June 27, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Well, I have a few minutes downtime when I’m not totally exhausted so I can write something here, finally. I had plans to do a daily post sharing my impressions of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into delivering all the GA website reporting and video streaming. That plan crumbled upon contact with GA. I actually did write an outline draft for the first day, but haven’t gone back to it and haven’t jotted anything down since.
GA, as usual, has been a wonderful, energizing, stressful, joyful, fun, event. I need to fine a way to do my job and have enough time/energy left over to write about it.
I’m very pleased with how the live streaming is going. We are getting lots of comments back about it and most are good. Some folks are having problems and we are trying to fix things for them. The file capture for later on-demand viewing is having some problems and we are working through them as well. My team of videographers are doing a bang up job of taping workshops and other events, ripping the tapes, and getting them ready for upload. I’m very proud of them.
More later!
Categories: Miscellaneous
June 21, 2009 at 10:02 pm
I’m about to go offline and pack up my laptop for the trip to Salt Lake City. My flight is at 6:30AM Monday morning so I need to be up around 4AM and heading out at 4:45 or so. Ugh. I’ll arrive in SLC at 8:50AM SLC time and have a full day ahead of me still. I plan on sleeping during the flight. We’ll see how well that works.
See you all in SLC!
Categories: General Assembly
Tags: uuaga09
June 18, 2009 at 10:53 am
This just came across one of the mailing lists I’m on:
Jesus and Satan have a discussion as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God as the judge.
They sit themselves at their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.
He asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, “I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out.”
“Very well, then,” says God, “let us see if Jesus fared any better.”
Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Satan is
astonished.
He stutters, “B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus’ program is intact.
How did he do it?”
God smiled all-knowingly, “Jesus saves.”
Categories: Computing, Religion
Tags: joke
June 5, 2009 at 11:02 am
I just unsubscribed from the CGI::Application mailing list. I no longer use CGI::App and the mails were just cluttering my inbox. My first Perl CGi script was written using plain ol’ CGI.pm many years ago. I ran across it again recently and winced when I read the code. I saw messes of nested function calls to generate the HTML, manually processing form data, etc. Scary stuff, but it worked. Then I found CGI::Application and HTML::Template and gleefully jumped on board. It made my life much easier. About 2 years ago I encountered Catalyst and started learning it. The applications I was writing were growing more complex and CGI::Application was becoming part of the problem instead of the solution, so Catalyst was attractive to me and offered a very flexible, powerful platform for developing web applications. I’ve been using it ever since and have deployed several large application using it. So, with a fond farewell, I signed off the CGI::Application mailing list.
Categories: Perl
Tags: Catalyst
June 2, 2009 at 11:28 pm
One of the things I’ve always loved about my ThinkPad and Lenovo notebooks is the System Update feature. I’d just run it and get all the latest updates from lenovo. They also notified users of critical updates via the Message Center facility. Very nice, until Lenovo terminated System Update. Around the beginning of March, SU started reporting that updates were no longer available and a new, better, service would replace it beginning in May. Well, that didn’t happen. May 1st came and went and the only solution offered by Lenovo was to check the support website for updates. I was not a happy camper along with lots of other angry Lenovo owners.
Yesterday, Message Center popped up with a notice that several updates were available. I was thrilled! I didn’t have time then to run the updates, but let it run tonite and everything updated just fine. A quick Google search revealed that Lenovo has reinstated System Update. A very smart move on their part, in my opinion. I don’t know if Lenovo users can run their current version of System Update to get the new install or what. Might be worth a try.
Categories: Computing
Tags: lenovo
June 1, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I’m pleased to see more transparency coming to the Guantanamo Bay proceedings. It’s about time. The unclassified evidence used to justify continued incarceration of over 100 detainees at Guantanamo Bay must be filed with the court within one month and the U.S. government has to apply for court approval to keep specific information secret.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the government cannot keep the documents known as factual returns from public disclosure and must seek court approval to keep specific information secret.
“Public interest in Guantanamo Bay generally and these proceedings specifically has been unwavering,” Hogan wrote. “Publicly disclosing the factual returns would enlighten the citizenry and improve perceptions of the proceedings’ fairness.”
Categories: Politics
Tags: courts, Gauntanamo Bay
May 31, 2009 at 2:52 pm
My heart goes out to Dr. Tiller’s family in their time of loss. I’m glad that a suspect has already been arrested. I worry what demented justification he/she will provide for their violence.
Categories: Politics, Religion
Tags: abortion, crime
May 31, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I was going to link to his savage words on the Operation Rescue website, but it appears to be down at the moment. I hope moderate and liberal Christians turn out it droves to condemn this killing and Terry’s horrid statement.
Categories: Politics, Religion
Tags: abortion, crime
May 28, 2009 at 11:04 am
This is nuts. Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer pulls an ambulance over for failing to yield, while the ambulance is transporting a patient to the ER, and assaults one of the medics after the officer tries to ticket the ambulance. I’m stunned that cops would harrass EMTs while the EMTs are trying to do their job. It just boggles my mind. I’m glad the patient came through everything OK and I hope that the leadership of the OHP and the EMT service sit down and work this out and proper discipline is applied to the wrongdoers. What a sad situation. Sourced from The Agitator.
Categories: Miscellaneous
Tags: police
May 24, 2009 at 4:12 pm
In my last Perl post I said IC::File fits my needs better and let me serve files using Static::Simple. Well, it did that, but issues with properly handling deletes and updates forced me to re-evaluate my decision and switch to InflateColumn::FS.
The application will manage an archive of discussion papers, including abstracts, BibTeX citations, and supplemental data files. I need to store uploaded files and provide links to download them from the application.
Retooling for IC::FS included subclassing IC::FS to tune its operation for my needs and writing my own utility method to serve up the files instead of using Static::Simple. IC::FS uses UUIDs for filenames in the filesystem and I want the original filenames in the URLs in the application. Serving up files directly isn’t difficult so I wrote my own Catalyst controller method, cribbing code from Static::Simple:
sub send_file : Private
{
my ($self, $c, $file, $filename) = @_;
my $type;
my $stat = $file->stat;
# Get MIME Type - swiped from Static::Simple
if ( $filename =~ /.*\.(\S{1,})$/xms )
{
my $ext = $1;
my $types = MIME::Types->new(only_complete => 1);
$type = $types->mimeTypeOf($ext);
}
else
{
# Don't know type, so punt
$type = 'text/plain';
}
$c->res->headers->content_type($type);
$c->res->headers->content_length($stat->size);
$c->res->headers->last_modified($stat->mtime);
$c->res->headers->header("Content-Disposition" =>
"filename=\"$filename\"");
# More code swiped from Static::Simple
if ( Catalyst->VERSION le '5.33' )
{
# old File::Slurp method
my $content = File::Slurp::read_file( $file );
$c->res->body( $content );
}
else
{
# new method, pass an IO::File object to body
my $fh = $file->openr;
if ( defined $fh )
{
binmode $fh;
$c->res->body( $fh );
}
else
{
Catalyst::Exception->throw(
message => "Unable to open $file for reading" );
}
}
return 1;
}
Categories: Perl
