meck's blog

I remember very well reading in computer magazine about the latest game with amazing graphics, extreme humour and brutality: "Duke Nukem 3D". Then, a couple of months later I had that game on my computer - with the aid of a class mate who was one of the first lucky guys to own a cd burner. And it really rocked! Not only the single player mode was fun with all that monsters and prostitutes... we had the best gaming nights with the multiplayer mode! OK, the aiming wasn't really realistic, you basically only had to get the horizontal direction right. But maps were cool - one had even a moving subway. And the main character Duke was soo cool - not to mention his sayings. You didn't have to speak English very well to realize that...

This was about 12 years ago.

In a previous post, I talked about how to use D-Bus to get information about network status changes. Now, since I have been using a private VPN with my Ubuntu as a client, I came across another scenario, where a script using D-Bus could help: The VPN works fine, but sometimes just disconnects. It does not happen very often, but when it happens, it is annoying and I'd like to see it reconnecting automatically. Moreover I'd like to stay in the VPN whenever I have a network connection available. Unfortunately, I didn't found any option within the NetworkManager to manage this. I ended up in writing this script which can be invoked like autovpn <VPN_NAME>, where <VPN_NAME> is the name of the VPN which is displayed in the NetworkManager under VPNConnections. You can even run it automatically on system startup by placing it in "Startup Applications". It does two things:

It tries to connect the VPN whenever it detects an active internet connection.

It tries to reconnect the VPN, whenever it disconnects unintentionally. The number of attempts is limited to 5 and there is artificial delay of 5 seconds between attempts.

I have been using regular expressions within my Python projects for a while now, but I've never felt the need to use a full-featured parser generator. This changed yesterday and I had a look at PLY, a pythonic implementation for Lex/Yacc. Being used to parser generation in Java using ANTLR or Cup I came across some remarkable differences which I want to point out for you after the stop. You will also see a small calculator code snippet.

I did not go 'wow' when I read this news today. What I find remarkable though is: The Swiss people decided to do so during a poll - not the politicians. Maybe I should drop some prejudices about this country... So what does it mean for us? We'll probably save some minutes at the border. I guess not very much, because the control procedure has not been very complicated from what I have experienced so far.

Actually I have known about it for about over two years now, but I have never really tried it. One reason was a stupid thing at my university we call quota :-)
Lately I came about a blog entry of a guy introducing the new features of the latest Ubuntu release. He also mentioned, that Rhythmbox was able to play Last.fm audio streams and I quickly decided to register and see how it works...

... and now? I have spent much more time on watching his campaign than I have ever done with any German candidate. In fact, he's one of the political figures I am now most familiar with. And not only because I watched the general election campaigns, but also the primaries and the battle with Hillary. Her voting yesterday reminded me of how long I have been doing this. I don't know exactly when it started. However, I know who's to blame for getting me addicted and I also remember a bit the first video where I think ten Democratic candidates were standing next to each other including John Edwards :-)

The question is now, what I'll do after this is all over and there is no more shocking clip about Sarah Palin. I guess, my hits on the CNN video website will become less, but I if go there, I will check out how Obama is doing in office.

My short answer would be: It doesn't seem so at all. I guess McCain picked her, because she was young, feminine, fresh and a Washington outsider. If you watch the following interviews, you might think McCain's decision was just dead wrong. Not only does she seem inexperienced: She seems even uninformed and dumb.

The question might have a negative connotation which is not intended. I asked this myself this morning during watching McCain's attempt to suspend the debate on Friday in order to go to Washington. I think him being slightly on top in the polls is a result of the better situation in Iraq and his better commander and chief image. But this is likely to change within the next days. The fact, that McCain tries to avoid confrontation with Obama right now is a good indicator, that this man fears a discussion on the economy.

I tried to find a new Linux game with decent graphics and came across Enemy Territory. There was a bit of work to do until it ran. Here I will show you what I did. I will be very specific and the result of the procedure will be a working installation of Enemy Territory in ~/apps/enemy-territory:

For all Firefox users out there it is time for a major upgrade. Even former IE, Safari and other users may take a look at the latest and greatest release from Mozilla. When I first started the new release on my Macbook I couldn't believe my eyes. Especially the interface changes are really huge. Consider this screenshot