Yearly Archives: 2005

ln for windows

While working on a C# project, having to copy the built dlls to the working directory to test the application was doing my head in. Now if I was in linux I would just

ln /dir/sourcefile.file /otherdir/targetfile.file

But can I do something similar in windows?, I didn’t think so but with some digging I found the fsutil comand which I had never used before.

fsutil hardlink create /otherdir/targetfile.file /dir/sourcefile.file

Now when I build my project my working directory is also updated…

Command-line reference A-Z

Google Analytics

What is up with Google Analytics, so bloody slow, it forgets about stats it should have, it takes a day to get new stats. Is it just me?. Nice and snazzy but I wish it worked. I hope to God that this isn’t what the Urchin customers got for their money. Sort it out Google…. ps, I am banned from Google Adsense due to “illegal clicks”…. my arse.

Python and UML

It’s been a good while since I’ve used any formal methods to plan any coding so it’s been a great using some UML again. It just shows that all that stuff I thought was fluffy bullshit realy does make sense when developing large projects. A few links I’ve found while looking around at Python and UML.

pyIdea is an IDE that generates Python code from UML diagrams.

Lumpy a UML generator for Python.

PyReverse is a set of tools for reverse engineering Python code.

ArgoUML is a modelling tool that helps you do your design using UML.

BlackAdder is an application development environment.

PyUt is a little UML1.3 diagram editor.

Wing IDE is the most advanced Python IDE available today (supposedly).

Stani’s Python Editor with built in UML and auto-completion.

Boa Constructor is a cross platform Python IDE and wxPython GUI Builder.

wxDesigner is a visual development tool for the free cross-platform GUI library wxWidgets.

Version control tips

Using CVS/SVN is great but it can be a right pain in the ass if it goes wrong. I’ve been using it on an off for a few years now. I always stick to these simple rules and very rarely run into any conflicts or difficulties. On the same note, I managed to get CVS working on my Dreamhost account with TortoiseCVS on my machine and viewcvs web front end hosted on Dreamhost. A very nice set up indeed. I’ll post how I went about getting it working another time.

  1. Update frequently
  2. Always update before committing
  3. Always add a meaningful comment to each commit

Who forgot to buy their lottery ticket

I did,

I play the lottery twice a week every week and have done for the last year. I but my ticket for 5 weeks online and I get an email reminder when my ticket has expired.

Yesterday I check the results using my results checker and I was amazed to see that we had won (only three numbers mind you, £10).

We hadn’t won though as I was busy when checking my mail last week and the reminder email passed by without me noticing it. So we didn’t actaully win at all. It’s only £10 but I can only imagine how pissed off I would be if it was 6 numbers.

Sodds law I reckon though, play solidly for a whole year, then when you forget, your numbers come up. I will never let this happen again, after all , how else will I afford my Hummer H1.

Half Viking Gallery Goes Live

HalfViking.com
It’s been a while on the back burner but this weekend I went hell for leather and managed to get the necessary coding done to get Halfviking.com live.

I manage all my photos 6000+ photos in Photoshop Elements and I am very happy with how it copes but it’s web gallery export sucks ass.

What I found was that PSE stores it’s data in an Access database. I wrote (using parts and few sub routines form album2gallery) a perl script to extract the data in the DB and write it to XML.

I then wrote a wad of python to parse the XML and create a static version of the gallery you now see. Using the Python Imaging Library I also managed to resize all the images to thumbnails and larger versions. All my photos are up now…. I have nothing to hide 🙂 .

There is still a couple of hitches (some duplicate albums [now fixed :)] and it’s not browser tested and I want to add some funky javascript) but I couldn’t be arsed waiting any longer… enjoy (or not)

RAD Frameworks

I’ve been looking and Rapid Application Development frameworks alot lately, there’s ruby on rails and now turbogear. They work super on my dev machine and applications come together super quick but how the piss do I get them running on my shared hosting without jumping through hoops.

I know the projects are still in Beta and I love what they are doing but it needs to be easier to deploy on shared hosting. They are great so do give them a try but be aware that deployment is not the easiest.

If you know different or can give me some tips.. please do.

Update: Non-root installations tutorial

Update 2: I’v also found mpcp @ http://jamwt.com/ which is a simple connector to use CherryPy with mod_python for production deployments… Look promising

XP Activation

I now have a completely legit, purchased, version of Windows XP Pro running on my machine. I was running for 30 days without activation and then I activated with the purchased serial. I did not reboot inside the 30 days and now everytime I reboot and try and log in, I have to activate a again (Activation works fine everytime). I have done a repair install but to no avail. I can’t contact Microsoft support as they are only open mon-fri 8-6 (when I’m in work) and I can’t email them either as their system reckons the manufacturer gave me this version of XP…. Not so.

So if anybody has seen this problem…. please let me know how to fix it…………………I will shoot anybody who tells me to re-install. Cheers

Update: Despite my reluctance to re-install, I did and all is now well :).

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Windows Product Activation
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This copy of Windows must be activated with Microsoft before you can log on.
Do you want to activate Windows now?
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Yes No
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