silent_mobius

Fairport, from the field 6

2007-08-10T20:57:52Z

Well Show of Hands kicked major ass in all kinds of ways. The evil daystar is passing through the underworld and getting ready to taunt me tommorow. Right now Fairport 1969 (sans Sandy Denny) are playing the whole of Liege and Lief. It's a quite a trip, though I thinmk the sound guys have it a bit over loud at times, and we're quite a bit back.

Fairport, from the field 5

2007-08-10T16:32:36Z

Christ on a bike it's must too hot for me. I missed a lot of the early bands trying to find cash of getting mild heatstroke. I am such a shut-in most of the time I have mimimal resistance to that giant ball for fire. "Curse you day-star". Ok the BBC folk award winners "Last orders" were very good. They didn't grab me though, but that could have been more to do with the heat-grumpies than their playing

Fairport, from the field

2007-08-10T10:53:32Z

Well day two starts, we have a fairly good spot all staked out but I have completely run out of cash, so there will have to be a trip to the only shop in Cropredy. Mind you it was announced that the mobile cash machines have reduced their charge this year, yeah righ, they are charging 25p more up to 2.75 and they don't take credit cards. Well if looks like a good line up today, I'll talk more as it happens.

Fairport, from the field 4

2007-08-09T21:32:09Z

Lulu, well she's in great voice. But I mean I'm not realy here to listen to lulu do poppy blues

Fairport, from the field 3

2007-08-09T20:33:04Z

Hmm well Jools Holland, people seem to like it but to be honest it's so far away from folk or rock it feels a bit out of place and very mainstream and generic. Though they are doing what they do very well I guess.

Fairport, one the field 2

2007-08-09T19:22:49Z

Ok Seth Lakeman has just started his encore. John and Sally are off somewhere and we've aquired Ruth (Alex's sister, who is a cutie) and Rachel. Anyway. Seth rocked, singing while fiddling must be tough, and rocking that hard at the same time is rare.

Fairport 2007 on the field report 1

2007-08-09T17:55:49Z

Ok I tried to do this last year but I was using a 3rd party lj client for WinCE and after it lost a fairly long post I got a bit disheartened. So this time its the web interface all the way (and copying to pnotepad first, just in case) Well all the weather worries have been for naught so far,it' been fantastically hot and sunny (damn me for not bringing a hat) Setting up took too long for my taste but as anyone who knows me knows I prefer to do something badly now and correct as I go rather than plan for any eventuality and take ages over it. Once on the field I started listening when kerfuffle came on, fantastic musicians and Kat, Alex and I all agree that we should politely accost the accordian/clog dancer and ... entertain her. Seth Lakeman is next, reports will follow.

What a luser

2006-11-24T16:09:58Z

Well I just make a fool of myself on #Catalyst. I knew that putty's freeform cut+paste would trip me up one day. And pasting a chunk of code into irc is a kickable offence *hangs head in shame*.

I was trying to ask about Catalyst Auth framework. I'd been trying to get C::P::Authentication::Store::LDAP to work for about 4 hours with no joy and was getting mighty frustrated and slipped, such is life.

So regarding C::P::Authentication::Store::LDAP. I can authenticate using basic Net::LDAP but precisely the same search using C::P::Authentication::Store::LDAP fails so I'm wondering if I'm getting something wrong on the catalyst side.

silent_mobius @ 2006-11-23T16:13:00

2006-11-23T16:13:34Z

Ok I tried this early on in my testing:

[% WHILE (row = result.next) %]
     [% row.purchase_order_rows.count %]
 [% END %]

It didn't work so I moved on, eventually I'm sticking this in the TT template to try and work out what the _hell_ is going on

    [% PERL %]
     print "\n";
     my $r = $stash->get('result');
     print ref($r);
     print "\n";
     my $a = $r->next();
     print ref($a);
     print "\n";
     my $b = $a->purchase_order_rows();
     print ref($b);
     print "\n";
     print $b->count();
     [% END %]

At the output end that gives me (3 is the correct count):

DBIx::Class::ResultSet
 PurchaseOrder::Model::DBICSchemamodel::PurchaseOrder
 DBIx::Class::ResultSet
 3

So that was the softly-softly approach so I try:

	[% PERL %]
 	my $r = $stash->get('result');
 	while (my $row = $r->next())
 	{
 		print $row->purchase_order_rows()->count()."\n"
 	}
 	[% END %]

Yep I get 3, so what the _hell_ is the difference between $row->purchase_order_rows()->count() in perl and row.purchase_order_rows.count in TT?

