Present Perfect

I got a patch from a nice fellow fixing some issues with FC3 (apparently su can now be interactive at any time - the "solution" is a binary called "runuser" that, surprise, behaves exactly like su used to behave. Something tells me making "newsu" was a better solution, but hey. If someone feels like it, please direct me to an explanation of the why and how of this change. Colin tried to explain it to me but there was some cabal knowledge involved that I was not privy to so I failed to grasp the change).

Anyway, the patch also adds yum support. The patch itself is a bit dirty since yax only hacked it enough so he could make it work for himself. But it was the spark that prompted me to revisit mach a little. So a new release is on its way.

Fedora Core 3 itself is pretty nice. Upgrading your distro is like moving into a new apartment though - no lights, no water, no electricity, and you have to bootstrap your way in again. Themes were screwed up, modules need to be rebuilt, and so on.

So I'm going through the motions, tackling item by item. Progress report at the fedora 3 build dir.

GStreamer goodness

I tried totem in FC3 on our streams, and they Just Work. Arguably, the error message when the sound device was blocked was pretty useless, so an upgrade should be done soon. But the streams play back nicely !

Got a poke on IRC yesterday as well:

<someguy_home> dude?
<someguy_home> after not trying it for ~a year, I just wanted to say that nautilus media player rocks
<someguy_home> that is all.
* someguy_home has been using the scanning function to go through a bunch of unknown ogg files
* someguy_home is looking forward to the brave new world of gstreamer goodness

I guess that's why one likes hacking. Even though nautilus-media needs some revisiting, especially now that Bonobo seems to be removed from nautilus.

I got a patch from a nice fellow fixing some issues with FC3 (apparently su can now be interactive at any time - the "solution" is a binary called "runuser"...

Lots of rpms of python software have the wrong "file path" compiled into their byte-compiled versions. So when you get tracbacks, you see stuff like '/usr/src/rpm/BUILD' or similar in the paths of the installed python file. I've run into this for several packages, but was too lazy to look at it.

Today we ran into a similar issue with our server; Johan was doing some magic to transmit code on the fly but it got the path wrong. This is because during a build files get installed in a staging area. It's this location that gets stored during byte-compiling.

Luckily the fix was easy; I added a --destdir option to a custom py-compile, and then override py_compile which luckily worked out fine.

I should probably push this upstream to automake; any packagers/python hackers who are willing to test this and give me some feedback on it ?

Lots of rpms of python software have the wrong "file path" compiled into their byte-compiled versions. So when you get tracbacks, you see stuff like '/usr/src/rpm/BUILD' or similar in the...

Today was weird bug day. I spent four hours trying to fix a bug that I could not understand at all. It seemed like python and twisted were somehow turning a string into a tuple at some point and I couldn't figure out where. Of course it was a silly bug in the code that went something like this:

keycard.requesterName = componentName,

Python programmers will see the trailing comma and realize that this makes the member a tuple, and not a string as I wanted.

I didn't find the bug easily because I debugged using something like

self.debug('keycard requested by %s' % keycard.requesterName)

which has the generally wanted side effect of just printing the only member in the tuple. So debugging like this makes it look like a string !
However, when you print with two variables:

self.debug('authenticating keycard with id %s for %s' % (keycard.id, keycard.requesterName))

it did show up as a tuple !

Maddening. One of those instances where you finally understand some little line of text in a python manual you read some day.

The second bug was more mystifying. I was debugging authentication using a special component, and when testing it out, all lengths of username/password worked in the HTTP request, except for the ones that had 3 characters for both username and password, which turned the username and password on the server side into empty strings. Totally incredible - dad/mom turned into empty strings, while dad/momm, dad/mo, dad/mommy, daddy/mom, da/mom, and all other combinations worked. I was so floored by this that I didn't even try to look into the bug, and just changed the password's length and get it over with.

Also, my very handy debug cycle of "change code-click reload-try new code" is completely trashed on three levels today. First of all, twisted's rebuild doesn't work as it did anymore, with python complaining about all sorts of issues when objects get rebuild. Second, pychecker doesn't work on dotted imports for some reason when used through the import mechanism. And we need to use the import way because we modify a module's __path__ to bring together different paths containing the same package layout. And third, when restarting a worker, something doesn't get cleaned up correctly, causing bind to return with an "Address already in use". So my debug cycle now consists of "change code - stop worker - restart - repeat five times until it doesn't show a bind error".

At that point you get into a lot of wasted time because you are really working on writing some new code, when you should just stop and fix either of these three issues allowing you to work faster on the actual code.

Anyway, the special authentication component is finished and works well. I created Python bindings for SQuaLe yesterday, then used them from the component. A query gets run every 30 seconds for each client, and when that query returns false the client gets expired. Neat stuff.

We're finally getting to the point where we can just write new components and use them pretty quickly. It's nice to see a good foundation pay off.

Today was weird bug day. I spent four hours trying to fix a bug that I could not understand at all. It seemed like python and twisted were somehow turning...

We've been here for almost a year now. I had a long period where I didn't wonder about the fact that we live somewhere else for the last few months, but now the sense of wonder is back.

