Windmill
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

I’ve been tilting at windmills, recently.

Windmill, actually.

It’s a Python program that lets your computer drive a web browser, without any human interference. We use it at Akoha to run tests that make sure that our website works with Firefox.

We use it to help us test our site with Internet Explorer. So I dutifully set up a Windows machine and tried to get it to run our test suite. I quickly realized that our software was going to need something more Unix-like.

Cygwin is the answer to that problem. It provides a full POSIX environment inside Windows. I built all our software and tried to fire up Windmill.

ImportError: No module named _winreg

Uh oh! Windmill needs to access the Windows Registry. According to the winreg documentation, it’s only available for Windows. Apparently, Cygwin doesn’t count as Windows. So I spent the weekend writing a library that fills in the gap.

cygwinreg allows you to read, write, and explore the Windows Registry from inside Cygwin. Whenever you want to use winreg, use cygwinreg instead.

import sys
if sys.platform == "win32":
    try:
        import winreg
    except ImportError:
        import _winreg as winreg
elif sys.platform == "cygwin":
    import cygwinreg as winreg

After I did that, I plugged it in, stepped back and ran my tests. They worked!

Download cygwinreg
or install it with
easy_install cygwinreg

Green Tree Python
Originally uploaded by nasmac.

Akoha’s sister company, Standout Jobs, has been hosting Montreal on Rails for quite a while. We figured we’d get into the act.

So we’re sponsoring the first Montréal Python gathering tomorrow. Sadly, we don’t really have enough space for everyone, so we’re commandeering the Standout Jobs offices upstairs. After all, what good are siblings if you can’t ask them for favours?

I will actually be on a train to Toronto, so I’m going to miss David Goodger talking about crazy awesome stuff he does in Python. But you should go!

Intimidated? Don't think that Python is for you? Worry not! Python programmers are friendly, charming, and helpful.

Montréal Python 1
Thursday, 7 February 2008
18:30 – 21:00
Standout Jobs
3981 boul. St-Laurent #615
Free admission

( Website | Facebook | Google Maps )

I attended class this morning.

Well, sort of. I showed up in #ubuntu-motu-school where I led a session on how to triage bugs.

I got some pretty good attendence, even though there wasn't a lot of fanfare about it. And we certainly got a few newcomers to the BugSquad, which is always important.

There's a transcript of our little tutorial that you can read, if you feel in the mood. And please, join us in the fight against bugs!

Magicicada
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

Daniel and Sebastian inform me that we have a plethora of desktop bugs. GNOME bugs. KDE bugs. That's because we've got new versions of GNOME and KDE in the archive for Edgy Eft.

We want your help. Yes, you!

Join the #ubuntu-bugs IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. You can help by triaging new bugs that come in. Or you might try your hand at fixing some of them.

You can read up on some more information. Or you can jump right in. We're a friendly bunch! *hugs*

Come join us for bug-squishing fun. Except for the one above: magicicadas are harmless.

People who know me know that Perl is my favourite programming language ever.

Today, a co-op was complaining about how some variables in Perl consist only of punctuation. But that is not a reason to hate Perl, it is a reason to love it!

Here's a one-liner, to prove my point:

perl -le'*{$#_}=sub{world},s;"*;$,=$";e,*{$"}=sub{Hello},print$_--->(),&$_'

Mr. Noodles
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

It is easy to have a good time in Waterloo, if you try. Especially if you import people like pphaneuf, whom I don't get enough time to hang out with in Montréal. The humour is not lost on me, I assure you.

holdenk hung out with math_foo for a while, whom he hadn't seen in forever. Where forever was last Wednesday. I made friends with Timin, who seems to have forgiven me. But he has retained mricon's training and still bites the hand that feeds him. Playfully, of course.

We played some games at ayria's place, after I wrote a small random number generator to substitute for a lack of dice. But then I realised that I used too many characters:

perl -pe 's/.*/rand(6)%6+1/e'

I made dinner reservations, which are mostly unnecessary in Waterloo. And then eight of us showed up at Ellison's Bistro and had a wonderful time. I must admit that I had to resort to bribery to get some people to join us. But in the end it was worth it, even though both of them would have been procrastinating anyway.