Arrrrgh

2006-11-23T15:17:56Z

Y'see this is why I "Just don't get" Catalyst.

Ok so I have a list "method" for a table purchase_order right? The stuff that InstantCRUD spat out for Template::Toolkit actually makes sense this time (rather than the form handler that delegated everything to HTML::Widget which is _really_ starting to get on my nerves.) now there is a 1 to many relationship with the purchase_order_row table so InstantCRUD show an entry in the list view formed by:

[% FOR val = row.purchase_order_rows; val; ', '; END %]

This lists all of the id's of the purchase_order_row rows that are associated with the current purchase_order row (still with me?) So I'd like that to simply be a count of those rows, after all I don't want the users to see the id's if I can help it.

So does TT have some way of doing scalar(@array) because that row.purchase_order_rows its a list right? No, its an object, its PurchaseOrder::Model::DBICSchemamodel::PurchaseOrderRow which doesn't exist it seem to be constructed by PurchaseOrder::Model::DBICSchemamodel's parent Catalyst::Model::DBIC::Schema and looking at the source to that doen't really tell me much because it's so abstracted.

So how the hell do I get a count of row.purchase_order_rows in TT is there a method I can use to get at it? This is why Catalyst _needs_ some explicit docs. You can't spend an hour searching through inheritance just to work out what methods you can use, there should be a list, somewhere and it should never be unclear what a object _really_ is, maybe something like:

The default resultset passed to the default TT list controller (/MyApp/root/MyTableObject/list) created by the InstantCrud helper is a XXX that inherets from YYY and ZZZ. Supported methods are:

oooo (link) from YYY
pppp (link from ZZZ
...

silent_mobius @ 2006-11-22T20:13:00

2006-11-22T20:13:44Z

Ok, I've been a software developer for about 7 years now and writing perl for about 5 of those. Now I liked the look of Ruby on Rails but to be honest its both a whole new framework/API _and_ language, so while I'm interested, and it does indeed look sexy, I can't really dive whole hog into it for work projects.

Then I found Catalyst. OO/web framework in perl with lots and lots of "We've already done that". It was Catalyst::Example::InstantCRUD that finally sold me on the idea as the sheer volume of qualified CRUD stuff I need to write is quite overwhelming right now. Now the only real problem here is that many of the CPAN modules they use at the core of Catalyst are unknown to me, I was never one to need an OO layer for DBI access, building SQL always seemed easier for the simple queries and the more complex ones usually needed tuning that I wasn't convinced I'd be able to do if the OO layer took me too far from the SQL generation engine. So most of Catalyst looks like some weird "moon-perl" the likes of which I have not had to deal with before.

So I've decided to document my experience here as I have it, mostly this will be outside of work hours as I'm still not convinced I can get into Catalyst quick enough to make it work for my in a public facing app, at the moment I'm looking at internal CRUD UI's only.

So I've been plugging at it on and off for a couple of weeks now, a lot of time has been spent just trying to install Catalyst from CPAN as there are some huge issues with Module::Build and RHEL perl paths right now, so there was a lot of gathering deps manually and "force install"ing, which wasn't so good. But once I was up and running on my home machine (Ubuntu Dapper) I started off on a simple InstantCRUD app... and was pretty impressed.

Well until I deviated from the tutorial. Man is this thing terse, I'm following inheritance left, right and center just to work out what methods I can use. It kinda felt like trying to write in old VBscript ASP without access to the MSDN docs (which I had to do for a week for my sins, thankfully development shifted to perl) I would generally give up each night frustrated and annoyed

Heres an example of what I though was a simple app

Basic mysql myasm table "articles" that's use to hold titles/abstracts/handler URI's/image URI's
Now we have a crappy little development server here that I use as a staging point for both content and code (I know, I'd prefer a real destructible development server and a seperate test environment, but it's not really an option right now) so I wan't a basic CRUD appp that also had a "copy record to live server" button for each row.

