Pinky Gone Driving Little tidbits not meant for human consumption

I've been a fan of Bazaar for a while now, using it for all of my personal projects. I store the history of these projects on a central server at work and when I make changes on any computer (my laptop, a lab on campus) I push the changes to the central server and then I'm able to get the latest version of my work on any other computer. In this sense, I use a Version Control System (VCS) as a synchronization solution. Less frequently, I make use of the history tracking features of a VCS. Until recently, when I started collaborating on a software project with a student (GooeyStat).

He is hosting the project at Google Code which provides free hosting to Open Source projects like this. Google also provides only Subversion source control (okay, they also have a limited pilot program for Mercurial). So, when I wanted to start contributing to GooeyStat, I didn't want to give up the Bazaar interface which is so faimilar to me. So, I installed bzr-svn which is a plugin that allows Bazaar to interoperate with Subversion repositories.

I have long used reStructuredText (reST) for writing simple documents that I might later want to turn into something formatted: Committee minutes, project TODO files, memos, etc. I also use reST when contributing documentation to projects such as Bazaar, NumPy and SciPy, since it is a commonly used format for Python-related documentation. I've recently come to see it as an ideal format for writing longer documents that will eventually be formatted, but where I don't want to worry about formatting initially.

Pinky Gone Driving has been running on a very old version of the Drupal content management system. In preparation for possibly working on a new website for another non-profit organization (the Unitarian Universalist Society of Black Hawk County) I decided that I should check out the latest version of Drupal and see if that was going to be appropriate for that site.

So, I upgraded this blog first as a trial run and this is what I got. My old theme appears to be incompatible but I've got a similar thing going now with the new version of the CSS. Also, some of the images in my previous posts appear to be inaccessible as well. But I'm sure that if I had more time, I could make all of those problems disappear.

On the plus side, the new version is fast, easier to use and has some very nice AJAX stuff that helps a lot in the administrative interface. The archive block to the right also has a nice AJAX effect in the pager for distant months which is a nicely polished touch.

Version Control is a process of keeping track of the state of a project at specific points in time. The traditional use of this technology is in software development, where many small changes can interact in complex ways, and it is important to know when and what changes were made that might have caused errors. I have been using version control for my work since the first time as a graduate student that I broke one of my numerical codes as I was adding a feature and I really wanted to just go back to the way it was before I broke it, but instead I had to spend two days discovering exactly what I had done and undoing it. I've been using Subversion for five years now and I have been quite happy with it. With the emergence of Distributed Version Control Systems, I saw an opportunity to change my version control software and gain features that I had long desired.

I'm working on a new website for the Waverly Area Celiac Support Group: www.waverlyareaceliacs.org and it's still in the very early stages. It's currently just a bunch of hand-typed HTML with some id attributes to enable using CSS. But, people keep telling me more and more things that they would like to see up on that website so I'm afraid to put too much more work into the static HTML version for fear of having to replace it with something more advance, or suffer when making frequent updates. The other option is to start right now with a Drupal-based site and never have to update, although the initial setup will take longer.

Synergy is a program for controlling multiple computers from one keyboard and mouse. It is intended for use by people who use multiple computers on one desk. There is a main computer (the "server") and all of the others are clients who connect via the network. Using SSH, one can make the connections secure.

With some recent changes in my network setup on campus here, I can now connect to my desktop machine using ssh. This opened up the possibility of using Synergy to control my laptop while it sits on the desk next to me playing music, etc. I got it all set up along with some bash scripts to start and stop the process.

It's Awesome!!. No more turning from my main keyboard and mouse to change the song, or copy a file over or test something from an external computer! This is a really great piece of software.

I've moved the posts off of braeburn.amath.unc.edu, my workstation at UNC onto this site here at Undersea. I will be working on a redesign, getting everything back to its former glory and hopefully starting to post more. Stay tuned...

As a result of the move, all of the posts from the old blog got dates on the 17th of October (don't ask, long story) so I appear preternaturally productive in October 2006 but it isn't true of course. I could reset all of the dates by hand, but the drudgery factor of that threatens to overwhelm me.

Update: I went ahead and put everything back on its original date. The archives block to the right should now let you access things by time.

Update (again): I've re-created all of the recipes along with the ingredients and everything.

I'm moving http://braeburn.amath.unc.edu/~nburrell/blog to here. Stay tuned.

My music library is mostly in OGG format because I started ripping my CDs on a linux box and I like that the format is free and open. When I made came to UNC and made the switch mostly to Macs, I imported my music into iTunes. Due to the hard, hard work of some very smart people, Apple's audio framework Quicktime has been able to play OGG files. But, due to the internal idiosyncracies of iTunes, it would not import the track numbers correctly. So, for the past two years, I've gotten used to listening to my albums in alphabetical order by track name (iTunes's default ordering).

Now, from a post in the FAQ, I found this AppleScript that reads the ogg files directly and sets their iTunes track number (and title, etc.) to the appropriate value. It takes a long time to run, but I'm gradually working my way through my music getting all of the track numbers imported. I will be happy to be able to listen to albums in their original orders now.

I got a tenure track teaching job! It's in the Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics department at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. It's a small, Luthern, liberal arts college with about 1800 students. There are 10 other professors in the department and I'll be teaching lots of different courses, but particularly the department's three statistics courses. There's lots of energy going toward student research at Wartburg and the flexibility to play lots of roles makes it a great place for me.

It's in a small town and that's just right for me. I am an uncomplicated man who doesn't need much to be entertained. Between the public library, the Internet and the great outdoors, I'm just not sure what would be missing there that I might enjoy about any other location. It'll be a great place for Rose to grow up, and tuition exchange with other colleges is part of the benefits package (when it comes to that). Lara and I are both very excited and are looking forward to 5 months of big changes.

Anyone want to buy a house in Carrboro?