diving into python

I decided Mark Pilgrim’s “further reading” program was intriguing enough to take a whack at building one.

To add to the fun, why not do it in python?

So the most basic step is to look at the logfile and pull out referers (yes, it’s spelt wrong but it looks right: usage and habit).

To that end, I found a script that purports to do what tail -f does.
ASPN : Python Cookbook : tail -f in Python

Description:A simple implementation of the standard UNIX utility tail -f in Python.


import time
while 1:
where = file.tell()
line = file.readline()
if not line:
time.sleep(1)
file.seek(where)
else:
print line, # already has newline

Looks simple, alright. It doesn’t work.

For one thing, there’s nothing to open a file in there. file = open(“/usr/local/weblogs/httpd-access.log”) would be useful. And we need to do that outside the while block: we open the file, seek to the end, then wait for new stuff to appear (for while not line to be false), then print or do whatever to what we find there.

I’m still trying to figure it out: what seems most worth figuring out is how to delimit a file on newlines instead of by characters since I am going to examine the file line by line.

When will I ever learn that most of the “helpful” scripts and code fragments rarely are?

filling the missing PCI devices

PCI Vendor and Device Lists

This page is primarily intended as an engineering resource for people who need to deal with computers built around the PCI bus. It’s reason for being is that there is no other centralized database of PCI device IDs. This database is entirely user-supported; all the data has been, and continues to be, furnished by those working in the PCI market. Feel free to add info for the use of others!

This is one of those things you find and you’re just glad someone took the time to do it. If you have any “unknown card” messages in your dmesg output, you can find out what they are.
Continue reading “filling the missing PCI devices”

find out about missing PCI bus entries

PCI Vendor and Device Lists

This page is primarily intended as an engineering resource for people who need to deal with computers built around the PCI bus. It’s reason for being is that there is no other centralized database of PCI device IDs. This database is entirely user-supported; all the data has been, and continues to be, furnished by those working in the PCI market. Feel free to add info for the use of others!

venery; collective nouns

rebecca ‘I am not a goth’ blood

goth collective nouns

an amaranthine of goths … an angst of goths … a band of goths … a bauhaus of goths… a bleakness of goths … a brood of goths … a byron of goths …a canticle of goths … a clot of goths … a corset of goths … a cloud of goths … a cortege of goths … an eclipse of goths … an emanation of goths … an echelon of goths … an exquisite of goths … a flock of goths … a flourish of goths … a gloom of goths … a glower of goths … a litany of goths … a mope of goths … a phalanx of goths … a pose of goths … a rapture of goths … a ravish of goths … a scene of goths …a shade of goths …a shudder of goths … a snoot of goths … a shroud of goths … a suicide of goths … a sulk of goths … a thick of goths … a vanguard of goths

another web

I wonder how many groups of alumni from companies, not just dot-bombs, have setup email lists or other virtual gathering places? I know some people who are on three or four mailing lists from old jobs: looks like a news story to me. Yahoo! has almost 27,000 groups with alumni in their names: they’re not all schools . . . ..

The ease of setting up a virtual community, the elimination of distance through technology, and the impersonal aspect or virtuality as aspects of the technology combine to make this possible. Perhaps it puts the notion of the web as an impersonal space to the test, since you can continue an association with old colleagues in a more immediate way than the telephone permits, regardless of location.

Anyone have John Markoff’s email address?

Content is still king

In the High-Tech Sector, Optimism Is Just a Faded Memory

. . . . . but those who control it are afraid of the new markets that the tech boom has created: they understand how to get revenue from theaters and DVDs and CDs, but not from mediumless digital media, like streams or music/movie files.

The most heated debate of the event came during a panel of Hollywood executives who criticized the technology industries for their lax adherence to intellectual property protection and copyright issues in the digital era.

That evoked a response from many executives here that the entertainment industry’s unwillingness to explore new business models was primarily responsible for the industry’s lack of growth.

