Make your screensaver surf the tubes
Awhile ago I saw this post and made my screensaver print out lines of Linux kernel source code. I made some changes to skip comments and such but overall I thought it was a nifty idea.
So then I thought it would be neat to make the screensaver do other stuff. So I wrote a couple little Python scripts to produce different output for the Phosphor screensaver.
To use either of these, just replace the ‘cat’ line in the tutorial with a call to one of these.
Invoke this one as such: ‘python /path/to/script name1 name2 …’
It will download several of the most recent tweets each of the accounts listed have posted.
Yahoo Search
Invoke either as ‘python /path/to/script’ or ‘python /path/to/script /path/to/dict’ depending on where your dictionary file is. If you’re running Ubuntu Hardy, or another distro that keeps a link to its dictionary in /usr/share/dict/words use the first one. Otherwise you need to give the script a path to a dictionary or another file containing a list of search terms to choose from. Multi-word terms are fine if you’d like to make a custom file.
Download both scripts.
simple class to handle command line arguments in python
Despite the fact that there are already a couple ways to parse command line arguments in Python I thought it would be fun to create another one.
My method is implemented in a single class that you instantiate by passing the contents of sys.argv along with three dictionaries containing the arguments you want to look for. The three dictionaries correspond to switches (-f), single value (-f somefile.txt) and multiple value (-f file1.txt file2.txt). Of course the multiple value can also take a single value but I wanted to separate them so that eventually I could make the class check to make sure the numbers are all correct. In other words you can limit an argument to one value.
Once the arguments have been parsed, they are referred to by their switch (-f, etc.) The values in the dictionaries passed when the class is instantiated are descriptions of what each parameter does. In this way the class allows the program to self-document.
Eventually I may add support for long switches (–file), referencing by descriptive name (file rather than -f), the ability to add arguments in a more fluid manner and just general error handling and stuff.
Here’s the code:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 | # handler.py # very simple command line argument handler class # give it a list of things you want to look for and a sys.argv # and it gives you an easy way to access what it found # by: george lesica # date: 11/2007 class handler: """class to handle simple command line arguments settings, supports 3 types of switch/argument combinations: 1. simple switches (true/false, etc.) 2. switch + single argument (-f somefilename.txt) 3. switch + multiple arguments (-f file1.txt file2.txt) constructor takes 4 arguments, a raw copy of sys.argv, 1 dictionary for each type of argument listed above (respectively) with the switches as keys and optional descriptions as values stores a single ivar, a dictionary of results""" def __init__(self, args, simple, single, multiple): """constructor, this is where most of the work gets done we parse the args, pulling out what we need then just chill until somebody asks for it""" self.__argDefs = {} self.__argDefs.update(simple) self.__argDefs.update(single) self.__argDefs.update(multiple) # so we can print out info self.__argData = {} self.__junkData = [] # whatever is left in args after parsing args.pop(0) # kill the filename # first do the simple args, they get true/false values for arg in simple.keys(): self.__argData[arg] = False # false by default if arg in args: args.pop(args.index(arg)) # remove it self.__argData[arg] = True # now the single args for arg in single.keys(): self.__argData[arg] = '' # default is empty string (allows boolean use) if arg in args: self.__argData[arg] = args.pop(args.index(arg) + 1) # get rid of "value" and save it args.pop(args.index(arg)) # get rid of switch # now the multiple args (this is the hardest one) for arg in multiple.keys(): self.__argData[arg] = [] # empty list by default if arg in args: thisKey = args.index(arg) while(len(args) > thisKey + 1 and args[thisKey + 1] not in multiple): self.__argData[arg].append(args.pop(thisKey + 1)) self.__junkData = args def __str__(self): """returns the arg definitions and descriptions as a formatted string""" out = '' for item in self.__argDefs.items(): out += ' : '.join(item) + '\n' return out def getValue(self, arg): """returns the value associated with the given arg, a boolean if it was a simple arg, a string if it was a single arg and a list of strings if it was a multiple arg if the given arg wasn't passed it returns false, empty string or empty list (respectively) which all evaluate to False""" return self.__argData[arg] def getData(self): """returns the entire dict of data parsed from the sys.argv including empties""" return self.argData def getJunk(self): """returns the entire junk data list""" return self.__junkData |
Eternal Updates
Recently I upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon and decided to use the occasion to change the way my hard drives are partitioned. Rather than Putting the whole OS on a single partition I moved /home to its own large partition and made the rest of the system separate. This will let me more easily install and use testing releases and other distros.
