Necryon

Long overdue update

jonathan — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 22:58:33 +0100

Things are really busy now. I have started a new job in a new company. Things are hectic and there is still a lot to do. You can have a look at the online shop here.

I haven't made an entry for a while. Nothing really too exciting has happened recently. I am hoping to get my motorbike license in Jan/Feb. I am really looking forward to getting out on some of the country lanes!

Stable website, hopefully

jonathan — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:55:13 +0100

So the website is now upgraded to CherryPy 3.1 . It was a bit of a bumpy ride since there appears to have been some changes in the database connection timeouts somewhere. I have now included DBUtils.PersistentDB as the connection manager, so it should keep the connection open.

I have been using more of PostgreSQL and I am now getting familiar with PL/pgsql ! I have also been looking at VPN software and have found OpenVPN to be really straight forward to setup.

Hopefully now the site is more stable I will be able to write more frequently!

Long time, no blog

jonathan — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:35:50 +0100

I'm back online now having setup an ADSL connection again at the flat. This time I have chosen to go with a different provider. So far the connection has been really good.

I have also been at my new job over a month now, and I'm enjoying it. It is a position which is developing still and I get exposed to lots of different areas.

Hopefully I will be able to blog more frequently now. I should also be able to resume work on v2 of this site. Since starting work over here, I have learnt more about databases and will be making more use of that as I develop this site.

Last weekend, my daughter was in a performance at the London Palladium. It was a really great evening, with lots of laughs and good music. We spent the day in London starting at the British Museum. I had not been there before and was amazed at the size of the place! The rosetta stone was fascinating. I found myself trying to work out the ancient Egyptian writing... We had lunch in Covent Garden and watched a street performer while eating paella, very enjoyable.

Back in the UK

jonathan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:10:10 +0100

And so I'm back in the UK, joy ...

I am missing Friuli terribly and I feel I have left a part of myself there. Unfortunately this time there were too many things happening at the same time and I have had to come away. I am hoping that this will improve my relationship with my daughter. I have learnt though from this experience that I am really happy living in Italy and that it is not the holiday impression that I am in love with. I am hoping that it is not long before I will be able to live there.

I am looking for work now in the Norwich area, but I know I will not find anything as enjoyable and exciting as the job that I had started in Italy.

RSS feed is working a bit better now

jonathan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:29:15 +0100

I've made some changes to the RSS feed generator and it seems to be behaving a little better now.

I have been reading more of the PostgreSQL docs today. It's growing on me, and I think I prefer it to MySQL overall. I don't think there is much to choose between them though.

Database upgrade

jonathan — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:36:30 +0100

I migrated my amarok database between PostgreSQL 8.2 and 8.3 this morning. The database migration used the pg_dumpall command to create a backup of the 8.2 server. This was then restored into the 8.3 server and all was good....!

Yesterday, I installed Rockbox[1] on my iPod. This enables me to use the Ogg codec on there. The installation was simple and it allows for dual boot of rockbox or the original iPod software. The Rockbox interface is very flexible and works well on my gen5 iPod video. I'm still using amarok to manage the music contents on there and I now have a mix of Mp3 and Ogg files on there.

Helen is arriving here on Sunday for a week. Hopefully we can have a nice quiet week so she can recover from the rigours of this last half term. We will go up into the mountains to see the snow and maybe throw a few snowballs about....

Website references:
1: http://www.rockbox.org/

Back on the bike

jonathan — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:31:29 +0100

The weather here has been quite un-seasonally warm and sunny, so I have been getting out on the bike. The rides have been fairly easy ones to get me back into the swing of things especially due to a chest infection I am trying to get rid of at the moment. The mountains have snow on their peaks and the scenery while riding round the countryside is quite something. I am looking up at the villages up in the mountains and hoping to get the chance to ride up there and see the views from them.

A friend of mine is starting a new business providing computer support to the home and small business alike. He is able to support many different operating systems (Various Windows flavours, Mac OS X and linux) and is aiming to focus on helping people migrate to Linux Mint[1]. His website[2] is currently being constructed but will be fully operational soon. I believe he will do well in this endeavour and hope more people get to enjoy linux!

The days are continuing to pass by and I still have not found a job, but I am still hopefull. I really feel at home here and want to be able to stay.

Website references:
[1] http://www.linuxmint.com
[2] http://www.avanceit.co.uk

Post Christmas gluttony - part 2

jonathan — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:29:26 +0100

I'm back home after 2 weeks in the UK. It was a good trip and I was able to spend 10 days with my daughter.