Shouldn't be that hard, right? Buggered if I've been able to work it out yet.

I'm still not sure what route to go down. Should I have another schema/model thing (I still don't have a handle on what the hell Catalyst is doing there) to represent the live DB and the usual Catalyst one, then can use a resultset row object directly and apply it somehow to the other object? or can I get a resultset then change the connection details and resave it. Or do I have to copy everything out of the resultset result thingy (what does $resultset->next actually return?) and build a new insert with another DBIx object (or Catalyst model inheriting a schema that inherits from DBIx *pant*) well hopefully I'll work it out.

Anyway the main impetus to starting this is a little victory, that is adding in meaningful field named for foreign key selectors in InstantCRUD (well in HTML::Widget::DBIC actually) it looks like the author was looking to do something like that anyway but commented chunks of it out. Took me about 4 hours to understand what the hell was going on and to prep a test that allowed me to Data::Dumper my way into a better understanding of the flow.

Eventually I altered:

sub create_from_config {
 ...
 @options = _get_options( $schema->resultset( $col->{foreign_class} ) );
 
 sub _get_options {
 	my( $resultset ) = @_;
 	my @options;
 #	my $displaymethod = $config->{$class}->{displaymethod};
 	my( $pkey ) = $resultset->result_source->primary_columns();
 	my $j = 1;
 	my $rs = $resultset->search();
 	while( my $i = $rs->next() ){
 		push @options, $i->$pkey, "$i";   #->$displaymethod;
 	}
 	return @options;
 }

To the following (Yeah, I'm not a fan of K+R bracketing style):

sub create_from_config
 {
 ...
 @options = _get_options( $schema->resultset( $col->{foreign_class} ), $col->{display_method} );
 
 
 
 sub _get_options
 {
 	my( $resultset ,$displaymethod) = @_;
 	my @options;
 	my( $pkey ) = $resultset->result_source->primary_columns();
 	my $j = 1;
 	my $rs = $resultset->search();
 	while( my $i = $rs->next() )
 	{
 		if ($displaymethod)
 		{
 				push @options, $i->$pkey, $i->$displaymethod;
 		} 		else
 		{ 				push @options, $i->$pkey, $i->$pkey;
 		}
 	}
 	return @options;
 }

With a quick addition to the interface_config.dat and lo and behold my foreign keys were displaying with their titles and not their primary keys.

Yay me!

*EDIT* Grrr LJ messes with the CRLF on pre blocks.....

Fairport 2006 Day 2

2006-08-11T23:56:20Z

Ok I didn't say anything about day 1 but that was more of a half day and I was shattered by the time it was over, not that I'm terrible sprightly right now mind you. Well we just got our of the closing act, 10cc, at first they were more than a little limp, but to be honest that may have been due to a technical fault but given their main era of success (70's) it was a little hard to tell. bit near the end they started pumping out tracks that I remembered from long nights out with my mums band as she played working mens clubs, nostalga-riffic.
looking forward to fairport (and a shower) tommorow. night night

Abingdon Day

2006-07-11T15:21:04Z

Well then, yet again its been a long time singe my last update. I think than can mostly be blamed on no longer having a laptop, well, that and a hefty dose of lazyness. Still the old works laptop was replaced by a smartphone (well not replaced as such, the job that provided the laptop was replaced, the smartphone was a cheap stopgap option) so I didn't really have any excuse.
Well I'm currently on my way back to Reading after dropping over 2.2 grand of deposit and rent for our new place in Abingdon, I really think I'm going to like it there, I hope Kat does too. I have to say that Abingdon is quite a nice place, well at first glance anyway I yet to live for any length of time in a small town. Well unless you count my home town of Scarborough.
I was looking for my passport before I set off and ended up rooting through my photos, it really does seem so long ago now, and I really do feel like a very different person to who I was then. while I happy with the change for the most part I have lost a little something perhaps it was just a kind of innocence. Jen, Colin, Kate, Gail, Melissa how are you all doing? heh, Ì wonder if Kate is married yet? if so that would make the full set. Well, myself excluded of course.

Damn I'm glad I got today off. Other than the sheer mountain of stuff I needed to do I really needed to get out of the office, not because of the people or the work. but mostly because of the heat. Even though the is air-con most days I end up uncomfortable and frustrated as my preffered working temperature would seem to be well below some people's comfort zone, roll on autumn/winter you are sorely missed.