In any event, a fresh install is also nice because it lets you clean the crap out of your machine by, well, erasing it all. One of the things that got erased were my ugly virtual machines. Previously I had been using VMware Server (the free thingy) since the version of VirtualBox in the Feisty repos was a bit buggy.
Having destroyed all my virtual machines, I decided to give VirtualBox another go. First up was my Windows XP VM. I have this mostly so I can use Office when needed and because I already own a license so I may as well use it.
After a pleasant install of XP Home on the new VM (after finding the new version of VirtualBox much improved) I began the process of installing Windows Updates.
After the first 20 minutes or so I still hadn’t really paid much attention other than clicking ‘restart’ when prompted. But after awhile I got to thinking that it was taking a really long time. Now, granted, this is several years worth of updates including two service packs but still, why should updating an operating system take over an hour and countless restarts? As I’m typing this I’m watching XP install 81 updates after having rebooted like 5 times and I anticipate at least another round after this.
Why is it that patches can’t be applied all in one go like they can be in every GNU/Linux distro I’m aware of? Seems like poor planning on the part of Microsoft… oh well, almost done, hopefully.
now with image galleries
New image gallery (also a link on the right) so I can post wallpapers I make mostly. Also whatever randomness ends up there.
consider the source?
Had to point this one out.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University, answering a question about Iran’s treatment of homosexuals:
“In Iran we do not have this phenomenon,” he continued. “I do not know who has told you we have it.”
Apparently this statement drew laughter and ridicule from the audience. But honestly how is his statement any different than many of the statements our leaders make that we take very seriously. Like when our leaders tell other countries that they have to change their laws so that our companies won’t lose money, or that we don’t torture prisoners (despite having made it abundantly clear that we do, unless of course you use their home-brewed ultra-narrow definition of torture).
Honestly, we should be learning from Ahmadinejad, not cursing him.
Not learning in the sense of taking his ideas to heart of course, but learning in the sense that he is a mirror in which, if we look closely, we can see ourselves reflected, we can see ourselves as much of the world sees us.
Next time you watch a news conference with an American leader, pretend instead that it is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and consider how you would feel about what is being said then.
Why we should all be wary of electronic voting
Apparently TD Ameritrade customers have been getting stock-related spam sent to their email addresses. The company had a security audit done and found “unauthorized code” in their trading system that was allowing someone back door access to at least parts of their customer database.
In other news, another salvo was fired in the ongoing back-and-forth over electronic voting (or e-Voting for those of you who can only understand buzzwords). The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (bit of a mouthful, eh?) released a report claiming that paper trails aren’t the magic bullet we all thought they were and will not solve our e-Voting woes (the horror).
So, now we have a brokerage firm with billions of dollars in assets at stake that can’t even protect its own source code and a (purportedly unbiased) report stating that paper trails will not fix electronic voting.
If TD Ameritrade can’t protect its code, how are the little old ladies who work the polling places supposed to, given the apparent ease with which e-Voting machines can be compromised? And if paper trails won’t solve the problem what are we to do?
I’m certainly not the first to suggest this, but I submit that the only answer is to simply go back to paper ballots while we still can, before a sizable industry develops around e-Voting and prevents us from changing course.
The old punch card-style ballots may be a broken system (if I ever read about hanging chads in a newspaper again I’ll puke) but there are a number of other technologies in existence that could be used and would provide voter-verifiable and machine readable paper ballots that could be counted easily and uncontroversially.
Given the ease with which computer systems can be compromised and the scale of a US election I think we should all be very concerned if our leaders continue down the current e-Voting path.
UPDATE: Here is the full ITIF report. Give the report a read. I did and I certainly don’t agree with some of the author’s assumptions, specifically the claim that distrust of technology “flies in the face of our digital culture” given that we trust computers with our banking, etc. I wonder if the author is aware of a little thing called “identity theft” that has become a big topic as of late. I have personally had my bank account numbers compromised twice in the past three years. So no, I really do not trust technology to keep important information secure. But read it for yourself.
UPDATE 2: I decide to post some other little tidbits from the report.
Not the author’s fault, but I just love hearing people make arguments that simply don’t make sense but are accepted as legitimate by the public and the press simply because they come from sources that should, one would think, be legitimate themselves. It’s like when a CEO claims his company “had nothing to do with <insert embarrassing event/fact here>” yet their logo is plastered all over it. Love it and hate it all at once.
