archaelus

iCal, iSync, displayAlarms, so much hate

Tue, 20 May 2008 05:08:20 GMT

tell application "iCal" you FAIL AT LIFE!!!!111!!!one
end tell.

So. iCal refuses to sync properly, saying:

2008-05-20 17:02:17:870|iCalExternalSync|945|10a640|Miscellaneous| SyncServices precondition failure in [ISyncInstrumentedSession pushChangesFromRecord:withIdentifier:]: you can't change the record's entity name from com.apple.calendars.DisplayAlarm to com.apple.calendars.AudioAlarm in {
    "com.apple.ical.sound" = Basso;
    "com.apple.syncservices.RecordEntityName" = "com.apple.calendars.AudioAlarm";
    owner =     (
        "Event/p146"
    );
    sound = Basso;
    triggerduration = -1200;
}

As far as I can tell, all my display alarms are FUBAR and need to be purged.

Violently.

And believe me I've tried every icbu backup/restore, synchrospector munging, pull the truth, sync forcing trick I can think of.

Applescript to the rescue:

tell application "iCal"
	repeat with myevent in every event in every calendar
		set dispAlarms to count of display alarms in myevent
		if (dispAlarms) > 0 then
			log "Found event with display events"
			log (get summary of myevent)
			log dispAlarms
			delete display alarms in myevent
			log (get count of display alarms in myevent)
		end if
	end repeat
end tell

tell off corporation "Apple"
     if (you can't let me recover from sync errors without writing applescript) then
         castigate "Apple" with "You fail at life too."
     end if
end tell off

Tracking Erlang/OTP

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:58:42 GMT

I'm going to try tracking the Erlang/OTP source tree and the helpful posts on erlang-patches in my git repository. I already have to do this for macports - odbc still doesn't really build out of the box on Mac OS - and the main configure script needs a few --with-gd=/Library/DarwinPorts arguments for my idiosyncratic macports installation.

I also have a few odd patchsets, such as Ulf Wiger's gproc - an extended process registry for OTP systems that I hope will one day be included in the standard distribution.

Maybe I could add the EEPs as branches too.

2007-05-03 When should I write a gen_server?

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:14:49 GMT

I’ve been writing Erlang code for a little while now and generally stick to OTP style systems. I find that I have a subconcious set of rules for deciding what kind of process to build for particular tasks - below are some of the guidelines I’ve come up with. This list is incomplete and I’d greatly appreciate feedback on it.

Signs you should write a gen_fsm:
* Your process responds to the same message in (radically?) different ways depending on the current state.
* You need to manage a collection of timers that depend on what state the process is in.

Signs you should write a gen_server:
* Your process always reponds to the same message in the same way.
* You mainly do a request-reply (call) style operations
* You're going to give the process a registered name.
* Your process is not going to trap exits
* Your process will be long lived
* Your process will be started by a supervisor

Signs you should write a gen_event:
* You want to modify SASL log handling.
* ???

Signs you should write a plain old process:
* You don't listen for requests from other processes (except perhaps replies)
* You don't fit neatly into any of the other boxes
* You are a worker process that makes blocking requests to other processes
* The rules for starting or restarting the process are complicated.
* The process does a number of different activities during its lifetime

2007-06-23 lolcat

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 04:27:02 GMT

Ok, fine - I too have succumbed to lolcat syndrome....

Uploaded with Skitch!

Posted using LJ Talk...

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:34:26 GMT

There's a cat licking my head. (It's certainly weird, but oddly not as distracting from erlirc hacking as I thought it would be :)

2007-03-30 Age Pryor: Shank's Pony

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:19:14 GMT

Age Pryor just played a gig at Mighty Mighty to celebrate the release of his new album Shanks' Pony.

Age and co. played all the songs from the new album, some old favourites from Fly My Pretties and coaxed Tessa Rain up on stage for their ever amazing King Of You All. Go buy Shank's Pony - King of you all is worth it alone :)

Posted using LJ Talk...

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:14:42 GMT

It would appear you can post via jabber - neat :)

2007-03-13 Spreadsheets - not for banking

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 03:41:03 GMT

“Many see computing as word processing and spreadsheets. Sure, you can use a spreadsheet to build a financial module but not to build a networking system or a banking database.“ -- The Age
Yeah... you'd be surprised.
By way of explanation for the amount of spreadsheet ranting, I once had a job which involved spreadsheet archaeology - the reverse engineering of spreadsheet systems in order to turn them into web based systems. I had no idea a network drive full of linked spreadsheets could do so much.

2007-03-08 Privilege

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 04:56:24 GMT

I was recently invited to attend the inaugural Linux Chix NZ meeting and find this article on privilege very apropos.

It's a difficult article to read as a person who has many privileges, as it calls on you to think deeply about them and what you personally are doing to and for those without. I need to reread it, internalise it and do something about it.

2007-03-05 Neologism of the day

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 02:20:04 GMT

Oarsuk (adj): something that ceases to be impressive just as its impressiveness is being commented on.

