svn:externals) and get a bit confused sometimes when dealing with multiple repositories but the extra functionality is well worth the effort to learn.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Version control through the ages
It just occurred to me that over the past six or seven years I have gone from using CVS to track all my code and projects to using Subversion and from there to using Darcs. In general I find that each one has really been an improvement over the previous tool. I miss certain Subversion features in Darcs (specifically
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Quebec: a question of definition
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he will introduce a motion to recognize Quebec as a "nation within a united Canada". This was immediately pounced upon by Gilles Duceppe who demanded that the motion be reformulated in order to recognize a "nation that is currently within Canada".
The unfortunate thing is that we are spending our time debating the wrong thing. That a certain socio-ethnic group of people exists in Canada is not a question. That the people in that group have inherited a certain culture and certain beliefs is not at issue. The real problem is not that nobody "recognizes" Quebec. The real problem is the divide between those who believe that Quebec should have a certain level of sovereignty and those who disagree.
It all comes down to control; and a lot of separatists/sovereignists feel that Quebec should have full and complete control over everything that goes on inside its borders; including immigration/emigration and any other kind of import/export. This is not a question of culture, nor is it a question of inclusion/exclusion: this is a question of power. We can see it when people suggest sending delegates from Quebec to international assemblies; as if we really wanted to debate the north american missile shield with the "ambassador" of the state of New Mexico. Countries exist for a reason. They are a grouping of geographically and socio-economically like-minded people who get together for the same reasons as any other community forms. They provide a tool for dealing with other groups of people and, as such, are very useful.
In the case of Canada, the country also provides a way to re-distribute wealth to attenuate the issues encountered by one or another constituent population going through hard times. When the farmers of western Canada need help, the fishers of eastern Canada provide it (albeit indirectly). With regards to this particular issue, Quebec has historically felt hard done-by because of its own richness and other provinces relative poverty.
Meta-communities also provide the opportunity to set certain guidelines and enforce them at a higher level. We can see some of the effects of this by looking at organizations like the U.N. where a number of participants agree to live by the rules established by all. Difficulties arise however when participants in such a scheme attempt to assert their independence or sovereignty. A perfect example is when the U.S. decided unilaterally to invade Iraq against the recommendations of the U.N. security council. Unfortunately, the sanctions available to the U.N. is very limited. It comes down to "might makes right" and in Quebec's case we can expect more of the same: because of its socio-economic place in the country, Quebec stands to gain a significant amount of "bullying power" by declaring its independence (or at least having it recognized). The simple fact that a political party exists at the federal level to represent and defend the concerns of a single province is proof enough of the fact that Quebeckers are prepared to do what it takes in order to guarantee that their concerns become matters of national importance.
Do I believe that Quebec is distinct? Absolutely! I was born here and will always be a Quebecker in my heart. Do I think that this "distinctness" (as opposed to the distinctness of Ontarians or Nova Scotians) merits the declaration of the independence of the province from the "rule" of the rest of the dominion? No. Absolutely not. So let's stop debating our uniqueness and start debating what's really at stake here: whether or not Quebeckers (and to a certain extent the rest of Canada) are entitled to a greater amount of "self-determination" than other provinces; I mean, at some level, each city could declare itself sovereign and we could start all over again building counties from cities, provinces from counties and (gasp) countries from provinces. If the only goal here is to get more power in parliament I say "let it be." You already have a whole national-level political party to yourself. Isn't that enough bullying for one nation? If not, then let's get the Mohawks and the Haida and the Inuit in there too so that they can represent their people.
The unfortunate thing is that we are spending our time debating the wrong thing. That a certain socio-ethnic group of people exists in Canada is not a question. That the people in that group have inherited a certain culture and certain beliefs is not at issue. The real problem is not that nobody "recognizes" Quebec. The real problem is the divide between those who believe that Quebec should have a certain level of sovereignty and those who disagree.
It all comes down to control; and a lot of separatists/sovereignists feel that Quebec should have full and complete control over everything that goes on inside its borders; including immigration/emigration and any other kind of import/export. This is not a question of culture, nor is it a question of inclusion/exclusion: this is a question of power. We can see it when people suggest sending delegates from Quebec to international assemblies; as if we really wanted to debate the north american missile shield with the "ambassador" of the state of New Mexico. Countries exist for a reason. They are a grouping of geographically and socio-economically like-minded people who get together for the same reasons as any other community forms. They provide a tool for dealing with other groups of people and, as such, are very useful.
In the case of Canada, the country also provides a way to re-distribute wealth to attenuate the issues encountered by one or another constituent population going through hard times. When the farmers of western Canada need help, the fishers of eastern Canada provide it (albeit indirectly). With regards to this particular issue, Quebec has historically felt hard done-by because of its own richness and other provinces relative poverty.