From the report:
They also fear that individual reviewers will make unsubstantiated claims against their voting systems prior to an election simply to undermine the public’s confidence in the voting systems.
So what they’re saying is that if they release the source code people might not have confidence in their machines. But if they do not release the source code people will not have confidence in their machines. How can people take this seriously? I just don’t get it.
Now, on the subject of paper receipts. The author cited some pretty strong evidence that paper receipts don’t work but then he tried to go even further and fell on his face.
From the report:
The fact that both machines would use audio technology would mean that everyone, including people with disabilities, could independently verify the audit trail. In contrast, paper audit trails would not allow blind or illiterate voters to verify their ballots independently.
So what you’re saying is that deaf people don’t vote? According to the NIH there are roughly 28 million people with hearing loss. According to the American Foundation for the Blind there are 10 million blind people. Either way a whole lot of people are going to need special accommodation and then the election becomes only as secure as those accommodations.
Should have just left that little bit out. :)
When a comparison isn’t a comparison
I was browsing through this post on Linux.com and got to thinking that no matter how in-depth, fair-minded they are, or what conclusion they reach, comparisons between Open Office and Microsoft Office are all basically moot because of one fact: Open Office is not 100% compatible with MS Office file formats.
Basically, in any comparison, MS Office automatically wins, the game is over before it begins. Only Microsoft can support the dominant file format completely so for most users the Microsoft products are basically irreplaceable.
Even basic documents (no reviewing, data fields or other high-end features) don’t save properly in MS formats under OOo. Margins, headers/footers and foot/end notes all act a little different, but different enough to matter.
While it is unfortunate that until very recently there was little or no standardization in this area of computing, it is a fact that the only document file formats that really matter for the vast majority of computer users are the MS Office formats and until OOo can adequately duplicate those (or until ODF becomes more widely used, which may or may not happen) comparing MS Office and OOo is a largely pointless exercise.
On Blueprint
Reading Reddit Programming this morning I noticed a link to Blueprint, a CSS “Framework” for web designers.
This caught my eye because I’ve commented before that CSS, while it can do any number of wonderful things, has had two effects that I consider negative or at least dubious:
- CSS has “good” (unique, browser-compatible, nice-looking) web design out of reach for many people. The choice is now between forgoing standards-compliance (in addition to all the neat-o stuff CSS can do) and using old-fashioned techniques like layout tables and spending a large amount of time learning the intricacies of CSS.
I consider myself computer-literate. I have no problem learning basics of programming languages and computing and technology topics come pretty easy to me. Yet the whole of CSS still eludes me. Browser incompatibilities, <div> tag tricks, :after, etc. all confuse me.
Maybe I just haven’t put enough effort into it, but why should I? I’m not a professional web designer and I really don’t even demand professional results, I just want my web pages to be compatible and reasonably “pretty”.
Given all this, I think my experience has been fairly typical: CSS is easy to grasp if it’s your job, but difficult (for some) if it’s your hobby. Which leads into my next point…
- The web has become somewhat homogenized because of the barriers (and capabilities) introduced by CSS (and other web technologies, but we aren’t talking about them right now).Ever noticed how almost every weblog looks pretty much like almost every other weblog?
They all look damn nice, but they all look the same. Sometimes right down to the header images.This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, many people don’t want to worry about design, they just want to communicate their thoughts to the world and this is absolutely a-ok peachy in my book. In fact, that’s what the interwebs are for in some sense.
However, I’ve noticed that even weblogs of people who might be considered “geeky”, people who one would think would want to poke around at the “code” underlying their web site, suffer from this condition. I can only hypothesize that at least some of these people are choosing “stock” designs because they don’t want to invest the time in messing with the CSS themselves, compatibility trumps curiosity perhaps.
Of course I could be wrong about everything I’ve just said. I have no data and no concrete examples other than my own experiences. But if I’m even a tiny bit right, then I think something like Blueprint could be a blessing for a great many people by removing some of the highest hurdles standing in the way of those who would like to tinker with their web designs but don’t have the time/determination/food supply to attain full-blown CSS-mastery.
In any event, Blueprint is certainly an interesting experiment and it will be interesting to see if the concept catches on; and if it does, with whom.
