Misspelled Nemesis Club

Around 1992 my second computer was an Amiga 500+, a lovely machine. It beat the pants off any PC at the time, particularly for playing Lemmings. Many Amigas used a television for their display, as a result they could run at a super high interlaced resolution. This looked awful and induced headaches. Interlacing is a fairly good compromise for television shows and movies, it’s terrible for sharp graphics such as a computer desktop. Nevertheless, in 2008, I’m pleased to say that the latest Linux drivers v169.07 by Nvidia support an interlaced display. These drivers are in Ubuntu Gutsy. This has meant my mythical MythTV computer is finally displaying in HD, at the native resolution of 1920 x 1080 interlaced, aka 1080i. The interlacing causes a shimmering during fade effects or vertical motion, it’s distracting but bearable. This isn’t the big news though. Intel has released programming manuals for some of it’s graphics chipsets. This means Keith Packard can get some community assistance with the X.org intel driver and that bug 11220 has a better chance of getting fixed. Update: Dear Intel, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

It is said there are 2 types of people:

At PyCon UK 2007 I gave a short talk on using Python to deal with tabular data. The slides, demos and modules for my talk are available for download. There is material in the download that I didn’t present on the day. The talk covers extracting data from various tabular data formats. This is the first step of an Extract, Transform Load (ETL) operation. It also summaries the character of those data formats. Comments, queries and suggestions are most welcome.

For the last week or so I’ve been putting together a spreadsheet, to compare the various Python implementations on support of PEPs and library modules. It is ready for a first release, but far from complete:

Since joining T-Mobile I’ve been impressed with the speed of Web n Walk. However, I had problems accessing MSN Instant Messenger, Jabber, FTP & IRC. Some other users recounted there MSN IM troubles in a Modaco thread on on the introduction of port blocking and a 3G forum thread on WnW AUP. I’m happy to report that a T-Mobile technician and I resolved the issues. The short answer: I was on Flext+WnW, upgraded to WnW Plus. T-Mobile switched my plan to Flext+WnW Plus, everything in the base package. Since then I’ve reliably been able to make MSN IM, Jabber, FTP and IRC connections. A longer answer follows: T-Mobile markets Web n Walk plans in 3 tiers:

I got a new phone with T-Mobile Web n Walk Plus today. I’m impressed, it’s working better than I’d hoped. Downloads are plenty fast with HSDPA (3.5G) and configration was bearable. Websites with a mobile variant are usable at 320x240, accessing the web on my laptop, at broadband speeds, when I don’t have broadband is incredible. However, so far I’ve discovered some downsides:

PyCon UK, the first UK community Python conference, is taking place in Birmingham on the weekend of 8th - Sun 9th September 2007. Extra early bird registration ends on Monday. We’re offering both days including access to all tutorials, talks, sessions & the conference dinner for the fantastically low price of £50 if you book in the next 3 days. Registration will remain open until the first day of the conference, but book early to save more. Proposed talks so far include:

I begin with evidence that Linux on the desktop is a reality, the bottom feeders have arrived: