I love Python. These days, I do almost all of my coding in Python, and what little I don’t, I do in Bash. Since I started hosting my python scripts on GitHub I got a bit more conscious about the way my code looks. I pay more attention to descriptive naming and proper commenting, but I think I still have some work ahead of me, before my code become PEP-8 compliant. In the meantime, I have a command-line python script called pytemplate that generates a new python file containing pre-configured information like file name, author name, email, license, etc. Optionally, pytemplate will also create a git repository for your script. Read the Readme for details on how to use pytemplate.
Filed under: cli, python | Leave a Comment
Tags: git, python
I’m old enough (37) to have known what it was like to use snail mail (handwritten pages, envelopes and stamps) as the default mode of personal long-distance communication. It seems archaic now, but I used to love writing/reading sending/receiving letters. There was joy in it for me, to get sheets of paper, find a pen, sit down and start writing a letter. Writing a six-page letter (A4 paper), front and back, was my usual “Hey, just wanted to say hi” length of letter, and people loved it. They said it was fun reading my long letters. Other times when I had more to say, things on my mind that need expressing, a letter from me could easily become twice to three times that long. I enjoyed writing. And then folding the papers and putting them in an envelope. Writing my friend’s/brother’s/sister’s/mother’s name and address on the envelope. Taking the envelope to the post office and paying for a stamp(s) to be affixed to the upper right-hand corner of the envelope. Watching the stamp(s) get rubberstamped, and seeing my letter being tossed in the outbound bin.
I loved it. Every step of it. Now with emails, I can barely find the time or inclination to reply emails, let alone initiate one. Putting together a 2-line email to friends or family feels like a chore now, yet here I am writing this multi-paragraph post to complete strangers on the internet. I’m all keyboard now, and only ever use a pen to sign stuff or scribble notes or a quick flowchart. I don’t know why this is so. Do you?
And speaking of emails, I’m told that’s becoming dated too, in terms of preferred mode of communication. I’m told, most of the “youth” today are not even old enough to have used email in their everyday communication. Can it be true? Is it all SMS, IM, tweet and chat now? Is that the way of it? Well, consider someone who was born on 9/11 would be 11 years old this year. Are my grandkids (assuming I manage to pull of finding someone to make *kids* with, first) going to ask me “Grandpa, did you used to write emails? What was it like, having to do all that typing?”
The other day, a colleague asked me if I was watching the second season of A Game of Thrones. I told her I had read books 1-5, and found the second season of the TV series had heavily deviated from the original story, so much so that I refused to watch that nonsense, and instead decided to just wait for books 6 and 7. She said she didn’t read. I love libraries. Deeply. I’ve always loved reading. As a kid I would easily read a 700-page novel in 3 days. Take down 2-3 of those in a week, depending on how riveted I was by the stories. But books seem to be disappearing and everything is going tablet/phone/e-reader. I love the new book smell. The old book smell. The textures of different types of pages. I might have become less verbose with my emails, but at least I still find it in me to ramble endlessly on the internets.
And I still read, though not anywhere near as much and as fast as I used to. Less time. Shorter attention span. So many bits and snippets to read on the web today. Skip lines, breeze through, get the gist of it, then move on. (TL;DR!) RSS feed backed up to three weeks ago.All those open browser tabs. The unread emails. Mark Folder Read. And none of it smells like adventure, or intergalactic battle, or dark mystery. It’s all 1s and 0s now. Digital information deluge at the speed of thought. Variable font styles encased in banner ads, drowning in pagination horror.
What am I going to tell my grandkids. Will they even be able to relate?
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Tags: backintheday, internet, letter, mail, nostalgia, progress, random, technology, writing
Mighty Mouse
(Click to for large version)
My mouse, the Logitech Trackman Marble. I’ve had this device for two years now and it has vastly improved my pointing device UX. It stays completely out of the way, no pick-up-and-shift-pick-up-and-shift clack-clack-clack, no distracting red laser. Just silent efficiency. I love it. Picture taken with my Nokia N900 using Solarize effect (installed BlessN900).
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Tags: mouse, n900, photo
CrunchBang Linux (with the Openbox window manager) comes with a wallpaper browser and setter called nitrogen. I won’t go into any detail of how to use nitrogen, because I feel its menu is straightforward enough for even a beginner to use without any difficulty. Instead, what I want to talk about is how to use alphabetic sorting with nitrogen.
Continue reading ‘Getting nitrogen to sort the image listing alphabetically’
Filed under: Uncategorized | 6 Comments
Tags: crunchbang, nitrogen, openbox, wallpaper
I need everything to be just where it’s supposed to be, when I’m working on my CrunchBang netbook. I use the Openbox version and absolutely love it for it’s light weight and high configurability.
With any given window manager or any given desktop environment I like to have my daily used apps and windows always on the same desktop/workspace. Usually, I’ve got at least four desktops. Right now I use three desktops in Openbox on my netbook.
Continue reading ‘Set default desktops for applications in Openbox’
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How to autohide your tint2 panel
As you can see from the screenshots I’ve posted so far, I use CrunchBang with the Openbox window manager. The panel that comes with CrunchBang+Openbox is known as tint2, which according to the project’s homepage is “a simple panel/taskbar unintrusive and light (memory / cpu / aestetic)”. I love this combination of CrunchBang+Openbox+tint2. The default setting of tint2 in CB is “always on top”. In this post I’ll show you how to autohide your panel. I personally prefer “always on top”, but maybe some of you like your panel to autohide? Only just yesterday, someone in the Statler group on identica asked if anyone knew how to autohide the panel.
Filed under: dewm | 4 Comments
Tags: autohide, openbox, panel, tint2
This latest episode in Canonical’s blatant attempts at discrediting GNOME and pulling away contributors/supporters marks (see what I did there?) yet another low point in Canonical’s role in the FOSS community. And in Canonical’s case, I use the term “FOSS” loosely. Canonical is like that one kid in kindergarten that just does not get along well with the other kids, and often throws a fit and takes his ball and stomps home when they refuse to play by his rules. Shuttleworth in his latest anti-GNOME blog post makes a series of unsupported claims, and I sincerely hope the FOSS community at large is able to see through his smoke and mirrors.
Filed under: opinion | 3 Comments
