Birth of our third child

The most incredible thing that happened in 2009 was the birth of our beautiful daughter Molly in January. It’s been amazing this year watching her grow from being a tiny baby to having her own personality. Judging by how determined she is I’m sure she’s going to keep her Mum and Dad very busy over the coming months.

Project Fondue

Project Fondue a side project with former colleagues Ed Eliot and Cyril Doussin kicked off properly at the beginning of 2009. We released several utility sites such as Favicon Generator, Unix Permissions Calculator and reStructuredText API app. We’re busy working on new and exciting things for 2010 so expect to see those announced over at the Project Fondue blog in due course.

Switch from OSX to Linux

2009 was the year I switched from OSX to Ubuntu Linux as my primary OS. So far I’ve found it to be a wholly liberating experience and there’s very little I miss from OSX (apart from Together and Omnigraffle).

Linux has proven itself to be the most suitable OS for my needs and it’s made development very straightforward; mostly that’s thanks to the package management but also I really like to be able to use Gnu tools over their BSD counterparts as shipped with OSX without wrangling with macports and fink.

This year I’ve also taken the time to learn how to use vim properly as my primary editor. Textmate was great but I’m not held back at all by using vim and it comes with the benefit that it’s the same editor on my machine as it is on every server I work on. To see my vim config and plugins check out the following branch: https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~muffinresearch/+junk/dotvim

Another big part of using linux and open source software is that when something isn’t quite right or you want it to work in a different way it’s really easy to get involved and file a bug or create a patch for something. Using Linux you really come to appreciate this openness and I’ve found that because of this I’m tending to try and avoid using propriety software or devices powered by propriety software, for example when I get a new phone I’ll buy an Android phone rather than an iPhone.

In the hardware department the switch to Linux has meant it was time to say goodbye to Apple’s shiny machines with the exception of the MacBook Pro I’m currently running Ubuntu on at work. There’s no question that the Lenovo kit that I now use as my primary machine certainly appears to be far more robust/serviceable compared to anything I’ve used made by Apple. Though I’ll have a better idea of that in a year’s time as one and a half years seems to be the point at which Apple laptops start to break down from my experience.

Coding Projects

This year I’ve worked on quite a bit of code outside of my day to day work from the aforementioned Project Fondue apps to various libraries and modules. I’ve learnt a lot from working on applications that scratch an itch as it means you’re really driven to make that code the best it can be through using test-suites and re-factoring code to progressively move it forward.

In 2010 I plan to go back to any incomplete projects. Starting with my PyGTK Gmail notification app which is closely modelled on Google’s own notifer app for OSX (this will be up on launchpad in the new year). Having spent some time playing with PyGTK I’ve really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to finishing that and maybe working on some other GUI apps with Python.

I also want to revisit other projects that have fallen by the wayside and either finish them or take the decision to shut them down where they’ve either served their purpose or been superseded. I’m also going to try and release any code I’ve been working but not put out there so that it’s available for other people to use/adopt/improve etc.

If you’re interested in checking out my current list of released projects then see my launchpad page for more info.

Something else that needs more work is python-yql a project for being able to use Yahoo Query Language from Python. I’d really like to get interested parties involved in 2010 with a view to improving python-yql and building out the token storage backends, improving the tests and adding a good set of examples.

Another thing I’m going to look to find time for in 2010 is to finally get my blog moved over to Zine from wordpress. We’ve been using Zine on the Project Fondue Blog and it’s been a pleasure to use. I’ll hopefully also have a little spare time to lend a hand actually contributing to the Zine project itself.

Events

I’ve not had a chance to go to many events this year with the exception of Euro DjangoCon in Prague which was really good and above expectations. Sadly I missed out on heading to SXSW this year and I’m not going in 2010 at the moment. Though just maybe I will return to Austin for SXSW 2011 – I’ll start saving now!

I did get the chance to go to LugRadio Live 2009 for the first time which was a really good event with lots of interesting presentations and a hilarious live show. Whilst this was “the last ever LugRadio Live” there was talk of a similar event being organised by the people behind OggCamp next year so that’s something to look out for.

Hopes for 2010

Here’s a big slice of wishful thinking for 2010!

I’d really like to see something happen in terms of making it possible for Distributed version control systems to work together. More recently I’ve been spending a little bit of time using both Mercurial and git to be able to work on a couple of difference projects hosted on bitbucket and github. However, it would be so much better if I could more easily contribute to projects that don’t user bazaar (my VCS of choice) without having to use several different clients. I’m not totally sure what the solution is here — branch mirrors in several VCS formats is one possibility but doesn’t really address the need to allow easy contribution and this kind of thing almost encourages forking of code away from the development of the original project.

It looks like bazaar is making some good in-roads into having some degree of interoperability with other VCSs through plugins such as the excellent bzr-svn and bzr-git but there’s a way to go. Ultimately it shouldn’t matter what VCS you or I prefer to use. What matters is that we can contribute to each other’s projects. Anyway I’ll probably extrapolate my thoughts on this subject in a future post.

My Second big wish for 2010 is to see a proper Python SDK for android. Whilst the scripting environment is cool it reminds me a little of PyS60 which never really went anywhere. I’d really like to be able to build an app with a Python SDK – not sure that will happen though.

In conclusion

It’s been a good year and I’m very much looking forward to what will happen in 2010. Here’s wishing everyone a Happy New Year and all the best for 2010!

If you’re someone who uses a computer for a living then having a decent keyboard is a very worthwhile investment. Earlier on this year I bought myself a couple of US layout “customizer” keyboards from Unicomp (one for work and one for home).

