Kernel logs were showing that VirtualBox was segfaulting. I decided to take a look at the VBox.log for the vm and I found this:

00:08:38.967 VM: Raising runtime error 'PAEmode' (fFlags=0x1)
00:08:38.967 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'FATAL_ERROR'.
00:08:38.967 Console: VM runtime error: fatal=true , errorID=PAEmode
message="The guest is trying to switch to the PAE mode which is currently
disabled by default in VirtualBox. PAE support can be enabled using the
VM settings (General/Advanced)"

I then went into the advanced settings and turned on PAE. As soon as I did that the problem was solved and the VM booted without an issue.

Note: the same result can be used by using one bridged interface to a physical network interface. However, I prefer to do it this way as I’m using a laptop and I don’t know at what point I’ll be using a wired, wireless or 3G connection. The following config will always work irrespective of where you are. That said feel free to detail any experiences of alternative methods in the comments.

The following assumes you are using Linux as a host.

The process is very straightforward if you already have a linux VM or if you are creating one from scratch the process is essentially the same note if you are doing this prior to installing an OS the only thing to note is which interface should be your primary interface. In most case this should always be the NAT adapter. Here’s a screenshot showing the dialogue you’ll see when installing JEOS as an example.

All you need to do is access the settings when the guest is off and add a second network interface to the guest. By default you should have one interface already which is using NAT. This should be left alone as this provides access to the internet. Select the tab “Adapter 2″ and change “attached to” to “Host-only Adapter” this will have the name vboxnet0 by default.

Once that’s set, boot the Guest image.

Once booted; from the console of the guest VM you’ll need to set-up the configuration for the second network interface in this case “eth1″ as we already have “eth0″ defined. To do this all you need to do is edit /etc/network/interfaces to add the eth1 configuration.

This is a simple as adding the following lines based on our vboxnet0 is configured to 192.168.56.1 (based on running ifconfig on the host.

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
    address 192.168.56.10
    netmask 255.255.255.0

Save this and then run the following to fire up eth1:

sudo ifup eth1

Note: If you haven’t already installed openssh-server now would be a good time to do so! sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Now you can drop into the terminal and ssh into your VM e.g:

ssh jeos@192.168.56.10

That’s it.

Birth of our third child

The most incredible thing that happened in 2009 was the birth of our beautiful daughter Molly in January. It’s been amazing this year watching her grow from being a tiny baby to having her own personality. Judging by how determined she is I’m sure she’s going to keep her Mum and Dad very busy over the coming months.

Project Fondue

Project Fondue a side project with former colleagues Ed Eliot and Cyril Doussin kicked off properly at the beginning of 2009. We released several utility sites such as Favicon Generator, Unix Permissions Calculator and reStructuredText API app. We’re busy working on new and exciting things for 2010 so expect to see those announced over at the Project Fondue blog in due course.

Switch from OSX to Linux

2009 was the year I switched from OSX to Ubuntu Linux as my primary OS. So far I’ve found it to be a wholly liberating experience and there’s very little I miss from OSX (apart from Together and Omnigraffle).

Linux has proven itself to be the most suitable OS for my needs and it’s made development very straightforward; mostly that’s thanks to the package management but also I really like to be able to use Gnu tools over their BSD counterparts as shipped with OSX without wrangling with macports and fink.

This year I’ve also taken the time to learn how to use vim properly as my primary editor. Textmate was great but I’m not held back at all by using vim and it comes with the benefit that it’s the same editor on my machine as it is on every server I work on. To see my vim config and plugins check out the following branch: https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~muffinresearch/+junk/dotvim

Another big part of using linux and open source software is that when something isn’t quite right or you want it to work in a different way it’s really easy to get involved and file a bug or create a patch for something. Using Linux you really come to appreciate this openness and I’ve found that because of this I’m tending to try and avoid using propriety software or devices powered by propriety software, for example when I get a new phone I’ll buy an Android phone rather than an iPhone.