Stupid Poll
Apparently this wasn’t a scientific study… :)
Either there’s some hardcore selection bias (maybe CNN viewers / readers really are liberal?) or else a whole lot of people lied…
Or I guess their “estimates” could just be complete crap, but you’d think they would do their homework. They ARE a “news” network afterall so they know how to do research… right?
Why the OLPC is missing the point
I felt compelled to comment on this after hearing they recently entered production of the OLPC computers.
In my mind, this program missed the point completely. The aim is to help students learn, but that begs the question: learn what? Is the goal to help them learn more about computing and the internet? But how much are they actually learning on a proprietary operating system with stripped-down hardware? The skills they will pick up will be pretty much inapplicable to “real” computers with the exception of a general comfort with technology (which could be acquired for much less using shared boxes in classrooms).
Outside of “computing” I honestly can’t think of anything else you can “learn from a computer”. I think it’s telling that kids have already been looking at porn on these things, just like the rest of the world.
Additionally, I’m not even entirely sure what the OLPC people think kids are going to get out of this.
From the OLPC website:
The XO helps children build upon their active interest in the world around them to engage with powerful ideas. Tools for writing, composing, simulating, expressing, constructing, designing, modeling, imagining, creating, critiquing, debugging, and collaborating enable children to become positive, contributing members of their communities.
Ok. Let’s break this down:
“…build upon their active interest in the world around…” - translation: look crap up on the interwebs.
“…writing, composing…” - word processor (the problem here is that the word processor built into the XO is totally non-standard and absolutely nothing like what they will see if they study or work abroad or land a high-tech job in their home country.
“…simulating, expressing, constructing, designing, modeling…” - I have no idea what this means, maybe these things have CAD/CAM software loaded by default? They might want to make the display a little bigger if that’s the case.
“…imagining, creating, critiquing…” - apparently you can only imagine and create things if you have a computer, no wonder there was absolutely no literature or art created until the late 20th century! The problem here is that the computer is being relied on to somehow “do” something, like the adage goes though, computers can only do what you tell them to. A computer can’t give you imagination, it can give you an outlet for your imagination, but a shared box in a classroom can do that just as well. Just ask Bill Gates about the tic-tac-toe (or whatever) game he wrote on lunch breaks at school.
“…debugging…” - new growth industry: coding houses run like sweatshops, the kids can even bring their own tools. I really don’t understand this one, are they going to write software? I thought these kids were like eight? Why do they need their own laptop to learn BASIC? (do kids even learn that any more?).
“…collaborating…” - ok, now instead of talking to one another they can communicate solely through social networking sites just like the rest of us. Fantastic. Isn’t collaborating sort of antithetical to what computers encourage? I mean, the portrayal throughout the buildup of this project of the kids who will eventually get these things has been children living in very poor villages in rural areas. So why do these kids need computers to collaborate? Their friends are 100 feet away!
“…enable children to become positive, contributing members of their communities.” - this is my favorite. A computer is going to make people positive contributing members of their communities. Wow. Seriously, I had no idea. Is the entire U.S. up in arms about the dangers computers pose to society? Weren’t they talking about classifying “internet addiction” as a disease? Seriously, I really don’t understand how handing a little green laptop to a kid is suddenly going to give him a bright future. I really don’t get it.
This whole project is an example of two things, one more sinister than the other. First it’s an example of the “throw technology at it” mentality. These are the same people who insisted we spend millions to cram computers into schools and were then shocked (SHOCKED!) when reading and math scores took a dive. When will people learn that it’s not technology itself that is the potential savior of mankind, it is how we USE technology. Handing little green porno browsers out to third world kids is not going to make the world a better place for anyone, including them.
Second, this is an example of rich white people deciding that instead of pursuing ACTUAL change in the developing world (ya know, like not interfering with their politics and economy on the regular) we should do something superficial that will create a series of dazzling photo opportunities and make some people famous. The very fact that the OLPC people had to go market (sell) this idea to developing nations smacks of false charity. There wasn’t a demand for little laptops for kids, but once it was proposed nobody could turn it down, the potential for photo ops was just too great.
Of course I could be dead wrong. I have a few other criticisms loaded up, but enough negativity for one day. It’s late at night and I don’t feel like doing more research for now. In fact, I really hope I am wrong. I hope the people behind this (the people in charge) really are trying to help and are doing so in a reflective manner. I also hope that kids do actually get something out of this besides porn and video games.
I just don’t believe they will.
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