Recent content on Misspelled Nemesis Club
Yes. Provided I share my name, date of birth, driver’s license, and inside leg measurement with every .com, .click, and their 1443 Harrys. 
 I’d prefer not to share those. 
 Can I privately prove I’m over age, on the Internet? 
 Maybe, eventually. 
 Let’s say I’m a visitor to your website. A law requires you to block access to under 16s, an “I am…
Summary 
 Ansible is weakly typed, but in particular variables set on the command line are stringly typed .
If a string is used in a condition (e.g. when: skip_build ) it leads to surprising results, because any non-empty string (e.g. "false" ) evaluate as truthy .
I recommend casting all variables in conditionals, or other calculations. 
 Prefer 
 - name : Some task 
 ...…
Regular expressions (regexes) are famously hard to read or write. There are
some techniques you can use to improve this. Like any other code you write,
your regular expression patterns should 
 
 include comments 
 break apart large blocks into smaller related sections 
 use named variables and identifiers 
 
 Verbose regular expressions, and named caputure groups…
Last week I ran three
 blind taste tests 
at a local meetup.
They covered cola, diet cola, and chocolate sandwich bars.
I wanted to find out what goes into running a taste test, how peoeple
react and to get some measurable results. 
 ] 
 My inspiration was a recent TV programme called
 “Eat Well for Less?” 
In the show families have their normal…
In Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Calc one can name a range of cells
and refer to the name in a formula. So rather than writing =SUM(C2:C7) 
one can write =SUM(SaleAmt) . Excel calls this a “Defined Name”. In Excel
2007 one can also create a
“ table ”,
which is a region of cells that store records and fields in the rows and
columns. The first row of…
I’ve hit a wall with this, so please take it and do with it as you will. 
 Mileage for Nothing 
 Sung to “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits 
 I.. Want.. My.. New.. E.. V.. 
Now look at them yo-yos that’s the way you do it 
You charge the batt’ries on the New EV 
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it 
Mileage for…
Last year in MPGe of an electric car 
I attempted to compare the
carbon emissions of the BMW Mini-E, and my own Ford Sport Ka. The result
was 212 g/km (30 MPGe) for the Mini-E charged from coal, and 172 g/km
for my Sport Ka (37 MPGe). In retrospect, the comparison was far too
rough to draw conclusions from. This post is an attempt to correct that.
This morning the Today…
Birmingham has a vibrant community of geek/enthusiast groups, of which
I’m proud to be a part. That said, it’s sometimes hard to find or even
know about all of them, without the right. So collected here are the
groups I know of: 
 
 Birmingham LUG 
 Linux User Group that meets at the University of Birmingham, on the
third Thursday of each month. Meetings are…
Does an electric car gets better or worse mileage than a conventional
petrol or diesel car? To a large extent, it depends on what we choose to
include or exclude in the calculation. We can measure the whole chain,
accounting for every step in the process of extraction, refinement,
transportation and use - a well to wheel model. Or more easily, and less
accurately, we can…
There are quite a few forums on the net for electric bikes, scooters,
motorcycles and cars. Mostly they cover early adopter issues, tinkering,
advocacy and DIY conversions. Here are the ones I’ve been drawn to: 
 
 Endless Sphere , A
lively forum with an emphasis on electric bikes 
 V is for Voltage Another lively forum
with many posts on scooters and motorcycles,…
These two messages appeared on the Spatialite mailing list today: 
 
 From: stefanobartol87453@gmail.com Subject:Where can I find an online
anti-virus that doesn’t install on your PC? I’ve got 5 PCs that I’m
trying to use to train disadvantaged young people. The problem is they
are riddled with viruses and a firewall blocks me from updating them.
The…
Petrol is fantastic stuff. It’s driven modern society, to the point of
defining it: dirty, but very effective. Petrol has been so popular
because of it’s convenience - as a liquid it’s easy to handle; and the
fantastic amount of energy it holds - about 10 kilowatt hours in each
litre. That’s an amazing amount of energy, in a very small space If…
LocalView
Intranet is a
web mapping product developed and sold by ESRI UK, predominantly to
local councils. The current version (as of August 2009) is 2.1 SP2,
supported on ArcGIS Server 9.2 SP5. The following are some straight
forward tips for improving it’s performance: 
 
