November 2009 Archives

Continuing with my bridging efforts, after the flip, we have code to map a Java Set to their Pythonic equivalents.

On the jython mailing lists, a note regarding bridging of collections. After the flip, I have posted code regarding bridging of java maps and python dictionaries.

One of my most-linked-to-weblogs is Lifehacker. Two of the authors have written a guide to using Google Wave. If you have no friends on Google Wave, feel free to friend me and indicate that you obtained my contact info off my weblog.

A study of the media suggests that large swaths of the world are ignored when being covered and that this fact may explain how American missed the 9/11 planning.

Juan Cole points to the fact that news networks need to make a profit and that reporting from places like the Central African Republic are just not good for profits. I will posit a different thesis. The west fancies itself as having manifest destiny, which they have to bring to the clueless masses in dark continents. In doing so, they generally employ local people in said dark continents, who learn the language. When the occupiers are invariably thrown out, said traitors (to be perfectly charitable) often settle in the home countries. The legacy of colonialism manifests itself in large, unintegrated expatriate communities in the former coloniser (for example, North Africans in France or South Asians in Britain). As I readily point out, integration takes time. So, for fresh immigrants, they will want to know what happens in their old countries. The media, whether the BBC, or France24, will always find it easier to send fewer people who understand the local language (which tends to be a vestige of the former colonial occupier). Hence, you'll get the best coverage of Burkina Faso, a country to poor to have its own media setup for worldwide broadcast, from the French, not the British media.

Back to the subject line, why did America miss the buildup of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? First, Afghanistan has never been colonised by anyone for any lengthened period, so most of the western media didn't cover it. The Taliban's ideal predated the media, so they didn't fund it. Overseas Afghans are not a large group and don't tend to high places in the west. So, Afghanistan isn't on the media's radar. Since 9/11s preparation took place in Afghanistan, most of whatever clues there would have been missed.

The servlet specification calls for authorisation support, but doesn't give you the ability to interact with it (as far as I can tell). So, after the flip, I've put up a Python script to add users to your servlet engine and a sample servlet configuration snippet to support authentication. The authentication is taken care of by the servlet engine.

Kassourri has been after me to fix the comments on this weblog as he seems to want to leave a comment. I've fixed it. Kassourri, I expect you to have left a comment in the near future.

The above said, I thought I might outline how I fixed it. It is probably a bug in the movable type code, but I didn't feel like tracing through perl code to find the exact bug. So... I added Options FollowSymlinks to the VirtualHost container and set the appropriate symbolic link. I then ran a few tests with the various authentication schemes (OpenID, WordPress, and AOL IM) and it seemed it worked fine.

This afternoon, I received another telephone call from Paypal. So I went through their menu tree and spoke to John, who seemed to be at some sort of a call centre. We logged into my account and found that I had $61.11 that had been charged twice. I've contacted the relevant seller and we'll see what happens.

My favourite poem, by the (now deceased) Baron of Tennyson, is entitled the Charge of the Light Brigade and is reproduced, in its entirety after the flip. I have my ideas what the point of the poem is, but I won't share it, as I'd like you to make your own judgements. Feel free to leave them as comments.

Grand food, not-so-grand service, low prices. The server seemed distracted. Julio -- I take pains to get names -- took my order, then forgot one thing and served something I hadn't ordered. When I reminded him of the former, he informed me that they didn't get their salmon that day. This would have been better noted when the order was placed. He did serve me dessert, which I had not ordered. To Julio's credit, he took it back without question -- it didn't appear on the bill. Instead, he handed me a menu and raised his brows at me when I ordered a third tapas plate as if I were nuts. That look is not one I'm familiar with, nor expecting from waitstaff. So one star off for that, but the food more than made up for it.

I have received a voicemail from Paypal (or some outfit purporting to be them) regarding some account information. Caller ID shows that it is somebody in Omaha, Nebraska. When I rang the 866 number provided in the voicemail, the lady who answered asked for my phone number, which I gladly provided. She then asked for my email address. which I also provided without argument. She then claimed she could not retrieve my account information. Hmm... very interesting. She then verified the email address with me and she still could not retrieve it. So Sudha, was I a victim of phishing?

Abdullah-Abdullah, he reminds me of a wild west story
Growin up in northern Helmand
he's livin the life of a druggie lord
Oh... Abdullah Abdullah

One of the blokes from my toastmasters chapter suggested that soccer is not a violent sport. At which point, I told him to go to a Newcastle home game. It turns out that Mr Johnson does not need to fly overseas, as in his own country, college soccer can be violent.

It would appear that I've finally got Movable Type working properly on the correct hostname. To run the setup wizard, you'll need to first configure your blog under its primary virtual host. After things are setup, you change the configuration file back to what it should be. Restart your web server and things should be working. If not, feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to help you figure it out.

It is also helpful to enable mod_rewrite and have redirection rules like the following:RewriteRule ^/mt.cgi http://blogvirtualhost.com/mt.cgi -- for all the .cgi files in your installation.

Here's where all the photos, videos, and anything that's not code will go. Basically, I've taken Gary Vaynerchuk's suggestion and am trying to keep my personal and professional life separate.