Unicomp was founded in 1996 when they bought the rights to the “buckling spring” technology as used in the well-known IBM Model-M keyboards. The Customizer models are essentially modern manufactured Model M keyboards albeit with slightly different numbers of keys and of course a USB cable.

Having had these keyboards for several months now I’m really happy with them. They are just beautiful to type on. The only downside of getting feedback from every key-press is the loud click that accompanies every key-stroke. My colleagues are pretty much use to me clacking away each day but I probably only get away with it because there’s a large amount of background noise in the office. Ultimately though because you can feel when you’ve made contact with a key it should mean you end up typing a little lighter than you would with an inferior rubber domed keyboard.

That said for me I would find it hard to go back to a normal keyboard. Having recently had to use a machine with a rubber domed keyboard I found the lack of feedback made the keyboard seem lifeless.

The build quality is great – these keyboards are built like the proverbial brick outhouse. So if you’re in the market for a decent keyboard I would recommend taking a look at Unicomp keyboards, they’re not particularly expensive at around $69 and they certainly feel like they should last a lifetime.

To log in and make changes over the CLI all you need to do is telnet to the ip address of the router and log in with the same details as you use on the web interface. If you don’t know the ip address of your router the easiest way to find out is to look at what the gateway is in your network settings. In my case it’s 192.168.1.254.

telnet 192.168.1.254

Once you are in you will see a welcome screen.

First thing to do is get the old setting so we can make an note of it in case we need to restore it in the future. This is available from the router’s web page or by entering the following:

:dns server route list

Which provides the following:

DNS Server       Source              Domain            Metric  Intf     State
87.194.255.155 *                                         1     RoutedEthoA  UP

Here my ISP Be only supply one DNS server address so I’ll make a note of the ip address 87.194.255.155. Other ISPs are likely to provide two entries. Keep that somewhere safe so if you want to go back to then old settings you can.

Setting the new DNS entries is as follows:

First clear the DNS entries

:dns server route flush

Next add the new ones

:dns server route add dns=8.8.8.8 metric=1 intf=RoutedEthoA
:dns server route add dns=8.8.4.4 metric=1 intf=RoutedEthoA

You can now check the settings by running this command again:

:dns server route list

Lastly save the settings.

saveall

That’s it – all that’s left to do is refresh the DCHP lease depending on which OS you are using. At this point you will want to check you are using DHCP otherwise you’re computer won’t be handed out the DNS settings correctly.

• Renew DHCP lease for Linux
• Renew DHCP lease for Mac OSX
• Renew DHCP lease for Windows

BitTorrent is a highly useful technology that helps to share the burden of many people getting access to content available from the internet by distributing the load via a P2P network.

The big problem with bittorrent is that it’s not great at providing access the Long Tail of content. Before we continue here’s a very brief overview of the Long Tail. If you’ve not had the chance to read Chris Anderson’s book – The Long Tail – I’d highly recommend it.

The definition of the Long Tail comes from a measurement of popularity as shown in the diagram above. The left hand side show the items that are most popular – think chart hits if you’re talking in terms of music. The right-hand part of the curve in the diagram above is the Long Tail. The Long Tail represents lots of niche choices (Any obscure or rare album would fit if in our musical example).

The reason why the Long Tail is important is that millions and millions of individual sales of products from the Long Tail adds up to a lot of money. Even if each item’s own popularity is minimal. The Internet makes the Long Tail market more of a success due to the fact of virtually infinite shelf space. Again sticking to music as an example if you’re offering downloads then you can afford to offer lots of niche albums as the cost of having them available is negligible. Where physical, finite shelf space is concerned you are only going to find more popular titles as shops need to stock what they know they can sell.

Bittorrent is not well suited to surfacing Long Tail content because Bittorrenting relies on there being someone who is seeding the data. For head content such this is not a problem – as popularity ensures the availability. However, if you’re trying to track down niche content – you might well find a torrent but you’ll find there’s no-one seeding the content in which case you lose.

BitTorrent cannot provide as much choice available to other means of distribution which is kind of strange as you often think of Bittorrent as providing endless choice at your fingertips – if you have mainstream tastes then it will work for you, if you don’t your satisfaction might be more limited.

Bittorrent is great for popular content where demand is high. It’s distributed approach makes it possible for large chunks of content to be made available to lots of people at once. As such for fresh and popular content it can be the perfect means of distribution but by virtue of how it works it will always cater more towards the head content.

I’ve been happy with the CX300′s but I’m probably not going to get another pair of the same, as I found that the rubber parts of them didn’t really fit that well and the size of my ears was somewhere between the smallest and the middle size. Sound quality was pretty good though so I’ll be up for something similar in that department.

The second thing that annoyed me was I contacted them through their “email help” which was an online form. The question I asked related to a broken link and information that I couldn’t find, the answer I got back was as follows:

Dear Stuart

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately we are unable to answer your account specific
query via e-mail.

Please call our Customer Services on 450 from an Orange phone,
or 07973 100450 from any other non Orange phone. They are
available from 8am to 10pm 7 days a week.

Kindly be advised that the answers to many common queries
can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions section in the
Help and Support option on the Home page of our website
www.orange.co.uk

I hope this information is helpful.

Kind regards

Dolu
Orange Customer Services

Well no that’s not answered my question and you are pointing me back at the FAQ that I’d been through to arrive at the form. Really! These kind of lousy contact mechanisms are a waste of time. Sort it out Orange!

Following Matthew’s lead I’m tagging anyone who wants to take part; consider yourself tagged! Oh and don’t forget to tag your photo “bookshelfmeme” and add the link to your photo in the comments!