 The ArcMap document (mxd) defining each map service is critical to
every aspect of…
Apologies if your email to me has bounced these last few days. My domain
was due for renewal, and neither I nor my calendar went bing. Everything
should be back now, if you’ve sent me something and I haven’t reacted or
replied please resend it.
To help you build and distribute your Python packges, Python provides
 distutils .
This library knows how to bring together your modules, where to put
scripts and how to compile C extensions. The process is driven by a
setup.py file, written by the package author or maintainer. Depending on
what argument is passed, setup.py can install the package, build an
archive or build…
If you’ve enjoyed PyCon UK the last 2 years, the
bad news is that it won’t be happening this year. The good news is
that EuroPython 2009 is coming to sunny
Birmingham instead, for 3 days from Tues 30th June to Thurs 2nd July and
 registration is now open . The
even better news is that until 14th March it’s really cheap , like 50%
off cheap making the 3 day…
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are by their nature data driven.
The data comes in a wide variety of raster and vector formats. Rasters
hold raw, continuous data recorded striaght from the real world. An
example is Satellite/aerial imagery, this is a commonly held in an open
format with broad support, such as
 GeoTIFF or
 GeoJPEG . Vector
formats 
hold refined,…
Investigating the performance of an intranet mapping website this week,
I was introduced
 MXDPERFSTAT . It’s a
fantastic tool for investigating map display performance. Given an
ArcMap document (a .mxd file) it runs ArcMap and loops over the map
layers, displaying each at a list of scales (e.g. 1:100000, 1:10000,
1:2500, 1:500) automatically. Scale cut-offs are…
Sending a sensitive file, one that should be encrypted, amongst Linux
and OSS geeks is doable. Most have heard of PGP, many have a GPG key
( here is
mine )
and some even use it. Sending an encrypted file to most people is a
non-starter. The software may be there (Outlook is S/MIME capable), but
the knowledge and the experience definately isn’t. Which is a…
A couple of years ago I tried to use ArcObjects, through
IronPython .
It didn’t quite work. Last week I tried again, using the newly released
IronPython 2.0. This time it worked better.
 create_sde_conn_file.py 
is based on CreateSDEConnFile.java, from Creating ArcSDE connection
files on the fly using Python and
ArcObjects 
on ESRI’s Geoprocessing blog.…
Here’s an email I received today: 
 
 From: meetYourmessenger <no-reply@meetyourmessenger.com>
Subject: You have (1) new message from Adam Hi alex, You have
(1) unread invitation “Hello :-)” from Adam at meetYourmessenger.co.uk
Click here Show the message in your temporary inbox at
meetYourmessenger.co.uk 
 
 I know an Adam on MSN Messenger, he…
I have no evidence, and it’s wishful thinking more than anything.
However, I predict that just before the expected release Microsoft will
reveal Windows 7 is to be a free upgrade for Windows Vista users. P.S.
If you have any trouble posting a comment to this blog, please let me
know on alex@moreati.org.uk .
Putting my timesheets in order today, I finally figured out how to make
Excel deal correctly with time durations. The default is to treat values
as a date/time, formatted as hh:mm. So a value such as 37:00 - meant as
a duration - is displayed as 13:00 (1 PM the following day). To correct
this, choose custom cell formatting, and enter the format as [h]:mm. In
OpenOffice Calc,…
Slashgeo have noted the release of Deep Zoom in
Javascript 
aka Seadragon , by Microsoft. Deep
Zoom 
allows one to deliver a very high resolution image over the web, with
pan and zoom. Only the portions viewed are download, so bandwidth usage
is minimised. Until now Deep Zoom was Silverlight only. It works
similarly to OpenStreetMap, Google Maps or Live Search Maps. A…
For months now, I’ve found Firefox on my Linux laptop to sometimes be
sluggish and a CPU hogging, particularly when scrolling. T-Mobile UK and
Engadget were the worst affected. Visiting t-mobile.co.uk saturated the
CPU for several seconds whilst rendering. The result looked horrible -
grainy, and badly pixelated. I’d attributed this to X, Nvidia, browser
sniffing,…
I couldn’t find a Python cheat sheet that I liked, so I made another. 
 
