While working to add MetaWeblog support to my blog (not that I’m writing lots of stuff here and I need a ‘desktop blogging tool’ to increase my productivity) I found some very helpful links how to add this to a Django based blog. Greg Abbas wrote two tutorials on how to integrate XMLRPC into Django and Metaweblog and Django. Everything fine and dandy until I tried to integrate the XMLRPC part into my system. I’ve started with the ‘arithmetic’ example, but I got the following error message:

xmlrpclib.ProtocolError: <ProtocolError for localhost:8000/blog/metaweblog/: 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR>

It was strange for me to see that my previous play with XML RPC (used in another part of the system) didn’t work either. It worked on the production server, but not on my development machine. One of the major differences between these servers was that I was using python 2.5 on my dev server and python 2.4 on the live server. After I’ve google it around a bit, I found that there were some differences between the 2.4 and 2.5 implementation of xmlrpclib. If you check the release note for python 2.5 there is a small mention:

- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding 
arguments to constructors of SimpleXMLRPCServer and 
CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.

And incidentally, SimpleXMLRPCServer is used by both XMLRPC implementations.

The fix is pretty easy: add the missing parameters (allow_none – Bool and encoding – String) when you instantiate SimpleXMLRPCServer or any class based on that.

After fixing this, I still had to adapt my models to the Metaweblog API. Thanks to ecto‘s trial version, it wasn’t a very hard job. I prefer to write my posts in Textile so now I have to see how I can make ecto or other blogging tool to let me to that.

On December 2007, I bought my first laptop, a brand new MacBook Pro. A friend brought it to me from US. Since then, I replaced my home computer and my work computer almost entirely (I still have my work mail on the Linux workstation, and I don’t plan to move it on my laptop soon, and I didn’t transfer all the feeds I’m reading from aKregator to NetNewsWire).

After more then 2 months of daily usage, I wrote some notes on what I like/dislike on OS X vs Linux. Perhaps other Linux users that want a prettier user interface will make the switch to another Unix based OS.

Although, a couple of A-list programmers/bloggers/writers already made the switch back to Linux (Ubuntu, mainly), I will give this OS a try (at least the period needed to earn twice the money I spent on this laptop doing freelance jobs).

This photo shows the US layout, which I like compared to the European/Romanian layout. Read more of my notes in OSX vs Linux, two months report

Each month, on the first Sunday, a group of people meet to exchange books. This month, together with S I managed to attend to.

To some, it might look strange, why can’t we take them from the library or from friends? Because it’s not the same thing. You meat new interesting people and exchange opinions about books. Some love ‘Lolita’ or Garcia Marquez, other don’t bother to finish them. You’ll find new authors or genres to read, make new friends, explore new horizons.

I offered The Brethren by John Grisham and Three Man on the Bummel by Jerome K Jerome, and went home with The Hedonism Handbook by Michael Flocker and a book by Pascal Brukner for S.

Overall, a very entertaining meeting, I’m looking forward to go to next month.

Inspired by the pictures posted on decluttered I’ve reorganized the cables from my desk.

First, I’ve looked for an appropiate pegboard, which I found very cheap at a furniture wood deposit. Then, with help from Sergiu, I’ve made a grid of holes, rows and columns, 4cm apart.

The last part was to attach everything that was ductaped to the back of the desk to pegboard and find a way to mount the pegboard to the desk. For this I used two kinds of zip laces, longer ones for medium – big devices, and shorter ones for cables.

I will add two more devices, an external hard drive (Western Digital MyBook) and a wireless router (AirPort Extreme Base Station) next month.

Here you can see the before and after uncluttered desk pictures.

Caveats to Internet Explorer PNG transparency bug

.png_image {
  background: url('/img/some_image.png') no-repeat;
  z-index:10;
}

* html .png_image {
  background: url('');
  filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(enabled=true, sizingMethod=image, src='/img/some_image.png');
}

If you’re using the above hack to handle Internet Explorer 6 PNG fix, and you’re still seeing some light blue parts, check the following things:

• The name of the class is the same in all the places you’re using it (in the div or img tag where you need the image, the ”* html .png_image” class line and the ”.png_image” class line)
• The above CSS must be included in the HTML body/head using <style> tags. Do NOT include from an external file.
• The path of the image is correct in both CSS definitions.
• If you are trying to apply this hack to an <img> element, try to use a transparent pixel for <img> and set the png image from css. The image from img source is rendered above the image from css source.

