel (via the exec_command() call) would result in an exit code being returned, but no stdout or stderr. This was for a command I was absolutely sure always returns output, and it wasn't consistent -- I'd run batches of commands and about 10% of them would fail, but not always on the same machine and not always at the same time. I spent ages looking at my code, and the code for the command running at the other end of the channel. Then it occurred to me that this seemed a lot like a race condition. I started looking at the code for the paramiko Channel class, and ended up deciding that the answer was to check that the eof_received member variable was true before trying to close the channel. It turns out this just works. I've my code running commands for a couple of days now and have had zero more instances of the "no output, but did exit" error. So, there you go. Its a shame that member variable doesn't have accessors and isn't documented though. I guess that makes my code a…

Couldn’t determine the video directory?

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 15, 2008
Post category:Mythtv

A couple of people have contacted me in the last couple of days with an error where MythNetTV can't determine the directory to put videos in. The error would look something like this: Importing data/tekzilla--0050--tehbunniez--hd.h264.mp4 Traceback (most recent call last): File "./mythnettv", line 453, in main(sys.argv) File "./mythnettv", line 212, in main mythnettvcore.DownloadAndImport(db, guid, out=out) File "/home/mythbox/Scripts/mythnettv/mythnettvcore.py", line 92, in DownloadAndImport prog.Import(out=out) File "/home/mythbox/Scripts/mythnettv/program.py", line 472, in Import raise FilenameException(self.db, 'Could not determine the video ' program.FilenameException: Could not determine the video directory for this machine. Please report this to mythnettv@stillhq.com The stack trace is mostly irrelevant. The problem here is that MythNetTV couldn't decide what directory to put the video in once downloaded. Please execute the following SQL statements against your MythTV database: select * from storagegroup where groupname="MythNetTV"; select * from storagegroup where groupname="Default"; select * from settings where value="RecordFilePrefix"; This will dump all of the possible places MythNetTV will look for a video directory. Once you've dumped this information, perform some simple checks: Is there anything listed at all? If not, you need to configure storage groups with the MythTV user interface Is there anything listed with the hostname that MythNetTV is running on? If not, you…

Foundation and Empire

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 14, 2008
Post category:Book

This is the second book in the original foundation trilogy, which I am reading as part of the the extended Foundation series that I am working my way slowly though. This book contains two stories -- both of them Seldon crises, although one of them unpredicted by Hari. As Hari had always said in the series -- his techniques can only predict broad social trends, and the not the work on individuals. What happens if a single person who could not be predicted appears? This story covers that scenario. I found this book harder to read than the previous one, but that might have been because I've had a pretty distracted week. Once I actually sat down to read without too many interruptions, I enjoyed it. The comments from others on LibraryThing are fair though -- the character names are odd, and the writing does feel a little awkward. [isbn: 0553293370] [award: winner hugo 1946] (LibraryThing for some reason gets the ISBN mapping for this book wrong. The above link's ISBN is right, but this link goes to the right place).