Eric and I attended Northwest Python Day 2009 today at the University of Washington. There were about 50 people present, with a few out-of-town visitors from Portland and Vancouver BC.

It was a mixed bag. I found the afternoon sessions more in­ter­est­ing than the morning ones.

The morning talks started with a set of five-minute lightning talks, including:

• ctypes being used to crack open a raw binary file with arbitrary bit alignment.
• Werkzeug: a set of WSGI utilities. Debugger sounds par­tic­u­lar­ly useful.
• BuildBot: Eric talked about using it for Continuous In­te­gra­tion and how easy it was to configure and extend, compared to CruiseC­on­trol.NET.

Browser Interface, Local Server: creating a desktop app that …continue.

What a month!

It opened well, when my nephew Harry was born. Frank died a day later. A cold dragged me down for over a week.

Last week’s Obama in­au­gu­ra­tion cheered me up. He’s off to a strong start. My story about attending the Bush Sr. in­au­gu­ra­tion omitted noting that 20 years ago this month, I emigrated from Ireland. More on that in some future posts.

Then there were the layoffs. Emma lost her contract job last week, primarily from having missed a lot of work due to ill health. And on Monday, some other friends were laid off, as were tens of thousands all around the country.

And my gout has flared up, though in a mild way.

There’s a little-known special election coming up on February 3rd for the new elective position of Director of Elections for King County.

I recommend that you vote for Sherril Huff, and so do the Seattle Times and the Stranger. Everyone else in the race is un­qual­i­fied.

Another novel in the Dune franchise. Paul of Dune is an interquel, largely taking place in the decade between the events of Dune and of Dune Messiah.

Paul Atreides has become the Emperor of the known galaxy. A vicious jihad has burst across the empire in his name. His prescience tells him that it’s absolutely necessary so that mankind can break out of the course that leads to stagnation and de­struc­tion. But billions have died and many more are yet to die. He is feared and hated. A …continue.

I mentioned recently that the #39 route is closing, which would leave me without a direct connection to downtown Seattle. The new #50 route would run along 15th Ave S, two blocks from my house, to the Lander St Light Rail station in SoDo.

We attended the Metro Open House at the Jefferson Community Center this evening.

My concerns are slightly assuaged. The new #50 should run every 15 minutes and run until about 11pm. That’s better than the #39 which runs every 30 minutes until 7pm, then hourly until 9pm.

In addition, the #60, which also travels along 15th and goes past the Beacon Hill Light Rail station, would run later and longer, …continue.

The Pope has reinstated four ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed bishops:

Pope Benedict XVI, reaching out to the far-right of the Roman Catholic Church, revoked the ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tions of four schismatic bishops on Saturday, including one whose comments denying the Holocaust have provoked outrage.

Pam has more. Newsweek has context.

Last month, the Pope said:

that saving humanity from homosexual or trans­sex­u­al behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from de­struc­tion.

Shit like this reminds me of why I am no longer a Catholic.

I was raised Catholic in Ireland and spent eleven years at a priest-run school. It didn’t take; I had lost my faith by my mid-teens.

But even if I still believed in God, I’d have a hard …continue.

I made royal icing last night for the Christmas Cake to put over the marzipan. A very tedious half hour with an electric handheld mixer to beat the egg whites until they were stiff, and then beat in the powdered sugar.

The recipe that I used from an old Joy of Cooking called for the juice of 1 lemon. I used ReaLemon which says that 3 ta­ble­spoons = 1 lemon. I added two ta­ble­spoons, which was quite lemony. The recipe that I’ve linked to calls for two teaspoons, which seems like a better choice.

I had drizzled whiskey over the cake several times to keep it moist. That was a mistake. The cake …continue.

I made royal icing last night for the Christmas Cake to put over the marzipan. A very tedious half hour with an electric handheld mixer to beat the egg whites until they were stiff, and then beat in the powdered sugar.

The recipe that I used from an old Joy of Cooking called for the juice of 1 lemon. I used ReaLemon which says that 3 ta­ble­spoons = 1 lemon. I added two ta­ble­spoons, which was quite lemony. The recipe that I’ve linked to calls for two teaspoons, which seems like a better choice.

I had drizzled whiskey over the cake several times to keep it moist. That was a mistake. The cake turned out …continue.

I mentioned Copilot a while back as a way of helping someone by connecting remotely to their desktop.

CrossLoop is another such service. If you want to charge someone for helping them out, CrossLoop will take a cut. Otherwise, unlike Copilot, it’s completely free. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it’s Windows only: there’s no Mac or Linux clients.

I’ve used it a couple of times to connect to my parents’ computers in Dublin and Cape Town. It works well, though it’s still painfully slow.

This morning’s problem: My father was no longer seeing images in his Yahoo mail. Somehow, he had managed in Firefox to block images on his Yahoo mail server, and only on his Yahoo mail server.

Salumi’s has the best selection of char­cu­terie in Seattle. The range and quality of their cured meats is truly impressive. The flavor, excellent. Their counter staff, friendly and family-like. The line goes out the door.

But. But. But.

Their service is wretched. That line moves at a glacial pace. I’ve never taken less than 20 minutes to get a sandwich; sometimes twice that. The staff are slow and in­ef­fi­cient. Their stations are badly laid out and they have to fumble around each other in their pokey little store.

Every time I watch them at work—and I always have plenty of time to watch them work—I want to drag them over to Jimmy John’s or Bakeman’s. Jimmy John’s is fast, efficient, …continue.