Hello World

Hi, this is my first post. I decided to start a project about a week ago to write my own blogging software that used some of my favorite technologies including Mako, Git, and rST/Sphinx. A colleague of mine pointed me to Blogofile which had most of what I wanted aside from the rST/Sphinx integration.

Hacked on it a bit over my vacation this weekend and finally have something working. It’s certainly not ready for the mainstream yet. The following things will require work:

:title:         Hello World
:post_date:     2009/09/21 10:05:17
:tags:          blogofile
:categories:    Software
:author:        Mike Lewis

....

The Sphinx Advantage
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Some of you who are familiar with Blogofile might be wondering why I'm going
through the effort of adding yet another wiki markup format to Blogofile when
there's already Markup and Textile (I believe).

* I like Sphinx and am familiar with it
* It will work great for doing technical writeups.

  * Love the pygments integration (I know Blogofile has it)

....

Here's what some of this file looks like::

    :title:         Hello World
    :post_date:     2009/09/21 10:05:17
    :tags:          blogofile
    :categories:    Software

Pylons and Rails Posts to come

I started a new full-time job yesterday, and now I am a Rails developer full time. Anyways, I still have a passion for Python and Pylons, and miss it a bit already, but I want to make a series of blog posts once or twice a week comparing and contrasting the Pylons stack I use with Rails.  I'll try to be objective as I can, and at least admit it when I'm not.

Mapping Ordered Args to Keyword Args in Python

It's been a while, so I thought I'd start off slow with a little tidbit I busted out today.

Here's the problem:

Say I have

def foo(b, c):
    ...

def bar(a, b, c, *args, **kwargs):
    ...

def baz(*args, **kwargs):
    ...

And I want to write a decorator or something that intercepts the variable b before it hits the function.

How am I supposed to know which one is b when it's different positions in each function, or could even be a kwarg?

I have my decorator right here:

from decorator import decorator
@decorator
def lol_dec(fn, *args, **kwargs):
    ...

I figured the best solution would be moving the args that could be named intoto the kwargs. It took me a bit of digging until I came across the inspect module, but it worked, and can work for you.

from inspect import getargspec
def fudge_args(fn, args, kwargs):
    #TODO once we all use 2.6 change it to following
    #fn_args = getargspec(fn).args
    fn_args = getargspec(fn)[0]


    new_kwargs = dict(zip(fn_args, args))
    new_kwargs.update(kwargs)


    return args[len(fn_args):], new_kwargs

It's used like so:

@decorator
def lol_dec(fn, *args, **kwargs):
    args, kwargs = fudge_args(fn, args, kwargs)
    kwargs['b'] = kwargs['b'] * 3
    return fn(*args, **kwargs)

New Venture - Muffin Castle

I'm a software engineer as you may or may not know.  Sometimes, though, I feel a bit unfulfilled after work because I don't make anything.  You can't see what I do, you can't touch what I do at work.  It's database software.  People think it's boring.

Anyways, I think I've figured out how to fill the void.

I'm starting a clothing brand or site or whatever you want to call it called Muffin Castle with my girlfriend, Marisa.  She does the art, and I do pretty much everything else.  It's more or less an excuse for me to play with ecommerce, screen printing, trying a turn at marketing something, and maybe get a few shirts out of it.  I'm hoping more to just get this hobby to pay for itself versus making money (although making a few bucks for my hard work wouldn't hurt).

I also get the chance to use drupal, which is in PHP and I frown upon PHP.  It does have a lot of momentum and seems fairly easy to hack.  Eventually I'd like to roll a site with Pylons, but that's going to be a later date when I get a lot of free time on my hands.

I'd like you all to check out muffincastle.com in the coming month or so because we'll be going live January 1st.

You can follow muffincastle on twitter to see what we're up to.  We should have our first round of production shirts done this weekend so stay tuned for photos.  You can find some of our "beta" work and prototypes here (our real shirts will look a lot more finished :))

Modding the Grado SR80s (part 2)

Just a quick update.  The new fancy wire I ordered came and I made a new cable.  Check it.

Why Apple Will NEVER Support Blu-Ray

Perhaps I'll be wrong, but I don't think Apple will ever include blu-ray support on any of their products, with the small exclusion of MAYBE the Mac Pro.

Why?  It's simple.  Apple wants to drive sales of their iTunes store, especially the HD movies.  Analysts that say it's because it's "about the price," are either uninformed or in bed with Apple.  If there wasn't a video iTunes store, Apple would love having Blu-Ray as an option for a premium.  Hell, until a year or so ago, you had to pay extra to have a DVD burner (the super drive as they call it) on the lower end MacBooks and iMacs.

Quote from forbes:

Another surprise, however, was that Apple's new machines don't incorporate support for Blu-ray. When asked about the move, Jobs simply called the optical disc technology a "bag of hurt."

Analysts agreed. For now, excluding Blu-ray is all about the price.