Meta-communities also provide the opportunity to set certain guidelines and enforce them at a higher level. We can see some of the effects of this by looking at organizations like the U.N. where a number of participants agree to live by the rules established by all. Difficulties arise however when participants in such a scheme attempt to assert their independence or sovereignty. A perfect example is when the U.S. decided unilaterally to invade Iraq against the recommendations of the U.N. security council. Unfortunately, the sanctions available to the U.N. is very limited. It comes down to "might makes right" and in Quebec's case we can expect more of the same: because of its socio-economic place in the country, Quebec stands to gain a significant amount of "bullying power" by declaring its independence (or at least having it recognized). The simple fact that a political party exists at the federal level to represent and defend the concerns of a single province is proof enough of the fact that Quebeckers are prepared to do what it takes in order to guarantee that their concerns become matters of national importance.
Do I believe that Quebec is distinct? Absolutely! I was born here and will always be a Quebecker in my heart. Do I think that this "distinctness" (as opposed to the distinctness of Ontarians or Nova Scotians) merits the declaration of the independence of the province from the "rule" of the rest of the dominion? No. Absolutely not. So let's stop debating our uniqueness and start debating what's really at stake here: whether or not Quebeckers (and to a certain extent the rest of Canada) are entitled to a greater amount of "self-determination" than other provinces; I mean, at some level, each city could declare itself sovereign and we could start all over again building counties from cities, provinces from counties and (gasp) countries from provinces. If the only goal here is to get more power in parliament I say "let it be." You already have a whole national-level political party to yourself. Isn't that enough bullying for one nation? If not, then let's get the Mohawks and the Haida and the Inuit in there too so that they can represent their people.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
pkg_resources.VersionConflict
This exception is raised when you update the version of a
setuptools package without deleting the egg-info folder. The test command ends up expecting that the version is whatever is listed from the previous build whereas the value has changed in the meantime. Just run setup.py clean --all from your "root" directory to get rid of the error.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Some long-awaited updates
I took some time this weekend to revamp a lot of the infrastructure around this site. I really would like to start documenting my progress in pipe-making as well as some of the other things I'm currently juggling.
I have set up my own little proprietary engine to pipe the contents of different RSS feeds of mine onto the front page of my site. This should allow me to collect the various things I'm up to into a single spot.
I have set up my own little proprietary engine to pipe the contents of different RSS feeds of mine onto the front page of my site. This should allow me to collect the various things I'm up to into a single spot.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Packaging Python
Ian Bicking writes about packaging Python libraries. He says simply that his advice is: "you shouldn't".
I really can't say that I agree on this one. While I do see the benefits of packaging libraries with the applications they go with, I have to say that after years of working in Java, where JARs are distributed and need to be included in an application-specific classpath, I really find the Python
I really can't say that I agree on this one. While I do see the benefits of packaging libraries with the applications they go with, I have to say that after years of working in Java, where JARs are distributed and need to be included in an application-specific classpath, I really find the Python
site-packages to be a breath of fresh air.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Users don't care about you
Jeff Atwood has posted an entry titled "Users don't care about you". I will use this soapbox to pick at a semantic nit and explain why not instead of trying to explain how to get them to care.
The reason is pretty simple (as all good reasons are in hindsight): they are users. There are no "users" reading my blog. There never will be. And this is really the crux of the whole revival-of-the-cult-of-personality-but-on-the-web thing. Unless your audience feels they have a personal relationship with you, they won't read your blog. I read all of my friends' blogs (if you are my friend and I don't read your blog, please send me a link to it). Why? Because even if the crap they write is boring, pompous, puerile, silly, humiliating, myopic and self-centered it's familiar crap. There's something about the odour that reminds me of that person. It's probably why you're reading this right now.
The majority of people writing blogs are doing it for their personal acquaintances. The "long tail" of blogdom is the really real world. You all know where I work, what I do, what my hobbies are and so on. Because you care about me. If you didn't, you wouldn't be reading this. What causes so many broken hearts (and wasted electrons) is that a huge number of bloggers sort of expect that they will clickety-click over to blogspot.com, tappity-tap to fill in the fields in the registration form, select a template, dash off an article or two on what they had for dinner and skyrocket to Number One On Google. Everybody wants to be the next Scoble (or whatever). Don't worry, the podcasters all want to be Adam Curry (much to Dave Winer's dismay); the real-estate agents all want to be Donald Trump; the investors all want to be Warren Buffet; the programmers all want to be Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds (depending on whether they want to be rich and famous or just plain famous).