I'll be interested to hear what mischief Will and Keith get up to (even though they seem to keep me oblivious to most of the boy-gossip) I hearby hand over the mantle of Knight-in-charge-of-getting-Keith-laid to Will I hope he does a better job than I did.

I wonter if theres a 3d model of didcot power station anywhere I think I coul do some fun stuff with that and a hired video camera. hell maybe I should get one of those HDD digi video cams. DV seems to be about 6GB for 30 mins so a modern 100GB laptop drive should hold about 8 hours. and would probably last longer as the power draw on modern drives has to be smaller than a standard tape draw motor.

Well maybe later, after the sting of that 2.2 grand has worn off.

file.....maker

2006-04-18T09:26:06Z

Ok I know I haven't updated in a while but please bear with me here I need to vent.

FileMaker, it's a "database", used to be a Mac product, became available on PC's a while back.

It just so happens that my current company (ab)uses this product.

...
...

The people who wrote the travesty should be put up against a wall and shot. They are an embarrassment to to my profession, I have no idea what sor of half-assed ex-mac people they have on staff but please _for_the_love_of_god_ someone put them out of my misery.

The ranks up there with older lotus notes email clients for sheer volume of terrible-terrible design fuck-ups. Just having to use this product hurts right down to the core of my software-developer soul.

The day I extract this POS from the flow of the company data can _not_ come too soon.

Hmmmm

2006-02-09T02:57:33Z

Well it's 2:47 am and I'm at work.

Having been sick for the past couple of days (no it wasn't anything serious, just a cold, and no, I wasn't being "all male" about it, I simply wanted to avoid giving my co-workers yet another illness and also found writing inventive code rather difficult with a head full of mucus) I needed to catch up, and given that I slept through the day and didn't sleep the night previous I surmised that tonight would be no different.

Hence I thought I'd come in to work.

The trip was beautiful, the night sky was clear and the moon bright, the stillness cheered me up no end, as did the gentle exercise (its nice that I now consider the cycle to work "gentle" as long as I'm not being aggressive with the hills) and being able to work without interruptions is truly stellar.

Well, maybe a few self imposed interruptions as I task switch. But hey an update was well overdue ne?

I have a plan to get on-top of a few things before the 14th I wonder if I'll succeed.

silent_mobius @ 2005-09-29T23:00:00

2005-09-29T22:04:38Z

Why do I always end up updating this in the pub? Well I guess the lubrication just does the job. shame I rarely have anything interesting to say by the time I have a few. Ahh well, such is life, as Shakespear Sister would say "Life is a funny thing, just when you think you've learned how to us it it's gone"
So much to say, so little desire to say it....see you soon

Pub Good, Beer good, Internet in pub even better

2005-04-21T20:42:00Z

I'm loving my live right now...but then again I am drunk in the pub my lady love works in.....

On The Subject of Unknown Durations

2005-04-21T10:05:12Z

"Can we use Machine A as a warm backup?"
"No, Machine A is currently in use investigating the impact of a DB upgrade for our entire system"
"Will that be completed before we need this backup"
"I don't know that. The investigation is open ended it needs to be thoroughly"
"If you set a date that the investigation will be 'done by' they we can make a decision on this"
"Indeed but I can only estimate a timescale for a job such as this. I cannot currently be certain"
"But if you say 'it will be done by x' Then you'll get it done. Otherwise if you leave it open ended you'll never get it done"

Which part of "I cannot currently be certain" was unclear you dumbass. When you ask me to ensure that an upgrade won't cause any problems its a big job how do you define a completion date for something that has no definition like 'investigate'. sheesh

silent_mobius @ 2005-04-19T13:56:00

2005-04-19T12:56:10Z

Here's a little something from Howie:

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -20
Conservative -31
	Liberal Democrat 62
	UK Independence Party 9
	Green 66

You should vote: Green

The Green Party, which is of course strong on environmental issues, takes a strong position on welfare issues, but was firmly against the war in Iraq. Other key concerns are cannabis, where the party takes a liberal line, and foxhunting, which unsurprisingly the Greens are firmly against.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

I'm surprised I'm more UKIP than I am Labour. Hmmmm
Though if you want to really think about which MP you should vote for (not which party) I recommend http://www.publicwhip.org.uk It impressed me.

