http://blog.garethj.com Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:29:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Building .deb packages for Python applications Recently I wanted to build a .deb package for an internal IBM application I was writing so that users could easily install it and also so we could distribute them through some internal repositories. This proved a bit harder than I expected so this is ... http://blog.garethj.com/2009/06/building-deb-packages-for-python-applications/ On Wednesday we had the pleasure of Richard Hughes joining us at Hursley to talk about PackageKit. I've heard of it but never quite bothered finding out any more than the name but having gone to the presentation I'm pretty glad. PackageKit is (yet another) attempt at making software updating/installation ... http://blog.garethj.com/2009/03/packagekit-presentation/ Recently I've been putting together a Web application for a research project. I decided it was about time I really looked properly into REST so my Web interfaces are better structured. I won't go into all the benefits here, you can read for yourself. Suffice to say it seems like ... http://blog.garethj.com/2009/02/building-a-restful-web-application-with-php/ For my BSL level 3 course I have a variety of OpenOffice documents for different forms etc which make up the portfolio. I wanted a way to merge these into a single document but they each had different margins and all sorts; this meant doing it within OpenOffice was proving ... http://blog.garethj.com/2009/01/merging-and-converting-openoffice-and-pdf-documents/ I received an IBM Thanks! award recently from Darren for helping out with the Feel Good Inc. Extreme Blue project. One of the choices was a 'Recycled Office Pack' which sounded interesting and so I thought I'd go for that: All items say things like 'made from recycled paper and card', ... http://blog.garethj.com/2008/09/big-blue-goes-green/ A simple thing but one that made me feel quite virtuous. I've written a very very simple script that turns off the screen whenever I lock the computer. Should save some energy every time I go to a meeting or off for a cuppa. For anyone interested, it's a Perl script ... http://blog.garethj.com/2008/09/going-green-slightly/ Just a warning: I'm now going into sales-pitch mode. I do not work for the One Account but I think it's brilliant (well, brilliant for me, I take no responsibility if you listen to me and end up huge great hole of debt). Having said that, I could get some ... http://blog.garethj.com/2008/07/paying-off-that-mortgage/ I went on a brief trip to Toronto a few weeks ago and a friend of mine asked for recommendations on things to do. Here are mine - please make add any comments/suggestions :) Things to do CN Tower: tallest building in the world and some fantastic views, try and ... http://blog.garethj.com/2008/07/things-to-do-in-toronto/ I recently hit this snag when working with Dojo. Basically I wanted to set the checked status of a checkbox on a webpage programmatically. Simple you might think? Apparently not as easy as it should be. Interaction with checkboxes has changed slightly in Dojo 1.1 (apparently) but myCheckbox.setValue(true) should be valid. ... http://blog.garethj.com/2008/07/dojo-checkboxes/ Ok, so that's definitely not true but I try. Although he often has interpreters coming into the office, I regularly act as a backup interpreter for Ben for small meetings etc. The other day however, his interpreter had an accident and Ben was supposed to be giving a talk in ... http://blog.garethj.com/2008/07/me-a-professional-bsl-interpreter/