Of course everybody wants to be just like those heroes and anti-heroes that epitomize and characterize their environments. That's normal. It's OK to wanna be cool. And part of being cool is being you. I know, I know, it's trite (oops, I missed that adjective up there in the rant about crap) but it's so true: who is Bill Gates like? Who did Michael Jordan copy? Do they have heroes? Sure! But they didn't rush out to try to be carbon copies of whatever they thought was the best thing since sliced bread.
I just watched a video of Seth Godin presenting at Google. In it he talks about making a remarkable product as being the first step in a marketing campaign. Of course, we're talking about blogs (or are we?) but the same principle applies: if you want people to make remarks and tell their friends to go and read your blog, you need to be remarkable. It's sort of like getting a girl to go with you to the dance in high school. You need to be remarkable if you want people to notice you. Truism after truism.
I would like to segue briefly here into a comment about attention. It's not enough to get attention, you need to get the kind of attention you want. I was talking to a friend recently and he mentioned that (verbally at least) I am able to hold people's attention for a lot longer than most. I credit this to the incredibly competitive environment at the dinner table in the house where I grew up. I am the eldest of three sons and if you are the eldest of your siblings, you know what it is to need to fight for that spotlight. I employ a range of techniques to keep people's attention and none of them involve brutally assaulting my listeners verbally or physically. I do things like only pausing for breath at a place in my sentence where I know that everybody wants to hear the end; raising my voice just enough to be heard and then lowering it again as attention focuses on me, rewarding my listeners by not continuing to bludgeon them with a loud, crass delivery of my idea(s); shifting my physical position to be in more people's line of sight or so that there are less obstructions between me and my listeners - every person in the vicinity not listening to me is not only not a part of my audience but may even begin to sabotage me by luring other listeners into separate conversations. What I'm getting at here is that throwing big temper tantrums and gesticulating wildly will make people sidle quietly away to talk to me until you are left with only the most spineless of people standing around you desperately trying to finish their drinks so they can escape to the punch table before you start another long-winded story. Or maybe that's me...
OK, so what's the bottom line here? Well, if you really want people to read your crap (I know I said I wouldn't explain how just why but this is my blog so...) they need to really know you. I remember when I first got into podcasting and I listened a lot to this one guy who was rude, crude and whose podcast was really just him blabbing around a couple of pieces of "underground" hip-hop and techno music. I fast-forwarded through the music. What I really liked about this guy was:
I identified, ultimately, with how crappy this guy was - there was something so human about it. Adam Curry, in contrast, with his silky voice (run through 18 compressors) and his trailers (recorded by adoring fans and mixed on donated software from companies hoping for a plug), seemed more of a confection than anything else.
So, at the end of the day I just want to read a blog, written by you, to me, for us and our friends. If you can slip in some stuff that only we know (it's like a club) or that I don't know yet ('cause I still like to learn - even when I'm killing time reading my friends' blogs) then that's a real bonus. But really, please, just be you and I'll be me, and hopefully, because we're friends, we'll actually have something to say to each other.
Update: After posting this I realized how huge that first item in the list is. This is both because I am being clever (see Ma, no hands) and because it is really the most important. I like it raw.
The reason is pretty simple (as all good reasons are in hindsight): they are users. There are no "users" reading my blog. There never will be. And this is really the crux of the whole revival-of-the-cult-of-personality-but-on-the-web thing. Unless your audience feels they have a personal relationship with you, they won't read your blog. I read all of my friends' blogs (if you are my friend and I don't read your blog, please send me a link to it). Why? Because even if the crap they write is boring, pompous, puerile, silly, humiliating, myopic and self-centered it's familiar crap. There's something about the odour that reminds me of that person. It's probably why you're reading this right now.
The majority of people writing blogs are doing it for their personal acquaintances. The "long tail" of blogdom is the really real world. You all know where I work, what I do, what my hobbies are and so on. Because you care about me. If you didn't, you wouldn't be reading this. What causes so many broken hearts (and wasted electrons) is that a huge number of bloggers sort of expect that they will clickety-click over to blogspot.com, tappity-tap to fill in the fields in the registration form, select a template, dash off an article or two on what they had for dinner and skyrocket to Number One On Google. Everybody wants to be the next Scoble (or whatever). Don't worry, the podcasters all want to be Adam Curry (much to Dave Winer's dismay); the real-estate agents all want to be Donald Trump; the investors all want to be Warren Buffet; the programmers all want to be Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds (depending on whether they want to be rich and famous or just plain famous).
Of course everybody wants to be just like those heroes and anti-heroes that epitomize and characterize their environments. That's normal. It's OK to wanna be cool. And part of being cool is being you. I know, I know, it's trite (oops, I missed that adjective up there in the rant about crap) but it's so true: who is Bill Gates like? Who did Michael Jordan copy? Do they have heroes? Sure! But they didn't rush out to try to be carbon copies of whatever they thought was the best thing since sliced bread.