Modding the Grado SR80s

I've had my Grado SR80s for about a year and a half now, and they have been no less than awesome since I got them.  Unfortunately, the tip of the 3.5mm TRS plug broke off when I tried bending it back into place.  This was a good excuse for an overhaul on the headphones because I have had a lot of modding ideas brewing for a while, especially after I saw this article about adding 2.5mm sub-mini jacks to the earcups.  I also just recently got the sen 414 earpads and did the reverse quarter mod... which added a bit of color, so I figured, why not more?

So let's get started.  All these pictures were taken post-mortem unfortunately, but I will try to explain the process.

First, we start after removing the earcups from the headband, and removing the earpads.  We have to open up the earcup which isn't that easy.  Some things I read suggested submerging in hot water, or using a blow dryer or just simple prying it apart.  None of them worked so well, so I figured out a better way to do it.  It requires two larger flat-head screwdrivers (the lower one seen in the picture could probably be substituted for a butter knife)

What I'm doing in the above picture is using the larger driver as a base and rotating the smaller one clockwise which creates sufficient force to separate it.  The lower screwdriver allows the upper one to rotate without scraping the plastic.  Once I figured this out it took no more than 30 seconds per earcup to separate.

Now is a good time to paint or mod the outer enclose if you desire.

After opening I clipped the the cable about 7mm after the zip tie and then stripped the outer insulation.  Then I soldered the inner wires to the 2.5mm jack.  I had to make the jack fit in the earcup, so I hadto file the slot down vertically so the jack's enclose wasn't higher than the plastic for the earcup.  I then screwed it into place with the set screw (I didn't even need to hot glue it, but it most likely is dependent upon the jack.

After that, I added the 2.5mm sub-mini plug to the other end of the cable that I snipped.  Blue is ground FYI.

Repeat for the other earcup.

The outer enclosure will require some modification to make the 2.5mm plug connect flush to the jack, as well as it fit over the set screw for the jack.  I recommend using a file and exacto knive.  My worksmanship isn't top notch, but I will probably give it another coat of paint eventually.

After that, you can put the cover back on.  It might look something like this.

Since my original problem was the plug, I also put a new plug on the end.  I filed it down to be able to fit into my iPhone.  It's a little ugly, but it gets the job done and I hate those iPhone adaptors.

Here are some more photos of the finished product.

I plan on making a new cable or two for them once this fancy stuff I got from eBay arrive.  I'll update the post once it comes.  I ordered most of the parts from mcm electronics.  They seemed to have the best catalog and selection of 2.5mm plugs/jacks.

BarCampBay: November 8th & 9th

Just a quick update. We decided on the date. BarCampBay will be held the weekend of November 8th & 9th.

Also, I created the logo last night. Here it is:

Yeah, yeah, the GG bridge is a bit cliche, but I think it looks a kinda snappy.

Anyways, the BarCampBay wiki page can be found here: http://barcamp.org/BarCampBay

We're still in need of sponsors, a venue, volunteers, and maybe an organizer or two, so if you can help, send an email to barcampbay@gmail.com

Google Checkout and Buy.com

I'm not one to rave about retailers or services, but I feel like doing so because of the contempt  I've been accumulating for Amazon, eBay, and PayPal.

First, let's talk about Google Checkout...  It's fast as hell, saves my preferences, and whatnot.  Since it saves my addresses, I don't need to individually register for each reseller.  It's also a common interface for each reseller as well, so I know where to click and stuff.  I loathe using PayPal.  It's slow as a sloth.  Just logging in takes forever.  Also, I don't like transferring from my bank account with PayPal, and it won't let you set a credit card to default.  I know it's in their best interest, but not in mine or a general consumer.  If you've ever had to dispute with a seller, it's a whole lot easier going through the credit card company than PayPal.  Also, checking out takes several clicks, and it's not a very intuitive interface.  There's times where I thought I was finished paying for something, but I didn't click the one last confirm button.

Let's move on to Buy.com.  Sure, it's nothing special, but they do use google checkout and have some pretty good deals.  Also, they don't mess around with shipping like Amazon does.  Sure, amazon has free super saver shipping, but what good is that if they hold your package for 5 days until they ship it.  They're certainly not doing it because it would cost them more to ship it in the next day or two.  With Buy.com they ship it fast, and have fair or free shipping prices.  I ordered a package yesterday and got it today.  Also, there's no misleading crap to trick me into purchasing Amazon Prime-like service with one click.  I know it's gotten a lot of flack on resellerraitings.com, but the 3 or 4 purchases I've made from them had been quick and easy.

BarCampBay

I've been thinking for a while about planning a general BarCamp for the bay.  I finally got around to contacting some people and it seems like there would be sufficient interest.

The date we have chosen is the last weekend in October.  We don't have anything more than that, so I'll update the blog/wiki/stuff when more stuff is decided.

For now if you want, follow BarCampBay on twitter.  Also, we're still need in volunteers, so if you're interested, drop me an email at mikelikespie [ at ] gmail.