This time I flew with Alitalia for a change to the normal ryanair route. This meant a transfer flight from Ronchi to Milano Malpensa then on to London Heathrow. The flight from Ronchi to Malpensa was in an executive jet with leather seats and everything! This was a short flight and the only excitement was on exitting the plane. I slipped on the top step of the ladder and bounced down to the ground on my butt.... Very stylish! Luckily the only thing hurt was my pride and I got up and rushed into the bus. The second flight was good too and was in a larger aircraft than the ryanair one. Now, the main problem with this route is arriving at heathrow. I got through all the checks etc and got my suitcase fine, and then contacted Helen to arrange pickup. Luckily as I headed out I saw her driving through the bus area. So we then started the journey back. This is when the heathrow problem came to light. It took 2 hours to get round the M25 to the M11 junction. There was so much traffic that it was stop-start for most of the trip, not really getting over 30 mph. We had a restaurant booking as a belated celebration for Helens birthday, so we were stressing about whether we could make that. Thankfully we did and it was an excellent meal.

Post Christmas gluttony

jonathan — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:28:16 +0100

It was arranged to pick up Emily at tea time on the first day I was in the UK so that allowed me, Helen and Helens Mum to head into town in the morning and get a few more bits to wrap up for Emily. It was crazy in town, full of people cramming in late shopping, but we got everything we wanted and headed out. I then picked Emily up and headed back to the annexe. It was good to hear about all the things that Emily was up to. We had tea and then Emily read some of a story to me before going to sleep.

The next day we started to go round and see my family who had not see Emily for a while. So started the run up to Christmas. Mum and Dad organised a Christmas day at theirs with my Grandparents and Helens Mum. It was a really good day and the meal was ace. I also got to meet up with Titus for the first time in many years and it was really good to chat to him and catch up.

Just before taking Emily back we organised (Emily mostly) to have a meal with Mum, Dad, Richard, Lauren and Mark at the Zaks burger place in Poringland. It was a good meal and Emily enjoyed a smaller desert than last time we were there. The desert Emily had the first time we were there was so big she had to stand on the seat to get above it and she only managed to make a small dent in it. I think it was meant to be shared among 8 people or something!

So arrived the morning of Emilys return home. I took her back and as usual it was a sad trip.

With only a few days to go before returning home, me and Helen spent some time together just meandering about. But even though we really didn't do much, time still passed really quickly.

Now we get to the return journey, which will go down as the most difficult yet. It was an early start on the 0435hrs jetlink bus from Wymondham to heathrow. This was a 4 hour trip on the coach which I found quite long enough. I then checked in ok and after a while got on the plane. We then sat there for an extra 45 minutes waiting for a couple to arrive. This meant we had missed our take off slot. So we had to wait a further 45 minutes for the next slot. By this time I was starting to worry about missing the transfer flight to Ronchi. We finally arrived at Malpensa and then I looked at the boards to find that the Ronchi flight had been cancelled due to weather. So I asked the nearest person what I needed to do and she said that I had to go and collect my baggage and head up to the checkin desks. So I waited at the luggage belts and my suitcase didn't come out. I waited some more as there were problems with the belt and then I went to the lost luggage desk. They told me I needed to go to arrivals A and check there. I headed out and round but couldn't see anything as it was just the exit where people came out. I then headed up to the checkin desks to find out more and they said I needed to go into the arrivals area through the security checks. So I went through and the guy there pointed me at the B area and I returned into the same area I was in before. So I asked if I could be let back into the joining corridor, only to be told that I had to go through the security checks again. So round I went and into the A area and there was my case going round on the belt! I collected it and then headed up to the checkin desks again. They gave me a voucher for the train and told me where to go next. I headed down to the train ticket booth and queued up with the other passengers there. When I got to the counter I asked if the ticket could be done to Udine instead of Trieste as I lived in Udine. But the girl said that it had to be Trieste. This meant that I would be on a train from Milano to Venezia Mestre and then change onto a train to Trieste. One of which goes past Udine, so I figured that would be ok. I then got onto the shuttle bus which took 50 minutes to get to the train station. By this time I had missed the 1805hrs train to Venezia and the next was at 1905hrs. I then thought that it would be quite late by the time I got the Venezia Mestre and there probably wouldn't be a train I could get home... I asked the guy in the ticket office at the station if he would change my ticket to the train direct from Milano to Udine and luckily he did. So I went on the 1910hrs to Udine which arrived at 2331hrs. So finally I was back in Udine and after a quick taxi ride I was home. I then slept until midday the next day!

