.local is the Shit

… accidentally I stumbled about something I really wished for. User-specific site-packages (python-talk). As specified in “PEP 370 — Per user site-packages directory” a user’s home directory might now have a directory called .local which contains lib/python<version>/site-packages and also bin/.

For this sweetness of course no python PEP is needed, but here comes the beauty:

~/.local is kind of a new standard directory which is a “standard” suggested by freedesktop.org and already used by some other applications and

python ./setup.py install –user

will automatically install the required package there – which again is no big thing and could be archived via PREFIX=~/.local/ but this is feels natural, pythonic, good. All now left to do is to add ~/.local/bin to the PATH-variable and ~/.local/lib/python<version>/site-packages/ to the PYTHONPATH (you should imo do this in ~/.profile).

So, using this, your virtualenv-usage might significantly decrease (though it does not make virtual environments useless).

Posted in MacOSx, linux, python, ubuntu | Leave a comment

Wrong Choices

*schnief* python chose the “wrong” VCS. Tell me why Guido – I don’t want to learn using another VCS.

Posted in bazaar, complaining | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Stupid is who does stupid …

Germany is getting damn stupid internetfiltering. Here’s the one line to circumvent it for unixoid operating systems.

Posted in redirecting your attention | Leave a comment

Tweening made comfortable

… starting to code webapps in ActionScript3 I discovered (this widely known) tweening class. It’s truly comfortable and definitely the way to go when you have to tween.

Posted in Uncategorized, actionscript3 | Leave a comment

… removeChild() …

… using this command on a regular base makes me feel cruel.

Posted in actionscript3 | Leave a comment

Almost lost my sanity over Flex+Bitmap Fonts

An (unbelievable ugly, but nevertheless life saving solution) is to be found here. ADOBE, this SUCKS! How the hell am I supposed to use bitmap fonts (and please don’t tell me I should not).

If anyone knows a sane way to suppress anti-aliasing for fonts, using Actionscript3 only – TELL ME – I’ll be grateful forever.

Posted in actionscript3, complaining | Leave a comment

Generating TiffG3 aka TIFF/F

I tried generating a tiffg3 to push it through capifax and at first nothing worked.
This was my first solution (using ImageMagick, which uses GhostScript):

convert -density 204x98 -resize 1728x1186 \
-compress fax -monochrome -negate &lt;in.pdf&gt; &lt;out.tiff&gt;

Problem: the output is ugly (improvements welcome)
The second solution (using GhostScript-only) works a lot better:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER -dBATCH \
-sDEVICE='tiffg3' -sPAPERSIZE='a4' -r'204x169' \
-sOutputFile=&lt;out.tiff&gt; &lt;in.pdf&gt;

My favorite solution would be python only, … dream dream dream …

Posted in MacOSx, linux, windows | 2 Comments

Changing iPhoto’s and iTune’s Library

… just by pressing the Option-Key (the Key formally known as Alt-Key) when starting the application.

Posted in MacOSx | Leave a comment

Additional Quicklook-Plugins

I just installed additional Quicklook-Plugins into ~/Library/QuickLook and refreshed the service via ‘qlmanage -r’ – works fine

Posted in MacOSx | Leave a comment

Send fax from the commandline (capifax for Windows, Linux)

This really nice project promises to send faxes from the command line under both Linux and Windows. The capifax command is part of a suite which also offers sending faxes via FritzBox-Phone from Linux -  great.

Posted in ubuntu, windows | Tagged | Leave a comment