 Python cheat sheet 0.1 (A4,
OpenDocument) 
 Python Cheat sheet 0.1 (A4,
PDF) 
 
 It’s rough, but pretty usable. I need to make better use of
space/colour, choose a clearer font and link it into the Python docs.
The license will be either Python Software Foundation
License…
This post is a tribute to Linux
Hater who sadly
 has retired . He was
insightful and right about many
things ,
although sometimes a bit too
whiny .
Linux currently holds about 1% market
share 
on the desktop. It has gained 0.5% in 2
years ,
whilst Mac OS X has gained 3%, and MS Windows has lost 4%. In the
browser market Firefox is now nudging 20%…

 The XBox 360
( Xenon ), Wii
( Broadway )
and Playstation 3
( Cell ) all use
an IBM licensed PowerPC CPU. 
 The Ubuntu spell-check dictionary includes ‘SPARCstation’, but not
‘PlayStation’. 
 YSlow rocks. 
 Users of IIS should not believe the official
docs 
on HTTP Compression, instead go to Coding
Horror . 
 MythTV…
Backing up my home folder this weekend, in readiness for the Ubuntu
Intrepid beta I spotted some unusual path names scroll by: 
 ~/.local/share/applications
~/.local/share/desktop-directories
~/.local/share/gnome-do
~/.local/share/mime
~/.local/share/Mono Paint
~/.local/share/Trash
~/.local/share/tracker`
 
 It turns out that the hidden folders $HOME/.local/…
It’s been Five years since I moved to Birmngham, to begin work with
 Defence Estates . I’ve enjoyed my
time there, the people are fantastic and I’ve learnt much. It’s now time
to move on; I want to find new challenges and broader horizons. If
you’re looking for a DBA, a system administrator, someone skilled in GIS
support, or in application support…
In Fitts Law and Minimalism vs GTK+ and
Qt 
I complained about the excessive use of borders and padding in GTK+ and
Qt. Here’s what I’ve got so far (click for unscaled versions): 
 
 Although work in progress still, I think the window looks cleaner
already. Most importantly the chat history scrollbar now lies flush with
the window edge. To achieve this,…
Anybody who tried to register on this blog during the last 6 months or
so, would not have received an activation email. So many people will
have been unable to comment. If this has happened to you sorry for the
inconvenience. This Wordpress installation can now send emails, thanks
to the Configure SMTP
plugin by Scott
Reilly . If you have any problems, please
email me,…
It all started with the Pidgin chat window, which is surrounded by
several pixels of padding. To my eyes the padding doesn’t achieve
anything, it just wastes space and detracts from the clean, minimalist
lines of the Buddy List. After much fumbling, I managed to change it in
the Pidgin source code . Bug
6987 
with patch was duly filed. Now I’ve become obsessed,…
On 31st March the British Standards Institute (BSI) submitted an updated
vote of approval, on ISO 29500 (MS OOXML). The move surprised many,
myself included. In September 2007 the BSI had voted ‘No - with
comments’, attaching a long list of reasons. The response had been
prepared in the open over the web, using the BSI OOXML
Wiki . It was
applauded by many,…
My first ever LugRadio Live was LRL
2006 , which was the
perfect opportunity to pickup CDs of the then newly
released Ubuntu 6.06
LTS . My last ever LugRadio Live is
 LRL 2008 , which will be the perfect
opportunity to pickup CDs of the now newly
released 
 Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS . See you there,
July 19th - 20th.
Dear web 2.0 coolios, Please stop writing comment systems with
half-assed threading. I understand you had to replace all those icky
newsgroups on usenet, but you could have done a better job. Take a look
at Google
Groups ,
 Gmane . See how all
those conversations are nicely grouped together? See how nobody is
writing @previous_author? Please sort it out, because the…
The term “unlimited” has been stretched in various ways over the last
few years. Usually it’s been qualified, limited if you will, by some
undefined fair use policy in the small print. Well now those hidden
limits are getting aired. If you squint, Tiscali’s current TV ad admits
a 3 GB limit for their headline price. T-Mobile are very up front on
their…
By default the proprietary driver for Nvidia cards on Linux fires an
interrupt for every frame drawn on screen, whether it needs to or not.
This increases power consumption. To avoid this use version 100.14.19 or
later of the driver (the nvidia-glx-new package in Ubuntu 8.04 provides
169.12) and set OnDemandVBlankInterrupts to true in
 /etc/X11/xorg.conf . For…
Several events for me in the last fortnight converged almost perfectly
on a common theme 
 