Pffff, I can't be bothered to fix their crappy HTML. Maybe later

Don't push too far your dreams.....

2005-03-24T17:17:00Z

I just found out that T'pau's "China in your hand" is about Mary Shelly. Yea gods I love the Internet, though it's at it's most tasty with lashings of spicy Google sauce.

Quick poll for the nobody who reads, should I go out with the boys on Friday, hmmmm?

Politically Incorrect Theater Presents:

2005-03-23T11:24:41Z

Steve: "Well, Vix is like our own Brittany Spears"
Me: "That is wrong on so many levels.."
Steve: "It was part of her value proposition wasn't it, that she was all innocent?"
Vix: "But I am innocent!"
Abigail: "'Value Proposition' what are you talking about Steve?"
Steve: "Well it what they do isn't it. When a bird tells you she's saving herself for the right bloke you just know..... you're going to get the best blowjob of your life".
Everyone: "........"

silent_mobius @ 2005-03-03T01:24:00

2005-03-03T01:26:56Z

Well, after booze and tears the parting shot I left Keith with was "Stop the ride, I wanna get off", quick as a wink he replied "You won't be saying that when you have to pay to get back on"

How right he is........

Mother Fing Miserable Fer I can't F***ing believe the SH*T!

2005-03-02T20:46:11Z

*Cough* ok I feel better now.
Hello boys and girls can you spell catharsis, come on now, say it with me
Ca-thar-sis, well done.

I haven't posted in ye-olde long time and many many thing have happen since we last spoke. I had my 31st b'day party which was much a to-do (over a grand's worth of to-do mind you) Kat celibrated her 21st at roughly the same time. We went to Warsaw for a week which was interesting in a retrograde communist kinda way, both surreal and the ultimate in grounding all at the same time.

But enough about foreign climes, I'm sure I can wax lyrical on the subject of Poland at a later date, right now I have more immediate matters to rant about.

But I should bring you up to date before I commence any form of tirade...
I completed some of my projects for work and more recently I decided to give veganism a try for a month.

Those of you who know me may well me laughting right now, stop it, I'm serious.

I'm simply taking my personal philosophy on meat eating one stage further, I'll only eat an animal I kill myself and since I'm not doing any of that right now...

Well also I want to see if cutting out dairy makes any difference to my health, I figure a month should be enough to find out if I feel any better, although my lothing of mushrooms and aubergine is starting to put a serious crimp my meal options.

Oh I went to see "Show of Hands" recently as a support band, they were fantastic. The headliners "The Oysterband" weren't even worth staying for, so we left.

There we go, all caught up. time for ranting. Those of you who are of a nervous disposition should look away now.

I am a f***ing professional, If I'm responsible for something then I need to have decision making ability in the areas in which I'm responsible. If you require absolute control at all times, fine I can be an obedient and hardworking drone, but

One _or_ the other! make up your F***ING mind.
I am so looking for a new job.
Exit, stage outtahere even.

Oh my

2004-11-04T11:29:00Z

Something just occured to me. The weight of this realisation hit me in the chest like a freight train. It's not something I'd though about before but after all I'm being exposed to more and more of it at work, I suppose I should have though about is sooner but I'd just assumed that it would sort itself out in my mind given time. The possibility has left me in a semi-panic state, elated and nervous all at the same time. Perhaps this will be the catalyst for future events, I'll have to think long and hard before any of these thoughts came any closer to reality.

Oh, no.... I'm not going to say what this is all about, sorry.

My work environment

2004-10-29T12:08:47Z

My boss just recited a little jem which I have to put in context for you all.

Boss: *Puts phone down* Oh it was [female contact] from [company]....Stupid Tart.
*Eyebrows raise in office*
Boss: Its funny that, "Stupid Tart"... it's kind of crept into the English language"
*Office looks at Boss quizzically*
Boss: *Absolute deadpan* But if you think about it...... It's not really very PC is it?
*Stunned silence in office followed by derisive laughter*
Me: Oh full mark for that one Steve

I sometimes despair of the gender politics in my office