Yesterday we went to some Mexican restaurant to celebrate David's birthday. While riding my bike to the meeting point, someone called out to me on the street. Being called out to is something that hasn't happened to me for a year, and that's something you don't realize or think about until it happens. Pretty damn cool to actually know some people here that try to stop you in the streets :)

The Mexican food was great, and since some of the gang had their birthday coming up as well, we agreed to have a party at our place in two weeks with the Mexican guy cooking. And I already reserved my place in the kitchen to watch and help...

Today while driving home I got run into by a girl on a moped who was of course speeding through the red light as soon as the green pedestrian light started blinking. She turned right while looking left for oncoming cars and crashed straight into me. Spanish people have a weird sense of traficness. Having this happen is another confirmation that I really do live here though.

We went to a bar where we had arranged to meet with an Argentinan giving tango classes. Kristien has never had classes, so we decided to take a few private lessons and then jump into a real class. He was quite a good teacher, even though his accent is hard to understand. And it's disorienting for me to do exercises as the woman, but it's good practice for my general understanding.

After that we went to an intercambio in a Belgian bar which was nice as well. Meet some new people, marvel at all the Belgianness, and feel at home. So, basically, after a year of cocooning and adapting to the idea that we're here, we're now sculpting our place in the city. It's like learning to walk all over again, and it's great.

We've been here for almost a year now. I had a long period where I didn't wonder about the fact that we live somewhere else for the last few months,...

So, a ten day stay back in the land of home. Arrived on Friday. Noticed I had turned ill on Saturday, fever and cold lined with snot. Got up fairly early and went to An's house because Kristien is the best woman for this wedding. Hung around all day, meeting people, eating finger food and drinking. Then time for the wedding party. It was fun, and dinner was great. Good idea for possible future wedding - have dessert buffet until late in the night.

Sunday

Sunday was spent taking a walk in the forest and laying around being tired. Monday morning I took the train home, and about two minutes after I left the train I noticed I was missing a whole bunch of stuff. I left my suitcase on the train. Grumbled, went to lost and found, filled in papers, got phone numbers, and went home. Started calling around for the suitcase, asked the people at the end station to check the train again, found the suitcase, asked to fax to get it sent back, and so on. I was relieved enough to have it located and too angry at myself to protest to all the calling back and forth I had to do.

Monday
Still sick as a dog. During lunch, we got a call - my grandmother suddenly passed away in her sleep. Left me speechless. All sorts of stuff needed taking care of, so I wasn't as productive work-wise as I was planning to be, and not as friendly to people as I normally try to be.
Went to the sauna with Jeremy, which helped my cold a little, and it was nice to go there and relax again, especially given the conditions.

Tuesday
Worked. Did stuff. Went to see Collateral with Peter, pretty good. Afterwards Peter and I crashed some party at the cinema. People had to show some ticket at the entrance of the party but we sneaked in easily inbetween the crowd. I'd never expect something like this of Peter - it's nice to know someone like me gives someone like him the courage to do so :)
Took turns guessing what the occasion was, and Peter guessed correctly that it was a recruitment party for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. We got very depressed looking at the future elite of our society, had the photographer take our picture for the in-house magazine, ate and drank a little, then we left while taking some game with us.

Then I noticed I lost my cell phone. I'm turning into my dad. Went back in the projection rooms (which is good to know for the next time - we can easily see four films in a row if we want to), but it was already cleaned. Harassed cleaning crews, until my cell phone turned up again. Phew.

After that, went to my grandmother's house to help out uncles and aunts with sorting out and sending out notice and invitation letters. It was nice to see how stuff like this is done, chaotic as it may be, and it was nice to see them still being able to laugh at each other. Went home at two with my tongue raw from licking stamps. I'm going to miss that big old house, damnit. Went back home at two.

Funeral's on the same day as my best friend's wedding where I am the best man. I timed the ride between the wedding church and the funeral church, and we figured out I should be able to make the trip from wedding.city.hall to funeral.church and back to wedding.church without missing a thing. What a week.

Wednesday
Finally got my new identity card. Worked all day. Had lunch with a good friend - the fun thing is that we exchange a voucher for a free meal each time we go eat together. Guaranteed lifelong friendship. Quickly dropped by record store and comic store. Bought eight CD's (among wich The Blue Nile, a bunch of local stuff, and the Bloc Party EP, yay !) and the Star Wars box set. San Andreas not out yet, have to get it on friday before I leave. Managed to lose my debit card in the record store, but to be fair this time I lost it deep in my wallet. I went back and forth between the two stores three times. I swear/fear I will be my dad very soon. Worked some more and fixed some bugs again after calming the masses stressing out about perceived bugs vs. real bugs, and fixing some network overloading at the office.

Joined the gang for the Sports Wednesday I helped launch. We played volleyball, and I had a blast. Again an opportunity to think about friendship. I realized a) I miss friends like this and one day I will come back home and b) I really need to get my ass in gear and make sure we do similar stuff in Barcelona. So come on Benjamin, let's play some basketball.

I hope the rest of the week will be slightly less disturbing in theme. Kristien, come on down and soothe my fears.

So, a ten day stay back in the land of home. Arrived on Friday. Noticed I had turned ill on Saturday, fever and cold lined with snot. Got up fairly...