Snakes, Foxes, and Penguins: October 2012

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sleep in Windows

Many of us are aware that there is no sleep in Windows. For those of us who don't want Cygwin or something similar, I wrote this stupid little script just now.

#!/usr/bin/env python2
from time import sleep
from sys import argv, stderr, exit

try:
    duration = int(argv[1])
    if duration <= 0:
        raise ValueError
    sleep(duration)
except (IndexError, ValueError):
    print >>stderr, 'Usage: %s duration' % argv[0]

It's not significant, but I am not amused by the lack of such a command in Windows.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Musings During Jury Duty

While killing time during one of the long waits associated with jury duty yesterday, I scribbled this down:

My handwriting is also worthless.

It's not that it's boring; it's that I have trouble channeling a coherent train of thought without structured stimuli. My mind jumps from thought to thought without allowing any proper development. That is, unless I find something particularly interesting.

My attention span is worthless.

There really are all sorts of stimuli out there; those who claim to be bored are just ignoring them, which iss fairly normal as we are thought to do so. Really, paying attention to them more often than not prevents focusing on more important things.

The Web acts as a source of mildly structured stimuli for me, which is why I often, though not always, turn to it. Social interaction is a form of stimulus structuring with a somewhat useful contex.

I transcribed it verbatim, against my normal process of proofreading while I do so.

tmpchrome

After my dissatisfaction with incognito mode in Chromium, I ended up writing this script, which I call 'tmpchrome' (despite it using Chromium).

My main issue is how all pages share a single incognito session; I'd rather have more control over how sessions are shared.

#!/usr/bin/env python2
from subprocess import Popen
from sys import exit, argv
from traceback import print_exc
from os import rmdir
from os.path import isdir
from shutil import rmtree
from tempfile import mkdtemp


profile = mkdtemp()
returncode = 1
p = None
try:
 print 'Profile:', profile
 p = Popen(['chromium', '--user-data-dir=%s' % profile] + argv[1:])
 p.wait()
 returncode = p.returncode
except:
 if p is not None:
  p.kill()
  p.wait()
  returncode = p.returncode
finally:
 try:
  rmtree(profile)
  if isdir(profile):
   rmdir(profile)
 except Exception:
  print_exc()
 finally:
  exit(returncode)

It isn't perfect, but is good enough for me.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Nico Nico Douga Download

The queue's a bit smaller this time, but I think these are some really good songs.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

My Typical Thought Process

I often follow the below process when deciding on what I should do.

I should do $X.
Hmm. $X is either:
1. What everyone does ("It's too obvious").
2. Something I have already done at least once ("Too boring").
3. Not a challenge.
So I'll spice it up by adding some new elements in
Eventually: I'll do this crazy thing with some minor elements of $X added in here and there

It usually ends up working out quite well, though, so I'm happy with this process.

Snakes, Foxes, and Penguins