2007-03-05 Google SoC Deadlines

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 02:03:23 GMT

Google have a list of deadlines for the 2007 Summer of Code:

• March 5: Mentoring organizations can begin submitting applications to Google
• March 12: Mentoring organization application deadline
• March 13: Google program administrators review organization applications
• March 14: List of accepted mentoring organizations published on code.google.com; student application period opens
• March 24: Student application deadline
• Interim Period: Mentoring organizations review and rank student proposals; where necessary, mentoring organizations may request further proposal detail from the student applicant
• April 9: List of accepted student applications published on code.google.com
• Interim Period: Students learn more about their project communities
• May 28: Students begin coding for their GSoC projects; Google begins issuing initial student payments
• Interim Period: Mentors give students a helping hand and guidance on their projects
• July 9: Students upload code to code.google.com/hosting; mentors begin mid-term evaluations
• July 16: Mid-term evaluation deadline; Google begins issuing mid-term student payments
• August 20: Students upload code to code.google.com/hosting; mentors begin final evaluations; students begin final program evaluations
• August 31: Final evaluation deadline; Google begins issuing student and mentoring organization payments

So to the NYC Lispers, the Yaws and ejabberd teams, and erlang hacking organisations in general: please submit mentoring organisation proposals - there are mentors and students who can't wait to hack neat code for you :)

2007-03-05 Programming Erlang

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:24:02 GMT

Joe Armstrong is writing the Erlang book I've been looking to buy since I started learning Erlang - Programming Erlang.

The other Erlang books are older and while they cover basic Erlang concepts well, they don't address programming with the Open Telephony Platform - the OTP in Erlang/OTP.

Joe's book sounds like it'll cover a very interesting set of topics:
1. Getting Started (extract)
2. Sequential Programming
3. Advanced Sequential Programming
4. Compiling and Running your Program
5. Concurrent Programming (extract)
6. Errors in Concurrent Programs
7. Distributed Programming
8. IRC Lite
9. Interfacing Techniques
10. Programming With Files
11. Programming With Sockets
12. Ets and Dets--Large Data Storage Mechanisms
13. Programming Techniques
14. Introduction to OTP
15. Advanced OTP
16. OTP Templates
17. Web server built with the OTP scaffolding
18. Mnesia--The Erlang real-time database.
19. Programming Multi-core CPUS
20. Reference Material

I'm especially interested in the chapters on Mnesia and ETS/DETS. Time to preorder I think :)

2007-02-20 Mac OS X otool

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 01:10:52 GMT

checking for XML_ParserCreate in -lexpat... no sayeth configure, but libexpat is installed, so now I need to find out if the symbol is in libexpat or whether I have a different problem.

I know I need to use otool, but which incantation is a mystery and google is being less friendly than I'd like. Looks like time to read the manpage.

otool -vT seems to do what I want - and there it is: xmlparse.o _XML_ParserCreate. Still no joy.

Ahh, configure is looking at a different (or missing) expat location. --with-expat=/Library/DarwinPorts to the rescue.

Today's lession: otool -vT </path/to/libfoo.dylib> -- lists the symbols in the dynamic library foo.

2007-02-05 IRC Protocol

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 05:40:54 GMT

I'm not loving the IRC protocol. Fortunately I only have to fool undernet's ircd into believing I'm a valid server.

<hack, hack, hack>

Oh so it's not RFC2813 I have to implement... it's that plus P10.

<hack, hack, hack>

“a server has a “max client numeric“, this is sent in SERVER messages. a client numeric on a server, ANDed with the max server numeric, must be unique. for example if server YY's max client numeric is YYA]] (4095), clients YYBXX and YCXX can't exist at the same time, doing this would cause a “numeric collision“, which is in this a protocol violation. but such numerics which occupy the same “slot“ are not identical - a message sent to user YYBXX in this example must not reach user YYCXX.” --p10

What does that even mean? Still,

=INFO REPORT==== 5-Feb-2007::23:58:40 ===
(<0.252.0> irc_server_session:122) Got event
{cmd,
 ":scrubbed.server 461 * SERVER :Not enough parameters\r\n",
 {user,
     "scrubbed.server",
     undefined,
     undefined},
 error,
 [{code,needmoreparams},
  {target,"*"},
  {command,"SERVER"},
  {text,
      "Not enough parameters"}]}

probably means I'm on the right track.

There is an easy way to

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:49:26 GMT

“There is an easy way to get a new entry into Journler from any app. Use the service menu, which is already assigned a hotkey of shift cmd J.” -- journler forums

Wow, that is pretty easy :)

2007-02-02 RabbitMQ

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:30:06 GMT

Oooh, shiny. LShift just released a queuing system written in Erlang.

I'm in the process of writing some kind of queuing system for SMS transport - maybe RabbitMQ will let me avoid all that.

2007-02-02 Scheme vs. Common Lisp

Thu, 01 Feb 2007 20:06:57 GMT

This article gives a very good explanation of some of the philosophical differences between Scheme and Common Lisp.

2007-01-31 HashDot

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 08:38:42 GMT

Franz have just posted a very interesting article demonstrating the #. (sharpsign dot or hash dot) reader macro in CommonLisp.