There was a slideshow we watched of party photographs that azrhey had taken. Boy, does that girl have a two-track mind. It is interesting to note that Holden and Pierre are set up to be arch-enemies. One is pantsalicious while the other isn't. One day, one of them will grow up to be Evil and the other will have the moral obligation to thwart him.

Yvonne and Pierre
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.

After driving some people around, I went over to musicdieu's place where we trashtalked a bit, just like I did the last time I visited him. Then I passed out. Without the assistance of Zubrówka. When I awoke, it was 5:00 and I drove morethanreal home.

I found myself on one of her three couches at 9:30 and made a couple of kettles of hot water, because I was quite cold. I sat in the kitchen for a couple of hours, hoping she'd wake up so we could get some breakfast. But that didn't happen. So I drove back to Math's place and the three of us went on a quest to get brunch.

Nobody is open for lunch on Sundays in Waterloo. Nobody except Bánh mì Givral Deli which serves cheap and delicious submarine sandwiches. We filled up on these and headed back. Whereupon Holden tried to give me more relationship advice.

Holden and I drove back and along the way I took a five-minute nap that stretched into an hour. No worries though, I dropped him off at Sheppard station and headed downtown. I needn't have rushed since the train was very, very late.

Now that pphaneuf has returned from his journey to France, we have a lot more trouser dropping in the office.

To convince people that we actually do work around here, I'd like to point out that I released WvDial 1.56.

It has only one change, which is quite embarassing to have had to make.

My day at the office has been pretty grand.

I got to talk with a whole bunch of people about their problems and promised to look into some of them. Then I talked to someone about sales and marketting. Then I talked to Chris and we struggled with PHP. And finally, a chat with Tim about release management.

It was like a day at the Montréal office, but with people who are less bouncy. I tried to smile at people and make them feel happier, at which I think I was mildly successful. Perhaps my motivational poster will help?

I had some tasty phở for lunch at Phở Viêt which is a Vietnamese restaurant run by Cantonese people. It is also within walking distance of the office. Their soup was rather filling for a small portion and they had delicious spring rolls. Alas, they are not UltimateSpringRolls, but one can't expect to find those everywhere. A special bonus was that I got to talk with Deidra, in between happy bites of noodles and soup.

It is now late and I guess I should be heading out. I was hoping to hang out with people after work, but they seem to have gone home. Oh well.

So to pass the time, I released WvDial 1.55.

Hurray!

I suppose it would be a good time to mention that http://open.nit.ca is up and running on a nice new server in Montréal. That's the website that hosts all of NITI's free software offerings.

About two months ago, our mailing lists were eaten by a disk failure. We've managed to get the archives back, from our subscription lists are all gone. But I've got them up and running now, on GNU Mailman no less, and have subscribed some people to them.

They have doubtlessly noticed this because spammers have been hitting two of our mailing lists like crazy. After going into denial for a while, I have decided that I ought to moderate these posts.

Oh hey. The new XPLC got into Debian. Too bad we realised that we need to kick in another change soon. Ah well. I look forward to pushing out a WvDial release over the holidays, as it really needs to get out the door now.

I've been struggling to get WvDial out the door for about two days now. This is why I'm still in the office at five in the morning. I thought I was just about done when I discovered the plethora of Debian bugs filed against it.

WvDial is a magical piece of software that figures out how to talk to your modem to get you connected to your ISP. It used to be very popular back when everyone in North America used dial-up access to get on the newfangled Internet. Nowadays, many people have broadband service, so it's popularity has waned.

However, people are starting to use bluetooth mobile phone modems now, so we're seeing a resurgence in popularity. Which is why, of course, I'm hoping to get another release out the door. I have the impression that I can't fix all of the bugs this time around, mostly because I don't have the hardware. But the easy ones should be solved so that we can concentrate on the tough problems.