Santa's Blog :)

Technology (Kubuntu, KDE, Python, ...) and some personal news

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Wedding Pictures

Finally all our wedding pictures (and the related pics from the bachelorette and bachelor parties) are online:
https://www.senarclens.eu/~gerald/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=21730

We are looking forward to some of your comments and hope you like them,
Anna & Gerald

Solving Linear Programs with PuLP and Coin

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PuLP is an LP modeler written in python. It can generate MPS or LP files and call different solvers, including the one from COIN-OR. To get started you need to install all required packages (just tested in (K)Ubuntu 11.10)
sudo easy_install -U pulp
sudo aptitude install coinor-libcbc0

After the installation test if the solver works with
from pulp import *
pulpTestAll()

The output should look like
Solver pulp.solvers.PULP_CBC_CMD unavailable.
Solver pulp.solvers.CPLEX_DLL unavailable.
Solver pulp.solvers.CPLEX_CMD unavailable.
         Testing zero subtraction
         Testing continuous LP solution
         Testing maximize continuous LP solution
         Testing unbounded continuous LP solution
         Testing Long Names
         Testing repeated Names
         Testing MIP solution
         Testing MIP relaxation
         Testing feasibility problem (no objective)
         Testing an infeasible problem
         Testing an integer infeasible problem
         Testing column based modelling
         Testing fractional constraints
         Testing elastic constraints (no change)
         Testing elastic constraints (freebound)
         Testing elastic constraints (penalty unchanged)
         Testing elastic constraints (penalty unbounded)
* Solver pulp.solvers.COIN_CMD passed.
Solver pulp.solvers.COINMP_DLL unavailable.
...

Once this is done you can proceed with working through the PuLP documentation.

RSI

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Not many posts recently - I'm still suffering from RSI (since about two years now), but I'll try to write a little more soon (some personal news as well as some nerdy information...)
ttys

Switching to PostgreSQL from SQLite3

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Running Django on a server using SQLite3 and Python >= 2.6 you might see errors like "OperationalError: database is locked" or "OperationalError: unable to open database file". This seems to be due to the following bug: "OperationalError: database is locked" with Python 2.6 multiprocessing and SQLite backend

In case you need to port existing data for this or any other reason to PostgreSQL, this procedure might help to save time.

Read more...

Testing your harddisk's speed (read and write)

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I knew that hard disks made great improvements in terms of speed over the last few years. Today I attempted a short test w/ the well know hdparm command
$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   14080 MB in  2.00 seconds = 7047.54 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  342 MB in  3.01 seconds = 113.46 MB/sec

Read more...

Using your cell phone for presentations

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I've been playing around for a while w/ different cell phones connected to video projectors to use them for presentations. However, I wasn't all that satisfied until I tried my Android phone yesterday w/ its reasonably high resolution. That left creating the content to be used on the phone.

Read more...

Pictures updated

Sign of life

Hi folks,
sorry for the silence. It took us a while to get settled etc., but now all is good and we're one step closer to living the dream. smile

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(K|X)Ubuntu Network Manager does not connect

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Even though I really like the functionality of network manager, some bugs cost me a major headache a few times in the past. One of them is sometimes triggered after a hard restart causing network manager (or rather the client applications like knetworkmanager) to say "Network deactivated" and resulting in no working network connections.

Read more...

Even more photos smile