Post Archive:
IOT-Kit is a toolkit for enabling the creation of IOT devices, by peoplewho can make simple arduino based devices. Rather than waffle on aboutwhy, how,...
The Internet of Things. Ask 100 different people what it means to themand you get a 100 different answers. I know, because I have done......
I've made a new release of pyxie. Largely internal changes.The focus of this release is the result of the independent intermediatenode refactoring project I was...
End of day 5. So here's the food diary for days 4 and 5.Again, if this is the first time you're seeing this, some context:From...
So, end of Day 3. So here's the food diary for today..Again, if this is the first time you're seeing this, some context:From 23-28 July,...
Day 3 of Living below the line for manchester foodbanks...Living below the line - £6 for 6 days food (total) in order to raiseawareness of...
So, I've posted on facebook about this, and posted on twitter, and posted onjustgiving, but I've not posted here. What am I doing?This week -...
My inner 10 year old who saw the original Ghostbusters at the cinemasays: GO SEE GHOSTBUSTERS. IT IS BETTER THAN THE ORIGINALSeriously, I was...
Peace and Goodwill?You don't make peace by using bombs. You don't bring people around to yourperspective by killing their family, their friends and children. ...
I've decided that I ought to have a small website for at least some of theprojects I've created over the years, so I've started doing...
Over the past several months during evenings and weekends I started work ona new python to C++ compiler -- called Pyxie (it's a play...
So, I created a PPA for my home projects - either things I'vewritten, or things I use. ( link to launchpad ) Anyway, I useUbuntu...
So, a fluffy tech-lite blog on this. I've written a more comprehensive one,but I have to save that for another time. Anyway, I can't...
I've been meaning to do this for a long while now, but finally gotten aroundto it. I've set up an Ubuntu PPA for the respositories...
Brief notes on how I installed Behave - abehaviour driven development package on Ubuntu 14.04.1LTS.First off, why? Well, the common answer for installing things would...
The short and simple guide to installing python packages for Ubuntu:Install python-stdebBuild an sdist version of your package, make sure it's all goodRun py2dsc on...
People don't talk enough about things that go well, and I think I'm guiltyof that sometimes, so I'll talk about something nice. I spent...
At a connected studio Build Studio last week, I along with 2 others in TeamDresscode prototyped tools for an proposition based around wearable tech.We worked...
In a further post of the intermitted kind, again, a collection of things Ithought interesting and worth blogging about. Some of them are things Iwould...
Well, 2 weeks since the last post of this type, so this is a bumper edition.As before it's a collection of things I thought interesting...
This post provides an overview of how Guild Actors work. If you missed what Guild is, and how it contrasts with other approaches, it might...
Last week there were a couple of interesting posts by Glyph Lefkowitzand Rob Miller on concurrency. Both are well worth a read. One of theexamples...
In no particular order, some things I read and thought worth bloggingabout for some reason. I may start doing this as a regular thing -...
Guild is a python library for creating thread based applications.Threads are represented using actors - objects with threadsafe methods.Calling a method puts a message on...
Given the break, you might think that I'd given up blogging - I'd actually shifted mode ofcommunication. I'm sort of switching back, this post...
Earlier in the year we visited MOSI - which is (these days) a Manchesterbranch of the Science Museum. Anyhow, one of the long standing exhibitsis...
Last weekend (11th Feb) I was at Hack to the Future (H2DF) in Preston, organised by Alan O'Donohoe and held at his school - OurLady's...
As noted in my earlier post, I've been losing weight this year. In particular, to give some numbers here, this is how my weight has...
Last month saw the first of a monthly series of BBC North internal brainstorms,and we were asked "what can we do for a Children in...
For those that know me, most of you unlikely to have ever known me not to be fat - even though I grew up chronically...
Meta: The next post in this category after this will be "what do I plan to do". I'll keepthis post brief, unlike the last one....
As before, this post covers a fair range of points, I hope, intended to support my summary. If you just want though, you can skip...
