Browsing the blog archives for July, 2009

Two Kinds of Flaky

Jul 29, 2009
Product Reviews, Reviews

In March, I bought a pair of Logitech Cordless Trackman Optical trackballs. I love the ergonomics on them, even for FPS gaming. It only took a week or two to adjust from a mouse, and some minor forearm and elbow strain that came with extra long days at work went away.

Unfortunately, my work looked like it had crapped out yesterday when it prompted me to charge the batteries. I’m outside of the Amazon return period, but still under Logitech’s 5-year pointing devices warranty. As it turned out, I just needed to remove and insert the batteries like 10 times to get it to power on. Really, I think this could all be avoided by having a corded version of this product; I really don’t need the cordless features, but this is the only trackball that came close to having the features I wanted. If it were Bluetooth, I might not complain as much (since a separate transmitter wouldn’t be needed).

The secondary problem, as you can see in the video and picture below the cut, is that my mutant power is apparently acidic sweat. The outer coating of the plastic under where my palm, thumb, and index finger generally rest is bubbling and eventually peeling away.

Long story short, I love the design, but am very frustrated with the execution. I’ve asked Logitech in several places to develop a straight USB version of this device.

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Moon

Jul 26, 2009
Movie Reviews, Reviews

I saw the film Moon at the Somerville Theatre this afternoon. It is everything you want from a classic sci-fi story, in terms of addressing the human experience, using a futuristic setting. It also has modern production values, but without any of the empty action sequences typical of a major sci-fi motion picture.

Sam Rockwell is pretty much the only actor you see for the entire 100 minute run time, but Kevin Spacey lends his voice to the robot HAL GERTY, and its at times mysterious motives. There are some amusing moments thrown in, as well (being alone in space unsurprisingly makes you… interesting).

If you can, avoid watching the trailer. I think it’s better going into this film knowing as little as possible about it. Unsurprisingly, I found myself thinking of 2001 a lot, in particular the color palettes involved (lots of whites and greys). However, unlike 2001 or more recently a lot of the effect shots in Battlestar Galactica, sound was allowed for scenes on the lunar surface.

Definitely worth the price of admission (if you can find it, probably at your local arthouse theater, as it is in limited distribution).

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Satisfy MacPorts Dependencies Locally

Jul 22, 2009
Computers, How-Tos

Introduction

Like many Unix geeks, I have software installed that I’ve built manually from source. A good example is my post on compiling django; a number of the relevant dependencies were built in /usr/local/src/ and installed in /usr/local/. I also like using package managers, because if I’m not doing any customization (and the package is common and not hard-to-find), I want to just get the latest version and slap it in the right place. The conflict between the two methodologies is when a managed package depends on software that is already installed on your system, either part of the default configuration (OS X ships with a fair bit of Unixy software included, especially if you install the Dev Tools, although not always a “standard” or particularly recent version) or custom-built.

I recently dumped Fink for MacPorts; while I’ve used Fink for a long time, since an early version was available for Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar in fact, it’s just gotten in a messy state maintenance-wise. I’ve been familiar with apt since using Debian-based systems at the SCCS, but the mish-mash of binary and source items, the preponderance of out-of-date packages, and the apparent need to install 70 metric boatloads of GNOME just to satisfy a few dependencies was frustrating. Of course, MacPorts has its own weaknesses, as do almost all package managers; in particular, none of them seem to be able to track whether a package was installed explicitly by the user or merely to satisfy a dependency. My opinion is that the latter should get uninstalled when all of its dependents are uninstalled, but no package manager seems to agree with me on that. A rant on that probably merits a separate post.

Below the cut is a rough step-by-step guide to creating a local portindex and creating portfiles for your manual dependencies. Note that most MacPorts users would tell you this is a terrible idea, and you should just install all the port dependencies, but I already put the effort into these custom from-source builds and I just want to use them without duplicates getting dropped all over my hard drive.

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Tweetworks Python API

Jul 6, 2009
Code Projects

Tweetworks Python API

Version 1.0.0b1 of the tweetworks package for Python 2.6 is now available. This package implements the web service API for Tweetworks, a Web 2.0 service that facilitates threaded conversations on top of Twitter.

This is definitely a beta, because while I’ve tested everything I can think of, I haven’t tried writing anything seriously complicated with it, although I certainly plan to. Comments and questions are welcome here, or find me in the Tweetworks Developers group or as @UltraNurd. I admit that the documentation is a little light at the moment.

If you’re interested in using Tweetworks programmatically from Python, or want to know more about the service, read on.

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