Comments for Mithro rants about stuff

Comment on Network Manager - Autostart VPN by sam

sam — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:07:44 +0000

Not really hard:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-networking-3/openvpn-client-682343/

Comment on My three weeks on a Mac by Pierre Phaneuf

Pierre Phaneuf — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:35:46 +0000

The sluggishness of the password box is a Google thing. I also occasionally have to switch to a console and kill off the screen saver dialog box on my Linux workstation, because it goes completely dead on occasion. My Google laptop tends to “beachball” a lot more than my other Mac, so while I don’t really know what’s up, there’s definitely something fishy.

The trash is also idiotic in other ways, like when you empty it, but it tells you a file is in use. Just unlink the damned thing and forget about it, will you?

Weirdly enough, a lot of Unix/Linux hackers are annoyed by the way applications are a first-class entity, rather than windows, but I like the Mac way better. I thought of hacking my window manager to simulate that based on the WM_CLASS property more than once, but I tend to be okay. When I use a Linux box, I often end up using workspaces in that way.

Comment on Network Manager - Autostart VPN by Cougar

Cougar — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:37:58 +0000

I couldn’t get nm-startvpn running under opensuse 11.0. It gives me error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/local/bin/nm-startvpn”, line 29, in
print interface.getVPNConnections()
File “/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/proxies.py”, line 68, in __call__
return self._proxy_method(*args, **keywords)
File “/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/proxies.py”, line 140, in __call__
**keywords)
File “/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/dbus/connection.py”, line 607, in call_blocking
message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: Method “getVPNConnections” with signature “” on interface “org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.VPNConnections” doesn’t exist

However, I changed 02runcmd so that is just starts/stops openvpn and this works fine

#! /bin/sh

case “$2″ in
up)
/usr/sbin/rcopenvpn start
;;
down)
/usr/sbin/rcopenvpn stop
;;
esac

exit 0

Comment on eagle2geda Symbol Converter by mithro

mithro — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:39:01 +0000

There is a typo in the version that is uploaded it should be “P.name” not “S.name”.

I have however mostly abandoned this converter. I don’t have time to work on it and have used neither eagle or gEDA is over a year. Feel free to do what you want with it.

Comment on eagle2geda Symbol Converter by andrew

andrew — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:52:13 +0000

Hi Mithro,

I was very impressed to see your eagle2geda converter. I can’t get it to work though, I get the error that the symbol “S” is not found. Is this because I am running the script in the wrong window?

Comment on My three weeks on a Mac by mithro

mithro — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:18:31 +0000

Actually that was exactly what I was complaining about. In Windows/Linux I can just use Alt-Tab to get to any window, with Mac I have to use two keys to do the same thing!

Comment on My three weeks on a Mac by Ryan Neufeld

Ryan Neufeld — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:09:26 +0000

I won’t go into a big fanboy rant here (since I’ve been using my mac for a month or two now and lvoe it) but here is a tip: command-tab (alt-tab) cycles between programs, and command-~ cycles between windows of an application.

Comment on Cool Python, Swaping two variables by Evan

Evan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 01:20:23 +0000

Hah, yeah I love that trick.

I’ve heard that it isn’t uncommon in interviews for them to ask a you do do something like “Swap the values of 2 variables without using a temporary variable.” I’d love to see their reaction if someone just wrote that down.

Comment on I will survive… by Ryan Neufeld

Ryan Neufeld — Tue, 27 May 2008 04:06:06 +0000

Oooh, I’m so jealous. I always love to hear anything about the internal goings on of google. Its neat to hear that not only do they just provide free food but other, more job-relevant perks, like open access and great tech support.

I can also feel for you with the jetlag. Yours may be a bit more extreme though, nothing like forcing yourself to stay up for days on end just to adjust. Please do blog more about what happens in and around the googleplex, I’d be interested to hear anything you are allowed to say to outsiders.

Comment on “rock” verses “rocks” by Warren

Warren — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:24:00 +0000

If you find something logical out, let me know, as far as I am concerned it is just an arbitrary rule.