Link

Cool site for photographers: iStockPhoto (http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php)

linking mailto: to GMail

As a GMail user it’s annoying to click on a mailto: link and have thunderbird or evolution startup. So a quick Google search yielded this Firefox extension: WebMailCompose.

It works with many of the popular web mailers including: GMail,
Yahoo!, SquirrelMail, and others.

Here are some of the screenshots (provided by the author):

building rpms without being root

I got tired of having to become root to install a src.rpm and to build it. Turns out a little magic in $HOME/.rpmmacros will do the trick. Do the following:


mkdir -p $HOME/rpmbuild/{BUILD,RPMS,SOURCES,SPECS,SRPMS}
echo "%home %(echo $HOME)" >> $HOME/.rpmmacros
echo "%_topdir %{home}/rpmbuild" >> $HOME/.rpmmacros


Now when you install a src.rpm it will go to $HOME/rpmbuild/ instead of /usr/src/redhat/.

That’s it.

python

I think I found my new favorite programming language: Python. After 10 years of Java, Python is quite refreshing.

Here are what I like and dislike about the language.

Like

• typesafe without having to declare types
• proper amount of verbosity i.e. if not valid instead of if !valid.
• indentation forces a common coding standard
• the fact that objects can be treated as maps (dict in python parlance)

Dislike:

• the lack of a marker to end a block of code i.e. }, end, fi, etc.
• lack of semi-colon (;) while it’s optional it looks stupid with other python code, but not using it makes it hard to switch between languages.
• passing self to methods

All in all Python is kickass. Now perl SUCKS!

frustrations…

Today was frustrating so I left early (2:30pm). It’s 10:44pm and I’m still a little peeved. Time to go play some Xbox to relieve some of the stress.