In the hardware department the switch to Linux has meant it was time to say goodbye to Apple’s shiny machines with the exception of the MacBook Pro I’m currently running Ubuntu on at work. There’s no question that the Lenovo kit that I now use as my primary machine certainly appears to be far more robust/serviceable compared to anything I’ve used made by Apple. Though I’ll have a better idea of that in a year’s time as one and a half years seems to be the point at which Apple laptops start to break down from my experience.

Coding Projects

This year I’ve worked on quite a bit of code outside of my day to day work from the aforementioned Project Fondue apps to various libraries and modules. I’ve learnt a lot from working on applications that scratch an itch as it means you’re really driven to make that code the best it can be through using test-suites and re-factoring code to progressively move it forward.

In 2010 I plan to go back to any incomplete projects. Starting with my PyGTK Gmail notification app which is closely modelled on Google’s own notifer app for OSX (this will be up on launchpad in the new year). Having spent some time playing with PyGTK I’ve really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to finishing that and maybe working on some other GUI apps with Python.

I also want to revisit other projects that have fallen by the wayside and either finish them or take the decision to shut them down where they’ve either served their purpose or been superseded. I’m also going to try and release any code I’ve been working but not put out there so that it’s available for other people to use/adopt/improve etc.

If you’re interested in checking out my current list of released projects then see my launchpad page for more info.

Something else that needs more work is python-yql a project for being able to use Yahoo Query Language from Python. I’d really like to get interested parties involved in 2010 with a view to improving python-yql and building out the token storage backends, improving the tests and adding a good set of examples.

Another thing I’m going to look to find time for in 2010 is to finally get my blog moved over to Zine from wordpress. We’ve been using Zine on the Project Fondue Blog and it’s been a pleasure to use. I’ll hopefully also have a little spare time to lend a hand actually contributing to the Zine project itself.

Events

I’ve not had a chance to go to many events this year with the exception of Euro DjangoCon in Prague which was really good and above expectations. Sadly I missed out on heading to SXSW this year and I’m not going in 2010 at the moment. Though just maybe I will return to Austin for SXSW 2011 – I’ll start saving now!

I did get the chance to go to LugRadio Live 2009 for the first time which was a really good event with lots of interesting presentations and a hilarious live show. Whilst this was “the last ever LugRadio Live” there was talk of a similar event being organised by the people behind OggCamp next year so that’s something to look out for.

Hopes for 2010

Here’s a big slice of wishful thinking for 2010!

I’d really like to see something happen in terms of making it possible for Distributed version control systems to work together. More recently I’ve been spending a little bit of time using both Mercurial and git to be able to work on a couple of difference projects hosted on bitbucket and github. However, it would be so much better if I could more easily contribute to projects that don’t user bazaar (my VCS of choice) without having to use several different clients. I’m not totally sure what the solution is here — branch mirrors in several VCS formats is one possibility but doesn’t really address the need to allow easy contribution and this kind of thing almost encourages forking of code away from the development of the original project.

It looks like bazaar is making some good in-roads into having some degree of interoperability with other VCSs through plugins such as the excellent bzr-svn and bzr-git but there’s a way to go. Ultimately it shouldn’t matter what VCS you or I prefer to use. What matters is that we can contribute to each other’s projects. Anyway I’ll probably extrapolate my thoughts on this subject in a future post.

My Second big wish for 2010 is to see a proper Python SDK for android. Whilst the scripting environment is cool it reminds me a little of PyS60 which never really went anywhere. I’d really like to be able to build an app with a Python SDK – not sure that will happen though.

In conclusion

It’s been a good year and I’m very much looking forward to what will happen in 2010. Here’s wishing everyone a Happy New Year and all the best for 2010!

If you’re someone who uses a computer for a living then having a decent keyboard is a very worthwhile investment. Earlier on this year I bought myself a couple of US layout “customizer” keyboards from Unicomp (one for work and one for home).