“We’re in a real technology gridlock,” said Peter Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of the Global Business Network, a consulting group based in Emeryville, Calif. “All of the entrenched industries are attempting to protect their positions so that in broadband, digital television and digital distribution of content, we’re stuck.”

It’s not the tech companies job to worry about copyright: if that had been the prevailing attitude 25 years ago, we may not have had VCRs or even photocopiers. It’s the media cpmpanies job to come up with ways to make money, given a larger market — anywhere that TCP/IP can reach — and little or infrastructure cost — no need to build a theater or ship a print to every small town when you can send the content as bits.

Having worked in a large media company, on both the news and entertainment sides of things, it was frustrating to see how hard people were trying to map their experience onto this new amorphous opportunity. The quality concerns in those early bandwidth-contrained days were valid, but now with increasing penetration of broadband in the home and almost universal high-speed internet access in schools and business, what are the media companies doing to capture an audience? I would guess the big three segments of the Internet are news sites, weblogs, and porn, but not in that order, and of them, news is where you’ll find the big media combines.

In entertainment, the key was driving people back to the TV set with ancillary programming like games and trivia: early attempts to build internet-exclusive programming were not well understood and were ultimately scuttled. Ad sales models from TV and cable broadcasting didn’t translate to the web, and rather than come up with new models, it was easier to kill off the new media products.

Between the potential of broadband and the increasing buzz around TiVo, I wonder if anyone will figure out how to get the content people want served up on demand, rather than clinging to the “must-see TV” model.

It’s getting to the point where I think the English model of a TV license or subscription that would fund a reliably high-quality broadcasting effort makes more sense than the continued commercialization and resulting cheapening of the content. 100 million households times a $10 license fee is a pretty nice budget: of course, my dream of high quality arts and education programming coupled with serious films and documentaries doesn’t appeal to everyone. More’s the pity . . . .

The Humane Environment

The Humane Environment

But interfaces have not moved with changing times. After a decade of research into cognitive psychology and by paying attention to people’s constant computer complaints (and his own annoyance), [Jef] Raskin realized that today’s GUIs are fundamentally flawed. The interface-building tools that companies and open-source prouducts provide enforce bad interface design practices. They are wrong. Period. Raskin figured out how to fix the problems. His popular book, The Humane Interface (Addison-Wesley, 2000) explains all this in some detail.

This makes for some pretty compelling reading: if you’re as fed up with the lack of progress in human-computer interaction as I am (and not just because I’m a lousy typist), it’s worth a look at the book, the running example, or both.

To what nation is he referring?

Yahoo! News – WAR CRY

“Even before [the current head of state], the [ . . . ] political system was a shambles,” said Prof. Salvatore Deluna of the University of Madrid. “Their single-party plutocracy will have to be reshaped into true parliamentary-style democracy. Moreover, the economy will have to be retooled from its current military dictatorship model–in which a third of the federal budget goes to arms, and taxes are paid almost exclusively by the working class–to one in which basic human needs such as education and poverty are addressed. Their infrastructure is a mess; they don’t even have a national passenger train system. Fixing a failed state of this size will require many years.”

Click the link above or below to learn more.
Continue reading “To what nation is he referring?”

meritocracy in action

Mr. Swartz Goes to Washington (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

I was impressed by how smart the Justices were. These were people who very thoroughly understood the issues and thought quickly on their feet. They were interested in long-lasting effects and classics, I doubted many cared much for Mickey or Steamboat Willie. It’s sad we don’t have this level of intellectualism and intelligence in the rest of our government today.

The justices are appointed, not elected, which has a lot to do with it. Since they don’t campaign for the the job, their work within the judiciary is what gets examined. Imagine our representatives and senators having to write a defensible opinion on a legal issue, using the Constitution or case law as their examples.

I understand and agree with Aaronbut I’m not surprised at the intellectual heft of the Court: I expect it. Imagine how things would be if the Court were an elected body or otherwise subject to the vicissitudes of politics.