ForTheScience.org

Git stash size in the command line prompt

Stefano Borini — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:42:08 +0000

Too often I get confused with git when it comes to stashes. I tend to stash often, as I jump from a task to another or from a branch to another, but it already happened I forgot I stashed something. The stash grows and I don’t remember what each patch contains. Fortunately, I never really [...]

Can’t add widgets in Qt Designer? Don’t use Unity

Stefano Borini — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:53:05 +0000

I got around a problem in Qt designer that didn’t allow me to drop any widget. When I tried, I obtained the barred circle mouse pointer, instead of the plus. When dropped, the drop operation did not complete, and the receiving widget remained empty. Apparently, it’s due to some form of collision between designer and [...]

A good lesson in python and unicode

Stefano Borini — Sun, 05 May 2013 18:44:56 +0000

Ever wanted to understand more about unicode in python? This talk is a good explanation on how to deal with it properly

The modem dialup handshake analyzed

Stefano Borini — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:58:27 +0000

Those of you old enough to get internet connection with an empty can of beans connected to a string will probably remembered a coal-powered tool of the time, the modem. Its shrieks filled the beginning of an evening of bad GIFs, short web pages with <blink> tags, and plenty of telnet and IRC sessions. The [...]

Lack of usability in Gnome/Ubuntu

Stefano Borini — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 16:32:59 +0000

Maybe I should file a bug report on this, but it’s a nice example of lack of usability due to colliding needs: the need for a scrollbar in the terminal, and the need for window resizing. As you can see, the popup scrollbar always follows the mouse pointer, making it impossible to get the resize [...]

Telepresence robot: giving wheels to an iPad

Stefano Borini — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:17:43 +0000

I really love this thing. It is a telepresence robot with a stabilizer (similar to a Segway) which mounts an iPad as a “face”. I have no use for it, yet I’d really love to have one. Now imagine having a full exoskeleton version…

iSight stops working? Check google talk plugin.

Stefano Borini — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:54:22 +0000

Occasionally, my iSight stopped working, even in the middle of a Skype video session, with the camera in full control of Skype. Any effort to re-enable the camera failed with a “Camera in use by another application” message. I could not wrap my head around the issue, until I investigated a bit and I think [...]

Difference between mpiexec and mpirun?

Stefano Borini — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:24:03 +0000

A few days ago I started playing with MPI, and I started wondering: “what’s the difference between mpiexec and mpirun?” It turns out that the distinction is mostly historical. In the first MPI specifications, there was nothing defining how the executables should run. Implementors of the specifications created an mpirun executable, but each implementation had [...]

A pythonic way out of the GPL restrictions in MySQL client library

Stefano Borini — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:53:44 +0000

I recently became aware of this native Python package PyMySQL. The package has one important benefit vs. the other solutions to talk to a MySQL server, such as MySQLdb (AKA mysql-python) , namely, it reimplements the MySQL protocol, instead of binding to the MySQL connector library (also known as libmysqlclient). Why is this an issue? [...]

Problems with MacOSX and Java “Plugin disabled”? Here is the solution

Stefano Borini — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:17:51 +0000

Apparently today February the 1st something happened in OSX so that Java plugins stopped working. I found the solution on the OSX forums at Apple, courtesy of user Shirkan79: you have to invoke the following command (on a single line) sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete :JavaWebComponentVersionMinimum" /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.meta.plist and type your password. Reopen your browser and Java [...]