So I am back here and looking for work again. I am hoping that something turns up soon as I am tired of living without Helen with me.

Another week slips by.

jonathan — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 01:54:56 +0100

I added another VM the other day and so wanted to setup networking between the VMs. I am using Qemu to provide the emulation which has a basic GUI at the moment. It is developing well though and will have a really nice setup soon. I have a user space interface in each VM for accessing the internet. So I added a TUN interface on the PC for each VM and then setup forwarding/routing between the two interfaces using iptables and ip forwarding.

I am still looking at the website and wondering whether now would be a good time to restructure the database to better fit using a template system. I think that some of the other features I want to add to the site will benefit from a template system. It is difficult to balance the extra complexity versus the scale of the site. At the moment it is really too small to see much benefit from using a template system rather than basic markup, but I have more ideas now than when I started the site work.

Helen popped out this weekend, which was very nice although we are both suffering with different bugs. I guess we have exchanged/shared those and can expect interesting and new variations on the current symptoms! We just had a nice quiet weekend to catch up and enjoy time together in the end though.

Thougts on next version of this site.

jonathan — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:49:29 +0100

I have been looking at using a templating system for a while and each time it just doesn't fit. To enable the use of markup in the content area requires extra work and I would be better changing the data model to fit. So, I have looked at Django to see is involved in creating a site using that framework and it seems a very flexible and straight forward environment. To use it I would need to write the site from fresh though as the structure is completely different to mine. I think I will continue learning for a bit and then revisit it.

It is decidedly cold out there this morning. I hope there is a chance of seeing some snow before christmas....

More work on the website.

jonathan — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:11:52 +0100

I have added a music section which at the moment just grabs an XML file from LastFM for my recently listened tracks. There will be more interesting items added soon.

I will be starting to ride long steady training sessions soon in preparation for next year. I went out the other day and the new saddle has made a definite improvement in the comfort on the bike. I am still finding new routes to ride, and have a few options available for a route.

Calendar is starting to take shape now.

jonathan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:48:28 +0100

I have been working on my calendar program lately. I have put together a common interface to either a SQLite or MySQL database backend and I'm now putting the user interface together using Tkinter. The core functions to access the calendar information in the database are seperate from the user interface module, so I will be able to couple them up to other front ends like my web site.

I have noticed that the RSS feed is not working as well as could be hoped when I use HTML links. I will have another look at it and make the parser generating it a little more aware of HTML and XML.

On my meanderings around the web the other day, I found an interesting guitarist, Johnny Hiland. Not a recent addition to the guitar world, admittedly, but I'm not the fastest at discovering new things.... He is lightening fast over the fretboard, but also has a good feel for the music. What is more suprising is that he is legally blind, so is unable to focus on the fretboard etc!

New saddle has made my bike more comfortable.

jonathan — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:39:47 +0100

I purchased a new saddle for my winter bike the other day. I had been using a specialized saddle, but I have replaced it with a Selle Italia Flite. It has made a really noticeable difference in my cycling. It is a better shape for me for a start, so it is more comfortable for longer rides. But I have also noticed that my legs are able to move more fluidly and I feel more able to pedal at a higher cadence.

I have been using Blender more recently and I am really learning how to model 3d objects and scenery now. I had a go at animating too, with the key frame method. I will be putting some images up soon.

The leaves here have fallen from the trees now, so I can see more of the castle now from the balcony. I'm going to take some pics from up near the castle soon as the views have changed from the last shoot from up there.

A friend pointed me in the direction of Selenium . It is a way to test web sites by actually controlling a real browser on a client machine. It can simulate an actual user meandering about the site and has remote control libraries for various languages. The Python module is really well documented and has a lot of functions defined. It uses the unittest module for the actual test workflow which allows people familiar with that module to get moving with selenium quickly.

Back to flying solo.

jonathan — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:34:10 +0100

Helen went back to the UK on Sunday, much to my dismay. But it reminds me that I need to focus on finding work here, so that she can move over here permanently. I have started working on a calendar tool, as I have been unable to find one that I like. In looking at ways of storing the data, I found SQLite . It is an ideal solution for storing data when there is no client/server requirements. There is also a Python library providing DB API 2 compliant access. I'm also keeping an eye on the situation in the mountains with snow! It looks like it will not be too long before skiing is a possibility.