I just watched a video of Seth Godin presenting at Google. In it he talks about making a remarkable product as being the first step in a marketing campaign. Of course, we're talking about blogs (or are we?) but the same principle applies: if you want people to make remarks and tell their friends to go and read your blog, you need to be remarkable. It's sort of like getting a girl to go with you to the dance in high school. You need to be remarkable if you want people to notice you. Truism after truism.
I would like to segue briefly here into a comment about attention. It's not enough to get attention, you need to get the kind of attention you want. I was talking to a friend recently and he mentioned that (verbally at least) I am able to hold people's attention for a lot longer than most. I credit this to the incredibly competitive environment at the dinner table in the house where I grew up. I am the eldest of three sons and if you are the eldest of your siblings, you know what it is to need to fight for that spotlight. I employ a range of techniques to keep people's attention and none of them involve brutally assaulting my listeners verbally or physically. I do things like only pausing for breath at a place in my sentence where I know that everybody wants to hear the end; raising my voice just enough to be heard and then lowering it again as attention focuses on me, rewarding my listeners by not continuing to bludgeon them with a loud, crass delivery of my idea(s); shifting my physical position to be in more people's line of sight or so that there are less obstructions between me and my listeners - every person in the vicinity not listening to me is not only not a part of my audience but may even begin to sabotage me by luring other listeners into separate conversations. What I'm getting at here is that throwing big temper tantrums and gesticulating wildly will make people sidle quietly away to talk to me until you are left with only the most spineless of people standing around you desperately trying to finish their drinks so they can escape to the punch table before you start another long-winded story. Or maybe that's me...
OK, so what's the bottom line here? Well, if you really want people to read your crap (I know I said I wouldn't explain how just why but this is my blog so...) they need to really know you. I remember when I first got into podcasting and I listened a lot to this one guy who was rude, crude and whose podcast was really just him blabbing around a couple of pieces of "underground" hip-hop and techno music. I fast-forwarded through the music. What I really liked about this guy was:
- How raw he was: there was nothing polished about his performance (lots of "ums" and "ahs" and plenty of swearing), his podcasts (plenty of snap, whistle and pop) or his distribution (a simple RSS feed without much around it)
- He came from Montreal (yay locals!)
- He talked about the shit going on in his life and made me feel his pain
I identified, ultimately, with how crappy this guy was - there was something so human about it. Adam Curry, in contrast, with his silky voice (run through 18 compressors) and his trailers (recorded by adoring fans and mixed on donated software from companies hoping for a plug), seemed more of a confection than anything else.
So, at the end of the day I just want to read a blog, written by you, to me, for us and our friends. If you can slip in some stuff that only we know (it's like a club) or that I don't know yet ('cause I still like to learn - even when I'm killing time reading my friends' blogs) then that's a real bonus. But really, please, just be you and I'll be me, and hopefully, because we're friends, we'll actually have something to say to each other.
Update: After posting this I realized how huge that first item in the list is. This is both because I am being clever (see Ma, no hands) and because it is really the most important. I like it raw.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Pivot points
I just completed a webservice that calculates pivot points for major FX pairs. Try it out with USDJPY. The data backing it is downloaded and cached from Forexite Ltd. You can swap the symbol in the URL for different sets of pivots. You can also append
.txt or .html at the end of the URL to specify the output format - the default is HTML.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Foreign Exchange
Over the Christmas holidays I discovered forex trading. This is the practice of buying and selling large amouints of foreign and domestic currencies and speculating on changes in the price. I have spent much of the last several weeks reading books on the subject of technical analysis and accumulating a small hoard of resources to help me understand how to trade. I have opened a demo account with Alpari, a russian forex site (don't worry Mom, they don't have my money yet) and am attempting to learn how to play with the big boys.
I have started a blog to track my trading progress. You can watch my progress as I battle my way through a $1.5 trillion market.
I have started a blog to track my trading progress. You can watch my progress as I battle my way through a $1.5 trillion market.
Friday, January 06, 2006
An email address for every site
I wrote this advice to a friend on the topic of alternate email addresses used to sign up at various sites:
By the way, a cool trick that I picked up somewhere is to register an account at http://www.cjb.net. You pick a subdomain of cjb.net (like joeblow.cjb.net) and then they redirect any email that goes to@joeblow.cjb.net to an email address of your choosing. So what I do is I have ilowe.cjb.net and every time I sign up somewhere, I give an address that encodes the name of the site I am registering on (for example yahoo-groups@ilowe.cjb.net). This has two benefits: first, I don't have to give out my real email address; second, if somebody starts spamming me using one of the addresses, I just add a filter to my mail client to kill that particular address and continue along my merry way. That way I don't have dozens of sites pointing to one "junk" email address that I need to log into every once in a while to clean out.
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