Unicomp was founded in 1996 when they bought the rights to the “buckling spring” technology as used in the well-known IBM Model-M keyboards. The Customizer models are essentially modern manufactured Model M keyboards albeit with slightly different numbers of keys and of course a USB cable.

Having had these keyboards for several months now I’m really happy with them. They are just beautiful to type on. The only downside of getting feedback from every key-press is the loud click that accompanies every key-stroke. My colleagues are pretty much use to me clacking away each day but I probably only get away with it because there’s a large amount of background noise in the office. Ultimately though because you can feel when you’ve made contact with a key it should mean you end up typing a little lighter than you would with an inferior rubber domed keyboard.

That said for me I would find it hard to go back to a normal keyboard. Having recently had to use a machine with a rubber domed keyboard I found the lack of feedback made the keyboard seem lifeless.

The build quality is great – these keyboards are built like the proverbial brick outhouse. So if you’re in the market for a decent keyboard I would recommend taking a look at Unicomp keyboards, they’re not particularly expensive at around $69 and they certainly feel like they should last a lifetime.

Karl von Randow the author of Charles was looking into the issue following my bug report and after he’d been unable to reproduce the issue in a fresh install of Ubuntu Karmic with a Java Runtime downloaded from the sun site he suggested I do the same, as I was currently showing that I was running the OpenJDK java runtime.

This prompted me to do a little more digging as I prefer to only use packaged software where possible mainly for the big benefit of getting security and other updates as soon as they are made available.

On my system I had both the sun-java6-jre package as well as the openjdk-6-jre package installed.

To check which one you are using run the following command from the terminal:

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_0"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.6.1) (6b16-1.6.1-3ubuntu1)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 14.0-b16, mixed mode)

To fix the problem I used the following command to switch to the SUN java binary.

sudo update-alternatives --config java
# Enter password #
There are 2 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).

 Selection    Path                                      Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java   1061      auto mode
 1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java   1061      manual mode
 2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java       63        manual mode

Selecting 2 and hit enter and now the version is as expected.

$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_15"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_15-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 14.1-b02, mixed mode)

Running Charles again the windows that were broken now display correctly.

To log in and make changes over the CLI all you need to do is telnet to the ip address of the router and log in with the same details as you use on the web interface. If you don’t know the ip address of your router the easiest way to find out is to look at what the gateway is in your network settings. In my case it’s 192.168.1.254.

telnet 192.168.1.254

Once you are in you will see a welcome screen.

First thing to do is get the old setting so we can make an note of it in case we need to restore it in the future. This is available from the router’s web page or by entering the following:

:dns server route list

Which provides the following:

DNS Server       Source              Domain            Metric  Intf     State
87.194.255.155 *                                         1     RoutedEthoA  UP

Here my ISP Be only supply one DNS server address so I’ll make a note of the ip address 87.194.255.155. Other ISPs are likely to provide two entries. Keep that somewhere safe so if you want to go back to then old settings you can.

Setting the new DNS entries is as follows:

First clear the DNS entries

:dns server route flush

Next add the new ones

:dns server route add dns=8.8.8.8 metric=1 intf=RoutedEthoA
:dns server route add dns=8.8.4.4 metric=1 intf=RoutedEthoA

You can now check the settings by running this command again:

:dns server route list

Lastly save the settings.

saveall

That’s it – all that’s left to do is refresh the DCHP lease depending on which OS you are using. At this point you will want to check you are using DHCP otherwise you’re computer won’t be handed out the DNS settings correctly.

• Renew DHCP lease for Linux
• Renew DHCP lease for Mac OSX
• Renew DHCP lease for Windows

If you’re not already subscribed to the Project Fondue blog feed then I can recommend it, as there should be some interesting posts coming out of there in the coming months (yes I’m unashamedly biased!).

I’ll be honest; for a while I was quite dismissive of YQL thinking that if I was using those APIs then I’d query them directly rather than use a 3rd party abstraction. But then I saw a recent post from Christian Heilmann that touched on making YQL calls from the server that began to pique my interest. It made me start to think about all the data from the web that could be accessed from just some simple SQL-like queries.