This post is being forwarded round lots of people at the moment, and I don't think it hurts to repost it here as well. My...
RIP Dennis RitchieDennis Ritchie never was a household name and probably never will be. However, he was the inventor of the language C, and one...
Caveat: This is my view. Your views/memories may be different. Please share them :-)They say that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat...
Well, after playing around with a bunch of different blog engines, I'veswitched hosts from yeoldeclue.com to sparkslabs.com, and switched blogengine from a home grown file...
This is likely to be the first of a few posts on this theme.One of the common memes going around the tech industry at the...
This is a repost of a facebook note I wrote last november, but I still like it, so reposting hereThe waterfall (& big design upfront...
Whilst there's (an awful lof of) negative in today's announcements aboutchanges at the BBC, there's some which are positive, if incremental, stepsforward:We believe this strategy...
In preparation for a complete replacement of this site, I'm disabling comments and posting after this one. The UI that this site uses has been...
I'm happy to announce Kamaelia's 4th release of 2010: 1.0.12.0 (Y.Y.M.r) Kamaelia is a component system based around unix-like concurrency/composition & pipelining. There's a strong...
Just a brief note to say that all the Europython videos I and helpers recorded are now uploaded and online on blip.tv. Since not everyone...
If you were 7 again, what would you expect to find in a book on beginning programming? I have some thoughts on this, and going...
For the past several months the python magazine hasn't sent any new issues out. Indeed, since late last year they ripped out their website and...
A few months ago, there was a thread on the then google group python-concurrency about some standard forms for showing how some libraries deal with...
A few people will have already noticed some small comments about this, but we're plotting to restart python northwest. Specifically, we're restarting this month.Details:When: Thursday...
If this happens this will be awesome. Traffic Server is some really nice code. It's a large codebase, but it's really cool, and it *scales*....
Since I've had a few questions about this, a short status update. At Europython last week I was recording all the talks I was attending....
Before I started using python, I'd used perl for several years, and one thing which I'd liked about perl was its autoload facility. Now in...
I've mentioned this in a couple of places, but mentioning on my blog seems appropriate too.I'm giving a tutorial on Kamaelia at Europython '09 this...
I've added a PythonInterpreter component to Kamaelia in Kamaelia.Experimental.PythonInterpreter. The primary use for this is intended to assist with debugging, but there are other possible...
Earlier this evening an announcement by Pete Fein regarding the formation of a python-concurrency mailing list (aka Python Concurrency Special Interest Group) bounced past my...
Bar Camp Leeds (UK) is running for its 3rd year running. It'd be great to see other Python people there if you're around. Details:May 30th,...
Improving the scheduler. It's been something we've avoided for quite a while in Kamaelia, but Simon Wittber's recent post benchmarking Fibra vs Kamaelia vs stackless...
As you may know Kamaelia is a project I'm rather familar with (ok understatement), but one of the key ideas behind it is about how...
Kamaelia implements something similar to, but not the same as the Actor Model. Since I'd not heard of the actor model for the majority of...
On the #kamaelia IRC channel , the issue was raised that a number of the examples on the Kamaelia website are just that, small examples,...
Interesting new meme, I think I'll jump on this bandwagon. For my first post in this vein, I ought to retroactively do November 1st's post....
In "Actors, concurrency and Kamaelia" Jesse Noller writes:"I believe there is room within Python as a language, and CPython as an implementation of that language...
Bar Camp Liverpool has been announced, for those interested. For those that have never been to an unconference, they're fundamentally as interesting as the people...
No sooner do you put a new release out the door and you're reviewing things and planning the next. Since there seems to be a...
With great pleasure I'd like to announce the release of Kamaelia 0.6.0 and Axon 1.6.0For the short of time:Overview: library/framework for concurrency using message passing...
Just a note for anyone in the london area - if you're interested in kamaelia or what we've learned about making concurrency easy (or much...
Many thanks to Ben Ford for the heads up and release of their code using kamaelia that accesses amazon web services. His blurb from the...