(defvar *zipcode-data*

#.(let ((zips

(prog2

(progn (format t “reading zips.cvs...“)

(force-output))

(read-zips-csv

(merge-pathnames “zips.csv“ *compile-file-pathname*))

(format t “done~%“))))

(list 'list

(vector-of zips #'zip-code)

(vector-of zips #'zip-state-abbrev)

(vector-of zips (lambda (zip)

(let ((loc (zip-location zip)))

(cons (location-latitude loc)

(location-longitude loc)))))

(vector-of zips #'zip-city)

(vector-of zips #'zip-state))))

This snippet reads zipcode data into the variable *zipcode-data*. The sneaky bit is that it does this at read/compile time.

When the compiler comes to create the special variable *zipcode-data* (think static variable in javalike languages) the #.( .... ) macro is expanded, calling code that reads the zipcode CSV file into a list of vectors (zip code, state abbreviation, (latitude, longitude), city, state).

After the reader has performed its #. magic, the compiler sees:

(list #<...vector of zip codes...>

...

#<...vector of states...>)

Which the compiler then writes out to the compiled lisp file as static data.

Essentially common lisp reader magic has allowed us to easily turn a startup cost (initialising *zipcode-data*) into a compile-time cost. Now to find a problem to apply this to :)

2007-01-29 GPG and the web of snore

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 07:59:16 GMT

GPG is a really neat crypto system that allows you to encrypt and sign data without requiring a central key granting authority. It relies on trust relationships between people's keys - I sign Joe Bloggs' key to indicate that a particular key for joe@bloggs.com is the key he uses. Why is that important? Well it lets you trust keys that you don't know about directly.

For instance I might receive an email GPG-signed by Jane Doe (jane@doe.com). Joe has signed Jane's key and as I trust Joe and his key, I can trust Jane's key because Joe has effectively vouched for her.

At least this is the theory about how it all works. People are busy going to conferences and signing eachother's keys to build up a global web of trust. I trust you, you trust him, he trusts someone else and so on. Sadly this trust data is badly under-used. Try using any GPG-enabled application (of which there are precious few) and doing anything with all those trust entries you've created. Yeah... that's what I thought. If you're lucky you might get some kind of pretty graph or a really low MSD score.

Don't even get me started on actual keysigning events -- I know you hate spammers, but would you really do this to your parents in the name of securing email?

</curmudgeon>

The less crotchety side of me is really waiting for a nice GPG UI and deep and thoughtful integration into the apps I use to communicate with people. iGPG anyone?

2007-01-29 Where oh where have my megs gone?

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:58:35 GMT

pmTool was using about 350M of resident RAM this morning and causing lots and lots of wonderful swapping (complete with attendant interactivity problems). I always thought this was just some essential Mac OS X power management daemon that couldn't be killed without causing trouble. In the past I've just rebooted every week or two to keep pmTool consuming only an unreasonable amount of RAM.

Turns out that pmTool is actually part of Activity Monitor... the program I run to find out what processes are eating all my RAM and causing all the swapping. GAH. At least I can avoid a few reboots now - just restart Activity Monitor and you get all of pmTool's RAM back.

*head asplode* :)

2007-01-27 Mac OS X Swapping

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 06:27:31 GMT

I'm quite a fan of Mac OS X (Tiger) - great UI, great apps, unixy underneath etc, but its interactive performance with a high IO load (like when it decides to swap) is awful. Though I haven't used Linux on my desktop for a long while, but I sure don't remember interactivity just going away for minutes while it did something memory/swap intensive.

Grubles

Small number of points awarded for none of the interactivity problems affecting iTunes playback.

2007-01-27 Music of the Week -- Uncertain Girl

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 03:18:00 GMT

I'm continually amazed by the sheer number of really great artists there are around the place in Wellington. Last weekend I got a copy of Sarah Wiig's first album, "Uncertain Girl" and I've been listening to it in iTunes pretty much all week. My favourite tracks so far are Peat Street, Uncertain and Empty, though the others are great too.

Age Pryor, The Phoenix Foundation, Sarah Wiig -- I wonder what bands I haven't found out about yet...

archaelus

iCal, iSync, displayAlarms, so much hate

Tracking Erlang/OTP

2007-05-03 When should I write a gen_server?

2007-06-23 lolcat

Posted using LJ Talk...

2007-03-30 Age Pryor: Shank's Pony

Posted using LJ Talk...

2007-03-13 Spreadsheets - not for banking

2007-03-08 Privilege

2007-03-05 Neologism of the day

2007-03-05 Google SoC Deadlines

2007-03-05 Programming Erlang

2007-02-20 Mac OS X otool

2007-02-05 IRC Protocol

There is an easy way to

2007-02-02 RabbitMQ

2007-02-02 Scheme vs. Common Lisp

2007-01-31 HashDot

2007-01-29 GPG and the web of *snore*

2007-01-29 Where oh where have my megs gone?

2007-01-27 Mac OS X Swapping

2007-01-27 Music of the Week -- Uncertain Girl

2007-01-29 GPG and the web of snore