So I decided in order to try out YQL I’d build a dedicated client library. This also provided me with an opportunity to explore OAuth properly as I’d need to make the client work with both Two and ThreeLegged Oauth so it’s also relatively straightforward to query Private tables from a web application.

The result is Python-YQL which you can install from PyPi with:

sudo easy_install yql

The documentation is available at http://python-yql.org/ and branches are available at Launchpad.net or you can get a branch with the following:

bzr branch lp:python-yql

Basic usage is along the following lines:

>>> import yql
>>> y = yql.Public()
>>> query = 'select * from flickr.photos.search where text="panda" limit 3';
>>> y.execute(query)

For details on more advanced usage see the docs at python-yql.org

Patches Welcome!

So go and check it out and kick the proverbial tyres. It’s early days and there’s bound to be some bugs and missing features but this is where you come in. I’ll happily expedite provision of fixes as they come in. Patches/Bug reports/branches are welcome!

Python Oauth2

For oauth integration, I started out using python-oauth until Cyril mentioned that Joe Stump had created a new oauth library based on various forks of the original python-oauth. Python-oauth2 provides an easy to use well-tested library that is a natural progression of python-oauth.

Once I knew about it I couldn’t resist switching python-yql over to using it. At the moment I’m bundling python-oauth2 as I needed to patch in support to to make it work with python versions < 2.6. However hopefully in due course this will cease to be necessary.

Future

There’s lots I can improve upon but for now I’m planning to spend some time using the library in order to work out what can be better. I’m thinking one of the first things I’d like to do is make what’s returned an object rather than just simply returning the data. This will mean that I can provide useful attributes such as the query that was called to return that dataset for example. This is now a reality.

The version in the trunk branch now returns a YQL object which provides a much more awesome API for accessing the data returned by YQL queries. This will be released as 0.3 and at that point I’ll update the docs. Until then here’s a taster:

>>> import yql
>>> y = yql.Public()
>>> res = y.execute("use 'http://yqlblog.net/samples/search.imageweb.xml' as searchimageweb; select title from searchimageweb where query='pizza' limit 3")
>>> print res
<yql.YQL object at 0xb77adc2c>
>>> res.rows
[{u'title': u'<b>Pizza</b> Hut'}, {u'title': u"Domino's <b>Pizza</b> -
Official Site"}, {u'title': u"Papa John's"}]
>>> res.rows[0]
{u'title': u'<b>Pizza</b> Hut'}
>>> res.rows[1]
{u'title': u"Domino's <b>Pizza</b> - Official Site"}
>>> res.query
u"use 'http://yqlblog.net/samples/search.imageweb.xml' as searchimageweb; select title from searchimageweb where query='pizza' limit 3"
>>> res.uri
u'http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/yql?q=use+%27http%3A%2F%2Fyqlblog.net%2Fsamples%2Fsearch.imageweb.xml%27+as+searchimageweb%3B+select+title+from+searchimageweb+where+query%3D%27pizza%27+limit+3'
>>> res.count
3

The good new is that this is already possible! I asked a question on Get Satisfaction and a Spotify employee Emil Hesslow answered straight away that this feature already exists. Here’s some examples:

• Check out George Benson’s guitar break: Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey 4:04
• A Nice hammond organ break from Greg Rolie: Toussaint L’Overture 0:46

You can also use the spotify protocol:

e.g: spotify:track:39Bi2scq80BWdgnxz2llWT#04:04

The format for the link is just a simple fragment identifier added to the end of the link in the format #mins:secs e.g: #4:04

From using this (I’m running Spotify under wine) I’ve found you need to URLencode this in the “http://open.spotify…” links for it to work so #4:04 becomes %2304%3A04.

The notes are available on slideshare.net

I’ve had to pull the presentation from slideshare.net temporarily – I’ll re-upload as soon as possible The problem at slideshare has now been resolved.