Non-logical Fragmentations

Not that I ever really used it, but bye.

Well most blogging services (free or not) have multiple methods of blogging on the go. Blogger (the host of this blog and the combined <href= http://laurenandnick.blogspot.com >blog of my wife and I</a>) has 2 methods of posting on the go. The primary method is to send text messages via SMS/MMS, but this can get costly on a long international vacation, and the other is via email.

Email is great, I assumes that you have internet access. And while WiFi access and internet cafes are readily available, they aren t always there when you have time to blog (like on a train or in your hotel) and they aren t always free.

Solution... Historically I was a PalmOS Treo user, as of last October I became a dedicated G1 user. But for this trip I m a BlackBerry user. I managed to stick with my G1 for our Vietnam trip of about 2.5 weeks living off of free WiFi hotspots, but for this trip, a 1month trip through India, we knew that WiFi would not be as available in many of the areas we where going to. Plus being gone for a month, I knew for work, I d like email access on the go. So why Blackberry, well for those of us in the US on T-Mobile (I don t know about other providers) we have the option to sign up for International Blackberry service for an addition $19.99 a month. This means as long as you have service (and T-Mobile has great roaming coverage) you have email access anywhere you stand.

So blogging solved. Blog via email to your blogger account sent via your Blackberry. And yes I know that typing a long blog post (like this one) can take awhile on a smartphone (especially a Pearl with its small keyboard, but I find typing on any smartphone is a bit slow) but there is a simple solution there too. You can type your post on your laptop (in our cases, we have an 8.9 Acer and a 10 Eee, both excellent for travel) and then connect your blackberry via USB and copy the text file over and even images. One quick note, make sure to save your text file (and make sure it is TEXT, not word or such) in 'Unicode' or you'll have to fix all your 'symbols' like quotes and stuff, also if you have word wrap turned on in 'NotePad', disable it before saving. Your file will be significantly bigger in Unicode, but it will save you time in editing.

Once copied to the blackberry, simply disconnect the usb (I guess you could use bluetooth, but it will be slow, especially if you are tranfering images) and you can open your tet file via the media browser. Then simply cut and paste the doc into an email, attach your images and press send. Off goes your post. One recommendation, unlike sending via a regular network connection, I heavily recommend shrinking your images to a decent size for email, especially when using some of these new cameras with 10MP+, images can be over 2mb and that can take forever to get off via a blackberry.

One more thing I ll have to research via full internet access later (since I m posting this entry via the method described here) is I think that I remember that if you have the blackberry software installed on your computer that you can send emails from outlook through your phone. If anyone has done this please comment and let me know& if that is the case, I ll definitely be paying for WiFi access the next time I m near one and downloading the software.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Well I did it, I cut my hair. Check out
http://laurenandnick.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-feel-light-headed.html for
pictures and comments.

Also stay tuned to http://laurenandnick.blogspot.com for more details
about our upcoming trip to India.

so overall my past birthday was a good one... this is the last item to arrive... a nice new (refurbished) TomTom Go730.

Wow... I'm impressed... the Arlington VA Public Library has a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/ArlingtonVALib , not just that, then even have a Facebook page and a Flickr Photostream. Not to mention a page full of blogs: http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/Libraries/events/BlogsRSS.aspx

Talk about staying on top of communications and reaching out to their users... I was looking forward to using the Arlington Public Library even before I moved here when I read about their site on a friend Ben's blog.

Anyways just wanted to share....

New server and new problems.

Late last year my patched along circa 1999 Dell server decided to go belly up. That server was running Centos-5.2 and hosted my Trac installation running Trac-0.11b, running in Apache using mod_wsgi. So recently we finally replaced the server with a brand spanking new Dell server (heck if its predecessor lasted almost 10years, I hope this new one lasts at least 5years). I installed RHEL5.3 on this server instead of Centos since we (the IT group at work) want to simplify our OS variations and stick with the commercially available RedHat Enterprise Linux. And that is where my problems began.....