Interesting project: http://yieldprolog.sourceforge.net/ noting here since it's somewhere I'll come back to, and it strikes me that others would find it interesting too. ...
A question was raised on the Kamaelia list asking for a demo on how to nest protocols using Kamaelia. In order to show some clarity,...
The famous lisp quote - "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortranprogram contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slowimplementation of half of Common Lisp" - make...
So, sourceforge are changing their services. Can't really complain since it is free, but it really is pain. They've switched off shell access, and broken...
And people wonder why I have no desire to visit the US any more : http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/30/police_raids/index.html...
"Open source licensing has become a widely used method of creative collaboration that serves to advance the arts and sciences in a manner and at...
Mainly for me, but hopefully of use to others too:#!/usr/bin/python## running this as "test_CribSheet.py -v " # - gives you some cribsheet docs on what's...
My talk suggestions have been accepted by the committee [*] and so I'll be giving the following two talks at Pycon UK:Practical concurrent systems made...
... or rather incomplete. This quote is often used as a good rationale for sharing ideas, and as a nub of an idea it's good,...
Intel have recently been talking about the fact that we'll probably have to deal with not hundreds but thousands of cores on a machine at...
I quite like this list of requirements for project websitesby Brian Jones. We've been planning a rebuild of the Kamaelia website to focus on applications...
In python it's clear that the semantics of a piece of code change depending on whitespace - for example:if True: print "Yay" print "Woo"frag. 1vsif...
... or is this a neat way to open a gaping security hole on your server? I can only presume that the backend of said...
Just been fiddling around with the idea of using the handwriting/gesture recognition code to allow the creation of kamaelia systems using an entirely pen driven...
Why do you twitter?...
This hack is a "toy" for a small child to assist them to learn to read and write. They are asked to write specific words -...
Since I wanted to "sit" on some IRC channels here at Mashed and rather than flit channels or waste screen estate I decided to do...
As per my previous post, the Kamaelia 0.6.0 release candidate #6 is available and can be downloaded from http://edit.kamaelia.org/release/...
Going to BBC Mashed? Want to go? (a few are tickets left) Interested in one of these : {Kamaelia, Python, Concurrency, Multicore, DVB, Building network...
I'm considering looking at how to do this, since it looks doable, but wonder if anyone has any experience of actually doing this, even partially....
The Small-Scale Experimental Machine, known as SSEM, or the "Baby", was designed and built at The University of Manchester, and made its first successful run of a program...
As discussed before, Kamaelia now has multicore support in subversion in the form of ProcessPipeline and ProcessGraphlines, meaning taking any Kamaelia system and making it...
New faces bring new ideas. As part of Google Summer of Code this year I asked upfront our students why they didn't want to use...
People have used the comment or new post feature of my blog recently to leave some useful comments. Rather than have them as top level...
Not tested this, but this looks really interesting/promising. The AR Toolkit is really cool, and this appears to be linux & mac os x bindings...
We're getting some commons questions regarding GSOC, which boil down to "how do I write a successful application". I've taken the common starting point and...
Only a few more days to get your application in, and less if you want good feedback. The ideas we're seeing look really good and...
Google's summer of code is on again this year, and BBC Research is taking part, and my interest is in Kamaelia based projects. For those...
As the next step forward, I now have multiprocess support for basic pipeline. Essentially I have the equivalent of "self.link" implemented for multiprocesses. Kinda like...
Well, I travelled all the way up to barcamp this weekend, and it was well worth it. Whilst I was there I gave a talk...
Now they think they have the right to dictate to me what software I get to choose to run? cf in italicsOn Thursday 28 February...
Well, this year will mark the 25th year that I've been writing code, so at some point later in the year I'll probably have some...
A turtle/worm written using javascript: http://languagegame.org/tmp/jstile/exp/worm.html...
I tend to understate certain things sometimes. From The Register article: MP accuses BBC chief of illegally championing Microsoft - John Pugh - MP for...
Generally we've used sax for parsing XML, but it's useful to show how to parse XML using a parser like expat that works by calling...
