It was only a matter of time. Very cool.

I didn't even think this was possible with a satellite. Those are stunning images, especially the one just before the wavefront hits and the sea recedes. Amazing. And the angle and span of the first two pictures at least seem to be identical. The third one is zoomed in.

Very good indeed.

Really, no words are necessary here.

Yep. Without IP restrictions, even.

This is a little obscure for most people, but being something of an expert in both the MSMQ and AMQP platforms, this is great news. A native supported implementation of AMQP (or an MSMQ interop layer for it) would be a welcome addition to most architects' toolbox.

It's been three days since I got the last spam message on my personal email address.

From ~60 a day to zero, in 24 hours flat.

I spent three hours two nights ago trying to figure out what was wrong with my mail server. Nothing, everything's working perfectly, I'm getting all my normal email just fine. There's nothing upstream that could be filtering or blocking or anything like that.

What the hell?

I've finally had it with RH-based distros. I used to swear by them but it seems they've gone down the crapper lately. I've been getting core dumps and mysterious errors on CentOS the past few weeks, and I'm done with all that.

So a few days ago I reformatted my Slicehost instances with Debian etch. Don't get me wrong, I've never liked Debian for what I use Linux for, because they're always two versions behind on everything and I just do not want to deal with "non-free" and "unstable" repo stupidities. But in this case, I needed Python 2.5.x and all the latest and greatest, so I had no choice (Slicehost offers Ubuntu as a server... right).

So after about a day or so, I have lighttpd, Postgres, Postfix, OpenAMQ and just about everything else working on my Slices.

I have to say something about RedHat though - you do get used to their admin tools. I found myself trying to figure out whether I hated RH more for making all those tools or Debian for not making them. Case in point? chkconfig and /sbin/service. Don't get me started on iptables, which are a proper service under RH but an afterthought on Debian - to the point that I had to go in and edit the /etc/network/interfaces to make sure my rules would survive a reboot. What the frak.

Anyway... everything seems to be working fine. I realize it's just that I'm used to a different environment, but it's still a pain.

As for the desktop, looks like I'm stuck with Fedora because I have no intention of going through another wipe-and-reload distro-of-the-day cycle, I just don't have time. Holy jesus, just installing the TTF fonts I need on Linux is an unbearable experience I don't want to repeat more than once every couple of years. For the time being though I'm warming up to Putty on Windows, which is not as flexible as a straight GNOME console with SSH, but acceptable for most quicky deals so I don't have to actually log in to Linux. It even comes with a half-acceptable SCP client.

Rant over.

Yeah, you. The sad asshole that keeps going through my posting history and abusing moderation with the ever-popular "overrated" mod.

Unlike you, I don't really give a shit. This account has seen -1 karma, and I don't doubt it will again. And yet I always end up on top.

Knock yourself out.

It's been ages since I coded anything in Perl (thank $DEITY) but via Reddit I found this gem today. It turns out that a simple bless call (!) will basically throw your code out to pasture. Big time.

A bless call.

RedHat's response? Absolutely precious:

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release. Product Management has requested
further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential
inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed
products. This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update
release.

Now, let's be fair here. This problem is not Perl, and it only occurs in RedHat-based distros - namely RHEL, CentOS (which I use extensively) and Fedora (my current Linux desktop).

I'm posting this solely because when I read it, I immediately thought what the reaction would be if something like that happened with .NET on Server 2003. Oh. My. God. But this is Free Software (TM), so it's no big deal. Not like you're going to see it splattered on the front page of Slashdot or Digg (to reddit's credit, it's already there).

I love FOSS. I use it every day. I love Python and vim and Firefox and Linux and so on. I really do. The more I see the value in it though, the more I am struck by the infantile double standards and FUD campaigns waged in its name by undeserving retards and armchair zealots.

And BTW, I can confirm that the test script in that Bugzilla thread runs just fine on Server 2003 R2 SP1/ActivePerl 5.10.0.1003. Which is of course unpossible, since that's Windoze, lol.

OK so I've been using SliceHost for a while. I have two instances I use to host some stuff and it works very well, etc. After a few years of using a colo box at ServerBeach, I was apprehensive to "downgrade" but really, I have no complaints so far (especially since I'm running on 64-bit CentOS, which I couldn't get to work correctly with SB and had to fall back to Fedora).

Saves lotsa money too.

I have also a few Server 2003 colo boxes with Another Company (TM). So far I've also been rather happy with them, no complaints really.

But I was wondering... is it possible to go virtual with Windows as well?

After googling a bit I found these guys. My experience with MS Virtual Server is really limited to setting it up at home off MSDN disks and going "ok, this is cool" and moving on to the next thing. So I'm not sure how well it works. Obviously it's more expensive than SliceHost, but while cost is really irrelevant in this case ($99/mo is still less than what I pay for the rack colos), I'm hesitant to jump ship again just like that and be unpleasantly surprised. Especially because the Windows stuff is what really pays the bills.

Anyone out there using Windows virtual hosting? With which company? What type of app(s) are you running on it? What kind of traffic? And does it really work?

Thanks =)

This is a bit old, but if you're thinking of moving some code to the next major Python revision, it will come in handy.

Over at Electricmonk, Ferry has a great article explaining parameter expansion in Python. Close to my heart, this topic is...

I don't use Jython myself, I play with IronPython when I'm not actually working with the real thing, but this is interesting. That project is making good strides.

I should mention that I'm interested in alt. VMs like these only as hosting solutions within larger applications. I wouldn't trade CPython for Jython or IronPython any day of the week, and you shouldn't either.

As an aside, a Microsoft dev has been running a very interesting series on functional programming with C# on his blog. Very interesting, at least for me, when I compare it to stuff that can be done in Python.

The worm has turned. The Python development team released the 2.6 iteration of the current CPython implementation (see changes for the 2.x series here, including all the deprecated modules in anticipation for 3.0) today, but even more exciting is the new 3.0b1 beta of what wil become Python3000!

If you don't know what's in store for Python3000, give Guido Van Rossum's blog the once-over for the executive summary.

Make sure you download, install, try them out and report any issues you find!

A preview of the new version of the Python language has been released. 3.0a1 is an early alpha based on the PEPs created for what has been internally called 'Python3000', which embodies the next generation of the popular language used extensively by Google and NASA, among others. Python 3.x will be incompatible (by design) with the 2.x line, since much of the crud accumulated and deprecated over the last few years has now been removed (the 2.x versions will continue to be patched, but not enhanced). More information about the release can be found on Guido van Rossum's blog.

Pythonistas and pythoneers rejoice!

Oh, and by the way, there will be a terrible earthquake that will affect China in May of 2008. And the NY Giants will win Superbowl XLII!