Post-transaction events in Django

So, at work I’m using Django quite a bit, and I ran into a problem where I need the database transaction to be committed, and then I need to trigger additional server-side code that will act on that data. Putting all of this into the view function with a manually managed transaction sucks, far too [...]

Eclipse is still mean to me

So in working on Android programming I’ve been working through O’Reilly’s book on the subject, or one of them at least, and I’m at the stage of including the jtwitter library to talk to twitter. So, I add it as a library in eclipse, and everything builds, and then when the app runs I get [...]

Blogging in the mobile age

What a strange world where I am writing a blog post on my phone. Kinda slow going, even using this cool Swype app to speed things up. Mind you, I suck at it… Perhaps a Bluetooth keyboard will be needed. Anyone else phone-blogging?

Eclipse, you could be nicer to me

So I’m playing in Eclipse going through Android development HOWTOs. Yes, I know. Java. Thankfully there’s a scripting layer for Android, but I want to learn it all before I choose a toolset for a particular problem. Besides, Java ain’t all bad, just mostly. Anywho, I fired up the HelloWorld tutorial, made my project, and [...]

Bash, sometimes you suck

So, I’m trying to pass a ! character to a shell command. Should be simple right? Not so much. twit –post ‘OMG…I’m out of coffee…work stoppage!’ bash: !’: event not found Huh? Oh yeah, in the fine tradition of crappy shells like csh, bash uses ! to re-run commands from the command history. But you’d [...]

Kanata Honda – The customer experience

I complain a lot about companies that provide poor customers service. It’s easy to do, as they’re so common, and it can be fun to read and shake your head at. I haven’t found a lot of material online about how good people can be, but it’s overflowing with complaints and rants. Human nature I [...]

Perhaps why magazines are dying?

So, earlier in the year I decided to try a one-year subscription to Car and Driver magazine, ’cause I bought it a few times at the magazine stand and I liked it. So I signed up online. Within a few months, I started getting notices in the mail about my subscription ending soon (or so [...]

On the nature of ownership

So, as previously mentioned, I own a Kobo and I’ve been using it for a while now, entering the world of ebooks. It’s kind of an experiment really, as I like dead trees just fine, but I also like the idea of ebooks. Dead trees do what they’re told. You turn the page, and it [...]

Some languages make you work too hard

Disclaimer: Python is my language of choice for programming, but I have a long Perl history as well. Coming from Perl, when I find that I must do something simple like taking a string, delimited by pipes, and split it into a hash/dict/associative array/whatever. mystring = foo|1|bar|2 So I want to take that, and split [...]

Honda Fit – Elastic doors?

I was climbing into our 2010 Fit yesterday and my wife pointed out something hanging down from the driver’s side door. That can’t be good. I contacted Kanata Honda and they said that they don’t know what it is either, so they suggested that I drop by and they’ll take a look at it. Sounds [...]