One thing that is particularly useful when debugging Kamaelia systems - especially servers - is the ability to dump out what's running. Fortunately Kamaelia provides...
Interesting wishlist for kamaelia (and others, but I'm interested from a kamaelia perspective) here: http://darkness.codefu.org/wordpress/2007/12/26/295I'm not sure I buy all the criticisms, and feel they're...
Just posted this to comp.lang.python - but posting here as well :-) I've received some great feedback since the initial beta release of the minimalistic...
After playing around with the STM code, and spotting the dining philosopher's code in the MASCOT example/manual that I found, I've now implemented the traditional...
I've updated the STM code in subversion at present here:https://kamaelia.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/kamaelia/branches/private_MPS_Scratch/Bindings/STM/Axon/STM.pyI would really appreciate any code review from anyone who's capable of doing so - even...
A common idiom in functional programming at least with the functional languages I've used and systems I've needed to build - is a call context....
Arrgh. If I hit "delete" on a form, I'd like the thing I'm deleting to be encoded in the form rather than associated with an...
OK, here's a challenge. Build a tool to assist with short term memory loss. The idea is this:You go to the top of the stairs...
Wins bonus points for looking straight out of a film :-)http://humanized.com/weblog/2006/09/11/monolog_boxes_and_transparent_messages/Their point is somewhat less shallow than this, but it does remind of film interfaces......
Tim Bray's widefinder project is an interesting little problem. How do you find the top 10 most popular accesses to your website in a way...
I've just posted this message on comp.lang.python looking for comments, but I'll post it here in case there's any feedback this way :-)I'm interested in...
On the backstage mailing list, out of the interminable rantings and ravings about whether DRM is a good or bad idea, whether people should call...
First of all, the proof that this works in Kamaelia, right now:OK, this is using the new code for running multiple Kamaelia type systems in...
OK, this is using a massively simplified version of the primitives needed for concurrency in Kamaelia, but the following is the first component that will...
This weekend's hack - a tool to make my life easier - a tool to make creation, modelling and playing with extended entity relationship diagrams...
Interesting post by rhonabwy on comparing Kamaelia to Stackless. The benchmark figures there are pretty grim from my perspective, but a useful starting point:10 concurrent...
So, I've been recommended to use "pitivi" a few times, so I figures, why not give it a go. Well, I'm running the latest version...
Just jotting this down really. You need Lightblue installed, which also requires pybluez (hence bluez) and also openobex installed. OK, no further ado:>>> from lightblue...
I have the distinct pleasure of chairing the EBU Open Source workshop later today, having been invited to do so and give the opening welcome/talk....
RFC 4861 Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6)This document specifies the Neighbor Discovery protocol for IP Version 6. IPv6 nodes on the same link...
I've written a greylisting server using Kamaelia, and its turned my mail back to something usable. I've been running this server for 52 hours now...
Posted here --- El blog de Michael Sparks Ye Old Cue, propone una solución nueva al viejo probelma de la visualización de posts, usando una ventana...
I finally got around to learning sufficient ruby to write a Mini Axon in Ruby - which means there is a basic Kamaelia core in...
Not sure how valid the following benchmark is, but it's an interesting datapoint.http://muharem.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/erlang-vs-stackless-python-a-first-benchmark/...
Interesting factoid - there are over 30 million people on Facebook. That means if facebook was a nation, it would be the 39th (possibly 38th)...
Greylisting is like magical glass for mystical flies. Real email is delivered by real flies, whereas spam email is delivered by fake mystical flies. The...
A bunch of links nabbed from Michael Tiemann's OSI blogGetting Schooled In DesignDesigning a New OSIRedhat Magazine - Design Thinking specialIntro to design thinkingStanford's new...
Quick and simple access to the BT console (based on notes here)# sdptool add-channel=27 SP# rfcomm listen /dev/rfcomm0 27Waiting for connection on channel 27Connection from...
Ever needed to only allow emails from specific people through to specific addresses using exim? If you have then hopefully this post is of use...
