News You Can Bruise for 2003 January 4

Sat Jan 04 2003 13:47: I heard from a guy who might want to use NewsBruiser on a Windows server, so I investigated the possibility. It's surprisingly portable, considering I never gave the idea a thought until a couple days ago. There are only three problems I can find:

1. NewsBruiser uses the Unix-specific crypt module to encrypt passwords. Fortunately, there is a pure Python implementation. This is also good because crypt isn't included with the default Python package on Unix, so bundling my own crypt will increase portability on Unix.
2. NewsBruiser uses the Unix-specific fcntl module to lock the list of pending index updates. On Windows it can use a method in the msvcrt module instead.
3. I made the assumption in a bunch of places that the path separator character is '/'; I need to go through and fix those, or NewsBruiser will generate horribly broken URLs and have problems finding files.

Pretty good, I think. I'm also thinking seriously about a paper topic. I think I'll probably go with demonstrating the simple web interface to the configuration file, focusing on the technique rather than the specific tool (I think the specifics of web apps differ too much for such a tool to be both understandable and generally applicable, but I could be wrong).

Sat Jan 04 2003 13:59 Innovation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: Last week I bought a bar of shampoo. It's shampoo stuff in a soap-like bar. Very useful for very short hair, since you don't have to worry about using too little shampoo; I just scrub my head with it a little bit and lather. It doesn't leave my hair feeling greasy like some shampoos, which is good because the whole psychological reason I use shampoo is to get rid of that awful feeling of greasy hair. But it doesn't leave my hair as stiff as when I wash my hair with soap (which is how I know it's not just rebranded soap).

Sat Jan 04 2003 23:47: The light in my bathroom burnt out, and rather than go through the trouble of replacing the bulb I performed my ablutions by candlelight tonight. It was fun, but not neccessarily an experience I want to have every night. It reminded me of when we lived out in the country and had occasional lengthy power outages. It was like camping--inside!