 On Thursday 28 March The Register reported from an anonymous source,
that the British Standards Institute (BSI) would reverse their
vote 
on the proposed DIS 29500 standard from ‘No - with comments’ to Yes.
In response John Pugh MP, Liberal Democrat member wrote a…
My first UK Unix User Group conference and the first ever Postgres UK
conference ended on Wednesday. Both were successful, reactions I
overheard were good. Dave Page has a posted a
 wrapup .
My favorite talk of the conference has to be Software patents and open
standards by Pieter
Hintjens. His style was engaging and his words cleared my understanding
and opinion of…
For those who aren’t familiar, ArcSDE is server software that sits atop
a database to spatially enable it. The resulting geodatabase is able to
store geographic features (e.g. roads, buildings, endangered habitats)
along with more common SQL data types. ArcSDE can also store
georeferenced rasters such as scanned plans/maps or satellite/aerial
imagery. To load raster data…
I joined the property ladder 2 years ago, a nice prefab steel-framed
maisonette with only one problem - a minute builder-specified kitchen.
There was too little storage, not enough worktop space and critically no
room for a dishwasher. To the rescue comes the Candy
Trio 
 503 - a free
standing, all-electric 60 cm cooker with an integrated dishwasher. The
top half is a…
The UKUUG Spring 2008 and
first ever PostgreSQL UK 
conference are soon. The UKUUG conference runs from Monday 31st March
until Wednesday 2nd April, the Postgres event runs for 1 day on the
Wednesday. They’re both in
 Birmingham , at the
 Conservatoire . That’s the
same location that held the first PyCon UK, for those of you keeping
track. I’ll be…
Apologies to anyone who got email to moreati.org.uk bounced or a 404
over the last week. I’ve been moving hosting provider, from Dreamhost to
Webfaction and ironing out some finer points of DNS configuration - I’m
a DBA Jim, not a network engineer. Thanks to standards and open source
software information services are becoming interchangeable commodities,
like…
Thanks to a comment on the blog post Hacking
T-Mobile ,
I’ve discovered that the T-Mobile Web n Walk transparent proxy can be
 bypassed neutered. Assuming you use Firefox, here are the steps: 
 
 Install the Modify Headers 
addon. 
 In Tools -> Modify Headers, open the Modify Headers dialog. 
 Along the top row set the operation as Add, the name…
I’ll admit it, I’m cheap when it comes to telecommunication. I generally
look for the line rental refund when renewing my mobile and I hate
paying line rental to BT. Two years ago I moved house, outside the area
cabled by Blueyonder, who were great. First I tried Orange broadband,
which was free with my mobile phone. It was slow and the supplied router
was a bit…
Around 1992 my second computer was an Amiga
500+ , a lovely machine. It
beat the pants off any PC at the time, particularly for playing
Lemmings. Many Amigas used a television for their display, as a result
they could run at a super high
 interlaced resolution. This
looked awful and induced headaches. Interlacing is a fairly good
 compromise for television shows…
It is said there are 2 types of people: 
 
 Those who perform backups. 
 Those who’ve never lost valuable data. 
 
 This is wrong, I’m in a third, transitory group. I’m no longer in the
second group, but I’m not yet in the first. I resolve to join, once I
replace my ex hard disk - now a rattle. Embarrassingly, it took with it
my gpg private…
For the last week or so I’ve been putting together a spreadsheet, to
compare the various Python implementations on support of PEPs and
library modules. It is ready for a first release, but far from complete: 
 
 CPython 1.5 - 2.5 coverage is good. 
 IronPython 1.0 - 1.1 has library coverage 
 Jython only has release dates 
 PyPy has not been started 
 
…
At PyCon UK 2007 I gave a short talk on using
Python to deal with tabular data. The slides, demos and
modules 
for my talk are available for download. There is material in the
download that I didn’t present on the day. The talk covers extracting
data from various tabular data formats. This is the first step of an
 Extract, Transform Load
(ETL) 
operation. It…