The PyCon UK Society has announced a UK Python Conference. This is ...
From the pygame mailing list:From: Noah Kantrowitz [ check pygame archives for email (don't want to cause spammage) ]Subject: [pygame] Calling all game developersCalling all...
Tongue in cheek, but I quite like (based on occam's razor):"Given a variety of options, the dumbest one is probably right" - applies to "which...
I had a great idea today, and I've registered the domain for it just now. I'm probably going to knock up something quite quickly (I...
Well, after getting a mini axon standing" compiling using shedskin yesterday, I've taken the next steps to see if we can get a full mini-axon...
Well, I looked at shedskin as I mentioned the other day, and now have this working locally. One thing we encourage people new to Kamaelia...
Summary - We ruled!http://www.entertainmentmanchester.com/theatre/reviews/rncm-mikado.htmHearing of people enjoying the show is great, and makes all the hardwork worthwhile. If you still want to see the show,...
There was another post on comp.lang.python which asked essentially:> I am 3 months old to python and I have done some small projects. I> want...
Two things struck me eye from comp.lang.python.announce that I need to look up at some point:Shed Skin by Mark Dufur has a new release with...
I'd like to invite anyone reading thing to come next week (its an ideal valentines day out :) and see a Bollywood inspired version of...
Well, I recently upgrade from SuSE 10.1 to Open SuSE 10.2. The problem with this is the reason I normally use SuSE is because I...
Last year at OSCON I was lambasted. Was it my talk was bad? No. Was it because the demo broke? No, I recovered from that...
It's just struck me that there is an issue with DRM that goes to the core of the way the open source and free software...
I've been doing some reading recently on how to deal with procrastination, in an attempt to deal with my own procrastination better. Along the way...
Looking around to find a good rss writing library, I can't find one that I like. I can fund several functional ones, but I'm curious...
I don't know about anyone else, but I find this relatively scary - Zoominfo trawl the web to find out who you are, collate all...
Brady has a post asking what people think about the apple TV vs Mac Mini. I started writing a reply there, but it grew massively...
Not all my spam is automatically filtered. On one account I've started resorting to automatic filtering, because it's become untenable - however a different one...
Well, I had a need to get two webcams, and whilst it wasn't necessary for them to work with linux, I was quite hopeful. Anyway...
Some people started talking about predictions for 2007, so I decided to come up with some. These won't be in the RSS feed to avoid...
Manchester Geekup - where all users of dynamic languages (and others) are welcome to come and share beer, knowledge, food happens againt next tuesday.Where: The...
OK, so my superhero was the dubious (occasionally anti-hero) Hulk (which secretly I quite like :-) What's my Supervillain result? Your results:You are Dr. DoomDr....
Steve Holden posted about the "which superhero are you?" quiz. My result? Your results:You are HulkHulk 80%Spider-Man 70%Green Lantern 65%Iron Man 65%Robin 55%Catwoman 55%Batman 50%Supergirl 48%Superman...
I've just added basic authentication to the Kamaelia Web Client, since it seems the useful thing to do, and appear to have created a need...
You may think basic authentication for your site is OK, and depending on how secure you want you data, and how much control you have...
Rudolph the Duck Billed PlatypusHad a very shiny beakAnd if you ever saw himYou would even say it squeakedAll of the other platypusesUsed to laugh...
Interesting social site from Philips. I'm not sure how many active users they have (or what social tribes it crosses), but they do have an...
Personally I think this is way cool since I didn't write any of the code :) Sylvain Hellegouarch has written a backend for Amplee that...
After a request on "how do you use Kamaelia's HTTP Server", I sat down and created a cookbook entry detailed how you use Kamaelia's webserver...
Well, a bit later than anticipated - I should really be off to this month's Geekup here in Manchester, but I really wanted to get...
Some links or else I'll forgetNov 14th - Geek Up (similar to london 2.0 AFAICT)Nov 18th - ManLUG. I suspect me turning up after all...
Awesome:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL7FcvEydqg&eurl=...
