January 24, 2010

Python Quote module

Over the past couple of years I’ve been wanting to learn Python more seriously but really haven’t sat down and just done it. I’ve written a couple of various scripts for personal and work use but always felt they weren’t coded in a “pythonic” way. I’m now reading Learning Python (4th edition) from the beginning and making sure I learn things properly from the ground up. When I was writing my code in the past I wasn’t aware of what objects were immutable vs mutable or how generators worked. I basically knew what I wanted to accomplish before writing my code and would reference the online documentation and just go at it. Overtime I picked up on some “pythonic” methods from looking at code examples, for example, using optparse for handling arguments passed into your program.

January 12, 2010

Windows 7 64bit + iPhone sync

I somehow attract issues whenever I build a new computer or do a fresh installation on my desktop. I currently dual boot between Windows XP 64bit and Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) which has served me well the last 3 years. My current setup is running atop a fakeraid mirror which at the time, was a PITA to get configured as it involved using a live cd and following a really long howto while crossing my fingers it would work. Today the installer supports fakeraid out of the box so no poor soul would have to go through those installation steps.

January 8, 2010

Yahoo Finance message boards

… has to be the biggest waste of space on the interwebs. Clearly Yahoo doesn’t give a shit about them since they are not policed in the slightest and riddled with spam, trolls, and crazies. There are absolutely no insightful conversations going on for any stock. I wonder why they even bother keeping them around.