P.S. When you’re writing code in textile, escape each paragraph using ”==”.

Legion of the Lost by Jamie Salazar

A story about life (or rather the first 2–3 months) in the French Foreign Legion written by an american guy.

I was curious to read more about the Legion, partly because I like reading action stories and partly because I wanted to see a glimpse of what a friend felt there. My friend joined the Legion 4 or 5 years ago, and unlike our hero from this book, served in Djibouti and other strange places and is still enrolled. I haven’t had the chance to speak with him much, but the other friends told me that he looked changed. His look was cold. Now I can see why.

What I liked about this book is the fact that our hero left a cosy place (his 9 to 5 corporate job) to do something wild. I didn’t like that he didn’t stay to finish what he started, though.

If you like army/war like action books, this is a nice book that would entertain you.

Forced by a small bump I passed with my bicycle last week, today I bought the last item left on the to buy list. From the first rides, I can say that riding this bicycle will be more comfortable than the previous one. That’s good, because I’d like to enjoy as much as I can the last things that can be considered workout.

Though, it has a small annoyance. When I start to pedal, there are some hickups. Probably some loose sprockets inside the rear hub. I’ll take a look one evening to see if I can fix it.

As my sweetheart said, real impressions about Sziget should be written 2 weeks after the festival ended.

Really really nice concerts (The Chemical Brothers, Hooverphonic, Manu Chao, Fanfara Ciocarlia) and really nice people (our Romanian neighbours, Alexandra, Cristi, Simi, Dog and their friends, our French neighbours, group 1 (the hot guys) and group 2 (Francois and friends), the Australian Paula and friends) is what I’ll remember with a smile on my face from this year’s Sziget.

This year I’ve noticed that there are many Romanians attending this festival. They are split in two big groups: cool guys (and girls) and “leave me alone, I’m too busy to talk with you, because I’m from Bucharest/Timisoara and you’re not, and you are not as cool as I am” groups. I’ve met people from both of them.

What I didn’t like this year was the weather and the fact that almost all the things were more expensive this year. The taste of money is sweet. :(

Evolution of ticket entrance price from 2003 to 2007:

• 2003 Daily 12 Eur, Weekly 75 Eur
• 2004 Daily 15 Eur, Weekly 80 Eur
• 2005 Daily 20 Eur, Weekly 100 Eur
• 2006 Daily 25 Eur, Weekly 120 Eur
• 2007 Daily 30 Eur, Weekly 150 Eur

More pictures from Sziget here: Sziget Festival 2007 Pictures or on Sziget Festival 2007 Budapest group from Flickr.

While dreaming at a new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for my home computer, I’ve taken the time to clean up the keyboard I use at my current workplace. Since I’ve used the first MS Natural Keyboards, a couple of years back, I preffered them to normal format keyboards.

It looked so dirty because I didn’t clean it since I have bought it 4 years ago.

One of the conditions for the new company I’ve wanted to work was to let me bring in my keyboard. The other one was to let me use my OS of choice (Slackware at that time, Gentoo now).

Many thanks goes to our colleague from Wroclaw, Hubert, for sending us two new hacky sacks.

We’ve been infected by this virus 2 months ago when the Wroclaw team gifted one hacky sack to Timisoara team through Sergiu. This was the only thing that managed to involve the whole programmers’ room.

It’s magic. When one of us want to play, almost always, everyone will stop working for 15 minutes and will join. It happens 2 times a day, once before lunch and once after. These are the joy moments of the day. That’s why we are waiting for more 4 sacks to arrive from Munich this week.

Long live hacky sacks.

Update: Using a much nicer picture made with Alex’s new camera.