After almost a year long hiatus, I got my python program twitterblog to work again.
twitterblog lets me take a twitter time line and directly dump it into my typepad blog.
There were a couple of limitations of the original software, which are now fixed, and on top of which I added a couple of new features.
So the new features are the ability to specify the title from the command line with the –T option and the ability to specify an end time for a time line so you print out the tweets from 4 days ago, and only four days ago using the –e option.
I also fixed a bug related to how tweets that contained non-ascii characters were being treated. Normally twitter returns nothing but text, but if the text contains UTF-8, the rather simplistic parser I had would puke.
Now if I detect an error while parsing, I’ll do something semi-intelligent, but at least no longer crash.
Python continues to impress with it’s syntax and it’s wealth of libraries.
March 7th, 2010
Okay so they are virtual and not quite real, but hot-doggedy-damn.
I saw 8 CPU’s in Windows 7 viewer and that was just cool. Almost 10 years ago I thought it was super cool that I had an Octane as a workstation with TWO processors, and here I am with my new shiny laptop and it has EIGHT.
That’s cool.
March 5th, 2010
Twice this Olympics Scott Hamilton has been snarky.
First it was the Brian Boucher comment: Finally Brian gets his gold medal. Like really dude, we know you beat him. We know it. And yes we’re bitter as Canadians that Brian came in second twice.
Then it was the comment on Ice-Dancing: I’ve been around the sport of ice-dancing my whole career, but I’ve never understood it.
well at least that one I can get behind.
February 27th, 2010
The Olympic Quarterfinal women’s pursuit between Germany and the US produced the most amazing race.
The German racer, Anna Friesinger-Postma, bonked, pulled a muscle, who knows, but she was failing with one lap left to go. And then with no gas left in the tank she fell on the ice and hurtled herself towards the finish line.
She falls on the ice and slides into the finish line.
Convinced she had blown it for her team she was on the ice pounding her hand onto the rink in frustration. She didn’t even bother to look at the result, because she knew they had lost. She knew she had failed her team. And the team was also convinced that they had lost.
But no. She had managed to cross the line just before the Americans … And her absolute determination to cross that line at all costs had paid off.
From heaven to hell in 5 seconds.
February 27th, 2010
The Pew Research group created a survey that measured how close to being a millennial we all are.
The data the was the basis of the study is here.
http://pewsocialtrends.org/assets/pdf/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf
What I found amazing was that I was 87% millenial. Given that I was born 10 years before the millennial generation
February 27th, 2010
So I was curious to read about ski waxing. And I thought, well maybe there is some home-brew, anecdotal, crappy knowledge, but there isn’t any real science behind this.
Uh no.
There isn’t just some research out there, there is a body of research on the topic.
There is a field. I found this thesis which concentrates on a subset of the co-efficients that affect the performance of skii’s.
http://epubl.luth.se/1402-1757/2006/03/LTU-LIC-0603-SE.pdf
I’m sorry.
I didn’t realize. Waxing at the Olympic level requires a Ph.D..
The countries with the deepest research departments, and the best athletes have a decided edge.
Wow.
February 27th, 2010
How wonderful. The Figure Skating competition has, once again a controversy.
On the one hand, we have Plushenko executing maneuvers that no one else did, but was flawed.
On the other hand, we have Evan Lysacek who executed the maneuvers he could execute, perfectly.
And then the debate emerges.
Was attempting flawed stronger moves more valuable than executing safe moves perfectly?
The scoring encourage perfection at the expense of experimentation.
Which is unfortunate and sad.
But ultimately, winning an event is about optimizing for the rules that are presented to you, not to argue that the rules are wrong…
So I agree with Plushenko, but Lysacek deserved to win.
February 19th, 2010
This woman broke four ribs in a horrific accident.
She could have called it quits.
But nope, she didn’t.
She came in third claiming bronze.
With four FUCKING BROKEN RIBS.
I’ve broken a rib.
It hurts like a bitch.
The idea that she could compete at a level necessary to claim a medal, is unreal.
So I am a wimp. Petra Majdic is not.
February 18th, 2010
so the Canadian woman is in the lead. she has no chance of losing.
And the announcer says: in previous events we’ve seen how weird things can happen. All she has to do is focus. And you know not do what Jacobellis did.
Damn.
Poor Jacobellis. her life is permanently tied to a singular event with no hope for redemption.
I feel for her.
February 16th, 2010
I’m not an expert in figure skating.
I don’t understand the details of the sport.
But I do know greatness when I see it. Yevegny Plushenko put o a performance that was qualitatively better than anything I had seen before.
It was like greatness on ice.
And what was amazing was to hear the reaction of the announcers.
The announcer’s reaction was: Ah-ah-ah… aie – aie – aie ..
He was stammering …
The guy is a legend and is legendary.
February 16th, 2010
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