Well as we all know RHEL5.x still only includes Python2.4 with the distribution. Centos and other variant have started to include or at least are upgradable to Python2.5. While RHEL5 does include mod_python, mod_wsgi, Python2.4 and Trac0.10.x... I needed Trac0.11.x

Solution: drop RHEL and go with Centos... just kidding

So actually it turns out not to be that bad... you just have to do a lot of manual compliations... so here is my step by step solution:

Step 1. install Python from source, I went with the latest 2.6.1 (not 3 yet since on my Mac I've had backwards compitibility issues and didn't want to deal with them)

./configure --with-threads --enable-shared
make
make altinstall
ldconfig

the 2 key steps: --enable-shared in the configure statement does the work needed later by mod_wsgi and mod_python, and 'make altinstall'  which tells the installation to use /usr/local and to appended the 2.6 to the commands to prevent messing up system scripts which are based on Python 2.4 and in many cases (yum included) do not work with Pytohn2.6. The last step 'ldconfig' simply refreshes the library information which is needed before compiling mod_wsgi or mod_python from source.

optionally required step: if the shared library for Python is not seen in the '.../python2.6/config/' you'll need to add a symbolic link

ln -s ../../libpython2.5.so .

now on my server, the python config directory was at:  /usr/local/lib/python2.6/config

Step 2. install 'mod_wsgi' from source.

./configure --with-python=/usr/local/bin/python2.6
make
make install

here the only statement of difference is to tell mod_wsgi to use python2.6 instead of the system default 2.4, now if you have installation errors check out http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/InstallationIssues this page also explains the optional step after the Python installation.


Step 3. install 'mod_python' from source.

./configure --with-python=/usr/local/bin/python2.6
make
make install

as you can see, there is no difference between the methods for compiling mod_python and mod_wsgi. And again the main reason for compiling from source is to enable the use of Python2.6. And since both of these modules will be using Python, this is the reason of compiling Python2.6 with the '--enable-shared' flag.

Step 4. download and install the python setuptools for python 2.6 using the py26.egg.


Step 5.  using easy_install tool from the setuptools in Step 4, install Trac.

easy_install-2.6 trac

this will automatically install Trac.11.x since it is the latest version compatible with Python2.6, and using 'easy_install-2.6' will ensure that you are using Python 2.6

Step 6. configure Apache like instructed by TracModWSGI.

Now that wasn't to painful, the only clevat... now since all these packages have been installed from source, for security purposes, you have to remember on your own to update/patch these installs.

update: I've run into a slight problem where Trac can't access SVN since the libraries aren't 'accessible' by Python2.6, I'l update again when this is solved

update2:  Solution to get the SVN-SWIG installation to work with Python2.6... recompile subversion, only 'change' needed was manually hard coding the version of Python in the './configure' file

# Python: Used for testsuite, and bindings

#PYTHON="`$abs_srcdir/build/find_python.sh`"
PYTHON="/usr/local/bin/python2.6"

 Only remaining issue was where the files were installed to. Presumingly there is another line in the ./configure file to correct this, but I went the 'quick' way... symbolic links.

cd /usr/local/lib/python2.6
ln -s /usr/local/lib/svn-python/* .

For a long time now, I've been brush & blade shaving (atleast 3yrs). and as blade shaving goes, I quit using electric shavers basically freshman year (with the occasional use here and there, but currently I do not own an electric razor). My b&b shaving started as an interest after passing by 'The Art of Shaving' store in the mall, and it grew when Bloomingdales included sample for AoS in our wedding registry gift pack. Shortly after Lauren gave me a sample/travel kit for AoS and I've been Brush & Blade ever since. Now my AoS kit has long since ran out, and rather than replace it, I've spent the last 2 years testing other products. Blade really hasn't been a question, I think the Mach3 (which was the razor given to me by my dad in high school) will always be my razor. That said, I've considered trying a single blade like the Merkur. I've tried the 'Titanium 4 blade product from Schick and ugh, it doesn't work for me. and I say for me since everybody's face is different. as for soaps/foams.... I found I like soaps from Van Der Hagen, they cost only a few $s. And as it goes for Pre and After shave... jusry is still out and I'm always taking recommendations.

Now for the title of this post... I really liked the brush that came with my AoS kit... probably one of the reasons I decided I like B&B shaving. But like advertised, the brush only lasted so long (good marketing tool, get them hooked so they come back and buy a $100 brush)... So I decided to try other brushes. I first chose to go with a cheap one (also by VanDer Hagan), and I got what I paid for, a cheap brush, it worked, but not good for a day to day brush. I then researched and selected a Synthetic (vegan) brush, most brushes are made from badger or boar hair. I was happy to have a vegan brush, but I never felt it produced the right consistency of foam for me. Anyways, it too was pretty cheap, it cost about $15. While I never felt it produced quite the right foam, I've used it for well over a year, but it was time... I ordered a new brush. This time I spent another $15 but got a Tweeserman made from real badger hair... this brush I like.