The older I get, the tougher it is to keep my weight where it should be. This summer I got on a diet and started exercising regularly. Progress has been slow but steady for the most part. The holidays were a bit tough, but I escaped without too much damage. Coming into the new year, I’ve been able to get things rolling again. It’s fun to finally be hitting a point where I feel better. I don’t realize how crummy I feel when I’m heavier until I get the weight off and I can feel the difference.
I’m not in great shape yet. I still need to lose another 25 or 30 pounds. (Though I just started lifting weights which is shifting my focus to body composition as opposed to purely weight. I’d been doing pure cardio before this.) I tried to run 3 miles yesterday. I made it 2 before I needed to stop and walk every so often. Not bad though, last time I tried it, 1.5 was about all I could put together.
If I can keep getting better at it, and my knees hold up I may run the Corporate 5K in April. Barring injury or some other unseen issue, that’s a very doable goal.
Browsing Posts published in January, 2010
There is an editor called Ommwriter that looks very interesting. I’d try it out, but at the moment it is only available for Macs. But there is a project Marave that is essentially working to build a similar editor using PyQt. Which means it is cross platform.
I downloaded it yesterday and have played with it just a bit. The Google Code site doesn’t have a ton of information but there is more background and info in this blog post about it.
Basically the goal (and this is communicated in a much more elegant way on the Ommwriter site) is to allow the writer to write free from distraction. So the app launches full screen and covers up the entire desktop. The few controls that are there disappear when one is typing. They are shooting for a back to the typewriter days type of experience so it makes clicking sounds when typing. There can also be background music. I turned that off right away. I don’t really want either.
This is a brand new project so there are some rough edges. I emailed in a problem yesterday and it was fixed last night – did an svn update this morning and I’m good. There are no binaries available – just source. Still – installing Python and PyQt is easy – and then it’s easy to run.
I’m partially interested in this because I want to learn PyQt better, but it looks to be a really useful tool as well. Here’s a screen shot with the menu items showing.
I’ve been getting my Fedora 12 machine set the way I want it. I had done the upgrade from 11, ran into problems with my video card and ended up doing a full install. Now I’m putting it all back together.
My favorite Twitter client is Tweetdeck – which is an Adobe Air app. Installing Air went without a hitch but getting Tweetdeck, or anything else for that matter, was not working. The error message the installer gave me was, “Application crashed with an unhandled SIGSEGV” and then it would point me to a log file that was full of information. Unfortunately none of that information helped me to understand what the problem was. So I turned to trusty google and found my answers at this Technology and Investment Blog.
The answer to my issue was about half way down under the heading “Problems Running AIR Application”. It says there is an issue with SELinux – which I don’t totally get because I thought I turned SELinux off – but either way, I ran the command there and it fixed my issue. (I think it is probably an Adobe Air certificate issue – not SELinux) The blog links back to this Fedora Forum thread about Air – which also has some good information.
I’ve been running Fedora 11 for a while but the upgrade to 12 was highly recommended here, so I kicked off the upgrade per these instructions. To put it simply, the instructions require typing a single word in at the command line. Even I could get my head around that.
First I backed everything up. I’ve got an external drive that’s large enough to hold everything that matters. If something were to go wrong with this I wouldn’t be rolling back to the previous state. I’ll just wipe the machine and do a fresh install. But I’d like to see how this process goes.
I am a bit bummed that it’s not done this morning. I kicked it off last night and went home. Shortly after I left it stopped, to prompt me about something and so it really didn’t make any progress last night. That’s a bit disappointing and there is probably a way to do a silent install – but it’s not the end of the world. It’s not like the whole thing blew up on me – it just waited for me to come back. I’m in HR type meetings all day, so I’m hoping things are done by the end of that.
I’ve got a Drupal install with just under 300 users. I needed a certain type of node created for each user. Didn’t feel like logging in as each one and creating a node. Didn’t feel like looking for a module either for a few reasons. Decided I’d write my own little script to handle it. The tough part was just making sure I had good logic figured and a solid understanding of what Drupal did when it made a node. It ended up involving 3 tables which isn’t too bad.
I have a little, local Drupal install that I used to write and test. Today I made a copy of the production environment, on the remote server and tried it out. It didn’t work. It ran and made the nodes but nothing showed up. It made me sad inside.
It took me a little poking around to figure it out. The nodes contain a bunch of Arabic in the production environment, but not in my test. My script was not handling the unicode correctly and a single line added to my script fixed it.
This is what I had:
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'drup_user', 'drupal')
or die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
echo "Connected successfully. \n";
mysql_select_db('nmsdemov3') or die('Could not select database');
And this is what fixed my problem:
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'drup_user', 'drupal')
or die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
echo "Connected successfully. \n";
mysql_select_db('nmsdemov3') or die('Could not select database');
mysql_set_charset('utf8',$link);
As mentioned, I wrote the script in Netbeans. I’m not sure if I liked that experience or not. A full IDE might be a bit of overkill for a single file script. But it wasn’t horrible or anything. I may keep doing it just to spend more time in that environment so that I learn it better for the other stuff I do.
So this dude wrote an app for his android phone that goes out and grabs arrival times for nearby bus stops. Which is cool. But then it takes results and communicates them via bluetooth to his watch, which displays the info on the face. So awesome.
Saw the trailer for the Karate Kid remake for the first time today. Been thinking about it quite a bit. You may be wondering why. I wouldn’t blame you.
Well the original film came out in 1984. I was 15 and I fell pretty firmly right in the target audience of that film. I loved it. I would rent it (along with a vcr) at the local grocery store and watch it repeatedly. I wasn’t as keen on the sequels, but I thought that first film was great.
So the new film intrigues me though I must confess my expectations are that at best it can be ‘almost as good’ as the first. And really I don’t expect that. I expect it to be not all that good. Why? Well, I think Jaden Smith is too young/small for starters. And based on the clip it looks like they are going to be heavy handed with the humor on his part. I don’t care for that approach. They look to also be doing the same with some of the fan service stuff.
The next issue is that another favorite facet of the original is Pat Morita’s incredible work and the character they gave him. The death of his wife in an internment camp while he’s out fighting the war – that was incredible stuff the way they brought it in. It gave real depth to what was happening and how he responded to what was going on with Ralph Machio’s character.
What intrigues me though is how they will deal with the fact that while the events are obviously going to be similar the entire cultural context is shifted. A small, black American in China. What will Mr. Miyagi (now Mr. Han) have for a back story? On the plus side, as is obvious in the trailer, the scenery is going to be just gorgeous. The most attractive set in the first film was Mr. Miyagi’s back yard. That wont be the case here.
I have to imagine that if this thing does even modestly well, that the sequel will be Jaden Smith coming back to the states and going all Kwai Chang Caine on roughs in the hood. Which of course brings up the Karate/Kung Fu issue mentioned at the site that posted the trailer. Funny. It’s going to make some people absolutely beside themselves and that cracks me up.
I do look forward to hearing someone scream out, “Sweep the leg Li Hong!” because we certainly wont be hearing, “There is no pain in this dojo! There is no fear in this dojo!…” There is no pain in this kwoon? Doesn’t have the same ring to it. (I have no idea if the term is used that way at all – I have zero knowledge of the Chinese language. Which I’m sure I’ve made apparent but just want to acknowledge that I’m aware of it.)