Some links on technical debt. Storing these for later because I've reason come to the conclusion that there's a very similar concept in project management...
Is it April? Novell & Microsoft teaming up to make Linux more attractive for windows users ? (links are to Novell's FAQ, and to Novell...
Some people think that in the future, generally speaking, we (a very amorphus indescript "we") will be running all our systems and services of their...
Just came across this site - Computer Science Unplugged - which is essentially about teaching the principles of computer science to children, but by definition...
Well, this is the text version of the presentation I gave at Linux World. It should be borne in mind that this has a mixture...
I'll be around at the LONIX User's meeting this evening which is described on their next meeting page. Any other Python people interested in meeting...
Just a note to say that I'm giving two of the "business briefings" at Linux World, Olympia over the next two days, first in the...
Blatant promotion - I wrote an article for Linux Format on Kamaelia, specifically focussing on the whiteboarding app, but also covering some of the background...
I wrote this as an example of a relatively simple, but non-trivial network protocol. It creates a server that sits there waiting for connections. Anything...
People clamouring for DRM systems continue to miss some key points. Two links to two articles which are interesting counterpoints to each other. One claims...
Some people wonder why I don't talk about my private life online, or 'silly things' like whereabouts I live in the world. The response I...
There are many RSS sources on the web, and people are beginning to look at them as a form on unix pipe for the web....
An email address I had many moons back I now have again :-) You can now reach me once more at zathrus >A.T< mad >D.O.T<...
Looks like I haven't been paying attention to the prolog world. Since I last looked they've also gone all OO. Just heard about logtalk, which...
Well, the release candidates for Kamaelia 0.5.0, Axon 1.5.1 have been created merged with the megabundle and uploaded to sourceforge, next comes the steps of...
I'm currently sitting in the session Scaling Up Open Collaboration and was expecting the two presenters to run a session, to run a talk. What...
Five million Scary Cybermen jumping through the void,One fell badly, and whirled and whirled,Rose phone The Doctor and The Doctor said,"No more Cyberman taking over...
That's the question on my mind right now. I'm supposed to go to the US for work reasons (Foo Camp) which is undoubtedly (almost?) a...
This is something I've been itching to write for a while, and I'm not sure I've got my analogies and descriptions right yet, but the gist is...
I made the offer to write some exercises to teach python programming at OSCON, specifically in the form of being able to create a "choose your own...
I've now got a focus for this blog - creative coding. This is a consequence of spending a week at OSCON, talking to lots of...
Small changes can make a big difference. For editting of new posts, I'm changing over to using dojo toolkit. I'll see how this goes for...
Well, here I am, in portland, after travelling for nearly 20 hours, I got here. On the clock I left home around 7am and arrived...
Finally getting around to putting together a proper wiki engine out of the various pieces of code I have, now that the wysiwyg editor in...
Hard drive death is a terrible, terrible thing. My hard drive on my personal machine recently died. The problem with this is I've been using this...
I hate being asked the question "What do you do for a living?" - it's a question I like to answer literally, to get to...
Well, rather surprisingly, but nicely so, I've been invited to Tim O'Reilly's FOO Camp this year. I've accepted the invite, so hopefully I'll get to...
So far this seems to be going pretty well. There does seem to be interest in our projects, but not unmanageable at this stage. I've...
Been a very interesting evening in many respects. Some links I need to follow up on as a result follow: Some summer of code project lists...
Why do they bother? Especially if their posts/replies won't ever show up? There's one very persistent (in the same was a bee bangs its head...
This blog will be offline for a while (probably just a few days, hopefully less :-) More when it comes back! ...
Lass O'Gowrie Pub, 7pm, Wed 8th Feb. I don't know if this'll be the first meetup for pythonistas that's happened in Manchester, but it'll...
Kamaelia (work) (site, bliki) Cerenity (personal) (site, bliki) Just a placemarker really of a few convenient links really. However I can put updates in...
Seems rather obligatory to have a post labelled first post. This is the first post of this blog, which will be my general "stuff"...