Scott's Blog

I use SciTE to do most of my Python (and everything else) programming, but I usually don't have the autocompletion turned on so I have to memorize all the commands that I use (or look it up in the help). One of these functions is "strip()" which I confuse sometimes with "trim()". But then I though, of course Python is a sexy language - so it would use "strip". I use the same idea to remember if it's re.search() or re.find(). There is to "strip find"...

I'm working currently from my six year old laptop. I needed access to Oracle but I don't have much space, here's what I figure out. Download Oracle Instant Client , which I found at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html To complete the install you'll need to register with Oracle (it's free), if you haven't already. Unzip the files into c:\oracle, total size about 84 meg. Modify your PATH environment variable to point to c:\ORACLE. Add TNS_ADMIN environment variable to point to C:\ORACLE. Create a text file called C:\ORACLE\SQLNET.ORA with the following contents: NAMES.DEFAULT_DOMAIN = world SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS) NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (TNSNAMES, ONAMES, HOSTNAME) Create (or copy from someplace) a text file called c:\ORACLE\TNSNAMES.ORA with contents like: ABC123.WORLD= (DESCRIPTION= (ADDRESS_LIST= (ADDRESS= (COMMUNITY= tcp.world) (PROTOCOL= tcp) (HOST= s

When I was going to Bishop's University we had a project class where we were expected to write a reasonably large program in a language of our choosing. My project was called "Filer", written in C++ (or was it Pascal?) for the Atari ST. Basically, with my program you could copy, delete, move, and rename files. I copied the look of Midnight Commander but using a graphical interface and would allow dragging and dropping. I spent many sleepless nights trying to finish this project, but when I demoed it was obvious that the reviewers didn't know where the Atari GUI ended and my program began (I guess that's a compliment in a way). So I did something intelligent, I printed out the source code. It ended up being like four inches thick and I gave it to the reviewers. Well today I was going through Freshmeat and found this project , with the exact same name and nearly identical look to my project. I think if I were to do that project again today I would write it in Py

Another reason why copyright is all screwed up. Defense contractors (who built these war planes and tanks with tax dollars) are demanding royalties for up to US$40.00 per kit (kit's typically cost US15.00-$30.00) for the priveledge of selling plastic model kits of airplanes, tanks, ships etc.. It's a shame since these kit manufacturers have a difficult time selling these kits to begin with and now either have to pass the expense on to the customers or switch to using "no royalty" models, like Nazi Planes. You would think that this would either fall under the freedom of information act or perhaps under fair use since it is a model of airplane. My guess is that they are suing for royalties under trademark laws by not allowing the use of "Lockheed F-16 Fighting Falcon ", say. I guess the way around this is to call it "Model 123" and have the seller hint that Model 123 looks very much like an F-16. Link via Boing Boing

I was reading a post where the author was having difficulty deciding on whether to use Spring or Struts or some other framework and Darren had the following reply: I find the best way is to list all the stuff that's already on your CV. That's what you don't want to use. Then look at all the stuff out there that you *want* to have on your CV and use that. Posted by: Darren on March 7, 2005 12:06 PM

More than once now I've installed Firefox on a Portuguese machine which caused a series of minor incoveniences. Formost of these is the Google search returns only Portuguese results which can be quite different than the English results. I found a file in C:\Arquivos de programas\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins\google.src which I modified in the following ways: action="http://www.google.com.br/search" to action="http://www.google.com/search" Then I changed the language: <input name="lr" value="lang_pt"> to <input name="lr" value="lang_en"> Also, some sites are a little too smart and convert to Portuguese your language is set to that so added the English language to options in Firefox and put it as the first language.